Friday, May 31, 2013

midnight cowboy

31may2013
if any movie deserves a blogging from me, it can be midnight cowboy, why ?, it will soon be apparent. released in n.s.w. australia before the  r category things, which is just as confusing as the shitfull of crap movies today. then, it was only the big AO (adults only) rating, x was something somewhere else. R was just a letter after q, i think the first R rated was percy, which seems a bit ,some word. i think they had to start somewhere , just like this, blog.

1june2013
being unsure about the percy movie, i had to do a search , it was the first r rated in australia, 1971. i got one of them ,the great rock discography (5th edition) with forward notes by john peel, it has come in real handy at times. i checked the kinks, they done the soundtrack for percy, the book only gives it a 4/10 rating, i 've only heard the lola, probably not the coca cola version thats on vs, cherry cola. the old percy's getting a write up here, no pun intended. i seen it on a late night movie , maybe the 80's or 90's. with the midnight cowboy movie, i would have been in 5th or 6th class, either 69 or 70. i thought it was a modern day western, something like billy jack or something. so i got a few class mates to travel into town , about 4 miles, big day out at the pictures.

3june2013
for me it wasn't no big deal, my mum was always a keen movie goer, for a long time. so saturday at the flicks was not an uncommon practice. them early days everybody stood up for a photo of the queen and anthem, i think that had just fizzled out, with my generation. them other guys were all dolled up  for the occasion all from the happy family or so called. me, by this time, i knew the streets, i knew trouble, and how to avoid it. probably the only difference here, when we went with mum , she'd go up the top level. cinemas them days had the 2 levels, downstairs the cheap seats, riff raff, up top bourgeois, so called. i don't remember too much about this time, but some things are clear. them days you got the ads, usually cig ads, the cartoon and 2 movies. i can't remember the other movie.

6june2013
that other movie kept playing on me, i thought it was a movie called, the confederate. i did a search it came up with some later thing. the movie i was looking for, was about a soldier who was killed by eating poison mushrooms. luckily, after typing the confederates, there was a movie called the beguiled , staring clint eastwood, never knew that was him, never knew him then anyway. that was the movie about the mushrooms, but it wasn't the other one for midnight cowboy. it must of been later. midnight cowboy came out may 1969, you know how long it took to came out here? i went to the library yesterday and did the  microfilm search. each roll has a month of papers. starting from may 69, i did a quick search of rolls . i knew it wouldn't be may 69, or dec 69 or jan 70 cause of school holidays . it was 29 oct 1970, some 18 months after it's release, i was not long 12. i seen it 31 oct 1970. the other movie was the mosquito squadron . strange match.

7june2013
i thought there was only 3 of us that went that day, there could have been 4. a few class mates didn't turn up that week, but after hearing our reviews  went the next week. the 4th kid could have been a john mc , i not one for name dropping, but i can see some relevance, and seeing i was a great fan of the man from uncle a few years earlier. when i heard that david mc callum song on those john peel tapes, i thought of john mc, whose last name isn't mc callum , but claimed to be a relative of david mc callum, he reckon his mother had letters and things, david mc callum was in mosquito squadron, so maybe john mc was there, doesn't matter anyway , just a thought. we all have some degrees , distant and removed. so there we were.


11june2013
the first movie came and went, no worries. intermission. now for the modern day western, don't really remember too much about the movie then, what i do remember is one of the other guys freaking out at the sight of tits and bum. there we were three young guys  with stiffys and a fucking nutter, what a sight. when it got to the little dog scene, he was in hysterics. the usherette came down with a torch to see what was going on, we tried to calm him down , with threats and such. told him to put his hands over his eyes when them scenes were on, so much for the western. i don't think we knew that much then, we knew fucking made babies, but all that other adult stuff was above us. i remember looking at the faces of the other guys , big smiles and one cry baby with his hands over his eyes. i used to play a  trick on my sister at the creepy parts on movies when she had her hands over her eyes saying is it over yet, then just as the creepiest bits on say it's over now , she'd take her hands off right on that part, sick. you guess it, the movie was getting boring , down comes the usherette, we seen the movie though.

bought this on ebay, i think that means i own it
16june2013
if it means anything, after the movie we all went to a pinball shop, i can see some relevance. there was no space invaders then, the big thing, were them car on a stick indy 500, a bit like screen projection once you got the hang of it you can get replay after replay, but at 20cents a pop, bit out of my league. john mc played that, we just played the 5 cent pinnies. you can do a lot more with 20cents then, than you can do with a dollar now days.  i think that movie stayed around for many weeks. i never seen it again for many years, i seen it on telly. you couldn't tell if it was cut though, before the rating system , even after, they just cut out bits.

18june2013
i'd spent half of my life with them two guys, john mc had only been at our school, 2 years.  i could write a blog on the other nutter, who went on to the Catholic education system , we others went to public high school. so it bon voyage over the next few weeks. i seen midnight cowboy about 30 or so times, i had/have the video and dvd. i relate more to the little big man.