u/TombStoneFaro

Forgive me if this has been discussed. I was just thinking how steampunk the early Hosts were and I thought: What if the park is much older than we are at first led to believe. What if Henry Ford and Walt Disney (I think both men wanted to live a lot longer) worked together on a way to preserve human consciousness using state-of-the-art post WW2 technology. Maybe guys like von Neumann and Turing are pulled in. The make a park to test things out. I think if Season 3 had looked backwards and wrapped things up with the reveal that Ford is actually Henry For or a blending of Disney and Ford -- had they done that I would have been a lot more interested in watching than I ended up being.

I think the Buddy Ebsen episode was an example. What other episodes?

The well-spoken guys -- the older one and his assistant. For some reason someone decides to invite them in (like vampires) to cash checks for 5 percent. They are quite agreeable, so much so that they have a holdout who reasonably says he prefers to keep the 5% beaten. But the older guy is lowkey and reasonable sounding. His assistant has the main character's back when he gets in a fight in a pool room. I suspect the smart ones are the most dangerous ones.

I was reading a book about OC in a restaurant and the owner said, "I know a guy you should talk to." And soon thereafter the guy happened to be eating there when I was and he turned out to have met Jimmy "the Weasel" through I think a union or maybe entertainment and he said with conviction, "Nicest guy in the world!". I have heard this from multiple people of various OC figures but I know 1000 percent that Jimmy was about as terrible a man as there could be. But I fully believe being a sociopath or whatever you call him that he could come off as charming as that is part of it.

I love the basic idea: a lone guy who goes to a place where everyone is against him or at least are too afraid to help him. I guess this theme has been explored in various forms -- High Noon, for example.

I liked the movie very much but I think some of the dialog is kind of annoying.

If the remake maybe explored it partially from the POV of the Japanese guy -- maybe had scenes also from Europe where Macreedy meets the son -- two important characters are only referred to, never shown or given voice.

I guess I am saying that I think the movie could have been longer. I would not change the setting or the time, but I would go deeper and wider. That I want to see a remake does not mean I am critical of the original -- it definitely showed the way.

Frankly, it almost feels as if 1955 was too early -- Hollywood was afraid to give Japanese Americans their due. I think the Coens could do a great job.

OTOH, maybe a different time and place would also be a possibility. If set in modern times, are their towns in the USA where the protagonist could be similarly isolated? It would be a lot harder to imagine a realistic scenario.

The Kid is recruited because he had severely beaten the bartender; indeed, as they pass through the town on the way to meet the Captain it is strongly implied that he killed the man.

I don't recall this being discussed between the recruiter and the Kid. I wonder if this was a way of illustrating that the filibusters had managed to cow local police. Then we later see the deep resentment the Mexicans feel toward the Yankees when the survivors of the massacre end up in their hands.

Decided to rewatch the 1955 film (set in 1945) and noticed something that one also sees in True Grit (and perhaps other Westerns) -- people talk pretty extensively to even mortal enemies.

Macreedy, the hero, has just been in a very serious fight with a goon of the main villain but the hero sits right next to the villain in the lobby of the only hotel in town and they chat.

There are quite a few other instances and my theory which originated after seeing True Grit is that the frontier was so lonely and isolated that one welcomed the chance to talk to anyone.

Of course Black Rock was just about the worst excuse for a town I have ever seen. The modern-looking train the Streamliner stopped for the first time in 4 years to deposit Macreedy and the locals are amazed. Imagine living in a place like that were the diner serves two things: chili with beans or chili without beans.

I liked both movies, exceptionally serious themes. I've been to Lone Pine but I figure both movies did not use real buildings much -- I know Bad Day built quite extensively, whole buildings. The older movie may have been able to use 1940s Lone Pine. Bad Day opens with a train arriving but I think those tracks are gone now -- nothing lonelier than abandoned track except now maybe all that is left is the bed. A pretty remote town, famous in a limited way because Louis Statham sponsored a very important chess tournament there where he lived although at one time he owned the Playboy Mansion. (And presumably lived in it.)

Set in 1926, I am not sure everyone would call it a "Western" due to time it was set in, but it certainly is close.

I love the film and the book. If you are a fan, you probably know that a young Robert Blake had a small but important role and was the last known survivor. However, there were several extras or even actors with small speaking roles who were not much older or even younger than Blake. For example, the kid whom Howard helps after he nearly drowned could be in his early 80s and is a local celebrity.

Also, there was the young store clerk and a woman who lights Howard's tobacco who could still be around although both would in their 90s -- of course everyone else who was an adult wd be well over 100, However, I have seen no article about survivors of the film.

(An aside: June Lockhart was one of I think two survivors of a 1930s movie and after she passed, the actor who played Tiny Tim in the same Christmas Carol remains around; this is Terry Kilburn who actually was also in a film from 1934(!) -- imagine! The adults in that film were born as early as 1875.)

