Tuesday: Bottle Rocket
All of the usual Wes Anderson accouterments exist in Bottle Rocket, but they feel more lo-fi and organic than they do in the rest of his filmography. This isn't to say that the film is Mr. Anderson's best work, because, frankly, it's not. However, there is a real sense of wonder to all that goes on here. Think of it as Mr. Anderson's Mean Streets, only without all those pesky religious undertones. [@Max, 1:50 p.m.]

Wednesday: Soapdish
We know Soapdish, the ever-so-meta movie about a soap opera within a soap opera, is totally hack. But! We defy you to think of a better cast. Just listen to this roster of comedic geniuses: Kevin Klein, Sally Field, Robert Downey Jr., Whoppi Goldberg, Cathy Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue, Garry Marshall, Carrie Fisher, Teri Hatcher. Not surprisingly, the cast lifts the film to heights it doesn't really deserve. Soapdish is funny, likable and really watchable. Plus, since Kevin Klein doesn't work enough, we have to get our fix wherever we can. [HBO Comedy, 8:25 a.m.]

Thursday: Grapes of Wrath
We're pretty sure we haven't heard the Great Depression referenced this much since junior high school. Hey, media … you're scaring us! Anyway, if breadlines and massive unemployment are in our near futures, what better way to prepare than to watch John Ford's Depression-era classic Grapes of Wrath. [More Max, 4:05 a.m.]

Friday: Crash
Not to be outdone by HBO, Showtime and AMC, Starz! is the latest cable television channel to try out the episodic television show waters. Unfortunately, they chose Crash as their first series. Based on the 2004 Best Picture winner (that still looks wrong in print), Crash follows the lives of a group of interconnected Angelenos and their daily struggles with racial tension. Dennis Hopper stars, looking like he stepped out of those ubiquitous Ameriprise Financial commercials and onto the set, while the rest of the cast is designed to remind you of the original film's many movie stars. (They don't.) Starz! posted the first two episodes online, so if you really can't wait until Friday, you can watch them now at your leisure. [Starz!, 10 p.m.]

John Ford won two of his final four directorial Oscars for Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and How Green Was My Valley in 1941. Curiously, he was in the center of critical controversy for both films, first for The Grapes of Wrath’s losing out to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, though Hitch himself never won a competitive directorial Oscar; and second for Ford’s How Green Was My Valley’s beating out Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane for the Oscar, though as I argued much later, How Green Was My Valley was probably the best film to win the Oscar, and that now covers 80 years.

I shall comment on such later Ford masterpieces in the series as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and My Darling Clementine (1946) in next week’s column. But if you’re looking for such Ford landmarks as The Lost Patrol (1934) and The Informer (1935) in this series, forget it. Both films were made under the aegis of RKO. I don’t agree with anti-auterists who claim that studios were the ultimate auteurs of the best Hollywood movies, but I have never argued that studios were completely unimportant. Still, I wish that contemporary reference books would at least keep track of the old Hollywood studios on their credit rosters. There is also a new DVD box of Ford at Fox if you miss the Ford films at the AMMI.

There’s no point in denying that Ford was a traditionalist. Nearly 70 years on, Stagecoach still gives you the feeling that you are seeing movie conventions minted fresh: There’s the Indian attack on the stage, the cavalry riding to the rescue, the two rivals meeting for a gunfight in the deserted main street. The cast, playing a roster of archetypes—the whore with the heart of gold; the drunken but still-capable doctor; the rogue trying to redeem himself; the rich villain; the good man turned outlaw by circumstance—rise above themselves, bringing caricature the sort of richness you associate with Dickens.

As the craft and excitement of Stagecoach prove, tradition needn’t be stifling, and to John Ford American tradition meant individualism. The enemies of that individualism are conformity, moralism, the corruptions that power can’t resist. And all of those things appear whenever people organize themselves into groups. In Stagecoach, the characters who are supposed to be the founders of a new ordered society are threatened by the very thing they are working to achieve.

In the first five minutes alone, there is no respectable institution—law, religion, business—that Ford doesn’t regard with deep suspicion. We see Dallas (Claire Trevor), the local prostitute forced out of town by the women’s “Law and Order League.” They of course have no right to bully her, but when Dallas implores the town sheriff to do something, he tells her to go quietly. He’s not about to make trouble by standing up for a whore. When Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), who’s also being given the bum’s rush, gallantly takes Dallas’ arm, they are herded to the stagecoach followed by their tormentors while a drunken version of “Shall We Gather at the River?” plays on the soundtrack, turning the scene into a parody of a temperance march. When the stagecoach driver Buck (the wonderful Andy Devine, whose scratchy-squeaky voice suggests a balloon rubbed with steel wool) hears that the Ringo Kid (the impossibly charming young John Wayne in the movie—his 80th—that finally made him a star) has busted out of prison, his reaction is “Good for him!” When the banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill) takes delivery of the Wells Fargo payroll, he pontificates that what’s good for the banks is good for America—before absconding with the bundle.

These are Ford’s representatives of America sallying forth into the wilderness: a whore, a drunk and an outlaw. The only respectable member, the banker Gatewood, is a thief escaping with stolen loot. Except for the whiskey drummer Peacock (played by Donald Meek, and to the name born), a man so mild and respectable he’s constantly mistaken for a clergyman, the other respectable members of the caravan act to uphold a vision of America in which some people belong and some don’t. Mrs. Mallory (Louise Platt), the wife of a cavalry officer, traveling in considerable discomfort because she’s pregnant, continually rebuffs Dallas’ attempts at kindness. The former Confederate soldier Hatfield (John Carradine, probably never as handsome as he is here), hopes that offering Mrs. Mallory his protection will bring back the honor he’s lost by falling into a life of gambling. And though that profession should make him at home with whores, drunks and outlaws, he acts as if it were a supreme insult to Mrs. Mallory to be keeping their company.

I don’t wish to reduce Stagecoach to a civics lesson like the phony High Noon. As an adventure tale, the movie is thrilling. The centerpiece, the attack on the stage by marauding Apaches, is highlighted by the breathtaking stunt work of Yakima Canutt, a reminder of the artistry that’s been lost in the age of computer-generated imagery. But Stagecoach is a vision of democracy as well, and one that’s both stirred by the idea of how democracy levels the playing field and tough-minded enough to know that the judgmentalism Americans are prone to will do everything it can to create a land where the folks who live on the hill look down at those in the valley.

The recent premiere of the third season of Deadwood has prompted a lot of dumb talk about the traditions of the western, most of it, as the critic Dave Kehr observed on his blog, from people who don’t appear to have seen many westerns. These writers really believe that westerns are all black hats vs. white hats, good women vs. whores, cowboys vs. Indians. So when they see a western where violence is treated less than triumphantly—where moral ambiguity is present—all they can do is proclaim it an “anti-western,” as Alessandra Stanley recently called Deadwood in The Times.

In the great westerns, the stirring and the heroic have always existed alongside the evil and the craven. We are looking at them in a country in its birth pangs, capable of going in either direction.

So the idea of the “anti-western” is inherently ahistorical. It denies the subtleties in the great Ford and Hawks westerns, the adult pessimism that Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann brought to the genre in the 50’s, and just how much the presumed father of the anti-western, Sam Peckinpah, owed to the traditions that had preceded him. What’s seen as a break with tradition is really a mirror of the journey undertaken by the genre’s heroes: the push to go further afield, knowing all the while that they can never fully escape what they are leaving behind. For Americans, the western is, as Huck Finn says of civilization, a place we all been before.

[Stagecoach, Two-Disc Special Edition; Warner Home Video; $26.98.]

Among the Gunners' duties is patrolling the streets of Baghdad day and night, with the troops encouraged to sound off at every opportunity about their gripes and fears. The tone of the film is skeptical and derisive, in contrast to the confident media pronouncements issuing mostly from the mouth of Donald Rumsfeld. But Gunner Palace is far from being an Iraqi Apocalypse Now. It's much too early, much too raw and much too haphazardly chaotic to influence hearts and minds one way or another in the current debate on the wisdom or stupidity of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. For instance, footage of American troops enjoying themselves in the luxurious swimming pool-who said Iraq was all bad?-and on the putting greens outside the palace reminds us of Saddam's corrupt self-indulgence when he was in power. But I may be presumptively premature in using the editorial "we," since my own political reaction to Gunner Palace-and the war itself-has been very conflicted.

