"186"

I have an ongoing love affair with New York, the city that formed me. I was born here, and though I’ve left occasionally, it was never for very long. The pace, color, and excitement of this amazing town always drew me back like a magnet, and holds me still. No surprise then that I love experiencing the potent nostalgia of great films that recall the New York City of my early years.

I will always remember the pure exhilaration I felt watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” for the first time in a theater thirty years ago. The memory is so clear of first realizing that I was experiencing an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, deliriously entertaining but also completely fresh and unique. What made “Pulp” so exciting and distinctive?

Summer is vacation season. This year, let’s presume you’ve set your sights on going abroad. First you take a deep breath and buy the plane tickets. Ouch — they’re pretty steep, an unpleasant fact explained by two little words: “peak season.”

Over the years, some film directors have had their own so-called stock companies. We’re not talking Wall Street stocks, folks, but rather groups of actors they felt so comfortable working with that they cast them in their projects time and again. The great John Ford’s stable of thespians was perhaps the biggest and most prolific in Hollywood history. In fact, some of its members appeared in the iconic director’s films over twenty times; bit player Jack Pennick worked with the filmmaker a whopping 41 times, although several of his roles were uncredited. Of course, starting in the forties, John Wayne was Ford’s favorite star. “The Duke,” who also had an abiding off-screen friendship with “Pappy” Ford, could be seen in 24 Ford enterprises, all starring roles in some of Ford’s most iconic work (you can see some of these movie titles at the end of this article).

Two gunslingers stand toe-to-toe in a dusty crossroads… on the left, a powerfully built man donning a cowboy hat and wearing a leather vest and bandanna; on the right, a tall, cool customer in a serape, with a rope burn ‘round his throat.     You duck down inside an old barrel and hold your breath… a tumbleweed rolls by… and the church bells chime…. bong… bong…bong... (Cue the “Waah Waah Waah Waah Waah” of Ennio Morricone’s signature soundtrack theme).     As far as I’m concerned, the only man thick-skinned enough to stand up in a town square to the cool, rattler squint of Clinton “Clint” Eastwood, would be the Duke himself (better known as John Wayne). But on which would you stake your claim when facing a hail of bullets?