Viendo la película que dirigió el brillante Sean Penn, no cabe la menor duda de que esta busca tomar la figura de Christopher McCandless para aplicar sobre ella algunos artíficios artísticos (del mismo modo que los propueso Jon Krakauer al escribir la biografía de McCandless, vale recordar que este es co-guionista de la película junto a Penn); artíficios que le den características heróicas a McCandless y que al espectador le permitan sentir compasión por la vida que tuvo (que, por cierto, podría haber sido mucho peor) y empatía en el modo con el que se enfrenta a los hechos. Pero nada de esto es lo que a mi me interesa, porque la película esta bien hecha y consigue movilizar al espectador con una historia impactante sobre el final.

Para continuar es necesario que veamos la imagen que ilustra el final del largometraje:

Este es Christopher McCandless y la película, el libro y el mito relatan su vida como la de un hombre acechado por una infancia difícil, distanciado de la sociedad a pesar de haber sido una de las mentes brillantes que conoció la Universidad de Emory. Pero en este breve repaso de la vida de un joven destacado en muchos aspectos de su vida (sobre todo académica y deportiva) se pierde aquello en lo que quiero llamar la atención: la estética y la filosofía en McCandless.

La busqueda de McCandless a la naturaleza traspasa las líneas de lo social para acercarse más a la filosofía Epicurea griega. La naturaleza como parte estable de la vida, como soporte constante de la existencia. Si no cito mal a la película dice en un momento: "una casa en el campo alejado, naturaleza, familia y verdad" (entre otras varias cosas que cita de Leon Tolstoi). De esta cita que toma McCandless en la película, tomamos nosotros para beber la filosofía epicurea, para leer en esas líneas los fundamentos de un modo de vida en el cual el hombre encuentra reposo en todo lo natural, donde nace el ocio de ser productivo. Esa filosofía se plasma en el largometraje para que el espectador palpe, sienta, huela y viva.

Por otro lado, se pierde la estética de McCandless. Pero, en este caso, no es la estética cinematográfica, sino la estética que rodea la fotografía que vimos anteriormente. Esta fotografía fue tomada por el mismo McCandless y quedó en su cámara sin revelar. En ella podemos ver el espíritu de un hombre viviendo el epicureismo como religión. Allí la mixtura nace en la figura de un hombre en contacto con la naturaleza más salvaje y la represantación de la sociedad entera en un colectivo (o bus, como prefieran), allí el hombre en contacto con lo más interno del mundo que habitamos se suma a lo más urbano y contaminante de las ciudades que es el transporte público que, en la historia verídica y en el film, alberga a McCandless y le da el calor y comodidad que la naturaleza no supo ofrecerle.

La muerte de McCandless generó otra serie de debates que no vienen al caso, porque lo que en esta ocasión importa es que el modo en el que eligió vivir y morir un hombre fue aquel en el que no dudaba en mezclar su raíz con su futuro. Su filosofía con su realidad.

*La diferencia de tiempo entre los post anteriores y este se debe a cuetiones tecnológicas que fueron resueltas y estamos mejor que nunca.

Goethe's final words: "More light." Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry: "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon. Incandescent. Lights that banish the darkness from our caves, to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerator."

                                                                                               Chris in Morning
                                                                                               KBHR, Cicely, Alaska
                                                                                               Northern Exposure 

When Sarah (Barracuda) Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate it was textbook solid screenwriting inspired. A nice twist in the story. If it were a movie and she ends up VP I'd call it Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington. Kind of a remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic. 

How do you offset the first African-American presidential candidate who makes his acceptance speech before more than 80,000 people at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on 45th anniversary to the day of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech? How do you offset Obama being raised by a single mom and forgoing a Wall Street career to do social work on the south side of Chicago?

How do you take advantage of millions of women who are upset that Hillary Clinton is not the presidential or VP candidate? How does McCain avoid being seen as just rich and elitist and out of touch with the countries economic problems?

You head north...to Alaska, that's what you do. You choose their female governor as your running mate.  A "hockey mom" with five kids (pro-family)  including one with Downs Syndrome (pro-life) , a moose hunter (NRA), whose husband is part Yup'ik Eskimo (multiethnic) and a commercial fisherman (working class) and union worker (union), whose parents were teachers (middle class), who has faith (evangelicals), who has brought reform to government there (change), who fought the "bridge to nowhere" (fiscally responsible), whose son joined the Army last year on September 11 (patriotism), and who comes from an area more than 3,500 miles from Washington D.C. (beltway outsider).

As a former broadcaster she is media savvy and can read a teleprompter. And her selection as the first VP GOP candidate came on the 88th anniversary of women being allowed to vote. And to top it off the former Miss Wasilla has the whole sexy librarian thing going on with the glasses and wearing her hair up. 

Is choosing Palin a Hail Mary pass by McCain? If so, he's old enough to remember when Doug Flutie's desperation pass beat the mighty Miami Hurricanes back in '84. Sometimes the high risk pass works.

And for the media, picking Palin is a slice of Hollywood. A political narrative full of conflict. Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Palin's candidacy "will be either dramatically successful or dramatically not; it won't be something in between." 

We know screenwriter Gary Ross (Big, Seabiscuit) has written presidiential speeches for the Democrats. The talent pool of Republican or conservative screenwriters is not quite as deep (99 to 1?), but I wonder what writer or filmmaker they've employed. (Perhaps John Milius, Dennis Hopper or David Mamet.)

Maybe it was Hillary's Hollywood people (Spielberg or Murphy Brown creator Diane English)  suggestion since a Republican victory is Mrs. Clinton's only chance to make a run in '12.

No matter the outcome of the election, from a dramatic standpoint McCain couldn't have written a better script. Well, Palin could have been born in Cedar Falls, Iowa to an African-American mother and a Hispanic father and have captured Bigfoot last week--but let's not get carried away. 

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Alaska has been at the heart of many good stories as well as being full of folklore. Say, did you hear the "Little known facts" about Palin? "The Northern Lights are really just the reflection from Sarah Palin's eyes." "Sarah Palin doesn't need a gun to hunt. She has been known to throw a bullet through an adult bull elk." (Do you know how long it took for Chuck Norris to get that kind of street cred? She did it in one day.)

On second thought, Sarah Palin appears to have more in common with Erin Brockovich than she does Jimmy Stewart. ("You may want to re-think those ties." Erin in the movie written by Susannah Grant.) But let's get back to Alaska.

Stories do flow from Alaska; Jack London's Call of the Wild, Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Never Cry Wolf, and Christopher Nolan's Insomnia written by Hilary Seltz , Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee's Coming into the Country, Johnny Horton's number one hit North to Alaska, documentaries by Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North)  and Warner Herzog (Grizzly Man) and more recently the Sean Penn movie Into the Wild from the Jon Krakauer book. 

