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dollarbin · 2 months

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Shakey Sundays #11:

Ragged Glory Part 2: Smell the Horse

Judging by the impending release of Fu##in' Up (a live version of Ragged Glory recorded live last November by Neil and Crazy Horse) it seems likely that Young will focus on songs from that much storied LP when I see him and the boys play live next month in San Diego.

That sounds pretty damn good to me. I'm more than ready to hear Neil rip through everything from Over and Over to Country Home (I see that, in true Shakey style, every song has been needlessly retitled for the new record by cherry picking lyrics from the songs; Country Home is hopefully now called Pickin' Someone Else's Potatoes; Over and Over should hereafter be named Ha! Ha! Ha! after the background vocals that follow the line "time was just a joke").

But if I had my druthers... well, that would be weird. What the heck are druthers? Where would I keep them if I had them?

Anyway, says I, Neil should shelve both Love and Only Love and Love to Burn for those upcoming shows; he should keep them safe at home with his own druthers while on tour. What he should bring is his giant wind machines. I want to see those things at full blast.

As I wrote a few weeks back in my first post about Ragged Glory, Young's epics on the attributes and flammability of love are great, sure, but compared with everything else from that era I find them a tad dull and definitely overplayed. Stephen Stills is probably planning reggaelishious versions of each track for his next record, the working title for which is I Suck Up The Dollar Bin. What's more, Neil has an entirely alternative version of Ragged Glory to consider for his set list: the aptly titled Smell the Horse.

Neil puts out about 16 new things a month, all of them on 480.6 kilogram clear audiofile vinyl, or whatever, so you are forgiven if you missed this one. Smell the Horse is an extended version of Ragged Glory which features four additional tracks. That doesn't sound too impressive, but I'm here to argue that it's a pretty big deal: hear about Smell the Horse is definitely worth a few minutes of your fine Sunday and I'd love to see it take up a healthy chunk of Neil's upcoming tour.

Let's start with the song that serves as inspiration for the extended version's title, a song which I think should been chosen to end the original record instead of the plodding and overly earnest Mother Earth.

We're talking about about Don't Spook the Horse:

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I love how slow everyone plays here, holding onto their sonic and vocal notes alike for as long as they damn well please. Neil, Frank, Pancho and Lefty (that would be Billy Talbot) had plenty of reasons to slow down and savor everything at that point: Neil's wacko 80's were finally over, they already had a great album in the can and everyone was clearly stoned out of their minds in Neil's barn.

Saying "barn" here isn't quite right; we should say "one of Neil's barns." Apparently he had a bunch of them. On was filled head to toe with about 65 million dollars worth of toy trains. Seriously. Neil had employees dedicated to maintaining those trains, and he'd invented cordless and accessibly adapted remotes for running them all with his wheelchair bound son. Neil was clearly the richest, best and wackiest dad on the planet. I've got kids of my own and a shed behind my house too. Guess what I keep in it? Rusted and broken nonsense, of course, plus a few remaining battered and original Hoth-era plastic Star Wars toys that I simply can't justify throwing away; suffice to say that my kids would prefer Neil Young as a dad when it comes to finding pleasures in a barn.

Anyway, Neil and the boys play this song at a glacial pace because where the hell else have they got to be? "Let's play it even slower next time," I picture Neil telling them. "This one's never gonna be on the record anyway. Plus, if we play it slow enough, I can make up some lyrics as we go."

And how about the collage Neil assembles of those throw away lyrics at 3:20 mark. He's already introduced the characters and repeated their attributes for us: there's a horse who spooks, a dog who tends to roll in its own feces and a pretty little girl worth courting. But then Neil puts all of them in his homebrew lyric blender:

If you're gonna mess around with that chick,

Be sure to close the barn door;

Try to not spook the horse,

Make sure she ain't rolled in shit.

Just who exactly are we concerned about the smell of here Neil, your dog, your horse or the pretty little girl? I sincerely hope he means the little girl, 'cuz that's the silliest thing I've ever heard.

Next up in the song, Neil references "the valley of hearts", a rather boring image he plucks nonsensically from the aforementioned Love to Burn. If not for that song's somber, dull lyrics and the preachy Mother Earth, we'd include the word preface the word"gnarly" with "hilariously" when describing Ragged Glory. After all this album opens with Neil telling us that his car only starts if it's pointed downhill and then he goes on to make this song the record's only cover:

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I had no idea until this moment that there was yet another silly, never seen by anyone at the time, video for this song. This one's even dumber and more ridiculous than the other videos from the record Neil made, which we spent time with a few weeks back. The visuals here, including Pancho's pants, basically prove my argument that this whole album can easily be taken as a joyful joke. Is that lady dancing with corn on the cob? And watch for when Farmer John himself shows up, first with a pitchfork, then with a shotgun. Neil was clearly cracking himself up.

