BUFFING IT

A week ago today, at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Your Humble Narrator had the honor to introduce the afternoon's movie selection...

The White Buffalo (1977)--Charles Bronson plays Wild Bill Hickok, opposite Chief Broom himself, Will Sampson, as Crazy Horse, in this tall-tale weird western. Both men have been plagued by nightmarish visions of the title ungulate, and have decided to try to hunt it down. Eventually their paths converge, and though they're both staunch racists, a tense alliance forms between them. Based on a highly researched, floridly written novel by Richard Sale, who also wrote the screenplay, this was a rare flop for Bronson, though he brings it the same confident bearing he had in his other western roles.

Directed by J. Lee Thompson, a long way from The Guns of Navarone, the movie is terrible, but entertainingly, sometimes hilariously so, and it has a cast of veterans that's hard to resist: Jack Warden as Hickok's crabby sidekick Charlie Zane, as well as Kim Novak, Clint Walker, Slim Pickens, Ed Lauter, Martin Kove, a young Richard Gilliland, and the venerable Douglas Fowley (Roscoe in Singin' in the Rain) as a train conductor. Stuart Whitman and Cara Williams are ignominiously served in their brief roles, and John Carradine plays an undertaker, because of course he does.

White Buffalo are a very real part of the religious beliefs of many indigenous people in America, usually seen as a positive omen, an auspicious harbinger of peace, prosperity and blessings. It would take someone more knowledgeable than I am about such cultures to say if the treatment in this movie is offensive--or rather, just how offensive it is. The animal, one of the clumsier and less convincing creations of the great Italian creature-maker Carlo Rambaldi of Alien and E.T. fame, is treated here basically as a monster; probably Executive Producer Dino De Laurentiis was thinking of Jaws, less than two years earlier, and hoped the movie could cash in on the killer animal vogue, along with the likes of Grizzly, Orca and Tentacles. Even so, especially in his Moby Dick Waterloo at the finale, you may feel a pang of sympathy for the poor beast.

I also enjoyed moderating the lively post-movie discussion...

The movie was presented as part of Museum of the West's excellent ongoing Reel West Sundays film series, in connection with their exhibit Still in the Saddle: A New History of the Hollywood Western, which runs through December 31 of this year (the 2 p.m. Sunday flicks are free with regular museum admission; $10 just for the movie). Still in the Saddle includes artifacts of The White Buffalo, like a dinky little jacket that the apparently very slight Bronson wore in the film...

Before the event, Chief Curator Andrew Patrick Nelson took me to lunch, along with film historian Richard M. Roberts...

...at The Frybread Lounge, a native-owned cafe in Old Town Scottsdale, where, to prepare myself for the task ahead, I had a bison burger...

..."Rez style," that is, on frybread instead of brioche. A seriously lean and delicious burger; if you're in the neighborhood, I highly recommend.

THE EAST WE COULD DO

The Wife, The Kid and Your Humble Narrator are back, from a very hectic and way-too-short but extremely fun couple of days in Erie. We enjoyed:

Food: Filet at Ricardo’s, perch and shrimp at Smuggler’s, Chinese buffet at the Imperial (with a huge pack of siblings, in-laws, cousins, etc), chicken with kluski soup, ox roast, tongue, ham and salami at Gerry’s 8th Street Deli, walleye and fat, buttery clams at Joe Root’s Grill, Steffanelli’s chocolate, Mighty Fine donuts, Smith’s hot dogs, popcorn and Dippin’ Dots at a Seawolves game.

Other major highlights: We saw the Flagship Niagara sailing majestically into port, The Kid got to meet my pal Ronnie and his parrot Kiko, we went bowling with my pal Stan and his son Nathan at Greengarden Lanes. We fed gulls, ducks, geese and other Bayfront scroungers, and took in the view from the tower at Dobbins Landing.

Waldameer Park: The Kid and I rode The Whacky Shack...

...and The Comet—the smaller of the vintage amusement park’s two wooden rollercoasters—together, The Kid and my sister rode the Swinger, The Kid and The Wife rode The Paratrooper, The Kid and Deb’s pal Emma rode The Pirate’s Cove, and various combinations of the above rode The Tilt-A-Whirl and The Ferris Wheel. A blast.

The Zoo: We had a superb time at the Erie Zoo, where we saw Samantha, the sweet, heartbreakingly arthritic 48-year-old gorilla pat her companion bunny, Panda (introduced after the passing of her male companion Rudy a couple of years back). We also saw a baby orangutan, kangaroos, two red pandas, capybaras, Patagonian cavies, a sloth, and many many other cool creatures. On the whole I’d say it was a better experience than we’ve had at the Phoenix, D.C., or Guangzhou zoos.

Seawolves: As aforementioned, we saw the Seawolves get squalidly pummeled, 8-3, by the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate). But Emma and Al took The Kid to the dugout, where Jerry Martin, an MLB warhorse now working as the Seawolves’ first-base coach, made a small fuss over her and gave her a game ball. She later got the ball signed by a ridiculously good-looking young player named Danny Fields, and also by mascot C. Wolf.

RIPs from while we were gone: to critic Judith Crist—an early influence, if I may be so presumptuous, on Your Humble Narrator—passed on at 90; to composer/conductor Marvin Hamlisch, startlingly passed on at 68; to Carlo Rambaldi, the special effects genius behind E.T. and Alien, among many others, departed at 86; and, at 78, actor Al Freeman, Jr., brilliant as Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X.