But my favorite set of stories that are Alaska-based is what I think of as one of the all-time great TV programs - Northern Exposure. (In my book it's right up there with The Twilight Zone and Seinfeld.) Though the show was filmed in Roslyn, Washington it retains the feel of a small eccentric, creative town you'd like to think exists in Alaska. Some say it is based on the quirky little town of Talkeetna, Alaska and others say the quirky town of Ely, Minnesota, a town near the Canadian border in the Boundary Waters.

In part because of my love for the show I've been to  Roslyn, Telkeetna and Ely. (However, I've never been to Moosefest.)  I do think the show Northern Exposure in part lead me to Cedar Falls, Iowa. Growing up in Florida steeped on Jimmy Buffett's songs about Key West, the Caribbean, and paradise mixed with a heavy dose of Walt Disney's version of Main Street, I think I have always been looking for my own personal Margaritaville. (A place where "My old red bike gets me 'round.")

Even if you didn't get into Northern Exposure you'd have to give it points for originality. Where else in the history of TV have you seen two people arm wrestle over the doctrine of transubstantiation or seen someone have a conversation with a human-sized dust mite? And isn't there a little spunky Maggie O'Connell (Janie Turner) in Palin? Yes, Palin even owns a float plane. I'm sure Noexers (as fans of the show are called) have already connected John & Cindy McCain with the older/younger couple Shelly & Holling.

Is it more than a coincidence that one of the co-creators of Northern Exposure went to college just a little over an hour from Cedar Falls? John Falsey is one more MFA graduate from the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. The Emmy, Peabody, Golden Globe winning producer/writer also worked on St. Elsewhere, The White Shadow and I'll Fly Away.  (I don't know much of what he's done in the last decade. "Where have you gone John Falsey?" Maybe he cashed in and moved to his own personal Cicely, Alaska.)

And I guess this blog is my own little version of Northern Exposures resident radio DJ Chris in the Morning (John Corbett). Trying to do my best to wax philosophically while making odd connections.

Cedar Falls is a little bigger than Cicely Alaska, but it's got enough characteristics to feel similar and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than Key West, FL, Seal Beach, CA, or Crested Butte, CO. No oceans or mountains here (though we do have a river and killer bike trails) but we have a perfect view of the political process as I pointed out in Politics, Power & Screenwriting.

I'm sure will see plenty of Mrs. Palin which will make up for all the times I saw Obama last year. (I think the guy was stalking me.) If John McCain and Sarah Palin don't make it to the White House I think they could have shots at a career in Hollywood. At least a reality show.

And whoever is our next president I wish they add to their packed political campaign platform a decree for films to be better. Yesterday I walked out of two movies in one day for the first time in my life. On second thought, that's really not the government's job--it's yours, so get busy writing.

And just to tie this all together as we say goodbye for now you might not know that the beautiful, haunting song that was played at the end of the last episode of Northern Exposure was written and performed by Iris DeMent -- a folk artist who is married to another folk artist named Greg Brown from Iowa City and where I believe they both now live. 

If you've never heard "Our Town" or if it's been a while since you've heard it, do yourself a favor and listen to the link below. The song resonates every bone of my body and I hope it hits a nerve or two for you. (And if you've never seen the show at all check it out because it is a fine example of great writing.)

September 4 Update: From a public speaking perspective you'd have to pull for an Obama-Palin ticket. Palin: "The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?.. Lipstick." Great writing and great delivery. All of this reminds me of that great Jon Stewart quip at the 2008 Oscars: “Normally when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.”   

Copyright 2008 Scott W. Smith

Thursday

• Flight Salt Lake City to San Diego: 1) Try not to scream during turbulence, 2) Don't order a $7 beer, 3) Leave the honeymooning lesbians sitting next to me alone by not asking them if they were going to get married in California.
• Touchdown: 1) Shot the shit with my sister and her friend Josh who was on his way to Indiana, 2) Circled around a parking lot 10 billion times looking for a spot, 3) Heaven--Ate crawfish, mussels, garlic bread, corn on the cob and kielbasa infused with garlic (will not be making out with any vampires tonight) and a Heineken Light, 4) Crashed at my sister's pad after reading excerpts out of The Art of Shen Ku: The Ultimate Traveler's Guide of This Planet (The First Intergalactic Artform of the Entire Universe). Awesome.

Friday

So Far...

• Read a little bit more of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild (started on the plane)
• Ate sinigang (a Filipino soup) for breakfast
• Made an appointment to go to acupuncturist
• Surfed the internet for cupcake joints to visit

On the Docket

• Acupuncture (first time--eek!)
• Eat
• Wait for NBC to call me
• Eat
• Beach
• Eat
• Movie
• Eat

Saturday

• Abraham-Hicks Law of Attraction Seminar
• Eat
• Beach
• Eat

Sunday

• To LA to visit Yvette, eat and be fabulous
• Past Life Regression (wooo! I know I was British or a pirate or a British pirate)
• Eat
• Sleepover at Yvette's mum's house
• Eat

Monday

• Eat
• The Office set visit (maybe)
• Eat
• LA touristing (maybe)
• Eat
• San Diego to Salt Lake City (sad)

More to come!

Você embarcou no ônibus-esquife sem

pneus e sem destino, e desde então

os motores do mundo rugem como

nunca, sutis engrenagens lubrificadas

pelo suor e por tudo o mais que se extrai

dos homens, lúbricas formas de estar na

vida como nas fábricas, nos escritórios,

nos bares, nas ruas de sonho acordado

trocando vísceras as próprias vísceras

pelo papel mais aclamado, por exemplo

o de mocinho, o de bandido, o de

vítima inocente, o de encarnação

do mal. Você deixou o cinema numa

tarde qualquer, largou o carro

de manhã cedinho, queimou dinheiro

foi ver o que se passa no extremo

da terra, ziguezagueando por estradas

à margem da margem da margem

da margem pois foram poucos os

que se deitaram extenuados em

vigília absoluta em lugares vagos

como o ônibus-esquife e, sozinhos

com a morte, lhe disseram certo,

vamos em frente, vamos ver

o que se passa em outros extremos,

para além das cadeias de montanhas

cobertas de neve, para além da neve,

das nuvens, da novidade breve

de mais um dia. Você foi e combateu,

como Quixote combateu a idéia da

máquina, máquina, máquina

de moer a natureza e vomitar de volta

pedaços dela, peças utilitárias de

quebra-cabeças, destituídas no entanto

do segredo impalpável que faz a graça

deste mundo.

(Alex Supertramp é o nome adotado por Chris McCandless, um garoto americano que saiu de mochila pelos EUA depois de se formar e, embalado pela leitura de Thoreau, Tolstoi e Jack London, ao final de uma aventura de quase dois anos na estrada foi viver no Alasca uma experiência radical: jogou fora o mapa e, tendo levado apenas um saco de quatro quilos de arroz, alimentou-se por quatro meses do que caçou e coletou no mato.

