The Lone Ranger In The Rear View Mirror

July 6, 2013
  "It's so offensive that Johnny Depp portrays a Pirate. Couldn't they have gotten a REAL pirate?"

  That's how ridiculous the criticism of "white guy" Depp playing the Native American Tonto sounds to me. Second of all, the comments and reviews of the new Lone Ranger are pouring in (most of them scathing) and I've got an icky feeling about it all. Mainly because I ripped and nitpicked the movie myself when, in fact, I actually enjoyed the dang thing. True, it's too long and it has a bit of a problem trying to figure out what it is, but overall it's a hell-of-a fun ride.

  True, I still hate the hats, but even that seems like a shallow nitpick as I look in the rear-view-mirror only to see myself and a bunch of other bone-headed rips on the movie: "The insignia is wrong on the cavalry uniforms!"  'The guns are wrong for 1867!" "A Commanche never wore headgear like that!" "Mountain Native Americans are taller than that!"


  "No pirate EVER had a parrot on his shoulder!" I don't know if that's true or not, but I imagine, on some level, it is. And, anyway, that's how we sound when we blast the details in a Western. We sound like a bunch of cranky old farts with too much time on our hands.

"The difference between night and day."
—An old Texas cowboy on the set of The Searchers when asked how authentic the movie is