Sunday, April 06, 2008

Remembering Charlton Heston

His greatest role?

8 comments:

drischord said...

Also, I did enjoy this headline.

http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/charlton_hestons_gun_taken

Quinapalus said...

It's too bad that Michael Moore is such a huge douchebag that he makes me reflexively sympathize with the people he's demonizing. Charlton Heston's "mixing of the races" thing was a pathetically stupid comment, but Michael Moore also clearly wasn't there to conduct a real interview, he was there to do a hit job on an old actor who was just a figurehead in the NRA anyway. I could enjoy Heston's stupidity more if it were in the service of real journalism, not part of some self-aggrandizing bullshit from a hack like Moore.

As for his performance at NU, his Jim and Huck thing is eclipsed in my memory by his equally racially sensitive portrayal of a "Chinese opium dealer".

Eric said...

On a separate note, the Wayne's World movies are highly underrated and very before their time.

drischord said...

1. I agree that Michael Moore is a self-promoter before he is a journalist, time in and time out. But Charlton Heston was the president of the NRA. While Moore conducted an ambush interview, it's inexcusable that the president of the NRA wasn't prepared to address a question about the gross distension of American violence. His group IS violence!

2. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Wayne's World is not my current favorite movie, but I have never loved a movie as much as I loved Wayne's World circa age 12.

Quinapalus said...

I'm not defending Charlton Heston's performance in that interview--I was just taking the opportunity to attack Michael Moore. I can't stand that guy. Only Michael Moore could make a movie about universal health care that was so flamboyantly unfair and over the top that even I, a future health insurance horror story waiting to happen, wanted to turn against him. And only Michael Moore could end an interview with the head of the NRA in such an obnoxious, self serving manner that it made me want to equivocate in retrospect about his interviewee's weirdly racist theory of violence.

On the other hand, I will point out that the biggest spike in gun violence in American history is the post-1492 spike. American gun violence was virtually unheard of before then, but suddenly grew exponentially. One plausible explanation for this is that the European immigrants had a hard time adjusting to the mixing of races, and decided to use guns as a tool to kill some people and dominate others. In that context, maybe Charlton Heston has a point.

drischord said...

Based on the content of his movies, Charlton Heston may well HAVE been thinking of racial mixing circa 1492.

dr. kittybrains said...

I loved Sicko. Unfair? Really?

texplush said...

i, also, fondly remember the Chinese opium dealer.
it may well have been the funniest thing i've ever seen.
okay, okay. The Cleansing was the funniest thing I've ever seen.
okay, okay, Wayne's World is funnier.
Eric is right. WAY ahead of it's time. I think it's worth noting, since Myers is about to be universally bashed for the Love Guru. Really? he cast Mini-Me again?