Seu corpo foi encontrado em setembro de 1992, dentro da carcaça de um ônibus deixado na trilha para servir de abrigo a caçadores. Inanição foi a causa da morte, aos 24 anos. A história real é contada no filme “Na natureza selvagem”, dirigido por Sean Penn, que baseou-se no livro homônimo de Jon Krakauer.

O filme é muito bom. O livro, que acabei de ler, também. Concordo com Krakauer que foram injustos aqueles que viram em McCandless um suicida, um aventureiro incompetente: sobreviver tanto tempo no mato, no Alasca, não é pra qualquer um, e além disso a sua trajetória é, de fato, de uma vitalidade absurda. Quixotesca, a meu ver – naquilo que o Quixote de Cervantes tem de mais profundo, sua ironia com o idealismo, seu carinho com o idealista.

Detalhe: Supertramp/McCandless morreu provavelmente no dia 19 de agosto, exatos 16 anos atrás).

P.S: sobre neoludismo, confira aqui. A associação é minha: não há menção ao movimento no livro ou no filme. Assim como não há referência ao Quixote.

Based on Jon Krakauer’s biography of Christopher McCandless, a rich white Atlanta college grad who eschewed all comforts in favor of flinging himself into a great roadtrip adventure, Sean Penn directs this tale of what happens to idealism when reality comes crashing in.

Filmed with a speedy sun-drenched dreaminess and a collection of cameos, Into The Wild provokes thought but ultimately leaves the viewer empty. The film never sold me on why I should care about this spoiled brat so arrogant that he enters the Alaskan wilderness totally unprepared, without so much as a proper pair of boots. And he is inexplicably treated as a prophet everywhere he goes, whether sanctimoniously helping two haggard hippies heal their broken relationship, opportunistically inserting himself into the life of an elderly widower, or hopping on his high moral horse and patronizingly refusing the advances of a trailer-park Lolita. All the while, McCandless wags his finger at his monstrous parents for wrecking him for life…and yet he selfishly leaves his little sister in their evil clutches.

The protagonist is so painfully self-obsessed that, in a particularly frightening scene, he taunts the brilliant Hal Holbrook into greatly endangering his hips as well as his life by climbing a precarious rockface. In another scene which got me yelling at the screen, he shoots a moose with lunatic faith that not only does he have the skills and facilities to preserve it, but that he as one man could possibly transport and consume such an enormous beast.

It comes as no surprise when McCandless’ arrogance brings about his ugly demise, presented with obligatory weight loss by Emile Hirsch (the real McCandless’ corpse supposed weighed less than 70 pounds). But Penn seems enamored with painting his hero as a natural, a visionary, an example of the triumph of curiosity and freedom. It’s not a bad film per se, it’s just a lousy protagonist.

Krakauer’s original title, Death Of An Innocent, begs the question, was McCandless truly innocent? Or was he naïve? Or was he, as I believe, a callous, wasteful, bourgeois egomaniac? There’s an undue mythology that people like McCandless have applied to personalities such as Henry David Thoreau as pillars of self-reliance and autonomy within nature: they fail to realize that Thoreau went home every day and had his mother make him lunch. Self-reliance, indeed.

Grade: C

But have you noticed the slight curl at the  end of Sam II's mouth, when he looks at you? It means that he didn't want you to name him Sam II, for one thing, and for two other things it means that he has a sawed-off in his left pant leg, and a bailing hook in his right pant leg, and is ready to kill you with either one of them, given the opportunity. The father is taken aback. What he usually says, in such a confrontation, is "I changed your diapers for you, you little snot." This is not the right thing to say. First, it is not true (mothers change nine diapers out of ten), and second, it instantly reminds Sam II of what he is mad about. He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.

In a letter to Ron Franz, an elderly man with whom Alex stays with for a few weeks, he writes:

You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life.  But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day.  I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.

During my own experiences in college, one of my favorite activities was to go back to campus when almost everyone had finished their classes for the day, sit on a park bench overlooking the immense fields of grass, and watch the sunset.  The sight was truly magnificent, always indescribable.  Afterwards, I was always filled with an overwhelming sense of peace and serenity.  This was one of the most shocking discoveries of my life.  Alex continues to write:

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships.  God has placed it all around us.

Why?  What is this experience?  I would like to stop here and recall a passage from another book entitled, The Golden String, by Bede Griffiths:

One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can only be heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset.  I remember now the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears.  It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all the year round and I had never noticed it.  As I walked on I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before.  If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised.  I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields.  A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to rest.  Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth.  I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me.  I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.

Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel in his book, Man Is Not Alone, would call this sudden, awakening demeanor in a person: reverence.

Reverence is one of man's answers to the presence of the mystery.  This is why, in contradiction to other emotions, it does not rush to be spoken.  When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves.  In such moments talk is an abomination.  All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last.

When I would sit alone and watch the sunset, I was always amazed by the number of people who would stare at the ground and simply walk from a finished class to an awaiting car, without casting so much as a glance at the wondrous spectacle draped before our eyes.  Like Alex, I seemed to be surrounded by people comparable to Ron who desired nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. 

And yet, I was never deterred nor was Alex by the lack of reverence in others.  Day after day, I continued to watch the sunset, alone.  Day after day, Alex continued to be drawn by nature, into the wild, alone.  Charlie, a man who met Alex in Arizona, said that Alex was a young man who:

"didn't like to be around too many people[...]Temperamental.  He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes--know what I'm saying?  Liked to read books by that Alaska guy, Jack London.  Never said much.  He'd get moody, wouldn't like to be bothered.  Seemed like a kid who was looking for something, looking for something, just didn't know what it was."

Re-reading this experience of Bede Griffiths made me pause and wonder:

[I] would generally go out alone each day and find some place where [I] could sit in solitude, and read or write or just meditate...[For] the most part it was just the presence of wild nature which [I] sought and the sense of being alone between the hills and the sky and the sea.  It would be difficult to define exactly what [I was] seeking but I think that in an obscure way without knowing it [I was] seeking God.

Whoever, therefore, is not enlightened by such a splendor of created things is blind;

whoever is not awakened by such outcries is deaf;

whoever does not praise God because of all these effects is dumb;

whoever does not discover the First Principle from such clear signs is a fool.

Therefore, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, open your lips and apply your heart

so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love and worship, glorify and honor your God.

