Saturday, May 26, 2007
Barbarian, Part Two: American Bad-Ass
On the heels of the last post on barbarians, perhaps we should bring it on home with an episode of "American Bad-Ass".
You can have your "Dirty Harry"; the absolute best Clint Eastwood movie is "The Outlaw Josey Wales". As far as attitude, grit and gunfights, this movie is one of the all-time best westerns ever. It was also the first one Eastwood directed himself.
In Richard Heckler's book "In Search of The Warrior Spirit", Heckler describes his experiance teaching Aikido to a group of Green Berets. In this fascinating book, Heckler considers the age-old question of what it is to become a true warrior. In a break between training sessions, he and another instructor watch "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and he finds the perfect warrior scene. It's when Josey Wales rides up to meet the feared Indian chief Ten Bears, I wish I could find the video. Wales comes bearing words of life, and words of death. The words of life are that the Commanche can harvest his beef cattle, and his ranch will have the sign of the Commanche for all to see. His words of death are there, in Ten Bears knives, and here, in Josey Wales' guns. It's up to Ten Bears to choose.
He chooses life.
The Outlaw Josey Wales; first installment of "American Bad-Ass"...
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3 comments:
What I found most interesting about "In Search of the Warrior Spirit" was the fact that the author concluded that teaching the SF guys aikido just wouldn't fit into their or the army's mentality. What the soft IMA's were teaching didn't seem to fit the gung-ho mentality - of which the SF crowd have their own special version.
A great scene form that book was when the Tibetan Buddhist monk guy went to lecture the guys on meditation, but he seemed very nervous to be there. When he asked if there were questions, the first guy raised his hand and asked "you're not very comfortable here, are you?"
Direct, straight-to-the-point, and no BS. I love it.
Damn! I knew there was a reason I keep coming back to this site.
"Josey Wales" is also my favorite Eastwood western. Personally, I'd put it third in my favorite Eastwood movies, after "Bronco Billy" and "Every Which Way But Loose."
Hey, DR. sorry my Google player embed puked out on you. I have the video linked that you wanted to watch.
http://mokurendojo.blogspot.com/2007/05/forward-kneeling-roll.html
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