I am pretty sure it is today and I forget the remake but I think the dialog and spanking are in both versions.

I think it was considered more innocent 57 years ago, but there is also Wayne saying, "You're enjoying that too much." Campbell was quite a bit older than the actress who had been chosen due to her looking younger than her actual age, I think.

Forgive me for bringing up something almost certainly discussed but Kim Darby, now pushing 80, came up in Westerns (True Grit where more than one Trek actor can be seen...) Anyway, if this has been covered I'd like to see the post but if not:

So easy to fix this in script: they wanted kids to be 300 years old, then make them age 1 month every ten years -- because as it stands in the episode, the kids would live thousands of years.

Also, I think running out of supplies without people to grow food etc. I think canned food was suggested but it would spoil unless of course the same virus that affected humans also affected canned food.

Even with plot holes, I think the idea of a society of near immortal kids is intriguing and almost certainly an hour is not enough to explore it at all. I know there is a novelization that perhaps explains and fixes plot holes.

I find it implausible that the kids, despite limited cognition (it is implied) would actually grow up intellectually instead of the "bonk bonk" business -- intelligence is not all about brain growth, it is about experience. Perhaps the virus also does affect intelligence sort of dooming the kids to a vastly expanded childhood but an unproductive one -- they can't take advantage of the extra centuries which is in fact poignant.

The narrator is omniscient in that passage at least and says that Carlo being less able during the fight to resist has something to do with Carlo being the better person than Sonny. Puzo says even though Carlo did not relize this about himself.

But why does Puzo feel that way? Carlo never killed anyone like Sonny had, but firstly, he is willing apparently to connive in Sonny's murder (unless he genuinely did not realize what he was setting Sonny up for murder) and secondly, he wishes for Vito's death thinking Sonny who had been his friend, would promote him -- an immensely mercenary and petty guy.

Moreover, Carlo abuses Connie much more than the average person did in 1945 even if Vito feels that this should not be interfered with. I am sure 99% of husbands did not, as newlyweds no less, give their wives black eyes or have affairs. I mean, I was not alive but he seems like an exceptionally bad guy to me whereas Sonny defends his sister -- and also protected Hagen as a kid.

Seems like no contest: Sonny is a murderer, but clearly the better man and so Puzo's description is puzzling.

I think windshields used to be just glass and broke into shards that cut people. But as Carlo kicks through the windshield it looks like a more modern material, probably involving plastic.

It was in the early 1970s that they started to make cars safer. Jay Leno had the line about "no padding, you hit your head on the dashboard they wipe it off and give the car to someone else."

Note: at least two posters mention that glass by the 1940s was laminated but I suspect not all cars had this even in the 1960s -- I recall cars with old-fashioned or non-existent seatbelts in the 1960s; kids would ride in back "loose". But if indeed some cars had laminated windshields then the scene was not historically inaccurate.

Toadvine tells The Kid and The Veteran, "I told them we were Indian fighters" and cautions them to play along. It is not clear what sort of interview process was in place.

Interestingly he takes The Fool and his brother along -- initially he asks if he has 100 bucks but when the brother clearly does not have that kind of money, he accepts them anyway. They recruit from along the idlers in Tucson. He also has another young guy, Sloat(?).

On the other hand, the men at the abandoned fort offer to join him and he does not even bother to respond -- he certainly does not want or need them.

So my question is, just what was Glanton looking for in his recruits? It seems like men who could not fight effectively would be worse than nothing -- "cannon fodder" would not be useful in the sort of fights they engaged in.

Taking the mentally handicapped guy along was really inexplicable.

Glanton is not uniformly an ahole. For example, he leaves the squatters lead and gunpowder. He also kills blinded horses, He allows the entertainers to travel with them. He adopts a dog. But when he finds the "diligence" with dead men inside he cuts loose two horses, but sends the other two into the desert will they will certainly slowly starve. He could have eaten these two horses or shot them. My only thought is he wanted the carriage far away from him but they did not stay in the area anyway. So why this apparently senselessly cruel act?

Note that Mike is eating with someone who has recently tried to kill his father twice, did murder Luca Brasi. Now even as Mike's dad is in serious condition in the hospital, he wants to meet for dinner along with the cop who hit Mike as his men held him, causing fairly painful injuries and incidentally tried to facilitate Vito's murder in the hospital. Now the three of them meet socially and McCluskey asks about what to order? Why not meet in a less social environment? Why pretend to be buddies with you most bitter enemies?

And then Solozzo tell McCluskey the restaurant has the best veal in the city. Coincidence?

Or any much-older relative.

My strong opinion is that there are a fairly large number of people who believe in a constellation of nonsensical things. After all. David Icke I think sells millions of copies of books about Reptilians etc.

My feeling is that nonsense wears down people's critical thinking: Once they believe, say, in multidimensional Bigfoot creatures (to choose a particularly idiotic thing someone told me is a fact) just what new health scam would they not fall for?