Posted on 07/03/2013 8:16:56 AM PDT by SMARTY
About 20 years ago my Parents rented a house in Southern California.
Their Landlady played the (blonde) preteen Daughter in the Movie. She did some Shirley Temple Movies back then too.
She was very complimentary of Henry Fonda from her experiences on the Set with him...
I guarantee you the new “Dust Bowl” will be a result of global warming.
Maybe Ma Joad will be played by Rachel Jeantel.
Yes, as he takes advantage of the very capitalism being railed against.
I didn’t think the movie was bad at all. I think it depicted a time in America when things were bad, really bad, and people were at wits end as to what to do about it personally. Desperation. Like the guy driving the tractor that demolishes the family home early in the pic, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive when things are bad.
I know that hearing countless recounts of times during the depression from my grandparents and others growing up that what’s depicted in this movie did not seem exaggerated or overblown.
Say what you will about Steinbeck, but Ford wasn’t necessarily some bleeding heart looking to make America look bad with this film. His politics were checkered alright but he was a Goldwater and Nixon supporter as well as supportive of the Vietnam War in later years. I find it hard to call much if any of his work as anti-American.
Are you kidding? Dust Bowl "climate change" will be blamed on anthropogenic global warming abetted by rapacious free market agricultural policies under evil conservative Herbert Hoover. The loss of the farm and land will be blamed on CO2-loving, greedy Wall Streeters and big banks.
Meanwhile, FDR will be portrayed as a socialist people's hero who carries a recessive black gene that is somehow passed on to an unnamed future mixed white/black President. That President will carry on FDR's glorious trailblazing policies leading to a full Communist paradise.
Ma Joad will be transformed into a feminist "hero" and Tom Joad will come out of the closet, celebrating his homosexual relationship with his former cell-mate that culminates in a beautiful gay marriage ceremony on the beach at Malibu. The movie will end as Agenda 21-inspired environmentalists descend upon the Great Plain with horse-drawn wagon loads of native grass seeds to restore it to its pristine natural state, while nasty humans are herded into idealized urban tenements. The End.
A film about Middle East terrorism, “The Rapes of Gath”.
By the time of East of Eden, Steinbeck’s had become an anti-communist and an Ayn Rand reader. Some of the language in East of Eden is reminiscent of The Fountainhead.
How about a re-make of “The Hangover”? It could be called “The Wrath of Grapes.”
To these kids “hardship” is when their smart phone loses signal. No way they are going to identify with Okies of the 1930’s.
Outstanding! Did you ever write for MAD magazine? I recall their movie titles, Oklahoma Crud, Balmy and Clod.
Except set in the near future, after DemocratCare fully kicks in.
I agree with your assessment. This will be a major exercise in modern propaganda. The best thing the story has for it is a cool sounding name. I couldn’t get through the book on my own - way to boring and communist drivel a few years ago in my late twenties.
I just don’t see the draw for this kind of story right now. Only hardcore leftists and Obamamugabe sycophants would pay to see this. I can only predict if this is what is on the slate for 2014 then there will be a barrage of similar tripe offered up across the board for both the cinema and television.
Never remake a classic..
Spielberg must be going goofy.
btw.. I can see John Goodman playing Pa and Ma..
Justin Bieber can take Henry Fonda’s partafter he gets out of rehab.
Cher can play a out of work cabaret singer who hasn’t eaten in weeks. that way she can meld right into the part.
LoLi can make a cameo as a car wreck in the desert and Joy Behar as a mudhole operator. Oprah as a lettuce picker crew captain and John Malkovic has to be in there somewhere with Nic Cage.
You’ll see.
The gratuitous, smarmy, maudlin whining will be wall to wall.
Spielberg will lay it on with a shovel. After all, how much of a boy wonder DO you have to be for an audience like THIS with a film like THIS?
With all the resources of H’wood and an entertainment MSM totally pre disposed to worship everything he touches…there will be blue ribbon, industrial strength pi$#ing and moaning the likes of which could choke the whole stable.