Na natureza selvagem ou Into the wind são três momentos da vida Christopher Johnson McCandless, desaparecido no início dos anos noventa. A história é real. Narrada por Jon Krakauer, autor de No ar rarefeito, o destino do jovem que crescera em um bairro rico de Washington D.C. é pesquisado à exaustão. Jornalista por ofício, Krakauer cerca a vida Chris desde o período em que abandona a sua casa e vai viver como mais um dos tanto solitários à margem da sociedade convencional americana até marcar encontro com a morte no Alaska. Mais que relatar ou tentar descobrir o que aconteceu, o escritor de Sobre homens e montanhas revela como é o mundo em que vivem pessoas que, por opção ou não, sobrevivem excluídos do "statu quo". A trajetória de conflitos do personagem são, em síntese, os conflitos do ser humano cujo sonho maior continua sendo a liberdade. Editado pela Cia das Letras, Na natureza selvagem ganha maior intensidade pelo filme dirigido por Sean Penn (ator de "21 Gramas") e pela extraordinária interpretação de Emile Hirsch. Penn procurou ser o mais fiel possível à realidade vivida por McCandless e o texto de Krakauer. Realizou um trabalho de fôlego e sensibilidade, reflexivo. A trilha sonora foi composta pelo Pearl Jam Eddie Vedder. É magnífica e possui vida própria. Em geral, a relação entre literatura e cinema rende - e rendeu - milhares de filmes. Nem todos de qualidade ou fiéis a obra roteirizada. Aqui, em Into the wind, muitos pontos comuns são preservados. Porém, se desejar, leia o livro primeiro. (Fotos capa/encarte:Chuck Zlotrick & François Duhamel.)

Fernando Rozano

While reading, I came across a paragraph that made me stop and ponder:

"You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent," Westerberg [a former employer of Alex] reflects, draining his third drink. "He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing."

I can relate to Alex's idealism and frustration. As far as I can make out the problem arises when you are able to see the profound and beautiful potential of what life can or should be and reality hits you square in the face. All you are left with is a headache and a horrifying question: "Why does the world have to be this way?"

"Why does the world have to be this way?...Why are people so bad to each other so often?"

I am reminded of a similar contrast written by Leo Tolstoy in his last novel, Resurrection. First, Tolstoy paints a picture of what true life holds before our eyes:

The sun shone warm, the air was balmy, the grass, where it did not get scraped away, revived and sprang up everywhere: between the paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry trees were unfolding their gummy and fragrant leaves, the bursting buds were swelling on the lime trees; crows, sparrows, and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls warmed by the sunshine. All were glad: the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children.

This scene seems very marvelous and wonderful to me: full of life, rejuvenation, warmth, joy, and laughter. However, Tolstoy continues:

But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of consideration--not the beauty of God's world, given for a joy to all creatures--this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and to love--but only their own devices for enslaving one another.

The term that comes instantaneously to my mind is blind. Are we, as human beings, blind? The answer seemed obvious to Alex. Alas, the world is full of blind men and women, and so the dreamer, the idealist is forced to see a disappointing reality, a reality of failed potential.

The rabbi, Abraham J. Heschel, writes most profoundly in his book entitled, God In Search of Man:

Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

Perhaps, this answers the why that Alex seemed so desperately to cleave to and analyze. Unfortunately, this can never be the ending but only the beginning. The real question that seems to face each and every one of us is this: How are we to respond to such a failed existence? How are we to move on ahead in life, even though life is a sort of nightmarish fairytale? How are we to live with our disappointments and frustrations? How are we to live with the blind?

HEALY, Alaska (AP) -- Ron Alexander has long been intrigued with the true story of a young idealist who met his death in Alaska's unyielding wilderness in 1992.

The film adaptation of the book "Into the Wild" only cemented the mystique for Alexander and others heading to Alaska this summer, hoping to retrace the last steps of Christopher McCandless along the Stampede Road near Denali National Park.

Alexander and his fellow travelers want, in particular, to see the old abandoned bus where the 24-year-old Virginian starved to death after more than three months alone in the harsh landscape.

"That's sort of the heart of the story," said Alexander, 44, of Arlington, Virginia. "It's almost like a Jim Morrison grave site, where people just want to go see it."

This is exactly what residents in the interior town of Healy, 25 miles east of the bus, feared with the release last fall of the movie adapted from Jon Krakauer's best-seller of the same name.

They envisioned hordes of copycats making dangerous pilgrimages in the footsteps of a character often seen as a spiritual visionary rather than an ill-prepared misfit, as many Alaskans view McCandless.

People from all over the world have journeyed to the rusted bus over the years. But there are signs this could be a boom year for those captivated by a college graduate who turned his back on his wealthy family for his restless wanderings.

The local chamber of commerce has already received a few dozen e-mails from would-be visitors wanting to track the unmonitored route taken by McCandless to the 1940s-era bus, used for decades as a shelter for hunters and other backcountry travelers.

Former chamber president Neal Laugman warns visitors about a terrain -- about 180 miles north of Anchorage -- with no cell phone service, unpredictable weather, clouds of mosquitoes and the raging Teklanika River, whose swollen banks prevented McCandless from seeking help. Laugman has gotten replies from people who are determined to make it to the bus no matter what.

"I don't want people to go out there and die. It's that simple," Laugman said. "We won't know that they're there until it's too late."

The EarthSong Lodge is among the last developments along the Stampede Road, which eventually gives way to an old mining trail that traverses the Savage and Teklanika rivers, although the Teklanika is often too high and swift to cross.

As the weather warms, lodge owner Jon Nierenberg sees hikers walking past the lodge every couple days, starting the 22-mile trek to the bus. Most of the travelers are young men.

This year, most of his guests are familiar with McCandless. Or rather, Nierenberg said, they're aware of a romanticized figure, a characterization not shared by many Alaskans or others.

Released about the same time as the big-budget movie was the independent documentary, "The Call of the Wild," in which filmmaker Ron Lamothe attempts to debunk what he calls lingering myths about McCandless.

"I don't look at them as nut jobs," said Nierenberg, a musher and former backcountry ranger. "I can easily see where they're coming from. But I think they're sort of idealizing an idea rather than a person."

Alexander, who plans to make the trek with a friend or two in late August, considers himself a bit of a wanderer with a passion for the untamed West. Leaving his urban surroundings as much as possible is crucial for him, said Alexander, a salesman for a Washington, D.C., documentary production company.

Alexander said he'll be much better prepared than McCandless and will visit other parts of Alaska not connected to the doomed young man.

"We're not coming up just to do this little pilgrimage," he said. "This is one little element. We're not completely nuts."

Ridership is significantly higher in the "backcountry safari" offered by Alaska Travel Adventures, which this summer is noting the "Into the Wild" connection.

Also up are the backpackers tramping past a cooking camp where safari riders stop for a wilderness meal, said manager Nick Prosser. Many hikers heading back are dehydrated, blistered and "pretty beat," he said.

Prosser, who has read "Into the Wild" and seen the movie, plans to hike out to the bus himself before he heads back home to Celina, Texas, at the end of his seasonal job.

