Screenings
Larry McMurtry: Writing westerns from Hud to Brokeback Mountain
April/May 2006 | Volume 57, Issue 2
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Clocking in at 180 minutes, this is the second-best TV Western ever made, after Lonesome Dove . If it has a major flaw, it’s that like its predecessor, it would have been better at twice the length. Adapted by Cynthia Whitcomb from the most historically based McMurtry Western novel, and directed by Rod Hardy, it features unprecedentedly accurate and vivid characterizations of Calamity Jane (Anjelica Huston), Buffalo Bill (Peter Coyote), and Wild Bill Hickok (Sam Elliott). Melanie Griffith is heartbreakingly lovely as the real-life brothel madam and author Dora DuFran, possibly the best role of her career. Gabriel Byrne, Jack Palance, Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman, Tracey Walter, Russell Means, Liev Schreiber, and Reba McEntire (as Annie Oakley) are in the cast too, and you wish there were more of all of them.
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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