As it happens, I've been bemused for over 50 years now by the ironies and paradoxes of America's "limited" wars, ever since I was drafted into the Army near the end of the Korean War, which coincided not accidentally with the ascension to power of a Republican President (Dwight D. Eisenhower), ending 20 years of Democratic Party rule. The Democratic Party's downward trajectory continued with Senator Joseph McCarthy blaming President Harry S. Truman and the allegedly Commie-infested Democratic Party for "losing" China to the Communists.

Even after he intervened forcefully to contain the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea, Truman was denounced by the left for intervening at all, and by the right for not unleashing Gen. Douglas MacArthur beyond the Yalu River, even at the risk of a war with mainland China. The Korean War was labeled "Truman's War" (so much for bipartisan patriotism). I considered myself fortunate not to have been sent to Korea, but I was on Truman's side both in intervening and in holding back MacArthur. I thus found myself somewhat isolated between the rabidly anti-war left and the rabidly anti-Communist right.

By the time Vietnam became an intra-party issue in the 60's, the Democrats had been so traumatized after years of being castigated by the Republicans as "soft" on Communism that they didn't dare to abandon the Roman Catholic–oriented Diem regime in Saigon. Shortly before he was assassinated in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was approached in Texas by a group of conservatives who told him, as if in jest, that they didn't mind cute little Caroline Kennedy riding her tricycle on the White House lawn, but they didn't want her setting American foreign policy-the soft-on-you-know-what charge in sugarcoated form. In a steady, solemn voice, J.F.K. reminded his belligerent critics of the millions of people who would be incinerated in a nuclear war.

Yet Kennedy is said to have signed off on the reported C.I.A.-sponsored coup that led to the assassination of President Diem, who had been discredited by the televised spectacle of self-immolating Buddhist monks, the suicide bombers of their day. This ghoulish practice was mysteriously discontinued once the North Vietnamese troops overran Saigon-or, at least, flaming suicides were no longer televised.

Lyndon B. Johnson was similarly inhibited from disengaging from the Vietnam quagmire and even escalated our involvement. He consequently lost his Presidency to an insurrection of anti-war Democrats, who divided the party sufficiently to elevate Richard Nixon to the Presidency he'd narrowly lost to Kennedy in 1960. The lingering Democratic division over the candidacy of insufficiently dovish Hubert Humphrey contributed to the Republican victory. Then, lo and behold! President Nixon recognized Communist China, which no Democratic President would have dared to do for fear of being smeared with a red brush by the self-righteous Republicans, including Nixon himself.

The recent 2004 election results could be read as a referendum on the Iraq invasion, with John Kerry's defeat offering a revealing look at the divisive tensions in the Democratic Party between the uncompromising anti-war-for-any-reason faction on the left, and the defensively tougher-minded faction in the center. I happen to prefer another explanation for the Bush victory: his marvelous good luck in having 9/11 as a continuous backdrop for his "war on terror." Similarly, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was lucky in having Pearl Harbor as a means of getting a largely anti-war population swept up into a martial frenzy to satisfy F.D.R.'s long-nurtured objective of stopping Hitler.

By contrast, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson never had the advantage of a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 to stifle dissent on their wars. Bush 43 was additionally lucky in not having a civilian draft in place to maximize anti-war feeling after he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

When the Vietnam War came along, Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney, among many others, became masters at avoiding the draft, but Mr. Bush's National Guard caper has backfired on the current crop of Guardsmen now that there is no draft to take up the slack. Recruitment is down, as might be expected, and there's even talk of enlisting foreign applicants with the promise of eventual citizenship-a scenario eerily reminiscent of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that Gunner Palace in any way depicts Baghdad as a city in massive rebellion against the Americans. The troops often seem bored by the generally uneventful routines in which they're engaged. A suspicious-looking paper bag on an empty street turns out to be an empty paper bag, not a terrorist's bomb. Suspected hiding places for terrorists and their weapons are raided, with generally meager results. There are many pleasant encounters with cheerfully curious Iraqi children, but the adult males tend to be surlier and more suspicious. In terms of box-office draw, Gunner Palace has far less violence and killing than is seen on American prime-time television.

And yet the atmosphere on the mostly quiet and deserted streets remains tense and threatening. I have seen much televised footage of Baghdad from a distance, but I have never before been made aware of how large and built-up a city Baghdad is. Gunner Palace records day patrols and night patrols-block by block, intersection by intersection, with helicopters always hovering overhead. Americans are there, embedded, and probably will be for a very long time. The soldiers are generally working-class and lower-middle-class, young men from small towns with a large sprinkling of minorities. There are a few women in the service and, based on the film, there's little evidence of Iraqi women being accessible to the U.S. troops in the way Vietnamese women were in the Americanized sin city, Saigon. The most depressing incident in the film occurs in the aftermath of a terrorist suicide bombing of a Shiite religious procession: When American Humvees are sent to lend assistance, the Shiite survivors throw rocks at the Americans. One wonders if this failure to communicate will persist into the foreseeable future; the language barrier alone suggests that it will. In the meantime, I remain impressed by the subversive tone of all the rap lyrics pouring out of the unit. But I also remain a yellow-dog Democrat with a paranoid vision of the Republicans as shrewd and wily opportunists, and I fear that only truly bad times will drive them from power. Was it worth it for so many people to have to suffer? This is why I'm happy that movies, not politics, are my métier.

Insider Dealings

Phillip P. Messina's With Friends Like These (1998), from his own screenplay, has had what is described as "multiple successes in twelve film festivals around the world, garnering top prizes with great reviews and audience raves." Yet American distributors have, until now, found the movie too "inside" for "average people," who presumably don't care to see a comedy about the machinations of the Hollywood scene.

I don't know if I qualify as an "average person," but I must confess that I didn't find With Friends Like These nearly as funny as it strenuously tries to be, from its opening burst of slapstick-a mock mob rub-out routine in a Los Angeles suburban setting-to its closing throwaway line about the studio casting Keanu Reeves in Martin Scorsese's movie about Al Capone. This final inside joke is supposedly funny in light of the entire movie that precedes it, about the pathetic efforts of four bit-role players to hit the big time by successfully auditioning for the part of Al Capone in a new Martin Scorsese movie.

The real-life Mr. Scorsese even makes a cameo appearance near the end of the film, while, at the beginning, Bill Murray makes a similar appearance, playing not himself but rather a loathsome, gluttonous, big-time producer, Maurice Melnick, who drops in on the anniversary party of one of these wannabes and seems to delight in greeting them with the icy stare of non-recognition as he piles food from the party into his outsized doggy-bag. Mr. Murray does as well as he can with this piece of satirical overkill, but it gets the movie's mean streak off to an early start.

It's a shame, really, because there are nice people in the cast who could've pulled off a subtler treatment of the Hollywood rat race than Mr. Messina provides. Robert Costanzo plays the biggest loser, Johnny DiMartino, and just a misstep behind him are Adam Arkin as Steve Hersh, David Strathairn as Armand Minetti, and Jon Tenney as Dorian Mastandrea, the only one of the four who adds to his other faults by compulsively cheating on his wife.

Playing the three wives (and one girlfriend) with more charm and panache than their hapless mates are Amy Madigan as Hannah DiMartino, Laura San Giacomo as Joanne Hersh, Elle Macpherson as Samantha Mastandrea and Lauren Tom as Armand's girlfriend. Beverly D'Angelo takes on the role of the film's poltergeist as Theresa Carpenter, the casting agent who initiates all the intrigues by confiding to Johnny DiMartino the director's plan to cast an unknown for the role of Al Capone in his new movie. Johnny blabs to Dorian, and soon the whole community is consumed by a post- Sopranos glaring-and-staring frenzy.