"I just would like to go for the adventure," he said. "I'm up here. I might as well go."

"I'm sorry, B." I said, "Who do you mean?"

"Well, these guys--Chris McCandless and Ron Franz--are they gay?"

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"Well, this old guy--why does he like this other guy so much? Why does he want to help him so much? He doesn't even know him. He is not related to him. Why does he want to help McCandless so much? They must be gay." She said. At this point several students chimed in that they think that McCandless and Franz are gay. Dirty old man and his young prey. Even though there is no textual evidence in Krakauer's book that supports such a reading in any way whatsoever.

I was stupefied. In a way I could see their point--at their age, they have only known eros--the only form of love they know is erotic love. If you follow the Greek and Judeo-Christian scheme of Agape, Eros, Phileo--the three types of love--selfless altruistic love, erotic love, brotherly love--my students probably know only Eros. Of course they know that their parents love them, but it is a biological bond. They love their parents too because it is a biological bond. And it is perhaps the most instinctive and strongest bond there is in the world. Every other kind of bond takes imagination. Parents and children love each other mostly not out of choice. But grandparents love out of choice, because the biological bond is less strong there. So I thought I would point out to them the part in the essay where Franz asks McCandless if he could adopt him--it is a very poignant part of the story--he tells McCandless that he was an only child of his parents, and that his own son had died, and that his line ends with him and he would like to adopt McCandless for his grandson. What do you make of that, I asked. Why does he ask for McCandless to be a grandson and not a son? One generation removed? Do grandparents love out of choice or bond? Do all grandparents love all grandchildren equally? They didn't like that question, I could tell. They were instinctively defensive and said that grandparent-grandchild bond is as instinctive as that of parent-child. But some of the students were beginning to switch their position.

So I pointed them to the part in the story where Krakauer tells us a bit about Franz--that he has unofficially "adopted" several Japanese children and supported them and their education.What does it mean to adopt someone with whom you have no biological bond? How do you love that person? How do you love strangers?

It is a choice. This is a story about choice. I told them.

"It is still weird," B said. A few others agreed. "Why would you want to adopt some kids you have never seen in your life?" She continued. "Why would you want to do that? I can't understand it."

I gave up. They were too young to understand. "You are all too young. You can care for someone very deeply like Franz does for McCandless without any ulterior motives or sexual designs, gay or straight. You know you all have limited life experiences. But that'll change" I told them. I ordered them back to the essay. Let us look at the structure of the essay, I said.

On me traite souvent de bobo. J'assume tout à fait mais il est des moments ou le bohème se révolte contre le bourgeois. Il se trouve que c'est dans une de ces passades de rébellion que je suis allé voir au cinéma (à Montparnasse, ça va de soi) : Into the wild le film réalisé par Sean Penn (qui a bien apprécié la Croisette, paraît-il).

Pour faire simple, Into the wild est l'adaptation ciné réussie (décors naturels somptueux, musique à ravir...) du livre éponyme (*) et passionnant de Jon Krakauer. La rébellion est l'un des thèmes du film/du livre inspiré par la tragique aventure du bien réel Christopher McCandeless, ce jeune qui tenta d'échapper à son environnement social en s'isolant dans une prétendue vie sauvage au fin fond de l'Alaska (et en en mourant).

Je serais heureux par ce blog d'avoir l'avis d'internautes qui ont ADORE (ou pas, sniff) ce film envoutant.
J'imagine ne pas être le seul à l'avoir inscrit dans mes films cultes, même si dans les cafés que je fréquente, on parle plus volontiers du dernier film des frères Dardenne ou de la rétro Jean Renoir à la Cinémathèque (en grève).

Venez nombreux !
---

(*) Mon copain captainship prétend qu'il est didactique de faire un paragraphe "Pour les nuls en ...". Je continue à trouver ça insultant pour les gentils internautes qui viennent sur Batignolles.
Néanmoins, je me plie à l'usage :
Pour les nuls en vocabulaire, éponyme signifie ici "que a le même titre que", autrement dit le livre de Krakauer se nomme aussi Into the wild. Pour en savoir plus, Wikipedia bien sûr :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personnage_%C3%A9ponyme

Capitaine Book
Le blogger de chez Flore

How high's the water, mama? 
Five feet high and risin' 
                                                   Johnny Cash
                                                   Five Feet High and Risin' 

I was supposed to get my haircut today…that didn’t happen.

When the morning begins with a segment of the NBC Today Show in Cedar Falls, Iowa you know there’s trouble in River City. Just two blocks from my office the Cedar River flows. In fact, we chose the name River Run Productions for our company because we saw the river as a metaphor that runs though Iowa and eventually into the Mississippi which eventually runs into the Gulf of Mexico and around the world.

Little did we know when we launched in January of ‘07 that just four months later I would be doing a shoot in Brazil including flying in a seaplane over the meeting of the waters where the Amazon and Rio Negro Rivers meet. 

But back in Cedar Falls today it was a long day of partaking along with hundreds (thousands?) of volunteers (including my partner who lost his home in the Parkersburg tornado two weeks ago) filling and placing sandbags trying to keep the river at bay. So far it’s been working to protect the downtown area, though many people in the low lying areas have evacuated and much of their homes underwater.  And the river is not supposed to crest until sometime tomorrow. 

Somewhere between moving boxes of photographs and memories to the basement Saturday night due to a tornado warning and taking the same boxes upstairs this morning in case of flooding, one can’t help but examine what you really need in your life.

I took all of these photos today and will give updates in coming days and then bring it full circle in regard to screenwriting and life.
 

Wednesday June 11, 2008 Update

The sandbagging on Tuesday paid off in Cedar Falls as the river crested at 2 AM with the downtown being spared from any flooding despite a record level of 102 feet. I drove over to Waterloo to help artist & friend Paco Rosic with his battle to hold back the flooding there from his restaurant/studio. Without much sleep in the last two night he and his father are winning the battle when most have given up.  Here are some shots of the front, inside (the multiple cords going to several water pumps), and view from the back of Galleria De Paco (voted this year as the #1 attraction in Iowa).

Thursday June 12, 2008 Update

Where'd all the good people go?
I've been changin' channels
I don't see them on the tv shows
Where'd all the good people go?
                                                                                                 Jack Johnson
                                                                                                 Good People

The secret's out, Jack. A lot of those good people are in Iowa. They're even on tv. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams showed some of them in last night's broadcast, including a nurse who volunteered in the morning after working an all-night shift in an intensive care unit. All told, I heard 5,000 people and 250,000 sandbags filled and placed on the levee helped keep the river back in downtown Cedar Falls. (Not that I put myself in the good people category, but I did make a brief cameo on the NBC segment in a non-speaking role as "Volunteer passing sandbag in white long sleeve t-shirt and camera strap around front.")

