Dear Lord, this is where I came in.
Ninety years is a decent run, but it is still good form to doff one’s hat and face stoutly into the wind when a giant passes.
Good night.
Flight of the Phoenix
The Flight of the Phoenix
Or… sometimes, you just gotta say “WTF?”
In the 1965 movie The Flight of the Phoenix, Jimmy Stewart pilots a small cargo plane carrying a few passengers over the Sahara. Scirocco; sandstorm; they go down. I’ll leave the terrific characterizations for another time, except to say I went all wobbly for Hardy Kruger as the airplane modeler who proposes to cannibalize, not other passengers but the carcass of the plane, insisting that he can make one of the wings into something that’ll fly them to safety.
It’s a wire-walk of a film, but it’s on my mind as I start this blog because of a moment at the end. The jury-rigged aircraft is aloft, it’s closing in on an oilfield and the lifesaving oasis beyond it, and as it swoops low, Stewart in the carved-out cockpit with a pet monkey, the other survivors clinging to either wing, all delirious at the sight of safety, one of the hard-hatted oilmen on the ground — nearly bowled over by their tailwind — shouts “What the hell was that?”
I loved that moment. It was something about the idea of doing what you have to do to survive — with strife, conflict, genius, joy and orneriness in equal measure — and as the cherry on top making the world, or at least someone, yell WHAT THE FUCK????
We all cherish our Walter Mittyish fantasy ambitions. I guess that’s mine.
Sixteen Tons 