And how about the fact that Neil passed over every song in the Western popular catalog from Sister Ray to Respect and chose instead to cover what is perhaps the least poetic and simplest song in history, a song which asks the Horse to hold down the beat and go "Whoa-o-o" over and over again while Young makes the least compelling case anyone has ever made for dating another human being and freaks out on his guitar. (So it's in writing: Neil, if you ever want to date one of my daughters, or, for that matter have one of them appear in one of his videos, the answer is hell no.)

But back to the whole "valley of hearts" thing: by referencing that dull valley in the delightfully sloppy Don't Spook the Horse, Neil effectively makes fun of his overly earnest writing at spots on the record and puts us even more at ease. Somebody, we think, ought to get me some of that stuff they're smoking while I check my dog for suspicious scents.

So are you with me? Isn't this whole thing a big, wonderful joke if you set aside Love to Bun, Mother Earth and Love and Only Love? I'm telling you, Neil could have completed the record's fantastically silly leap to unbridled joy by including Don't Spook the Horse from the get go.

But Smell the Horse does a lot more than add levity to the original record. It also adds some big deal beauty. Check out one of the most tender, spacious and shimmering album outtakes from Shakey's entire 60 year career:

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Man, I just love this. Name another song that makes such loud and lovely use of the squeak fingers can make across the fretboard; name another song where Neil sings with this much care.

Interstate shows the vast breath of what Young was doing during the Ragged Glory sessions. Sure he could have made a comedy record. But if Interstate were on the original record instead of Farmer John we might call the whole thing introspectively soulful. Bob Dylan, it turns out, isn't the only genius who tended to cut the very best songs off his records in this era.

It initially makes sense that Young recorded Interstate a few weeks after the brilliant, hillbilly toss-off that is Don't Speak the Horse. Surely, he couldn't have achieved such disparate tones on the same day, right?

Well, don't be so sure about that: after all, 15 years earlier Young recorded one of the most hopeless songs of his entire career, Borrowed Tune, on the very same day he recorded one of his most hopeful, Traces.

That's Neil Young: from heartbreak to hope in sixty seconds flat.

The third outtake featured on Smell the Horse is Boxcar, a bouncy, strident track with some pretty questionable lyrics about Young's skin color (he says he's like a white man, which is a pretty obvious metaphor. Hey Neil, I'm a lot like a white man too. That because I'm a white male. But then Young goes on to tell us he's like a black man too, and a red man, whatever that is. Um, okay Neil...) that he wrestled with on and off for 20+ years before finally releasing on Chrome Dreams 2. The song could have added a much needed tasty note to the nothing-burger that is Old Ways; but it has no real business on the plate of swordfish, greens and hominy that is Ragged Glory. Sometimes Neil leaves the right songs off his records.

And finally, there's one of the weirdest songs in Young's entire, wonderfully weird catalog: Born to Run. No, this isn't Neil covering the Springsteen track. Young wrote his song first, supposedly, and initially recorded it in the summer of 1975 during the Zuma sessions, which just so happens to be the same summer Bruuuuuce released his own anthem by that name.

This all reminds me of my own summer of 89. I was 13 year old and about to get world famous through a song I'd just penned and recorded with my band, The Thurmanistic Paul Barrs, entitled Freefallin'. But then, bad luck came my way: Tom Petty beat me to it and put out his own, vastly worse, song with that very same name. My own Freefallin' was a stirring account of the time I fell off my bike and straight into the arms of a stunning middle school lady, but it remains on the shelf to this day because I didn't want to deal with persistent questions from the press about the possibly Pettyish origins of my own hit record; I'd seen my good friend, the incomparably talented Vanilla Ice, get unfairly pummeled by that very same media for the bass line he most certainly did not steal from Under Pressure in any way whatsoever, and I did not want to go through all that myself.

(Okay, you got me. Obviously, none of that is true. But I really was in a middle school band with that name. I sang lead.)

