He watched the movie while I listened to it and messed around on the computer. Usually I do cross stitch or weaving, but last night I was too wiped out to take a chance on messing up my handiwork. So, I listened. And then I started looking up info on the 3 characters (including Etta Price, Sundance's wife/mistress). The more I looked the more I was amazed. Then we watched the extras included with this particular DVD. Interviews with Redford, Newman and Katherine Ross. And again, I was amazed.
Amazed at what? you might ask. Well, I'll tell you! (when I get back from checking the washing machine)
Ok, back again.
As I listened to the movie, not watching the good looking movie stars who were portraying each of the characters, I was struck by how bad these guys really were. That's part of the reason I started looking up info on them on the internet. They were robbers, murderers, liars, cheats, immoral, profane. Etta Price may or may not have been married to Sundance and the movie hints at it, but does not come right out and say, that she may have slept with both of them off and on. (Info on the women who went to Robber's Roost indicates that the men there shared their women with each other and one site indicated that she was one of just a small handful of women who ever went to Robbers Roost.) Then when the commentary began, we listened to all of these people involved with the movie talk about what good guys the two outlaws really were, not nearly as bad as others during that time period, or else just two among the others in their actions.
I remember watching this movie in the theater. Don't remember what year it was, that was the time before things came out a couple months later on VHS, of course. I remember how good looking I thought Robert Redford was. Swooon! I remember how brave and daring I thought Etta Price was and how good it made me feel when people told me I looked like Katherine Ross (we had a similar hair style and coloring - she's always been much prettier than me). I knew these guys were bad guys, but hey - give them a break! Maybe they'd just had a rough time and fell into being bad guys kinda by accident. And if you had no chance of marriage and someone offered you a life of adventure, why not do what Etta Price did? (I say "Etta Price" because that is her name in the movie - no one knows for sure what her real name was.)
Last night it really dawned on me that these guys were no better than the Hell's Angels or gang members in todays gangs.
Sometime in the night while I was wide awake instead of sleeping, I remembered the time Mel and I went to see Paint Your Wagon.
Again, a movie I'd seen in the time after I'd left home and before I met Mel, a movie I had really enjoyed at the time. Sure it was "naughty" and sure, it was immoral, but it was a cute movie. Right? [Remember, I was raised in a Christian home where we didn't go to movies - ever - and I'd become a Christian when I was 8 years old and had been baptised soon after.] When I saw it with Mel, after a couple semesters of Bible college, I was shocked and embarassed. Here I'd told him what a good movie it was - and it was just a movie about glorified hookers and polygamy. Ei yi yi. Yet, I am so very, very well aware now that these two movies are very symptomatic of what was happening during the '60's. Cultural revolution, where good is bad and bad is good. These movies were cutting edge at the time - now they are very simple and "cute". When I think of the thousands of movies that have been produced since then, how immorality of all kinds is portrayed as "normal", it all makes me feel a little bit sick.
I still like these songs sung by Lee Marvin I Was Born Under A Wanderin' Star, and The First Thing You Know . There is something in both of these songs that tugs at my heart - maybe that is why I liked the movie so much, when I was still going through all of that teenage angst.
.
I Was Born Under A Wanderin' Star
I was born under a wanderin' star
I was born under a wanderin' star
Wheels are made for rollin', Mules are made to pack
I never seen a sight that didn't look better looking back.
I was born under a wanderin' star
Mud can make you prisoner, And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin' from, For dreams of goin' to
Which with any luck will never come true
I was born under a wanderin' star
Do I know where hell is? Hell is in Hello
Heaven is good-bye forever, It's time for me to go
I was born under a wanderin' star
A wanderin' wanderin' star
Mud can make you prisoner And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin' from, For dreams of goin' to
Which with any luck will never come true
I was born under a wanderin' star
When I get to heaven, Tie me to a tree
Or I'll begin to roam, And soon you know where I will be
I was born under a wanderin' star
A wanderin' wanderin' star
The First Thing You Know
God made the mountains, God made the sky
God made the people. God knows why
He fixed up the planet, As best as He could
Then in come the people, And gum it up good
The first thing you know,
They civilized the foothills
And every where He put hills
The mountains and valley below
They come along and take 'em,
And civilize and make 'em
A place where no civilized Person would go
The first thing you know
They civilize what's pretty By puttin' up a city
Where nothin' that's Pretty can grow
They muddy up the winter, And civilize it into a place
Too uncivilized Even for snow
The first thing you know
They civilize left, They civilize right
Till nothing is left, Till nothing is right
They civilize freedom Till no one is free
No one except, By coincidence, me
The first thing you know
The boozer's in prison, And the criminally he isn't
And only the rascals have gone
When I see a parson, I gotta put my arse in
A wagon that follows the tail of a crow
The first thing you know
I pick up 'n and blow!
The first thing you know
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