Kevin Costner's Open Range "documentary"
This story is a section of a published story. It's about a Kevin Costner movie and his trying to copy Ken Burns who made many public television documentary films. I wrote this in 2004. I purposely removed the political aspects of the original piece because, as I said in the first post on this thread, I didn't want to turn this board into a political screed - but you can see my mindset here, favoring teaching US history in schools.
Jack
Recently I rented the two DVD set of Open Range, a 2003 Western with great character development, realism, and storytelling. I am in no way qualified to do a literary criticism of the plot and storyline, but I know that I like when I see it.
The problem came when Mr. Costner decided to include his own PBS-style mini documentary on the second bonus CD disk, narrated by Costner himself. It tells an interesting story about Old West settlers and adventurers, a lady photographer, and included Teddy Roosevelt's days in the West. But when Costner summed up at the end what happened to the prospectors, lady photographer, etc., he said Teddy got "elected President in 1902." I couldn't believe I was hearing this and replayed the piece three times, just to make sure.
For those of you who were listening in high school, we have Presidential elections every four years - and there was a rather talked-about election in 2000, so if you could figure (if you were listening in Third Grade Arithmetic as well) that we had a presidential election in 1900, followed by one in 1904. Apparently Mr. Costner and his professional staff were otherwise preoccupied back in grade school or in 2003-4 when this mini-documentary was being edited.
Mr. Costner's confusion was caused by an event I remember well from high school US History - and a guy who played Jim Garrison, a District Attorney in a presidential assassination movie should have, too: Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became President for the first time in September 1901 as President McKinley succumbed the bullets of an assassin delivered days earlier at the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, NY. This error by Costner was almost as stupid as...making Waterworld. No, it was worse, because it attempts to be a history lesson for young and old alike. Anyone quoting Costner's documentary in a high school class will be seen as stupid.
A few years ago, Jay Leno did a piece on the Tonight Show where he showed college students at the Cal. State LA graduation not being able to identify photos of presidents, including the famous profile photo of FDR with the cigarette holder. They said it was "The Penguin" from the Batman TV reruns. Sadly, I didn't make up that last joke up: it was one "student's" guess.
Last summer I was on a 5 day bus trip where the tour guide asked us some US History questions to pass the time on the road. I got a number of them right which lead to the 11 year old grandson of two of passengers befriending me, telling me that they don't teach any real US history in his school and he watches the History Channel all the time because he loves it.
There is a hunger to know about where we came from that will survive this liberal pap that we have been exposed to in the last 20-30 years.
This story is a section of a published story. It's about a Kevin Costner movie and his trying to copy Ken Burns who made many public television documentary films. I wrote this in 2004. I purposely removed the political aspects of the original piece because, as I said in the first post on this thread, I didn't want to turn this board into a political screed - but you can see my mindset here, favoring teaching US history in schools.
Jack
Recently I rented the two DVD set of Open Range, a 2003 Western with great character development, realism, and storytelling. I am in no way qualified to do a literary criticism of the plot and storyline, but I know that I like when I see it.
The problem came when Mr. Costner decided to include his own PBS-style mini documentary on the second bonus CD disk, narrated by Costner himself. It tells an interesting story about Old West settlers and adventurers, a lady photographer, and included Teddy Roosevelt's days in the West. But when Costner summed up at the end what happened to the prospectors, lady photographer, etc., he said Teddy got "elected President in 1902." I couldn't believe I was hearing this and replayed the piece three times, just to make sure.
For those of you who were listening in high school, we have Presidential elections every four years - and there was a rather talked-about election in 2000, so if you could figure (if you were listening in Third Grade Arithmetic as well) that we had a presidential election in 1900, followed by one in 1904. Apparently Mr. Costner and his professional staff were otherwise preoccupied back in grade school or in 2003-4 when this mini-documentary was being edited.
Mr. Costner's confusion was caused by an event I remember well from high school US History - and a guy who played Jim Garrison, a District Attorney in a presidential assassination movie should have, too: Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became President for the first time in September 1901 as President McKinley succumbed the bullets of an assassin delivered days earlier at the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, NY. This error by Costner was almost as stupid as...making Waterworld. No, it was worse, because it attempts to be a history lesson for young and old alike. Anyone quoting Costner's documentary in a high school class will be seen as stupid.
A few years ago, Jay Leno did a piece on the Tonight Show where he showed college students at the Cal. State LA graduation not being able to identify photos of presidents, including the famous profile photo of FDR with the cigarette holder. They said it was "The Penguin" from the Batman TV reruns. Sadly, I didn't make up that last joke up: it was one "student's" guess.
Last summer I was on a 5 day bus trip where the tour guide asked us some US History questions to pass the time on the road. I got a number of them right which lead to the 11 year old grandson of two of passengers befriending me, telling me that they don't teach any real US history in his school and he watches the History Channel all the time because he loves it.
There is a hunger to know about where we came from that will survive this liberal pap that we have been exposed to in the last 20-30 years.
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