Anyway, I'm not accusing Neil of any plagiarism here; his song and the Boss's have nothing in common beyond their title, and Young surely would have left his own Born To Run off Zuma regardless because, well, it's a bit of a mess. Here, take a listen:

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Don't get me wrong, this song still rocks. There's a fun, boneheaded hook, and everything recorded for Zuma is freakin' awesome. But I think we all get why, in addition to the Springsteen issue, the song went unheard until Archives 2.

But just listen to where Neil and the boys take that same song on Smell the Horse. The riff has new texture and less clunk. Plus there are about 16 different tempo shifts and about 48 different instrumental sections, and Neil breaks out some serious wailing in the vocal department during the chorus alongside his trademark snarl in the verses.

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This track is a total and glorious mess. Clearly the plan was to have Neil's coked-up genius of a producer, David Briggs, edit the hell out of this, patching together the best 5-7 minutes of their 12 minutes of wandering through variations of the chorus and primary verse. Briggs would have definitely used the guitar work in the 7th and 8th minutes as the song's centerpiece: listen to Neil discover sounds in the neck of his Les Paul that he, and everyone else on the planet, has never heard before or since, while Billy Talbot thumps away (12345, 12345 goes the bass...) doggedly underneath him; my guess is someone had to punch Billy in the arm and tell him to stop already long after Neil was ready to wrap things up.

I'd argue that Neil made the right call again here: this song doesn't belong on Ragged Glory. Its tempo and mood swings are too symphonic, too complex and bizarre. Rather, Neil should have figured out how to play Born to Run with this much energy and ambition for either of his 80's Crazy Horse records, Re-ac-tor or Life, instead. Both of those records are filled with equally complex, ambitious and boneheaded songs, most of which somehow fail to miss their mark. Had Neil told us that he was born to run during either of those records Ragged Glory might not be viewed today as the renaissance for the band that it truly was.

So start running, or get out on the interstate, or, better yet, mess around with someone you love in your barn on this Shakey Sunday. Just remember to check the dog, or the person your fooling around with, for foul odors.

#Youtube #neil young #and crazy horse #ragged glory #smell the horse #shakey sundays #stephen stills sucks

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jamil06f · 2 years

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Download The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes EBOOK -- Lauren Kessler

Download Or Read PDF The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes - Lauren Kessler Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

[*] Download PDF Here => The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

[*] Read PDF Here => The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

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equestrianempire · 2 months

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Cedric: Laura Kraut’s Once in a Lifetime Partner Inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame Chairman Peter Doubleday with Mary Elizabeth Kent, who helped train Cedric for her sister, Laura; Margaret Duprey, Cedric’s owner; and Laura Kraut, his rider – Photo: © KindMedia

Lexington, Kentucky, USA – March 8, 2024 – Francisco “Pancho” Lopez, longtime barn manager for Katie Monahan Prudent and then Elise Haas, and Cedric, Laura Kraut’s gold medal Olympic mount, were inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame during the Hall of Fame’s Induction Gala in Wellington, Florida, on March 3.

“This was the third year we have hosted our annual induction ceremony as part of a sit-down dinner in Wellington and it was our biggest and best yet,” said Show Jumping Hall of Fame chairman Peter Doubleday. “We sold out in advance and, unfortunately, had to turn away several people who wanted to be there. Our sport’s history was on display with 15 Hall of Famers and many more of our sport’s legends in attendance. Once again it was an incredible night, one that we will continue to build on each year.”

The “once in a lifetime” partner for rider Laura Kraut (FRA), Cedric was a small gray Holsteiner gelding foaled in Belgium in 1998 who became a stalwart on the U.S. Equestrian Team. He was originally owned in the U.S. by Peter Wetherill and Happy Hill Farm. After Wetherill passed away in 2010, his brother, Cortie, assumed ownership together with Kraut before Margaret Duprey of Cherry Knoll Farm became Cedric’s final owner in 2012 to help keep him in Kraut’s barn.

Cedric made his FEI debut in 2006 and, despite his 15.2-hand height and many quirks, quickly became a powerhouse on the international show jumping circuit. His amazing partnership with Kraut spanned 11 years, producing 81 clear and 45 double-clear rounds in major competitions of $100,000 or more. Most notably, the pair helped the U.S. win a team gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Hong Kong.

Cedric’s successful career also included riding on the U.S. team at the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG) and numerous Nations Cup appearances, including Aachen, Barcelona, Dublin, La Baule, Rome, Rotterdam, St. Gallen and Wellington. He and Kraut also won the Grand Prix at four Longines Global Champions Tour (GCT) events and they were the first horse-and-rider combination to win back-to-back events, claiming top honors in 2010 at Chantilly and then Valkenswaard just two weeks later. Cedric and Kraut also won GCT events in Lausanne (2012) and Wiesbaden (2013).