There are more than a few jokes about looking and sounding Sicilian even when one is not Sicilian by birth or temperament. There are also jokes about having or not having been "connected" in some unsavory past. The incessant betrayals and confidences become monotonous after a time, and the film sinks into the familiar swamp of suburban futility. Still, there are far worse flicks around with much wider distribution.

On the Western Front

I must apologize to my readers for not alerting them in time to catch the first entry in "Essential Westerns," the revelatory 37-film series playing at Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, 212-727-8110) for four weeks, from March 4 to March 31. This first film in question is John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the greatest western of all time and one of the 10 greatest films ever made. If you've never seen it, you can probably get it on VHS and DVD. I would recommend every remaining western in the series, since the virtual disappearance of quality adult efforts in the genre (except for the Eastwood- Deadwood exertions) is quite simply a fact of life.

Special attention should be paid to George Stevens' Shane (1953) and Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), which play Friday, March 11, through Monday, March 14; John Ford's Seventh Cavalry classics Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) on Tuesday, March 15; Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959), Wednesday, June 16; Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960), Thursday, March 17; Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) and Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns (1957), two deliriously woman-empowering westerns, showing Friday and Saturday, March 18 and 19; John Ford's Rio Grande (1950) and Wagon Master (1950), Tuesday, March 22; King Vidor's erotic Duel in the Sun (1946) and Henry King's austere The Gunfighter (1950), Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26; John Ford's lyrical My Darling Clementine (1946) and William Wellman's gritty anti-lynch mob film The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Sunday and Monday, March 27 and 28; and the series' fitting valedictory twilight westerns, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valanc e (1962), showing on Wednesday and Thursday, March 30 and 31.

At one point in Preston Sturges' wonderful wartime farce, Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), the hero's mother is trying–in front of a crowd of neighbors in her kitchen–to dissuade her son from taking off his Marine uniform: She reminds him that his grandfather, after all, "wore his Civil War uniform the rest of his life." "Kept having new ones made," interjects a helpful aunt. "He said he had to remind people that brother fought brother," the mother adds piously, for the benefit of the non-family members in the room. I was reminded of that by a passage in Joseph McBride's fascinating new biography of John Ford. Mr. McBride tells us how Ford–given his postwar "identification with the military ethos"–liked to attend Hollywood events wearing "full Navy regalia." A daughter of one of Ford's closest Navy buddies remembered: "Ford used to make quite a big scene about wearing his uniform to anything. He would say to my dad, 'I don't want to wear my uniform. Don't put me in the position of having to wear it.' But if Dad wouldn't press him, he would be heartbroken."

Sturges makes it easy to recognize that unseen grandfather, to get the joke about him: the fakery, the self-importance, best of all the unctuousness ("he had to remind people … "). It's the sort of joke–a very American sort of irreverence–that excludes, even defies, I would argue, the work and sensibility of John Ford. Ford meant to be irreverent (Don't make me wear it!), but he never

really was. Where Sturges made a single brilliant movie that kidded (in 1944) about fetishizing the uniform, Ford made a string of movies that did just that–the famous Cavalry Trilogy among them ( Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande ). According to Mr. McBride, Ford offered to be, even set out to be, America's national poet on film. There were some deep strains of American poetry, anarchic and skeptical, that he was out of touch with, impulses represented by screwball comedy and film noir. And yet Ford's greatness was undeniable. Asked to name his favorite American directors, Orson Welles replied: "[t]he old masters–by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

There have been other Ford biographies: one in 1979 by his grandson Dan Ford, Pappy (Mr. McBride draws on it quite a bit), and most recently Print the Legend (1999) by Scott Eyman, the Lubitsch biographer. Both are valuable books, but more anecdotal, less ambitiously researched than this one. A film historian with an already imposing track record of books on Frank Capra, Howard Hawks and Welles, Mr. McBride wants his biography to be definitive–which it is. It's also a vivid reminder of the many reasons why it's not easy to love John Ford, either the work or the man. The uniform fetish is the least of it (he kept having new ones made, too).

"When you're working with a genius, you put up with a lot," said Henry Brandon, who played Scar in The Searchers . Ford's meanness on the set was legendary, but selective; many of his sets were famously gemütlich –more like going to camp (songs, games, scheduled activities even) than to work, Henry Fonda once said. But Ford knew better than to mess with Fonda. He also knew how to reduce John Wayne to tears of humiliation–and frequently did. Ford might pick on anyone at all, from a star to a grip to someone who'd just asked a stupid question. What made it even worse was that people could never see his eyes: The dark glasses he wore on the set were as inevitable as the long handkerchief he was always chewing on. Harry Carey Jr., a Ford regular, claimed he could tell whenever Ford was going to get nasty to someone: A tendon in his neck started to twitch and he gnawed his handkerchief even harder. His favorite target–after Wayne–was supporting actor Ward Bond. There were serious reasons for hating Bond, who was a right-wing thug and a sort of fascist enforcer during the 50's witch hunts; but the kind of things Ford liked to reprove and mock the actor for–like the size of his ass–weren't really among them.

And Bond was his big buddy, just as Wayne was. Two of his closest friends, part of his gang–a backward bunch altogether, even by Hollywood standards. They reenacted all those macho rituals of drunken bonding and brawling that the worst Ford movies and the worst parts of the best ones incessantly celebrate. But Ford's real-life gang were often up to tricks that even his movies couldn't have turned into clean Irish fun. Like the time Wayne tried to rouse a sodden, sleeping Bond by pouring vodka on his chest and then setting it on fire. Or Ford peeing out his bedroom window by way of greeting his daughter and her friend, the actress Joanne Dru, on the porch below ("Good afternoon, girls!").

Ford surely knew that with these guys, much as he loved them, he was lowering himself. On the set–nearly the only place where he was dependably sober–he made them pay. But that vindictiveness lowered him, too, and most of the time he would feel sorry for it later. His sentimentality (also in his movies) was the other side of his nastiness, and almost as hard to bear. "Sentiment is Jack's vice," said Orson Welles, assessing the movies for Peter Bogdanovich. "When he escapes it, you get a perfect kind of innocence." Welles cited Young Mr. Lincoln ("How truly great that is!"). He might as well have named They Were Expendable , and for the same quality–a war movie not like any other, managing a heroic mode that feels both heartbroken and serene at once.

That Fordian "innocence" operates with mysterious force in The Searchers . One of the most striking things about the first 20 minutes or so of the movie is the indirection–the tact of the moviemaking itself. We know, for example, without acknowledgment by anyone on the screen, that Ethan (John Wayne) is deeply in love with his brother's wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), and she with him. We know it when he first arrives, from the way he bends from his great height to kiss her on the forehead, and the way she lowers her eyes when he does so; then the way she backs wordlessly into the house ahead of him, welcoming, her apron lifting softly on the wind in front of her. She will soon say goodbye to him–in front of the preacher (Ward Bond) who has come to recruit the men for a rescue mission. Another grave, wordless forehead kiss, another resigned and lowered gaze, a light touching of forearms–an exchange not observed by the Reverend, who's just noticed her caressing Ethan's coat before taking it to him, and who now stands drinking his coffee in the left foreground, raising the cup to his lips, chewing thoughtfully on his doughnut, looking abstractedly (as the couple to the right behind him draw heartbreakingly apart) toward us. There's hardly a movie scene anywhere, it seems to me (at least when I'm watching this one), that moves you so much and so powerfully. At such times, Ford makes those other "old masters"–all famous for their "touch," their civilized elegance (Lubitsch, Ophuls, et al.)–look almost ham-fisted.

And yet Ford made many crude and cartoonish films, with performances to match (he said comedy was his real talent–it wasn't). The sharpness of that contrast, even the violence of it (like the way he trashes The Searchers in a later film, Two Rode Together, which seems like a malignant take-off) suggests a mystery that's beyond the facile psychologizing (sexual insecurity? masculine-identity crisis?) that Mr. McBride's biography, at its weakest, falls into. But it's a bounteous book, and the rest survives. Especially the wonderful stories.

