Something in that particular point is the leverage *we* can use. I can't articulate it just yet, but I can see it and wanted to pass it along for anyone else who might also be able to see it but be better able to take it and run with it.

Where to start, though?

In World War II, of course, or rather, right after it.

After World War II, Ford made "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon," which IMO is a top contender (among a few) for this genius's masterpiece, but in the present context it is mentioned because it defines several military ideals. Well, a lot of that all went smash in the Vietnam War, or so it seemed. Actually, I was reminded of "Ribbon" when thinking about something in "We Were Soldiers Once…And Young."

I don't think conservatives are really going to make a sea change in America until we manage to counter how the Left leveraged their way into power using the American involvement in Viet Nam. To do that, we're going to have to face up to the Vietnam war–hardly an easy thing to do, but it does have the advantage of depersonalizing the "culture war" for us; thus, we don't have to worry about "becoming the enemy." The harder part will be bringing America along with us.

If you've got an online link to your Monument Valley montage, let us know. I'd like to see that. A personal trip to Monument Valley has eluded me so far, but one day. . . .

The best of those young co-workers will come around someday. Age has a habit of doing that to you. It usually happens about the same time you begin perceiving that your own generation is no longer the newest, hippest thing on the block, that all the movies, music, and literature you liked as a teen has quietly become a bit rusty around the edges. Once you've accepted that, it opens up the possibility that what your parents and grandparents loved might be similarly worth knowing and appreciating. Add to that the increased sense of nostalgia one gets for one's family as the older members begin dying off, and you have the secret appeal of old movies.

The people who "discover" John Ford come to him with a deep thirst, like parched men crawling out of the desert. They're on a search for "the freshness of the early world," for the power and succor of the untamed American Myth. It's a quest for all the meaning and hope that was burned out of them by a lifetime of post-modernism at school. If they're smart, they begin to really see and understand what Ford is trying to tell them from beyond the grave. And eventually, like a lightning bolt striking — perhaps while they are standing at John Ford Point in Monument Valley! — comes the tearful realization that there's no such thing as "too many wide shots," and the reason Ford kept them on the screen for so long is the same reason a mother gives her soldier son an extra large slice of cake at the "Welcome Home" party.

Yes, COMPANY OF HEROES is a great book, probably the one book people should buy if they want to see Ford up close and personal on set.

I do think that the image of Ford as a tyrant is overdone. There's a reason people stuck with him for decades, there's a reason why John Wayne and Ward Bond treated him with the utmost fatherly deference even after their careers had reached the point where they no longer needed him and could have told the Old Man to go to hell. They genuinely loved the guy — for every story of Ford terrorizing them, there were years and years of great movies, card games, drinking binges, military ceremonies, kind behind-the-scenes gestures, family outings, caring advice, and familial camaraderie. He was their father figure, their drill sergeant, their acting coach, their prison warden. They admired his brilliance, his toughness, his touching sentimentality, his incredible sweep of history and drama. He not only made them squirm and cry but he made them laugh and whoop with joy. And at the end of the day they would look up on the screen and realize that he had granted them a sort of immortality — he had mythologized them on film with all of the power and poetry of a Homer.

Another silly meme is that Ford despised Ward Bond, he thought him a dumb ox and terrorized him mercilessly. The truth is Ford and Wayne both adored Bond, he was by far their best friend, and when he died it was the beginning of the end for the both of them, neither were ever the same. All of their teasing was merely an expression of that love, and the only reason it was so relentless if because Bond could take it, he had an adamantine skin and a college-jock personality that let any amount of hazing roll harmlessly off his back and simply reinforce his notions of how handsome and sophisticated and winning he was.

Little anecdotes and incidents (we'll be discussing one regarding THEY WERE EXPENDABLE next Saturday) are too often blown up into monstrous events that are used to color decades-long relationships negatively. Whereas in truth, such things were merely the occasional spats that crop up in loving families. Ford was a tough cookie to work with and be around, no question, and he had a temper and a thin skin and a mean streak. But he had more raw humanity and caring for his fellow man in his pinky finger than most of his critics do in their whole godforsaken souls.

This film "THEY WERE EXPENDABLE" is one of my favorite films, from one of my favorite directors. One of the above post about "Where are his equals today?" I could have not said it better! The montage from the film showing the work of the great Joseph August was beautifuly edited. And to use the old phrase " they don not make them like that any more" fits. I have read most of the books on Ford and he may have been a tyrant, but he was a artist with story, and camera. BTW if you can find it, Harry Carey Jr. has a book called "In the Company of Heroes" about Ford and the films he did with him. It is very insightful. Thanks for your great work.

To quickly repeat what I explained in more detail to Mike above: the music in the video is from FAREWELL TO THE KING by Basil Poledouris.

Your questions are things I've thought about for many years. It's far too complicated a subject for easy and pat answers. For instance, today's wars don't have nearly the popular support and approval that WWII enjoyed among Americans. The stakes were clearer then, the sacrifices numerically more daunting, the end goals achieved in only five years.

That era also had a draconian production code put into place by a strong and vital religious movement, one ready to inflict dire consequences on any studio who dared release something blatantly anti-American, anti-military, or anti-religion. Today's ratings board is a joke, the Hollywood version of the UN. Back then, it had teeth.

There was a pro-America blacklist back then — first unspoken, then increasingly official — put into place by monolithic studios that had not yet been forced to sell their theaters and dismantle their cradle-to-grave star systems of grooming and control. These studios were run by iconoclastic businessmen with deep patriotic streaks, who kept a wary eye on their bottom line, and on their product's reputation with the American (not International) public.

TV and the Internet hadn't yet eroded the preeminence of movies and radio, both of which had many millions more customers than today, making them correspondingly more important (and hence more controlled and regulated).

Even with all of these things in place supporting a unified cultural worldview back then, Hollywood was still full of Lefties ever striving to further their toxic causes of socialism and liberal fascism. Sex, drugs, and obscene behavior of every sort was as prevalent then behind-the-scenes as it is now, even among many stars you probably remember fondly as being wholesome exemplars of traits you admire. Ever read the tabloids of yesteryear? Nothing's changed, they were as full of gossip and innuendo as today, just a bit more decorous about it all. The big difference is that stars were tightly controlled by their employers the studios, whereas today they run the asylum.

And, of course, it wasn't just movies that experienced a loosening of standards over the decades. Schools have become pathetic shadows of their former selves, horrendously indecent things now occur right on main street with police standing idly by with arms folded, and key pillars of family and society and civic pride have been dismantled and destroyed. All of these failures to maintain cultural integrity inevitably filter down into movies as well.

Of course movies serve as a psychiatrist's couch, for both their makers and the people who think like them. These days, the people who make the movies (and maintain the Hollywood blacklist) are Lefties, and so the movies cater to their psychological needs. To change this, conservatives are going to have to man-up and fight their way back into Hollywood, tooth and nail, talon and claw, until they once again are represented in numbers. When that happens, you'll see a sea change in the type of movies getting made. Pro-war movies will do battle with anti-war movies in the marketplace, and the public will decide the winner by voting with their dollars. In any such long-term match-up, I like our chances. Modern Hollywood increasingly reminds me of the later years of the USSR — mighty on the outside, rusty and rotten and ideologically bankrupt on the inside.