The level of that kind of whiney and self pitying BS was bad enough in the original…. I am sick to think what THIS version will be!
Ya gotta love Tom Joad’s practical approach and impatience with whiners in that book. My favorite was always the one-eyed man and the “cow’s ass” comment.
===CUT===
“The one-eyed man stood helplessly by. “I’ll help ya if ya want,” he said. “Know what that son-of-a-bitch done? He come by an’ he got on white pants. An’ he says, ‘Come on, le’s go out to my yacht.’ By God, I’ll whang him some day!” He breathed heavily. “I ain’t been out with a woman sence I los’ my eye. An’ he says stuff like that.” And big tears cut channels in the dirt beside his nose.
Tom said impatiently, “Whyn’t you roll on? Got no guards to keep ya here.”
“Yeah, that’s easy to say. Ain’t so easy to get a job - not for a one-eye’ man.”
Tom turned on him. “Now look-a-here, fella. You got that eye wide open. An’ ya dirty, ya stink. Ya jus’ askin’ for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself. ‘Course ya can’t get no woman with that empty eye flappin’ aroun’. Put somepin over it an’ wash ya face. You ain’t hittin’ nobody with no pipe wrench.”
“I tell ya, a one-eye’ fella got a hard row,” the man said. “Can’t see stuff the way other fellas can. Can’t see how far off a thing is. Ever’thing’s jus’ flat.”
Tom said, “Ya full of crap. Why, I knowed a one-legged whore one time. Think she was takin’ two-bits in a alley? No, by God! She’s gettin’ half a dollar extra. She says, ‘How many one-legged women you slep’ with? None!’ she says. ‘O.K.,’ she says. ‘You got somepin pretty special here, an it’s gonna cos’ ya half a buck extry.’ An’ by God, she was gettin’ ‘em, too, an’ the fellas comin’ out thinkin’ they’re pretty lucky. She says she’s good luck. An’ I knowed a hump-back in - in a place I was. Make his whole livin’ lettin’ folk rub his hump for luck. Jesus Christ, an’ all you got is one eye gone.”
The man said stumblingly, “Well, Jesus, ya see somebody edge away from ya, an’ it gets into ya.”
“Cover it up then, goddamn it. Ya stickin’ it out like a cow’s ass. Ya like to feel sorry for yaself. There ain’t nothin’ the matter with ya. Buy yaself some white pants. Ya gettin’ drunk and cryin’ in ya bed, I bet.”
...
The one-eyed man said softly, “Think - somebody’d like - me?”
“Why, sure,” said Tom. “Tell ‘em ya dong’s growed sence you los’ your eye.”
===CUT===
I guess I am being really overly snarky about it. But, the whole tone of the film I remember was sickening.
I still recall thinking… if Americans were like the cry baby, self pitying creeps in the film, we'd still be British colonial subjects. It made me sick as ALL self-pity does!
It's unwholesome and it is NOT constructive!
I don't think we need ANY MORE of the self-pitying, victimhood mentality in this country. It is bad enough as it is and we don't need to cultivate MORE of this.
My grandparents were forced from their homeland (where they had lived for generations) and came here to a completely NEW and different place. They knew NO ONE, they didn't speak English, they had absolutely NOTHING and were immediately and relentlessly subject to some of the most bourgeois xenophobia you ever saw!
But, the main thing they DIDN'T have and certainly DIDN’t MISS having was self-pity. That was strictly scorned and mocked!
Yeah, right - playing both roles, using split-screen. John Goodman as "Pa" and John Goodman in drag.
Regards,
Just so long as he uses Johnny Depp in clown makeup again.
Just for the record, I was there during the Depression and Steinbeck's "Grapes" is a monumental telling of truth as to how it was in the 1930's.
And now, today, America's economy sits on a ledge similar to that shortly before the 1929 market collapse, and you ain't seen nothing yet.
My advice ... be prepared.
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