A naturally careful and competitive horse, Cedric was one of the nation’s leading money winners, amassing well over $2 million in prize money. He was honored as The Chronicle of the Horse’s Show Jumping Horse of the Year in 2010. Cedric was formally retired at age 19 in a moving ceremony in Wellington in 2017.

The induction dinner, held at the Wanderers Club in Wellington, also recognized 15 others in attendance who have previously been inducted into the Hall of Fame including Olympic veterans Mary Chapot, Margie Engle, Leslie Howard, Anne Kursinski, Beezie Madden, Michael Matz, Melanie Smith Taylor and Katie Prudent (1980 Alternate Olympics), as well as Linda Allen, Jane Forbes Clark, Anthony D’Ambrosio, David Distler, Peter Doubleday, Danny Marks and former Olympic rider and current U.S. chef d’equipe Robert Ridland. Others in attendance included Olympic veterans McLain Ward, Lauren Hough, Will Simpson, Nick Skelton, Shane Sweetnam, and Mac Cone and Grand Prix riders Georgina Bloomberg, Carly Anthony, Heather Caristo-Williams, Jimmy Torano, Kelli Cruciotti-Vanderveen, Schuyler Riley, and Coco Fath.

Sponsors of the dinner included Robin Parsky, Beth Johnson, Charlie Jacobs, who sponsored the attendance of all Hall of Famers, and the Wheeler Family who sponsored the cocktail reception and open bar. Also sponsoring were the Hall of Fame’s corporate sponsors – Blenheim EquiSports, Charles Ancona, CMJ Sporthorse, Hampton Classic Horse Show, Kentucky Horse Park, LAURACEA, LEG Colorado Horse Shows, Markel Insurance, Palm Beach International Academy, Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA), Washington International Horse Show, and Wellington International. Table sponsors included John Madden Sales, Leslie Howard, Oliynyk Show Stables, Margaret Duprey and Laura Kraut.

The Show Jumping Hall of Fame was organized to promote the sport of show jumping and to immortalize the legends of the men, women and horses who have made great contributions to the sport. The Show Jumping Hall of Fame is located at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. Plaques honoring those who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame can be seen at the Horse Park’s Rolex Stadium. Mementos and artifacts from the sport’s history are on display as part of the Show Jumping Hall of Fame collection at the United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA) Wheeler Museum at the Horse Park.

The Show Jumping Hall of Fame is sponsored by Blenheim EquiSports, Charles Ancona, CMJ Sporthorse, Hampton Classic Horse Show, Kentucky Horse Park, LAURACEA, LEG Colorado Horse Shows, Markel, Palm Beach International Academy, Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA), Washington International Horse Show and Wellington International.

For more information about the Show Jumping Hall of Fame, including the Show Jumping Hall of Fame Jumper Classic Series, please visit the Show Jumping Hall of Fame website at www.ShowJumpingHallofFame.net.

Source: Press Release (edited) from Show Jumping Hall of Fame

Photo: © SHOF / KindMedia

Categories: Awards, English, Jumper News USA

Tagged as: Awards, Cedric, Equestrian, Horses, Jumper News, Jumper News USA, Laura Kraut, Show Jumping Hall of Fame, Showjumping, The Wanderers Club, The Wanderers Club Grand Prix, United States Equestrian Federation, US Equestrian, USEF

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cheeseburgersandwarbirds · 5 years

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Fun Fact

Pancho’s Bar in Captain Marvel is not a real place.

It is actually a reference to Pancho Barns, an amazing woman pioneer aviator who broke Amelia Earharts air speed records and was the founder of the first movie stunt pilot union. Later in life she owned the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a bar in California that catered to the pilots working nearby. Read more about her people! She’s super cool!

#captain marvel #pancho barns #women are amazing #i love history #[out of the cockpit; ooc]

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whitefeathermfg · 2 years

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Pancho Barnes

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wordsbymae · 1 year

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btw, how dare farmer say that pancho and lefty aren't lapdogs😤 they're so cute:(

- 💫

He is one wrong move away from being kicked out of his own house. In one of the other mousey parts, I mentioned that if mouse did try to buy the cottage down the street he would have no other choice than to resort to kidnapping. In the fic I say that as he is carrying Mousey to the barn, Pancho gets worried and comes over to sus things out, maybe bossy and mouse are just play fighting? But why then is mouse crying? anyway, Pancho as all dogs do, gets caught up in the farmer's legs. This is when the reader knows something terrible is going on because the farmer swears at Pancho and tells him "Get the fuck goin' you mangy mutt". if reader wasn't fearing for their own safety the farmer would be a dead man. Reader never forgives the farmer for being so rude to their boy.