Ford is supposed to be a man's director, and certainly that was the kind of movie he mostly made. But it's the women in Mr. McBride's book, the actresses–Claire Trevor, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee and others–who have the most interesting stories to tell about how the director worked. It was "weird," according to Lee, the rapport you felt with him. She played Bronwen for Ford in How Green Was My Valley , and he readied her for one of her biggest scenes (where Bronwen, learning that her collier husband has just died in an accident, rushes out onto the street and down the hill to the mines) without any recognizable "preparation." He sent her off down the studio hill with his handkerchief tucked into her apron (their secret). Apparently it worked–Lee saved the handkerchief. But then someone, she thinks, must have thrown it out later. It was, after all, very badly chewed up.

James Harvey's Movie Love in the Fifties will be out in October from Knopf.

Of course, Orson's "one negative" is not unique in Ford criticism. Ford is often referred to as oversentimental, which is true at times, but more often the work is filled with legitimate and powerful sentiment, quite a different thing. I've also been noticing that things which seemed only sentimental when you were younger, turn out to feel pretty real as you get older. Anyway, Welles felt that Ford, whom he also defined as "poet and comedian," was certainly the best American director.

In the new American Movie Classics subscriber's magazine–the cable channel is running the 35-film Ford tribute this weekend (see below)–Andrew Sarris floats Ford as America's greatest director, and American Heritage recently ran a long piece calling Ford's The Searchers "The Movie of the Century."

He is still the Academy's most frequently honored filmmaker, with six Oscars for direction–four for features, two for war documentaries (see below)–as well as the New York Film Critics record holder, with four as best director. He was the first director to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award.

Personally, Ford was the first filmmaker I ever knew of and with whose work I connected immediately. When I was 10 and Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) was new, I saw it several times; I would name it at age 11 or 12 as one of my three favorite movies.

Beginning with 1952, during which I turned 13, living with my parents on West 67th Street in Manhattan, I started to keep track of every film I saw, typing a 4-by-6 index card with comments on it for each one. If I saw a film again, I would often make new comments. This continued faithfully until the end of 1970, when I was 30 and had just finished shooting The Last Picture Show . Looking at the staggering AMC run of films, I realized there were quite a few I hadn't seen in years, and I started looking up my old cards on some of the more arcane titles, thinking perhaps to quote from them. What appears here are the cards, exactly as I typed them between 1952 and 1970, with a current opinion, if necessary.

Between 1952 and 1966, I saw every new Ford movie–over 15 of them–during their initial release. I kept a separate list of all Ford movies I saw, in order of their viewing (85 entries, more than any of the other 56 directors I kept track of). In 1963, when I first met Ford while on assignment for an Esquire piece about him, until his death in 1973, I was in constant touch; I ended up buying a house literally across the street from him in 1972. Besides the lengthy Esquire article, I expanded this with a series of taped interviews with Ford, and published the whole thing as a little book in London and New York in 1967-8, just around the time we started filming a feature-length documentary salute to Ford commissioned by the American Film Institute. Directed by John Ford (1971) opened at the Venice Film Festival and at the ninth New York Film Festival, the same one that had begun with The Last Picture Show , a film in many ways inspired by Ford perhaps more than anybody.

AMC is running our rarely seen tribute (see below)–which features filmed interviews I did with John Wayne, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Ford himself in Monument Valley, Calif., with Orson Welles' voice narrating–as part of their current fund-raising activities for the Film Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by Martin Scorsese to save our film heritage from further deterioration. Of all films produced between 1895 and 1928, only about 10 percent have survived; from 1929 to the present (the sound era), only about 50 percent are still with us. So this three-day Ford binge is not only culturally healthy, but also a culturally crucial effort to save older films from extinction.

On the cards: The date at the top right of the single card reproduced below is the year I first saw the film. The numbers at the left are the cumulative index-card total at that point; each viewing rates another number. The six possible rankings are: Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent, Exceptional, though each of these often has a plus (*) or minus (-) valuation to aid precision.

Friday, 6 A.M.

Straight Shooting (1917;Butterfly-Universal).

Seen: Manhattan (1968).

Good- (Ford's first feature; a fascinating work in its early mastery of composition and pacing, in its unmistakably Fordian qualities and the strong influence of Griffith. A homesteaders vs. cattlemen story, with Harry Carey, it is certainly dated by modern standards, but its freshness and vigor is still most apparent, and much of the photography–the striking long shots, the interior-to-exterior compositions–remains vivid and evocative.)

This is a good example for film preservation: Of the more than 20 features and shorts Jack (before the billing became John) Ford made with Harry Carey, 1917-1920, only one or two more have survived. Indeed, comparatively few Ford silents exist, and this was his most prolific era, making over 60 films.

Friday, 7:30 A.M.

The Iron Horse (1924; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (1959).

(Pretty fair epic silent film of the building of the first transcontinental railroad and of one man's search for the murderer of his father.)

Seen: West Los Angeles (1969).

Good- (Generally well done, but still very much under Griffith's influence–though the atmosphere and the attention to detail as well as the compositions are unmistakably Ford's; the story is pretty weak, and the humor is still undeveloped, still crude. But … with some absolutely breathtaking photography; it seems that Ford had his eye from the moment he stepped behind a camera.)

Friday, 3:15 P.M.

The Battle of Midway (1942; U.S. Navy-Fox).

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1965).

Very good* (The first American war documentary, a stirring, patriotic and typically Fordian twenty-minute account of the battle of Midway in the Second World War; done with narration and the voices of mothers and sons, played by Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell …. Ford was there and we see it all from his distinctive point of view.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1965).

(The raising of the flag in the midst of the battle–"Yes, this really happened"–is one of the great film moments, fact or fiction …)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1969).

(… it is a poetic and touching document, and entirely the work of an artist.)

Friday, 3:45 P.M.

December 7th (1943; U.S. Navy).

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1968).

Very good (Strikingly photographed and beautifully edited wartime document of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath; excellent and all but indistinguishable combination of actual footage and recreated scenes …. Some fine Ford touches–such as the dead boys speaking from their graves about their lives and parents …)

Friday, 6 P.M., and Saturday, 2:05 A.M.

What Price Glory? (1952; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

Good* (Delightful, exciting, often moving version of the famous World War I stage play and film, very well played by James Cagney and Dan Dailey, directed with gusto and humor in typical Ford style …)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1966).

(The old dialogue is a trifle stilted at times and there's a certain awkwardness in some of it, as though Ford's heart wasn't in it all; but there are also marvelous things–especially the humor–that could only be Ford.)

Friday, 8 P.M. and midnight.

How Green Was My Valley (1941; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (1959).

Exceptional* (Among Ford's most popular pictures, and deservedly so, for this is an unbearably moving, superb epic about a Welsh mining town and the changes in the lives of one family during a generation. Tender, compassionate, brilliantly acted and directed, beautifully photographed and written. One of Ford's most affecting works, filled with pathos and warm humor.)

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

(Unquestionably one of the most tragic, moving films ever made; Ford is among the top four directors in world cinema.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1968).

(Greater than ever, the film's majesty and depth, humanity and scope is not diminished in the least; it is a glorious movie, and one that never fails to make you cry at the tragedy and also the bravery of life.)

Friday, Aug. 6, 10:05 P.M.; Sunday, Aug. 8, 3:40 P.M.; Monday, Aug. 9, 1:15 A.M .

Directed by John Ford (my A.F.I. documentary as described above).

Saturday, Aug. 7, 4:05 A.M.

Mother Machree (1928)

A part of the 1928 Ford silent, found since 1970, which I have never seen. Welles' metaphoric comment on "scripts by Mother Machree" (see above) was also a concrete reference to this as among the most notoriously sentimental of Ford's silent films.

Saturday, 7:15 A.M.

The Shamrock Handicap (1926; Fox).

Seen: West Los Angeles (1969).

Fair* (Likable, decidedly minor Ford silent, set in Ireland and America … a nice example of the bread-and-butter days of Ford and Hollywood, when movies still dared to be just a movie …)

Saturday, noon.

Seas Beneath (1931; Fox).

Seen: West Los Angeles (1966).

Good (Early Ford talkie with all the great Fordian elements in embryo form … striking photography at sea, careless story plotting held together by a vigorous and dynamic sense of pictures…. The acting … leaves much to be desired…. The Ford personality is so unmistakable in many moments …)

Saturday, 1:30 P.M.