It appears the worst is over in Cedar Falls but problems continue to mount in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City and in other cites across Iowa and the Midwest. All of this reminds me of a quote from Steve Brown who I produced a video for in Nashville a couple years ago:

“The one thing I've learned is every day the world rolls over on top of someone who was just sitting on top of it yesterday.”

I don't think a week goes by when I don't think of that quote. I used to keep a list I called the roll over club. It contained names like John Kennedy Jr., Princess Diana, Mike Tyson, Kenneth Lay (Enron), Michael Vick, Britney Spears, Barry Bonds...you get the picture.

The point is things change quickly when your sitting on top of the world. I'm fond of pointing to Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air where after reaching the peak of Mount Everest exhausted he took a few pictures and then began his decent. Krakauer writes, "All told, I'd spent less than five minutes on the roof of the world."

Over the years I've seen many people who were at the top of the world before it began to roll: Muhammad Ali, Christopher Reeves, and Michael J. Fox come to mind. Ali continually reminded us that he was "the greatest" though he had to recant that later, when Reeves died due to complications from a horse riding accident that had left him paralyzed one headline read, "Superman Dies," and Fox had an amazing dream year in his early 20's when he was the star of the top rated TV program that he shot in the day and then went to his night job shooting "Back to the Future" that would become a #1 box office hit long before his career and life took a blow as he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

And in 1990 The New York Times  ran an article on The Man Who Own Prime Time about Brandon Tartikoff who had become the youngest person ever to be chosen the head programmer of a network at 31 and rose to become president of NBC Entertainment. Under his leadership NBC flourished with a string of successes including Cheers, The Cosby Show, LA Law, Family Ties and Seinfeld and for one incredible five year run NBC was the No. 1 Network for five consecutive seasons. Seven years after that article appeared Tartiloff died at age 48 from Hodgkin's disease. 

Despite human's great accomplishments, the above stories and this recent flood are reminders of how fragile we are. 

Whatever mountain top you are reaching for know that if you are one of the fortunate ones who gets to the summit you don't get to stay up there very long. An acting teaching once told me "When your feet hit the ground in the morning if you don't want to be an actor more than anything then don't pursue it because it's too hard to make it and too hard to stay if you do make it. So unless you love acting it's not worth it." That's great advise for the screenwriter as well.  

In the June 5 issues of Time magazine there is an article called "How to Live Live With Just 100 Things." Lisa Mclaughlin writes, ‘Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive.” Dave Bruno started what he calls "the 100 Thing Challenge,  a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.”

Maybe trading in your multiple piece spoon, fork and knife set for a spork won't bring the Jewish concept of Shalom or peace (what Cornelius Plantinga Jr. calls "universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight...Shalom, in other words is the way things ought to be.")  But maybe it's a step in the direction of that happy ending we all seek.

I think that is the single greatest reasons why movie audiences yearn for (in some cases demand) a happy ending. Because one of the deepest longings in life is to find shalom. Look at many of the films people return to again and again (The Shawshank Redemption, Titanic, The Princess Bride, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Rocky, The Wizard of Oz) and you will find this concept over and over again. Most (all?) films at least show a small corner of shalom or it's opposite, a world lived outside the garden.

Who doesn't want to have that moment of clarity that Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire has as he writes his mission statement and says, "It was the me I'd always wanted to be"? 

Often it takes an event like a flood, 9-11 or a death in the family, or a personal illness to get our attention. Out of difficult times we need to have hope that there is a purpose and meaning to our suffering. Let's not forget those who have lost greatly in the recent tornadoes and floods and pitch in where we can. And in time we'll hear stories from this flood about how good things came out of the calamity.

Just like the Johnny Cash song Five Feet High and Risin':

My mama always taught me that good things come from adversity if we put our faith in the Lord.
We couldn't see much good in the flood waters when they were causing us to have to leave home, 
But when the water went down, we found that it had washed a load of rich black bottom dirt across our land. The following year we had the best cotton crop we'd ever had.

Sunday June 15, 2008 Update

This morning’s early morning lightening storm was kind of an exclamation point to two weeks of strange weather for the area.

And all the flooding in Iowa proves one thing: Jay Leno was wrong. Back in the first week January just before the Iowa caucuses he said that the word caucus was an Indian word meaning the only day of the year anyone pays attention to Iowa.

From two weeks ago when Parkersburg and other towns where hit by a tornado to the flooding of last week has provided the national press with lots of dramatic images.

Things began to return back to normal in Cedar Falls on Friday when the downtown ban was lifted and the national guard moved on. By Friday night hundreds of people had gathered in Overman Park to watch a movie in the park. Late Saturday afternoon I rode my bike downtown and saw Cup 'O Joe was open on Main St. and the distinct sound of a Bob Marley song was being performed live at The Hub: 

Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

                                            Bob Marley
                                            Three Little Birds

Wednesday June 18, 2008 Update

It's tough out there
High Water Everywhere
                                                                               Bob Dylan   
                                                                               High Water (For Charlie Patton)
 

It's hard to believe that is less than a week that flooding in Iowa alone as displaced tens of thousands of people and caused over $1.5 billion in damage. It's a classic man vs. nature battle that will also have long a term economic impact.

Just about a month ago I did a couple days location scouting for Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It in the very areas being hit by flood waters; Waterloo, Cedar Falls, Vinton and Cedar Rapids. Probably a good choice by Mandate Pictures to shoot their roller derby film later this summer in other states. 

But those areas will rebound because that's what good Midwestern people do. And I thought I'd share with you some photos from this part of Iowa that I hope will be a refreshing break from the images you are seeing on the TV day after day. 

Photos and text copyright ©2008 Scott W. Smith

Sigur Rós - Glósóli

Aos poucos vou juntando as peças com a ajuda dos meus amigos virtuais e poderia afirmar que existe uma tendência bastante forte apontando outra direção planetária, bem distante das Semanas de Moda, do chamado mercado de consumo de luxo e de Sex and The City, o filme.

O culto ao urbano parece estar perdendo seguidores, a chegada ao poder de uma nova geração muito influênciada pelas questões ecológicas, já sinaliza uma vertente focada num retorno a natureza, na invenção de um neo-primitivo e no resgate do corpo original, sem os exageros, artificialidades e hipertrofia, que se tornaram marcas registradas principalmente da comunidade gay. Esportes radicais ocupam cada vez mais espaço e sair das zonas de conforto, praticando escaladas, arvorismo, trekking, adquirem cada vez mais adeptos.

Quando eu era adolescente, vivenciei um certo hippismo tardio, tendo viajado de carona por alguns lugares, morado de forma comunitária, abraçado árvores e feito agricultura orgânica. Mas tudo isso era gueto, hoje é urgência e sobrevivência.