#nova :)#oc farmer #farmer yandere #mousey au #pancho and lefty

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warhistoryonline · 4 years

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Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes (July 22, 1901 – March 30, 1975) 1943 - A Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and her gear. https://wrhstol.com/355aNjI

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back-and-totheleft · 4 years

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The Vietnam Odyssey of Oliver Stone

The soldier trained his rifle at the ground in front of the feet of the unarmed Vietnamese villager and fired away, yelling "Dance. Dance. Dance." The old man hopped from one foot to the other.

"I wanted to kill him," recalled Oliver Stone. "I hated him. I crossed over into being a monster."

The above incident is depicted in "Platoon," written and directed by Stone, a Vietnam veteran. It and the other events shown actually happened, according to Stone. He's not proud of it. But he owns up to it. "Platoon" is Oliver Stone's atonement. Moreover, it's our atonement, too. "Platoon" is the first Hollywood movie to take the redemptive power of cinema and focus it on the Vietnam War.

If you think Vietnam was John Wayne in "The Green Berets," Robert DeNiro in "The Deer Hunter" or Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now," think again. "Platoon" is about the bugs and rain and the jungle and the pain. It's about the unseen enemy, rice paddy stashes and gun caches in thatched-hut villages. It's about boredom, fear, friendship, rage, loyalty, humor and choices - right and wrong. Like the phrase from the comic strip Pogo, "We have met the enemy and they is us," that's what "Platoon" is all about.

Why is "Platoon" drawing critical raves, Oscar talk and large numbers at the box office? Why is it being called the most important movie about Vietnam, or perhaps the most important war movie ever made? Why, 20 years after the war's escalation, are we seeing images of a Vietnam movie on the cover of Time magazine and in the media across the nation?

Oliver Stone has a few theories. The Academy-award-winning writer ("Midnight Express") and acclaimed writer-director ("Salvador") says it took 20 years for the nation to heal its wounds, for historic perspective to settle in and allow Americans to understand Vietnam and welcome home its legacy - the Vietnam Vet. It took the Vietnam monument in Washington, D.C., and, yes, Bruce Springsteen's misunderstood "Born in the U.S." ("Got in a little hometown jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/Send me off to a foreign land/Go and kill the yellow man.") It was an educational process, Stone told a recent gathering of the media in New York.

"We thought the war was over, when in fact it was just beginning," Stone recalled of his return after 15 months with the 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian border. Stone, wounded twice, was awarded the Bronze Star for combat gallantry and a Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster. He was later transferred to the First Cavalry Division. Of his return home, he says, "There was total indifference. The war happened at 7:15 each night on the news."

Stone, 40, is a bear of a man with a boyish face. He's a very forceful individual who speaks in bursts of words which tumble forth. At the same time, the writer in him is ever observant. He seems impatient, as if he can't wait to get back to the word processor.

Ten days after his return in November 1968, Stone found himself in prison, arrested on a marijuana charge. Adjusting to civilian life for him and some 2 million other Vietnam servicemen would not be easy. But Stone managed to tough it out. What was his salvation? The cinema. Stone studied screenwriting and directing with Martin Scorsese at New York University Film School, receiving a BFA in 1971.

A Canadian firm bought a screenplay, "Seizure," and allowed him to direct the low-budget film. In 1976, Stone moved to Hollywood. Two years later, he won an Academy Award for his screenplay, "Midnight Express," which also brought him the Writers Guild of America Award. Stone also directed another low budget film, "The Hand," and co-authored the script for "Conan the Barbarian" and wrote the screenplay for "Scarface."

It was 10 years ago, during America's Bicentennial, that Stone wrote the script for "Platoon." He says every studio in Hollywood turned it down, telling him nobody wanted to see a movie about the Vietnam War. "It was considered too gruesome, too realistic."

"Platoon" is a Vietnam movie from the grunt's point of view. We see the war through the eyes of Charlie Sheen, who plays Chris, a young recruit (based on Stone), and hear it through his words in letters he writes to his grandmother back home.

