Word: cowboyism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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MALA NOCHE. Come to the wild side of . . . well, Portland, Ore., for a drugged-out slice of lice in artfully grungy black and white. The first feature by Gus Van Sant, who was later beloved by critics for Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, this 1988 homo-erratic melodrama remains his boldest and best...
...like a the World Almanac or an atlas -- competitors may be shown an image of Socrates and have to know when he lived in order to move to the next clue. Carmen's trail may lead a player from Kigali to Istanbul, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Cowboy Hall of Fame, or from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Mayan ruins. Some of the questions are far from easy: players may have to know the currency of a distant country, identify a South Pacific island tribe, or describe the significance of historical figures such as Frankish King Clovis...
...sensitive for words. This recommends his work to the serious younger audience, which tends to mime its discontents by striking sullen poses. But it is not a useful attribute for a maker of sound movies. Neither is Van Sant's disdain for narrative. He got away with Drugstore Cowboy because its band of drugged-out dodoes were engaged in a petty crime spree that almost passed for a plot. But My Own Private Idaho is a different story. Or rather nonstory, in which a pair of homosexual hustlers (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves) search inconclusively for the meaning of their...
Some listeners might be tempted to say this Belfast cowboy -- as the Band's Robbie Robertson once called him in a song -- is, in fact, a little mad. But if so, his is a fine madness. Morrison asks his own questions ("Can you feel the silence?") and provides his own answers ("((We)) carried on dreaming in God"). Those very dreams are the songs he shares. His music is a perpetual state of grace...
Kerrey exudes honesty and fairness in a country where a politician's false claims to virtue are often tolerated and constant wheeling and dealing can be respected. He appeals (with no small effort) to some basic "Americanness" many of us identify with--a Western sort of freedom (he wears cowboy boots a lot), a blue-jeaned individuality (he's not tied down by marriage) and a populist fear of Washington (to which the AIPACked and Farmer's Unioned Tom Harkin has much less claim...