Considero os músicos, os mais sensíveis para captar e propagar novas tendências comportamentais, principalmente com as facilidades tecnológicas que dispomos para produzir e difundir um vídeo. Coletando no profile do meu amigo virtual, Rodrigo Senra, o Digão, que manja tudo de novas bandas, selecionei e publiquei aqui uma série de movies cuja ambientação está muito mais ligada a natureza e a sua força divina, do que ao universo em desencanto das metrópoles.
Para quem já passou dos 30, apesar das músicas serem ótimas, as imagens podem parecer um pouco piegas, mas não deixam de ser um exercício em busca de uma inocência perdida.
Outro bom exemplo, é o sucesso do livro e do filme Na Natureza Selvagem (Into The Wild, direção: Sean Pean), baseado na história real de um brilhante estudante, que abre mão de tudo, deixa para trás também a sua própria identidade, rebatizando-se Alexander Supertramp; coloca uma mochila nas costas e parte para o Alasca afim de viver uma aventura.

O Vitor Angelo, recentemente tocou no tema ao escrever sobre a campanha publicitária do Tom Ford, que em sua esperteza de marketing, utiliza modelos nus, para falar de moda. Se o urbano está perdendo o encanto e deixa de ser necessariamente "moderno", a tecnologia adquire mais força, o que favorece muito esse deslocamento das grandes cidades, já que podemos trabalhar de qualquer parte do planeta de forma remota. Eu mesmo andei fazendo umas conexões com Barcelona e Lisboa e construimos um belo produto sem nos encontrarmos fisicamente.

Os movies mais significativos talvez sejam os da banda islandesa, Sigur Rós, em especial o belíssimo link na linha acima, que por conter cenas de nudez, não pode estar no YouTube.

Assista também:

dk7-Instone

Esse, eu já publiquei aqui no blog, mas vale rever:

Raz Ohara & The Odd Orchestra - Where He At

ANYWAY, sorry about that tangent there.  I think Krakauer writes good books, if not necessarily comprehensive ones.  I'd heard about this book and was interested in reading his take on the Mormon faith.  I'd done research on the Latter-Day Saints in high school and I'll admit right now, I have a lot of concerns about the Mormon faith.  But I recognized that what I knew was very limited and I wanted to learn more about the contemporary Mormon church.  I'd hoped that this book was the place to find that information out.

Unfortunately, it's not.  Heaven is an interesting book, but Krakauer focuses almost exclusively on fundamentalist Mormons.  These are the subgroups (like the group in Texas who had all their children removed after accusations of abuse) who have been excommunicated from the Mormon church and practice polygamy.  He jumps back and forth chapter by chapter, telling the story of the modern polygamous sects combined with the history of the founding of the Mormon church.  He describes Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and all the various moves that led the Mormons to eventually settle in Utah.  Don't me wrong, it's fascinating to read a description of the founding of such a large church.  Most religions were founded so long ago that all but the most basic information has been lost.  In the case of the Mormons, a huge amount of historical documents still exist.  According to Krakauer a great number of these have been bought and kept secret by the LDS church (especially documents that disagree with or disprove Smith's claims), but these documents are still there.  As a lover of archaeology and anthropology, I find all of this fascinating.

But still, what is lacking from this book is an explanation of what the modern LDS church actually believes.  Krakauer focuses on the fundamentalist Mormons and largely ignores the rest of the church.  For some, this might be exactly what they want.  He does focus on all of the controversial, intriguing stuff, all the polygamy and multiple wives and signs from god that 60 year old men should marry 14 year old girls.  For some, this may be extremely interesting, but I just found it kind of sad.  I know this stuff exists, but I also know that these sects are rare and have largely been shunned by the rest of the Mormon Church.  Krakauer claims that these sects are actually still very connected to the mainstream Mormon Church and that if higher up Mormons had their way, they'd all still be polygamous today.  I realise this may be true, but I really really hope it's not.

I kind of went with it though, persevering in the hopes that if Krakauer was going to spend so much time writing about polygamy, he'd at least explain why this kind of life was so convincing to so many people.  He said over and over why specific people were ‘convinced by the scriptures' that Smith's Doctrine Section 132 was correct.  132 is the revelation Smith made granting men the divine right to take more than one wife.  Now, I know nothing about Mormon scripture, but even to me this sounds fishy.  Basically Smith wanted to take another wife, but his first wife, Emma, was having none of it.  She said if he was going to take another wife, she'd take another husband.  So conveniently, Smith then received a revelation from God saying that men could have multiple wives but women weren't allowed anyone except their husbands.  Even more conveniently, it named Emma specifically multiple times and said she was to obey her husband or she'd be destroyed by God.  I guess Smith really WAS a very charismatic man, because apparently everybody bought this.  My problem is that if so many people are convinced by the scriptures, I need a little bit more than just ‘the doctrine said so' and then suddenly everybody is convinced.  These men were continually described as the big thinkers and scholars of their day, so why did everybody believe this stuff?  I realise that focusing on a bunch of religious scripture and doctrine isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it left a big hole in the discussion about polygamy for me. 

Overall, I'd say this is an interesting book.  The problems I had with it weren't necessarily the fault of the book itself, but more that my expectations of what this book was about weren't totally accurate.  I wouldn't say I learned anything particularly new here, but it did flesh out what I kind of already knew.  Actually, that's a bit of a lie, I did learn about one historical event, a massacre of 150 settlers by Mormons in Utah.  I couldn't this had actually happened and that I hadn't ever heard of it before!  

I don't really want to get into a discussion about my opinions about the LDS church, mainly because they're probably not very popular and I know the worst thing to do is to make comments on politics or religion on a blog.  And I don't have any problem with the millions of very lovely Mormons living their lives throughout the country.  I've met many of them and they've always been extremely nice to me (heathen that I am).  But I can't help but be a little bit nervous about a church that is growing so rapidly but only allowed black people to be members in 1978 and still won't allow women to hold any position of authority or power.  From my understanding of Mormon doctrine, women aren't allowed to speak in the temple or teach on any subject, ever.  Oh, and interracial marriage is forbidden.

So yeah, if you want to learn a bit about fundamentalist Mormonism, polygamy and the history of the LDS church, then this book is for you.  Oh, yeah, there's also this whole other thread about how these two guys got a revelation from god and killed their sister-in-law and her 15 month old daughter, their own niece.  Did I not mention that?

Both the book and the movie speculate that Chris accidentally poisoned himself by mistaking some seeds he ate; research that was known when Penn made the movie prooved this hypothesis to be wrong. Ron Lamothe, a documentary filmmaker born the same year as Chris McCandless, followed Chris's footsteps and made a documentary of this journey, The Call of the Wild, which corrects some of the romanticizing inaccuracies of Krakauer's book and Penn's movie. I haven't seen it, but it appears to be more aligned with the motivations that led Chris on his journey.

