Deep Breathing Under Big Sky

Cowboys on horseback still manage to just about stop my heart. It’s always been this way, and I’ve never been free of it. It started early: when I was growing up in South Carolina, my sister and I used to watch old westerns with our father: movies like McClintock, Shane, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Hang ‘Em High. I was captivated with dusty ranges, rocky spires and plummeting waterfalls, and the desperate things some of those men would do—guns usually blazing—to get there. And while there was an age I certainly reached where I started to pay most attention to the flop of blonde hair over Redford’s heartbreaking face, or the rakish, lusty glint in Newman’s gorgeous baby blues, I always watched the horses. I watched the actors who rode them: from the extras in the wide-open range scenes—cowboys gripping saddle horns with one hand and waving hats with the other, Indians riding bareback and full-throttle, infinitely cool—to the easy way leading men like Eastwood and the Duke sat the saddle, how they leaned back in it, heels down, as if they were more centaur than man: the horse merely an appendage. (read on…)

Dailies

It happens at the forty-third second. Forty seconds in, however, my two sons are safe in Vic Morrow’s arms, the helicopter’s whirring blade is exposed and stilled, and I know that when I thumb the PLAY button, the blade will continue spinning above them, its rotor a broken tail; sparks will gush from where the ammunitions team miscalculated the blast, the palms and tall grass growing out of the water will bow down, succumb to the wind created by the helicopter’s blade, and the water will wrinkle. For that moment they are supposed to be safe and Vic Morrow is to bring my sons, Chien, 7, and Thanh, 8, safely out of the rice paddy. That’s what the script called for. That’s what John Landis had in mind for his segment of Twilight Zone the Movie: a bigot undergoes what it’s like to be hated and in turn assumes a heart. (read on…)

Natural Selection

The stolen baboon. On the evening news, she’s an irrelevancy—a simian mug shot tucked between National Hairball Awareness Day and an interview with the Boston Strangler’s children. Six hours later, she’s lounging on the sofa in our living room, smacking together her protruded lips, scratching her back on the damask. Suburban Tampa is apparently far more fun than a lab cage in Atlanta. At Emory, they didn’t have a baby-grand piano to pound with her toes. Or curtains to swing from until the rods collapse. Or a cornucopia of plastic fruit. Pears. Bananas. Pineapple. She pelts these at me, one after another. When the fruit bowl runs dry, she lobs coffee table books, a bouquet of irises crafted from Matsuno beads. Her deep-set eyes look curious and playful; her rhythmic grunting sounds friendly, even gentle. I am in no mood for games. The occasion calls for composure. Damage Control. Later, after Mrs. Bonzo has been returned to sender, there will be time to wring my daughter’s neck. (read on…)