The movie depicts a night watch in the jungle turned into an ambush by the North Vietnamese Army, contrasts the boozers (those who drank beer and alcohol off-duty) and the heads (those who used marijuana and other drugs back at base camp), shows a My Lai type scourging of a village by American soldiers and the conflict between a gung-ho, out-to-kill lifer Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger), and a mild-mannered eager-to-get-o ut-alive Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). The movie does not paint a glorious picture of the American presence in Vietnam.

" 'Apocalypse Now' was about everyday life in Vietnam. It was more Joseph Conrad mythology," said Stone. " 'The Deer Hunter' was more about Pennsylvania and Meryl Streep than Vietnam."

The characters in "Platoon" are based on real people who existed in three different combat units in Vietnam. The characters and events are composites, but based on reality, Stone said. "My hypothesis was: 'What would happen if the three were in the same Platoon?' "

I asked Stone how accurate the scenes were depicting drug use in Vietnam. Many Vietnam soldiers were introduced to drugs in Vietnam and returned with drug habits. "Not in the field," said Stone. "A lot of us did it in the base camp - mostly marijuana, some heroin."

The tone of "Platoon" is not one of condemnation, but rather understanding - a knowledge that the roots of war are in all of us. Stone called war "one of the greatest highs. There's an adrenaline that flows. Life freezes down to a minute."

As you might expect, the violence in "Platoon" is graphic. But it is not gratuitous. "TV violence is obscene," said Stone of small-screen images of crashing cars, shootouts and fistfights where the participants seem to always mend by next week's episode. "It ignores reality, the real pain, shock and loss. It (violence) has to be done explicitly. Otherwise, you'll deceive the public."

Stone found a willing backer for "Platoon" in England. John Daly and Derek Gibson, owners of Hemdale Film Corp. arranged financing and brought in producer Arnold Kopelson. "Platoon" was brought in for $6 million, a low figure in today's Hollywood where a $15-million budget is average. Orion Pictures is distributing the movie.

Hemdale had produced Stone's "Salvador." Other noteworthy Hemdale movies include "The Falcon and the Snowman," "At Close Range," "River's Edge," "The Terminator" and "Hoosiers." They'll team again with Stone for his upcoming "Tom Mix and Pancho Villa.'

"Platoon" was described "as the flipside of 'Top Gun.' "

" 'Top Gun' was totally irresponsible, really," said Daly. "My friend's son, 12, saw 'Top Gun' and wanted to sign up. I said, 'Wait to sign-up until he sees 'Platoon.' "

To heighten authenticity, Stone and the producers brought the cast to the Philippines prior to shooting for two weeks of "basic training." Sheen, Berenger, Dafoe and the rest were given a shovel, told to dig their home, taken on hikes and climbs, given night guard duty and handed Army rations. Capt. Dale Dye, a retired Marine officer and Vietnam veteran, was in charge.

Dye, who has a consulting firm, Warriors Inc., which advises film-makers on military accuracy, contacted Stone, telling him, "You understand that this is as significant for the Vietnam veteran as anything is going to be. Let's do it right."

Dye was a sergeant in Vietnam where he was wounded in action three times during 31 major combat operations including the battle for Hue City and Khe Sanh during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Later, as a master sergeant he was active in the evacuation of Saigon and Phom Penh.

" 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Deer Hunter' are war films," said Dye, "but have nothing to do with Vietnam. They are allegorical in nature, but don't reflect the agony and ecstasy of young men who went to fight in that very difficult war."

Dye now has no illusions about war: "I went into it with grand delusions of flashing sabers and lovely ladies on my arm. When I got down to the mud and the blood, I found that to be hollow."

Stone was similarly gung-ho. A son of a stockbroker who met his wife in Paris during World War II, Stone attended the Hill School, Pottstown, before entertaining Yale University. He studied there for one year. In 1965, he got a job with the Free Pacific Institute, teaching Vietnamese-Chinese students in the Cholon district of Saigon. Then, he got a job on an American merchant ship. Two years later, at 21, he was back in Vietnam.

Has "Platoon" helped Stone put Vietnam behind him? Yes, he says. "I was totally warped and twisted by Vietnam. I got rid of all my demons."

-Paul Willistein, “The Vietnam Odyssey of Oliver Stone,” The Morning Call, Feb 1 1987 [x]

#oliver stone #platoon #paul willistein #morning call #the vietnam war #dale dye #ptsd #coming home

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