I don't share the hero worship; neither do I share the contempt by rugged outdoors guys, mainly Alaskans, who think of him as an incompetent greenhorn and fool. Chris was probably a very likable young man, idealistic, choosing his own path, rejecting the ordinary. But he wasn't wise or mature enough to look beyond his goal, to reach the mountain top and then come back down. It's almost ironic -- if he hadn't died, he may not have become famous, but who knows, he may have been able to share something truly extraordinary.

Actually, I wanted to write about the movie because of this song I like. So, I'm finally coming to the point :) : The song is called Angel from Montgomery, written by John Prine. This version is performed by Bonnie Raitt and John Prine.

After the jump, unedited, is Outside's list. 

Into Thin Air (September 1996)

Though many aspire to reach the summit of Mount Everest, few can imagine the enormity of the challenge. And therein lies the problem. A no-holds-barred account from a man who survived the deadliest day ever on the roof of the world. 
By Jon Krakauer

Everest A Year Later: False Summit (May 1997)

In 1996, Jon Krakauer did what 12 others on the mountain could not: He escaped with his life. A year later, as this conversation with Krakauer revealed, the aftereffects of that episode were still being felt—both by those who were on Everest, and by the families who waited and watched from afar.
By Mark Bryant

The Good Company of the Dead (August 1999)
George Mallory's disappearance high on Everest begat mountaineering's greatest mystery: Did he reach the summit 29 years before Hillary? The recent discovery of his body offers up another tantalizing mystery: Who was the man behind the legend? 
By Mark Jenkins

The Man Who Knocked the Bastard Off(October 1999) 
On a sunny day in 1953, a tall young New Zealander named Edmund Hillary became the first human to stand atop the world's highest mountain—and, thereafter, a paragon of grace and bonhomie for explorers who would follow.
Q&A with Sir Edmund Hillary

Ghosts of Everest (October 1999)
It took 75 years for Everest to loose its frozen grip on George Mallory, and an instant for the news to rocket around the globe. In the months since the 1999 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition returned to sea level, the team leaders haven't told the full story of their mission on the brutal North Face, nor have they revealed the provocative key evidence they found enshrouded there. Until now.
By Jochen Hemmleb, Larry Johnson, and Eric Simonson

Base Camp Confidential (April 2001)
An utterly unofficial oral history of Everest Base Camp, from Sir Edmund Hillary and Jim Whittaker to ShoSho the man-eating dog. 
By Brad Wetzler

He Ain't Your Sherpa (April 2001)
He's short, fat, semiliterate—and truly phenomenal. He's fast becoming the best Himalayan alpinist of this or any generation. He holds the mark for the quickest ascent and the longest visit to the highest point on earth. And this season, he could break the record for the most summits of Everest ever. With daring and flair, he defies the myth of Sherpas as silent types—the all-but-invisible iron men who've been saving Western mountaineers in the Death Zone for decades. His name is Babu Chiri Sherpa.
By Eric Hagerman

Majesty or Travesty (April 2004)
It's climbing season again on Everest. And as hundreds of summit hopefuls converge at Base Camp, the great debate persists: Has the Big E become the Big Easy? Alpinists Greg Child and Dave Hahn take sides.

What the Pros Know (The Complete Conversation) (September 2006)
Is it possible to guide safely on Everest? Or will the mountain always demand its pound of flesh? MARK JENKINS talks to a dream team of veterans-between them, they've reached the summit 17 times-in a frank look at the risks, rewards, and nightmares of taking clients to the top.

The No Fall Zone (January 2007)
When freeskier Kit DesLauriers dropped in at 29,035 feet on Mount Everest in October, she became the first person to ski off the Seven Summits. Kit, her husband, Rob, and photographer JIMMY CHIN-whose exclusive images appear here-also became the first Americans to ski from the top of the world's tallest mountain. Outside correspondent DAVE HAHN, who guided the climb, reports on the epic descent.

High Times (July 2007)
You were told that Everest base camp is an insult to the true spirit of mountaineering. But why weren't you told about the excellent bars, the butter people, and that friendly playboy bunny from Poland? Kevin Fedarko spends a month at the world's most exclusive party town.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Hale, Hearty, Tough-As-Nails, Acclimatized-At-Birth Mountain People... (November 2007)
The skyscrapers of Manhattan may not reach as high as Everest, but this is where Tsering Norbu Sherpa, a member of mountaineering's most famous clan, is making a new life. CHRISTIAN DeBENEDETTI rides shotgun with one of New York's unlikeliest cabbies.

King of the Hill (May 2008 )
Depending on whom you ask, commercial outfitter Russell Brice is either the best guy to call if you're serious about summiting Everest or the most controversial man in the Death Zone. As NICK HEIL reveals in this exclusive preview of his book Dark Summit, both statements are true—and that's where the story gets interesting.

  This season has been drastically different. The Chinese government recently closed the Tibet side of the mountain to climbers for an Olympic Torch-touchdown mission to the summit, broadcasting the successful climb on TV. With ongoing protests worldwide over the Olympics, three significant new books on the ill-fated 2006 season (including HIGH CRIMES, by Michael Kodas, and DARK SUMMIT, by Nick Heil), and now the Breashears film (which not only departs from Jon Krakauer's take in crucial ways but also recreates scenes from the disaster with certain survivors portraying themselves, and presents moving interviews with physician Beck Weathers, twice left for dead on the peak ), it's a ripe moment to look at the peak's enduring grip on the Western imagination--and in the media. 

It was the worst climbing tragedy in Mount Everest's History. As darkness fell on May 10, 1996, a fast-moving storm of unimaginable ferocity trapped three climbing teams high on the slopes of Mount Everest. The climbers, exhausted from their summit climb, were soon lost in darkness, in a fierce blizzard, far from the safety of high camp at 26,000 feet. World-renowned climber and filmmaker David Breashears returns to Everest to tell the story of the climbers who perished in that storm in Frontline's presentation of "Storm Over Everest," Tuesday, May 13 at 8:00 p.m. central on NPT and PBS stations nationwide. It is also the story of 11 climbers caught in the storm and the eyewitness accounts of their astonishing survival in the world's most unforgiving environment.

Elisabeth Jensen in the New York Times writes, "In an attempt to free his film from the controversy of that day — mostly manufactured by the media, he says — Mr. Breashears largely avoids second-guessing, instead piecing together a straightforward story of the climb, told by the participants and focused around the storm itself — what it was like to be in it and survive. Close observers of the tragedy are left to parse for themselves how the recollections match up with past accounts, like in the best-selling book “Into Thin Air,” which sold nearly one million hardcover copies alone."

James Clash, Adventure Columnist for Forbes Magazine, has an interview with Breashers:

Preview: