Thursday, April 13, 2006
That Stock I Bought Finally Pays Off
This just in...another cow has sacrificed his life so that you all can have a few more hamburgers and I can pay the bill for that wireless mic I bought recently. The proceeds from the bovine sale arrived in the mail today, and to congratulate myself on weathering another year in the cattle business, I immediately ordered a copy of Forty Guns, one of my all-time favorite westerns. I first saw this movie at the Pacific Film Archive a few years ago on what I will probably always remember as THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.
At the time of THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER, the film wasn’t available on DVD or even VHS, so seeing it on the big screen was a highly anticipated treat for me, one that I figured few others could really appreciate or, at the very least, would be willing to endure. I was surprised, though, by how easy it was to convince several of my friends to attend (despite being huge freaks, they’re all pretty good-hearted). They didn’t care so much that Forty Guns stars Barbara Stanwyck, but they all seemed pretty agreeable once I told them it was originally given the salacious title “Woman with a Whip” and features men in bathtubs singing “woman with a whip” as part of the opening sequence. After that I barely had to heap on any “but it’s my birthday” guilt at all.
Once we had absorbed every glorious second of the movie from the front row, I immediately felt panicked that I might not ever see it again (just like before VHS!). This undoubtedly fed my determination to savor THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER even more, so I hope that when the DVD arrives it’s as good as I remember. I don’t think, though, that it was just me who loved it so much. Dick, who happened to be visiting from Sweden at the time, has never been the same since.
