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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

Stick to the Facts

In the commentary track for a movie I recently watched, the director made a statement about details within a setting. “Most people just overlook those things, so accuracy isn’t all that important,” he said.

That fellow apparently hasn’t met my friend’s husband.

The widescreen TV in their living room was tuned to a Western when I showed up with Christmas gifts for Judy and Mike. For the first few minutes of our visit, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the movie, other than to ask Mike if he knew its name.

“Crossfire Trail,” he said. “It’s pretty good.”

“Boy, Mark Harmon isn’t getting any uglier with age, is he?” I commented. “He looks just as pretty as ever.”

“He’s meaner than dirt in this one,” Mike said. “You just watch.”

Intrigued, I stopped to watch the remainder of the scene. Sure enough, the character played by Mark Harmon seemed sweet and soft-spoken for a moment but then suddenly showed his evil side by making a sinister threat to the woman he wanted to marry.

“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Meaner than dirt,” Mike repeated with a nod.

Mike’s great fun to watch Westerns with because he happens to be a gun collector, hunter, marksman, and a serious expert on weapons, both modern and historic. “That gun didn’t even exist in the 1800s!” he’ll shout at the TV. Or, “Somebody oughta teach that guy how to hold a gun; he’d shoot his own head off it this was real life.” He even sometimes counts the number of shots. “Fifteen shots from a six-shooter,” he’ll say. “That’s a new record.”

In this particular movie, however, Mike said the moviemakers had done their research. Each time a gun was picked up, aimed or loaded, he’d utter the name of the chosen weapon.

Tom Selleck’s character stood beside a table in one scene, loading what I’d probably wrongly call a rifle. Mike blurted out the gun type. “Good choice,” he said. “Definitely right for the time period.”

“Is he loading the right kind of bullets?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Eventually, the reasoning behind the movie’s title became apparent as the good guys and bad guys faced off in an action-packed crossfire that left most of the good guys wounded. I sat in fascination, listening to Mike rattle off the names of numerous weapons that were loaded, aimed, and pulled out of holsters.

“That’s a great gun,” Mike said about one of the weapons that Tom Selleck used. “Seventeen shots—click, boom, click, boom, click, boom, just like that.” He was obviously disappointed when Selleck ran out of bullets and switched to a lesser handgun.

As the credits began to roll, Mike sighed with satisfaction. “That’s a pretty good movie,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll get to see the whole thing. I’ve seen the beginning and the end, now. Still missed the middle, though.”

As a new movie began to play and Mike nodded off, I thought about the director who saw no need to go to great effort when it came to detail. It would certainly be interesting to stick him in a room with Mike, a Western, and a bowl of popcorn. I can easily imagine the director staggering out of the room as the credits rolled, holding his head and muttering, “Stick to the facts. Better stick with the facts.”