Doctor Bull (1933; Fox).

Seen: West Hollywood, Calif.

Very good - (Ford's Arrowsmith –a charming small-town comedy-drama, with Will Rogers in the title role; not one of Ford's best…. but Ford's handling … and Rogers' personality make up for the awkwardness of…the other players …. dated … shows an interesting trend in Ford's work–his personality best expressed in the little picture.)

Saturday, 3 P.M.

The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

Very good* (Beautifully directed piece of Americana, about Dr. Samuel Mudd, the man wrongly accused of conspiracy in the assassination of President Lincoln: with a particularly impressive opening sequence … a haunting still-frame of Lincoln's head blurring into immortality … has not the greatness of Young Mr. Lincoln …)

Saturday, 6 P.M. and midnight.

Donovan's Reef (1963; Ford-Paramount).

Seen: Manhattan (1963).

Excellent* … a semi-nostalgic … rowdy comedy set on a South Seas island–beautifully color-filmed … strikingly personal in its direction; with a story of little consequence, Ford has constructed a thoroughly delightful romantic farce about a couple of former Navy men who have retired and spend most of their time now brawling and raising hell.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1969).

(A vacation movie–lots of fun–and uniquely Ford.)

(1999): I've overrated this; the film is amazingly personal to Ford, but also formally at times way over the top.

Saturday, 8 P.M.; Sunday, Aug. 8, 2 A.M.; Tuesday, Aug. 10, 9 P.M.; Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2 A.M.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962; Ford-Paramount).

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

Exceptional* (A Ford masterpiece: perhaps his final word on the West in the era when the gun was the law. A complete tragedy about an Eastern lawyer, a tough horse trader, the girl they both love, and the killer whose death destroys one and creates a career for the other. Sad, melancholy, sometimes very funny, deeply felt and beautifully directed, acted, photographed and written, this is among Ford's most personal achievements, and one of the best pictures he has made.)

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

(Without doubt, a beautiful, tragic movie: Wayne, Stewart, Vera Miles are superb in their simplicity, and Ford's direction is a masterpiece of understatement and economy; among the classic westerns.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1967)

(The depth of irony and humanity in this picture is remarkable, and the simplicity, the purity with which it is achieved shows Ford's true genius. It is one of the saddest movies ever made, by a man who may well be the greatest American director.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1968).

(… filled with grace and poetry, from the depths of Ford's heart and mind. Among the great westerns.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1970).

(The depth of Ford's emotional involvement in this story is remarkable and deeply moving on every level; its reverberations echoing through the years and shadows of his other work; a great masterpiece of personal cinema.)

Saturday, 10:15 P.M., and Sunday, 4:05 A.M.

My Darling Clementine (1946; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (1959).

Exceptional* (Among Ford's most memorable, perfect works: a masterpiece of the Old West, set in Tombstone, about Wyatt Earp and his brothers … and Earp's relationship with the tragic Doc Holliday-culminating in the famous O.K. Corral gunfight. Brilliantly, personally directed … strikingly photographed, excellently acted.)

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

(In every way a great film; one of the best westerns; a high point in Ford's staggering career.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1966).

(A great and beautiful film by a great director.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1968).

(… The simplicity of the telling, the perfection of the construction and playing, the majesty of the photography and composition–all conspire to make it among Ford's most classically beautiful achievements.)

(1999): Only more precious. Newest released version has five minutes of Ford's material restored, plus his much preferred "no-kiss" ending, in which Henry Fonda shakes hands with his darling Clementine rather than kissing her on the cheek. As Ford told Fonda during The Grapes of Wrath (see below): "Country people don't kiss [in public]."

Sunday, Aug. 8, 6 A.M.

Three Bad Men (1926; Fox).

Seen: West Los Angeles, Calif. (1966).

Good* (A somewhat contrived and occasionally haphazard story that has, however, many of the classic Ford gambits in immature form … There is a Dakota land rush at the end that is extremely exciting and beautifully orchestrated, and a rescue of people in a burning church that is clearly influenced by a similar sequence in The Birth of a Nation , but which does not pale by comparison. The exteriors are beautiful and typically Ford in all their aspects: the riders on the horizon, the epic long shots … the brilliant interior-to-exterior photography, the vivid black and white contrasts. The story … has the Fordian concept of the glory in defeat, but is still rudely stated, not always naturally played … with a flair for the movies both unmistakable and totally unique.)

Sunday, 1:30 P.M., and Monday, 3:45 A.M.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940; Fox).

Seen: Manhattan (with Tobacco Road )(1956).

(Certainly one of the finest novel-to-film adaptations ever made, a powerful and tragic, brilliantly acted, written, directed and photographed version of Steinbeck's story of Oklahoma migrant workers forced off their land by the Government and obliged to flee westward with their families looking for work where there is none. A deeply moving piece of Americana, poignantly told.)

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

Very good- (Fine and sensitive as the acting and the direction is, this is not in any way as great or as personal as many of Ford's other works, such as The Searchers , The Quiet Man , She Wore A Yellow Ribbon or The Wings of Eagles , none of which is flawed by the dated social consciousness and unconvincing, rather confused propaganda of the script, particularly its latter scenes. But there is no denying the mastery of Ford's treatment, nor the vitality and beauty of its scenes and performances …)

(1999): It remains an extraordinarily dark work to come from a major American studio. I showed it once to River Phoenix, and remember River being struck repeatedly by the brilliance and beauty of Henry Fonda's remarkable performance as Tom Joad. Though flawed, an important picture.

Sunday, 5:35 P.M.

The Long Gray Line (1955; Rota-Columbia).

Seen: Manhattan (1955).

(Sentimental, tearful story of 50 years in the life of Irishman Marty Maher, and his beloved West Point. Well directed and shot; some of the film is humorous, much is maudlin and boring.)

Seen: Manhattan (1962).

Excellent (A superb piece of work, among Ford's most deeply moving: sentimental, yes, but as only Ford could be–from the depths of his heart. Unqualifiably a beautiful movie.)

Seen: West Hollywood, Calif. (1968).

(As strong a picture of the importance and glory of tradition as Fort Apache –and as personal to Ford perhaps; wonderful performances and magnificent direction.)

(1999): The best performance of Tyrone Power's career, and a most unmistakably Fordian picture of the glory inherent in defeat. Fine use of wide screen, though Ford was said to keep wandering into the frame because he misjudged it's width.

Sunday, 8 P.M.

The Searchers (1956; Whitney-Warner Brothers.)

Seen: Manhattan (1956).

Exceptional*(Stunningly color-photographed, superbly directed and acted, exciting, deeply stirring western drama about two men and their agonizing 10-year search for a little girl kidnapped by Comanches; a vivid and beautiful piece of Americana.)

Seen: Manhattan (1963).

(Perhaps Ford's purest film and certainly one of his most personal; truly a masterpiece by one of the four greatest directors in cinema history.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1969).

(It really is a remarkable film, so complex in its effect, so deep in its emotions; it is certainly among Ford's greatest achievements on any level–as entertainment, as art, as personal filmmaking; it is continually engrossing and always fresh. An unqualified masterpiece.)

Seen: Van Nuys, Calif. (1970).

(Richer and more moving with each viewing; one of Ford's greatest achievements, on any level.)

(1999): As highly recommended here recently ( The Observer , July 26, 1999).

Sunday, 10:35 P.M.

Cheyenne Autumn (1964; Ford-Smith-Warner Brothers).

Seen: West Hollywood, Calif. (1964).

Excellent- (An epic Ford achievement: the harrowing story of the flight of 300 Cheyenne men, women and children 1,800 miles to their native Yellowstone country. Strikingly photographed, acted with dignity and conviction, filled with incident, detail, humor … masterful Americana …)

Seen: Canoga Park, Calif. (with Emil and the Detectives (1965).

(Cut by Warner, the picture has lost the important touch of humor, an ingredient too absent from this to start with; always a flawed film it has been damaged even worse. But nothing can destroy the majesty of Ford, and it shines through every frame.)

