Monday, March 06, 2006

That'll Be the Day

The special edition of The Searchers is out on June 6. Good news and bad news on the special features. The good news is that the second disc will include Nick Redman's documentary A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers, which chronicles the making of the film through scenes from twenty reels' worth of behind-the-scenes footage and portentous voice-over narration. It will also have the various promotional behind-the-scenes segments Warner Brothers produced for TV, among the first examples of a studio making TV infomercials to promote its movies.

Bad news: the commentary is by Peter Bogdanovich. "Now this is the scene where John Wayne finds the dead bodies... you may notice that George Lucas, whom I know personally, borrowed this shot for Star Wars. But as Pappy -- John Ford let me call him 'Pappy' -- told me, 'We all steal from god-damn near everybody.' Pappy said 'god-damn' a lot. Did I mention I know George Lucas?"

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