Seen: Beverly Hills, Calif. (1970).

(Decidedly Ford's weakest film of the 50's and 60's, it still contains some memorable sequences, and marvelous ideas, but it is nonetheless a deeply flawed work.)

(1999): Cheyenne Autumn was the first film I extensively watched being made–for three weeks; a few hours had been my limit before that–and so it is impossible for me really to be objective about the overall work. Being there in Monument Valley with Ford for over 21 days, having lunches and dinners with him daily, getting to know all the actors, learning an enormous amount watching a frail and skinny 69-year-old man easily command a cast and crew of over 600, a large trailer town in the midst of the desert. I remember thinking to myself, Well, I guess getting to be that age wouldn't be so bad, after all–at least, you don't have to worry about how you look or what you say, as Ford clearly didn't.

From here on through to the end of Ford's life in 1973, up to right now, it is not entirely possible for me to be objective about Ford, and I often enjoy being in his company even with a film from one of his lesser days. What I like best, of course, are those pictures in which his humor, his humanity and his sense of history most eloquently prevail. Naturally, feeling a personal affection for the man I knew, and knowing the current plight of film preservation, it is painful to think of losing any single one of those movies, even the poorest one. They all are some portion of the singular life work of one of the precious few poets in the art form of the 20th century. Saving films, then, is like saving parts of lives.

Television reporters received the following document, reproduced here verbatim, on July 13. Just call it the Gospel According to CBS Public Affairs:

"JESUS," AN EPIC MINI-SERIES STARRING JEREMY SISTO, NOW IN PRODUCTION IN MOROCCO FOR BROADCAST IN MAY 2000 ON THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK

Jacqueline Bisset, Jeroen Krabbe, Debra Messing, Armin Mueller-Stahl, David O'Hara and Gary Oldman Also Star

Additional Footage To Be Shot in Malta

JESUS, a special event four-hour mini-series starring Jeremy Sisto ("The '60s," "White Squall," "Grand Canyon") about the extraordinary life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth, is currently in production in Morocco and will continue to be shot in Malta for broadcast on the CBS Television Network in May of the year 2000–the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.

Jacqueline Bissett ("Joan of Arc," "The Deep,"), Jeroen Krabbe ("Prince of Tides," "The Fugitive"), Debra Messing ("Will & Grace," "A Walk in the Clouds"), Armin Mueller-Stahl ("Shine," "Avalon"), David O'Hara ("Braveheart," "The Devil's Own") and Gary Oldman ("Bram Stoker's Dracula," "Air Force One") also star in the epic drama about the man Christians believe to be the son of God and the Messiah. The mini-series reveals how Jesus, during His relatively short life, grew from a simple carpenter to a man whose spiritual teachings and loving ways continue to inspire billions of followers–nearly two thousands years after His crucifixion. The drama explores Jesus' relationships with His mother, Mary (Bisset), and earthly father, Joseph (Mueller-Stahl); His 12 apostles, His devoted friends and followers, such as Mary Magdalen (Messing), and His cousin, John the Baptist (O'Hara). It also illustrates the politically charged times during which Herod is the unpopular ruler of Galilee and Roman governor Pontius Pilate (Oldman) rules over Judea–to the disdain of the Jewish leaders and residents.

The production begins with the young, likeable carpenter, Jesus, living a simple, happy life with Mary, Joseph, His extended family and friends–despite the oppressive Roman occupation of their region. It is following Joseph's death that Jesus embarks upon His spiritual destiny. After fasting for 40 days and nights in the desert–while rejecting the temptations of Satan (Krabbe)–Jesus begins to share His wisdom and vision with others. Word of His rousing Sermon on the Mount, compassionate ways and spectacular miracles–such as turning water into wine, casting evil spirits from the possessed and healing the sick–draws numerous new followers to this charismatic leader. Jesus ultimately chooses 12 apostles to be His special helpers. Jesus is also devoted to His disciple, Mary Magdalen, a former prostitute who is reformed by His teachings.

Meanwhile, the new, arrogant Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, starts to survey the varying factions in his region. It is not long before Pilate attempts to assert his power over the Jewish leaders–and to show his lack of respect for nearby rulers such as the egotistical Herod. As Jesus' popularity increases, the various leaders begin to feel threatened by Him. The religious leaders fear His influence and believe Him to be a false messiah; Herod worries that He is the outspoken John the Baptist reborn, and Pilate perceives Him as a source of trouble.

The undaunted Jesus continues to preach and remain steadfast in His beliefs, despite the knowledge that He will be killed for such actions. After an emotional, deeply symbolic Last Supper with His apostles, Jesus is arrested and passed from leader to leader in order to meet his fate. It is ultimately the sly Pilate who makes a show of complying with the frenzied chants of numerous chief priests and locals to have Jesus crucified. The willing, forgiving Jesus is put to death at the age of 33. His loving message, however, continues to survive and thrive in billions of Christians throughout the world.

JESUS is a production of Five Mile River Films, in association with Lux Vide, S.p.A. …

Tonight on CBS, The Almost Perfect Bank Robbery , a different sort of television movie starring Brooke Shields and Rip Torn about an F.B.I. agent who tries to catch a couple of bank thieves. [WCBS, 2, 9 P.M.]

Thursday, July 22

The producers and executives behind an upcoming sitcom about Hollywood–Fox's Action –are hoping that the vogue for raunchy stuff lasts into the next century. So far, they seem to be right. Television reporters for a major daily newspaper recently wrote an article linking Action to rude motion pictures like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut , in which children swear, and American Pie , in which a teenager inserts his penis into an apple pie.

The sitcom stars Jay Mohr as a trash-talking producer and Illeana Douglas as the washed-up child actress-turned-prostitute who becomes his No. 1 adviser. Buddy Hackett plays the producer's security guard. There's an abundance of talk about penises and sex, and within the first three minutes or so, Mr. Mohr's character uses the F-word eight times (always bleeped out).

But there comes a time when everybody gets weary of all the nasty stuff. Or else audiences become unshockable. Recently, the directors David Mamet and David Lynch have both made G-rated, "fuck"-less movies.

NYTV caught up with Action 's creator, Chris Thompson, to ask him if maybe he was behind the curve a little on this one. Said Mr. Thompson: "Well, this is very easy for these guys to say, since they've been doing it for 20 fucking years, you know?" Hey, hey, hey! Language! "And, you know, certainly the world of the theater and the world of motion pictures has been well ahead of television, you know, in that regard. So it's sort of easy for these guys to say, 'Well, we're tired of it.' Well, yeah, they've been doing it for 20 years. I'm taking the first shot at it here."

Mr. Thompson, who created Bosom Buddies and served as executive producer for The Larry Sanders Show for about a year, said he originally dreamt up Action for HBO. But when the network passed on it, he showed it to Fox's new entertainment chief, Doug Herzog, who arrived there from Comedy Central last winter.

Mr. Thompson had his doubts about whether the show could work on a network, he said. "I sort of went to them and said, 'I don't think you can do this show.' I said, 'I won't do it with a laugh track,' and the problem with shows about Hollywood–which is the same problem with shows about rock 'n' roll–is that you can never get to do anything real, because all the real stuff is fairly debauched."

He went on with his story in a throaty, tough-guy voice: "I said, 'Look, I don't need to use language all the time, but you know, there are occasions when this is the way people talk and there are occasions when only a "get the fuck out of here" will do.' And I said, 'Will you let me bleep?' and they said, 'Yeah.'"

The show will air Thursdays at 9:30 P.M. Tonight on Fox, in the future Action time slot: The P.J.s . [WNYW, 5, 9:30 P.M.]

Friday, July 23

Ah, yet another Woodstock anniversary. Starting this afternoon, those who don't want to shlep upstate–and who would?–for the festival can catch Woodstock '99 on pay-per-view. Jeff Rowland, executive producer of the telecast, said it will last 65 hours–at $29.95 per day or $59.95 for the whole thing–and will show everything that goes on using 30 cameras. "You can see the performances in their entirety, and live," said Mr. Rowland, with the Metropolitan Entertainment Group. "You'll hear an occasional four-letter word, you'll occasionally see an exposed breast, no doubt. That's part of its appeal."

Mr. Rowland produced the Woodstock '94 pay-per-view telecast, which grossed $11 million. He expects to do even better this year.

NYTV asked Mr. Rowland if there wasn't, you know, some kind of contradiction between those 60's values and the commercial aspect of the show. "That's horseshit!" he snapped. "Really. Woodstock was always commercial. The reason there was no such thing as sponsorship or T-shirts at that time was just because it hadn't been invented yet. The fact that there is commercialism involved in the concert will not take away from the spirit. The commercial thing pissed me off from 1994."

Whoa. Peace out. [Time Warner Home Theater, 61, noon.]

Saturday, July 24

Hey–the return of Max Headroom , the late 80's sci-fi show that all but predicted the world that's upon us now (reporters carrying around computers and video equipment, etc.). [Bravo, 64, 3:30 P.M.]

Sunday, July 25

The guys who make the public access show Liebography have produced a mock-umentary about Led Zeppelin. They're airing it tonight. It features old Zep footage with not-necessarily-the-story voice-overs. It's funny, but the narration is rarely funnier than Robert Plant and crew speaking for themselves. [Manhattan Neighborhood Network, 56, 10:30 P.M.]

Monday, July 26

Sarah Thyre, wife of Conan O'Brien's sidekick, Andy Richter, and a comedian in her own right, will fly out to Los Angeles this week to meet with the producers of King of the Hill , Fox's animated show about a Texas family.Her Southern accents, she said, are among the best stuff in her repertoire: "That's kind of my dream, to do animation voices. I do totally different characters, so it would be fun to play the debutante's Mom as well as the laundromat malingerer."

Ms. Thyre, who plays the gym teacher on Strangers With Candy , said she should find out if she gets any guest roles in about a week.

Tonight on Strangers , Jerri makes drugs for the most popular girl in school! [Comedy Central, 45, 10 P.M.]

Tuesday, July 27

Six I Love Lucy episodes. [Nickelodeon, 6, starting at 9 P.M.]

NYTV can be reached electronically at jrutenberg@observer.com.

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

Even if you don't like westerns, there are at least four or five that must be seen by any civilized person, and since John Ford indisputably made the finest of them all in that most profoundly American genre, one of his would have to be at the top. Which to choose of the 20-odd features surviving from the approximately 60 he made between 1917 and 1966, when he directed his last of them? Certainly high among the contenders for the crown would be Mr. Ford's deeply ambiguous, disturbing post-Civil War domestic tragedy set in Texas during the Indian Wars of the late 1860's, filmed in Technicolor and Vistavision less than a hundred years later, in 1956, starring America's most enduringly popular western star, John Wayne, and based on Alan LeMay's excellent novel, The Searchers [Saturday, July 24, and Sunday, July 25, Turner Classic Movies, 82, both at 10 P.M.; also on videocassette] .

The irony is that in its own day–now nearing 50 years ago– The Searchers , while a successful box-office attraction, was nowhere considered among the premier in its field. Here it was mainly taken for granted, as usual with our most traditional aspects; just another quite good John Wayne-John Ford western, at a period when Wayne's right-wing Republican politics were beginning wrongly to color certain people's view of liberal Democrat John Ford's movies. Nevertheless, seen from the truer perspective of time, The Searchers stands not only among the very best, but also among the final western masterworks of the movies' golden age. The picture begins with the classiest western opening of all, a black screen becoming a door that opens from within a home to the red desert outside this settlers' house as the whole family–father, mother, three children (two daughters, one son) and a dog–walk onto the porch while a lone horseman rides up from the gigantic red buttes in the far distance. The rider is the father's long-absent brother, Ethan Edwards (Wayne), returned for the first time since the end of the Civil War, three years previous, during which Ethan was on the side of the Confederacy, a loner who has spent the bitter years since then fighting as a hired gun in Mexico. What is conveyed in a few small private moments is that Ethan is chastely in love with his brother's wife, and she with him, though neither would think of showing it in any overt way.

There is the alarm of a Comanche uprising, and Ethan rides off with the sheriff's posse to check on a nearby ranch. While he and the others are gone, Comanches attack Ethan's brother's house, brutally murdering the man and his young son, raping and killing the beloved wife and teenage daughter, abducting the 8-year-old little girl, burning down the house from which we have emerged so recently to begin this story of Ethan's subsequent 10-year search. He and an adopted "quarter-breed" (Jeffrey Hunter) become the searchers not only to find the kidnapped young niece but also to avenge the terrible deaths by executing the destroyer, a proud and virile Comanche chief, who will become the child's husband. The search is both love-and-vengeance, ridden and racial.

The saga that ensues is remarkably vivid, filled with incident, superbly composed, emotionally complicated, often darkly funny, deeply moving. That Ethan's obsessive fury and hatred in some way turns against the young victim as well is among the most troubling aspects of the story, resolved by Ford (at odds with the novel) in one of the most profoundly touching moments in picture history. The ironic theme of the work, spoken by settler Olive Carey, is that all the sufferings these "Texicans" (read Americans) must endure will make it possible for future generations to live in harmony and peace. Although Ethan succeeds in his quest, at the end another settler's door closes on him walking away toward horse and desert as alone as ever; thus concluding John Ford's penultimate poetic landmark of the West that has shaped us, that haunts us still as both history and myth.

Don't hold your breath for new episodes of Mr. Show With Bob and David , the absurdly brilliant HBO sketch comedy series. "I don't think it's going to happen," said Bob Odenkirk, one-half of the title team. (David Cross is the other.)

Thirty episodes of the show have aired since 1995, but Mr. Odenkirk said the crew was demoralized by a time-slot shift for the fourth season, from Friday midnight to Monday midnight. "We're still second-class citizens at HBO, and we feel like we need to leave there to get any respect there," he said. So they're now writing a movie, tentatively titled The Ronny Dobbs Story and based on a Mr. Show sketch: Dobbs (Cross) is a white-trash punk who continually gets arrested on a Cops -like show until he becomes a national celebrity. They've also written another script, Hooray for America , about a company that hires an actor to front a Presidential campaign.

In the meantime, they're writing and producing Tenacious D , a curious comedy experiment they're hoping HBO will pick up as a regular series. Tenacious D is the name of a semi-real, pseudo-pompous comic rock act, consisting of two fat, slobby guitarists (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) who perform sketches as they rock the house, hard. Bob and David first saw the pair performing years ago at a bar in Los Angeles, and became devotees. Tonight, HBO airs the first of three episodes. [HBO, 32, 11 P.M.]

Thursday, March 25

The list of successful comedies centering on African-Americans is not too shabby: In the post- Jeffersons era, we've had The Cosby Show , The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , Family Matters, In Living Color and, to a lesser degree, Living Single , Martin and this season's The PJs . But African-American dramas? Does anyone remember Under One Roof , 413 Hope St. or M.A.N.T.I.S. ?

The audience certainly exists for such a show, which is why hotshot producer Steven Bochco ( Hill Street Blues , L.A. Law , NYPD Blue )–reportedly a white man–announced this month his plan for a new CBS one-hour drama starring and written primarily by African-Americans. The show will chronicle the struggles within an inner-city Los Angeles hospital and will launch next January.

"I think an African-American themed drama which is built around life-and-death situations will succeed," said Paris Barclay, the Emmy-winning director who will develop the series with Mr. Bochco. "We haven't seen that before. Most of the time black dramas have dealt with families, like Under One Roof . And 413 Hope St. was soft, dealing with social work. The life-and-death aspect was oblique. It lacked jeopardy, and didn't bring in a broad enough audience. For this new show, we've never seen a hospital like this one, struggling to provide good medicine to a disadvantaged population."

David Mills, a writer for ER and Homicide who is black, believes African-American dramas face an uphill battle. "The conventional wisdom starts with a mathematical fact," he told NYTV via e-mail. "As long as black people make up only 15 percent of the population, a show built around black characters will have to attract large numbers of white viewers to become a hit. Step two, according to conventional wisdom: Large numbers of white viewers have never, and will never, be interested in serious dramatic series about black people, only comedies.

"I object to this way of thinking, but there has never been a successful drama series to prove this conventional wisdom wrong. White Shadow probably came closest, and that only lasted three seasons."

But Mr. Mills cites his own shows as examples of how to create compelling black characters in prime-time drama: André Braugher on Homicide , and Eriq La Salle and Gloria Reuben on ER , are certainly not tokens. "I think that's going to be the key to any future successful drama series with black leads," he said. "That is, their blackness can't be the show's reason for being."

African-American writers are underrepresented in dramatic television, just as they are in comedy. (Chris Rock is trying to combat that problem through his work with Howard University undergraduates.)

"The producers of shows have a history of hiring people they know, and most of them are white," said Mr. Barclay, who is black. "So it's a self-fulfilling process; few shows reach out and try to deliberately bring in people from different walks of life. But Steven [Bochco]'s shows always have; that's how he found David E. Kelley, who was a lawyer when he brought him in for L.A. Law ." Mr. Barclay serves as supervising producer and directs some episodes of NYPD Blue ; he's the sole black writer there, though there have been others in the past.

Mr. Barclay is also gay, making him somewhat of an anomaly for a television producer. He's currently looking at gay-themed scripts and has written some on his own to develop into a feature. (Mr. Barclay directed the 1996 Wayans Brothers spoof Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood .) "It's much more difficult to do, because the story has to be that much greater to reach a broad audience," he said. "Most of the people who finance movies are not gay, and are concerned about the box office."

It is the success of black stories in feature films that makes Mr. Mills optimistic about the future of television. "Spike Lee changed the game in the mid-80's. And somebody's going to change the game the same way in TV, and everybody's going to realize that they've been missing out on some great untold stories."

On tonight's ER , Carter intervenes when a riot occurs. [WNBC, 4, 10 P.M.]

Friday, March 26

Program title of the week: Thomas Kinkade: Painter of Light . [QVC, 69, 9 P.M.]

Saturday, March 27

Is the alcohol industry secretly funding MTV? One would assume so based on the ultra-hedonistic Spring Break '99 specials that MTV aired throughout last weekend. With carefully censored genitalia, simulated sex and perhaps more naked flesh per television square inch than The Robyn Byrd Show, MTV's coverage was a 13-year-old boy's delight, and the festivities seemed directly correlated to the hard-core boozing frequently on display. One program, shot Real World-style, consisted entirely of three blond co-eds bar-hopping, imbibing shots, shooters and other funny drinks, then gyrating, indulging in light lesbo activities and sucking the chests of wicked-psyched frat boys. (Full disclosure: NYTV was glued to the screen.)

Don't expect similar titillation from tonight's Sex in the 90's special, which concerns sexually transmitted diseases. Unless you're into that kind of thing. [MTV, 20, 11 P.M.]

Sunday, March 28

Start lowering your expectations. The heavily hyped Futurama is here, and the first episode is, well … O.K. This animated comedy from the Simpsons creator Matt Groening has had some journalists and legions of fans salivating in anticipation for several months, and the final product is promising but underwhelming.

In the year 2999, a pizza delivery boy has awoken from an accidental cryogenic sleep to find himself in a brave new world with street-corner suicide booths, the preserved heads of 20th-century celebrities, and robots with attitudes. The animation is Simpsons -esque, and there are certainly funny jokes here, most of them concerning Bender, the trash-talking, alcoholic robot. But the laughs simply aren't as big or as quick as we've come to expect from Mr. Groening, and there's some unwelcome moralizing about following your heart.

But this is a pilot episode, where the premise must be explained, and characters and relationships introduced. That doesn't leave much room for the funny. So raise your hopes back up for next week's episode. [WNYW, 5, 8:30 P.M.]

Monday, March 29

Peter Jennings hosts The Century and–wait a second, didn't he just write a book called The Century ? Who does ABC think it's fooling? [WABC, 7, 9 P.M.]

Tuesday, March 30

On March 17 at about 1 P.M., Al Franken was speaking to NYTV about his sitcom, Lateline , which NBC had brought back for the third time after unsuccessful runs last spring and in January. He expressed hope that this time the show, set at a Nightline -type program, would finally attract viewers. He even promoted an upcoming episode with guest stars Rob Reiner, Martin Sheen and Vanessa Williams playing themselves. When NYTV asked about some negative reviews the show had received, Mr. Franken shot back, "Actually, we were probably the best-reviewed sitcom of last year," and cited reviews in People and TV Guide .

About an hour later, NBC informed Mr. Franken his show was canceled. The previous night, the first episode of the new batch had scored the network's smallest audience in its time slot since June 1994.

In Lateline 's place tonight, NBC airs a Frasier repeat. [WNBC, 4, 8:30 P.M.]

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

Most war films are, ultimately, about winning. In 1945, however, as World War II was ending, John Ford made probably the finest U.S. war picture, about one of America's greatest defeats–in the Philippines–the title of which alone is devastating in its implications: They Were Expendable [Sunday, March 28, Turner Classic Movies, 82, 10 P.M.; also on videocassette] . Ford, who had entered the Navy in 1941 at age 47, was closely involved in numerous missions and operations all through the war, serving with the O.S.S. and making several war documentaries, including this country's first one, The Battle of Midway (1942), which mostly he himself shot hand-held and during which he was wounded. It received the Oscar as best documentary, as did another Ford supervised, December 7th (1943). Although he rarely spoke of his war experiences, records recently have come to light that he also was there on D-Day, and shot some of the most significant color footage in various campaigns. Certainly, his intimate involvement with all aspects of that terrible conflict is apparent in his sensitively unadorned, elegiac handling of They Were Expendable . "What was in my mind," Ford told me once, "was doing it exactly as it had happened."

The picture–excellently adapted from William L. White's nonfiction account by Ford's Navy pal, Frank (Spig) Wead (about whom the director would make the underrated 1957 biographical film, The Wings of Eagles )–focuses on the use of PT boats in the Philippines, specifically through the deeds of its central pioneer John Buckley, also a good friend of Ford's and one of the most decorated men of the war. He is played with simple dignity by Robert Montgomery, also a Navy veteran. His fictional cohort–who gets the brief but memorable love interest with a Navy nurse perfectly incarnated by Donna Reed–is done in a most effectively understated performance by John Wayne. The few scenes involving the nurse, in fact, give a remarkably resonant sense of the preciousness of females in these essentially male occupations; there's unaffected chivalry displayed and tremulous warmth without really sexual overtones. When Wayne and Reed dance silently together, lit with evocative chiaroscuro, the emotional intensity is almost palpable. When she's the male officers' dinner guest, and enlisted men serenade her from outside, it is unaffectedly poignant with unspoken suggestions of family, peace and the hearth fire. The last time the two speak over a long-distance phone line and their connection is prematurely severed, there is no further resolution and the break is wrenching.

Essentially, like a good many of Ford's pictures, They Were Expendable deals with the peculiar glory in defeat. When I pointed out this trend to him, Ford said it wasn't something he had "done consciously," though he allowed "it may have been subconscious.… Of course, they were glorious in defeat in the Philippines–they kept on fighting." Typically Fordian is the way he visually sums this up in the movie, as the old-timer played by Russell Simpson (a Ford regular: Pa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath )– seats himself on the front steps of his house, rifle in hand, moonshine bottle next to him, awaiting the inevitable Japanese onslaught as a distant accordion plays "Red River Valley." There are numerous such illuminating and personal Ford touches throughout: After showing the destruction and casualties from one of the encounters, Ford cuts to a large close-up of an anxiously grieving Philippine mother–her men also were expendable. Or, at a burial at sea, the artless simplicity of Wayne's reading, "Home is the sailor/ Home from the sea/ And the soldier/ Home from the hill." Or, in a bar when all the doomed men raise a grave, yet hopeful toast as the battle is to intensify, Ford cuts around to various groupings, but ends the sequence with a young sailor, not yet old enough for alcohol, who drinks his toast with a glass of milk. This is the kind of picture-making we simply do not get anymore, reminding us why, when questioned who his favorite directors were, the very modern Orson Welles replied that he preferred "the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford."