1993, Hollywood's best year

I hate to sound so cantankerous on a Monday but, consarnit, movies have been going down hill ever since 1993.

This occurred to me during a recent visit to the magnificent Kinzua Dam in northwestern Pennsylvania. 

A monumental dam like the Kinzua is one of man’s most impressive structures.

As a boy I used to build dams in creeks everywhere. For juvenile engineering purposes, certainly, but also because it let me shout a forbidden-sounding word whenever Ma asked how I’d spent my summer afternoon.

Dam!

That has me wondering if profanity-averse parents insist on referring to one of the seven wonders of the world as the Hoover Darn.

But as my wife and I gazed upon the waters of the Allegheny River gushing through in a raging spray from the Kinzua spillway, we each thought the same thing:

Dr. Richard Kimball: “I did not shoot my wife!”

Lt. Philip Gerard: “I don’t care!”

Yes, we each thought of the riveting scene from “The Fugitive” where the wrongly accused Dr. Kimball, played by the dashing Harrison Ford, leaps off the face of a massive dam to either annihilation or uncertain redemption. At the time we had just discovered re-runs of the original David Janssen series that ran from 1963-67. The shows are still among TV’s most compelling ever.

So, fired with the recollection, we raced home, rented the film and popped it in to show the scene to Josie.

She was mesmerized. True adult entertainment done well is riveting to all ages.

Plus, at the end of it, foul-mouthed Joe Pantoliano steps up behind Gerard to utter an incredulous barnyard profanity that, of course, delighted the surprised 10 year old.

Thus, we take another step in our long march away from endless viewings of “Finding Nemo,” “Madagascar” and the three saccharine versions of “High School Musical” to entertainment emancipation of adult films awash in profanity and violence.

I can’t wait.

When we deem her ready for such viewing, I’m taking her straight back to 1993.

I don’t know what kind of recreational drugs that were consuming in Hollywood some 17 years ago, but I wish they’d become fashionable again.

Here are the top 10 grossing movies from 1993:

1. Jurrassic Park
2. Mrs. Doubtfire
3. The Fugitive
4. Schindler’s List
5. The Firm
6. Indecent Proposal
7. Cliffhanger
8. Sleepless in Seattle
9. Philadelphia
10. The Pelican Brief

I’m not going to play critic on the merits of each of these movies when the market already has. It’s given 1993 a huge thumb’s up. Each of these movies has demonstrated remarkable staying power. 

And that’s not all. Here are some other 1993 classics.

There was highbrow: Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” and the highly acclaimed Holly Hunter movie, “The Piano.”

There were two comedies that I consider classics of heartwarming mirth: No one would dispute “Groundhog Day” as a classic, but have you seen “Dave,” the Kevin Kline/Sigourney Weaver movie about a presidential look-alike who is pressed into actual duty? It’s outstanding.

Again, I’m not going to comment on the merits of “Free Willy,” “Grumpy Old Men,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Wayne’s World II,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” or the Schwarzenegger film “The Last Action Hero,” but each of these movies attracted rave reviews and massive audiences.

Two of our favorites from 1994 both starred Clint Eastwood, one you remember, one you probably do not.

“In the Line of Fire” is Eastwood as a decrepit Secret Service agent in pursuit of a homicidal John Malcovich. It’s one of Eastwood’s best.

Lesser known is “A Perfect World,” a wonderfully offbeat film that co-stars Kevin Costner as a down-on-his luck hoodlum who runs away with a young boy. Great film.

The year year also saw the release of the greatest chess movie ever made, “Searching for Bobby Fisher.” There was even a great cowboy movie, “Tombstone.”

Had 1993 been extended by two months one of the greatest movies of all-time would top this list: “The Shawshank Redemption.”

It was the year Bill Clinton took office, the year “The X-Files” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” debuted, the year Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband; a gallon of gas cost just $1.05.

But I’ll remember it as maybe the best year Hollywood’s ever had. And I can’t wait to sit my daughters down and show them all these great adult movies.

Am I the kind of father who’d risk a little salty language in the ears of impressionables just for the sake of a really good flick?

Er, dam straight!

The King-sized Monster in Maine

We vacationed there as kids and it was where my wife and I enjoyed our last child-free frolic.

But I’ll never return to Maine. A three-headed monster lives there and his realm is populated by drug addicts, adulterers, cutthroats and a host of garden variety geeks and idiots.

And those are the good guys.

I already feel like I’ve met every single person who resides in Maine -- and I’m only on page 519.

Yes, God help me, I’m reading Stephen King’s “Under the Dome.”

King, 62, has sold more than 350 million copies of books under his own name and those issued under the crafty pseudonyms Richard Bachman and John Swithen.

He is the literary equivalent of an earth-devouring monster. Right now he’s killing my time.

I’d been looking forward to reading the 1,074 page book. I hadn’t read a King offering since “Needful Things” (1993) and thought this epic would be a nice break from the history and biography that so enriches my life.

Like most of the world, King’s left an indelible mark on me. For me it started with Pet Sematary, as horrific as anything ever conceived by Poe, Hitchcock or Sterling, the Holy Trinity of creative American horror. I remember relishing “Salem’s Lot” the night after my last college final was completed and I was free to read whatever I wanted.

I remember swapping “The Dead Zone,” “The Shining,” and “Misery” with my old man and sharing our exuberance of stories well told. My wife and I raced each other to book stores to get the monthly installments of the wonderful chap book series, “The Green Mile.” And we both loved his Bachman book, “Thinner.”

I guess I stopped reading King when he started writing books faster than I could read them. Some sources put his total at 73.

I can think of maybe five things in my life I’ve done more than 73 times. In fact, other than golf, reading good books, fun time with the kids, attending sporting events and lovey-dovey stuff with the missus, I have trouble thinking of things I want to do 73 times.

Lots of stuff -- voting, commuting to work -- just gets boring after 25 times.

And that’s what had happened with me and King.

He started losing me with “It,” an otherwise compelling tale that craps out when the villain is revealed to be -- spoiler alert -- a great big scary spider. Oooh! My 3-year-old on a sugar high could have come up with something more plausibly frightening.

Heck, my 3-year-old on a sugar high is more plausibly frightening.

So now I feel marooned halfway through a book that’s more dense than three stacked Bibles.

I need to find out if the people of Chester’s Mill ever emerge from the big dome, how it got there, who’s to blame and who’ll be slain without mercy or taste.

At this point, I hope they all do. King has made the entire population of Maine part of the cast.

And there’s something objectionable about every one of them. His books make the whole state seem like it’s filled with a bunch of reactionary jerks who, ayuh, confront each supernatural challenge with either dull-witted immobility or vigorous criminal mayhem.

I’ve lost count of the rapes, the murders, the assaults and criminal lawlessness taking place in the town -- and that’s just by the police officers.

The narrative is so plodding I’ve become distracted by casting which B-list actor should play the leads in the eventual miniseries (I say Ashton Kutcher as Col. Barbie and Dick Cheney as Big Jim Rennie).

I don’t think the dome book would have been published in its existing form by anyone but King. But no publisher or editor at this point can tell him he’s off track.

So he should take it from me. He needs a decade-long horror sabbatical so he can return with another series of timeless novellas like the four included in “Different Seasons,” his most satisfying read.

That 1982 collection yielded two of the best human interest movies any of us has ever seen: “Stand By Me” and the magnificent “Shawshank Redemption.”

Many people are often surprised but the outstanding 1994 Tim Robbins/Morgan Freeman prison flick is faithfully based on a Stephen King book.

He needs to get back to telling stories about people and daily struggles that make the supernatural seem so contrived.

Besides, what could be any scarier or more supernatural than what’s just taken place?

I just devoted about an hour to giving career advice to Stephen King.

Wheeee!-gers enjoy sweet freedom

At one time or another I’ve harbored boyhood ambitions of becoming a cowboy, an astronaut or, gee, a successful freelance writer. All these years later, I’m still hoping maybe one of those dreams will come true.

But this week a brand new ambition has begun to flourish.

I want to be a wrongly imprisoned Uighur.

It’s pronounced WHEEEE!-ger, a joyful sound that makes it even more appealing. It’s going to be difficult for the duration of this post to not just spell it like it sounds. Just once more -- WHEEEE-ger!

Uighurs are members of a downtrodden Turkish ethnic group from China’s Xinjiang province. In the summer of 2001 thousands of them claimed religious persecution and fled their homeland for Afghanistan. A score of them where they were swept up by Pakistani security forces, shackled, hooded, labeled enemy combatants and bundled off of to Guantanamo Bay.

Understand, until about four days I ago I didn’t even know such a thing as wrongly imprisoned Uighurs even existed -- and maybe I should harbor an ambition to become a more informed news reader.

Sure, I’ve always believed that an unhealthy percentage of our prisoners at Guantanamo didn’t belong there. Some were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were ratted out by unscrupulous bounty hunters and others were rounded up with the rest of the usual suspects.

And I know this will lead to some to label me a squishy liberal, but I felt bad for them. I’m sure our jails and death rows are full of innocents who got stuck with mopes for attorneys or politically ambitious district attorneys.

My wife and I are big fans of the classic 1960s TV show “The Fugitive,” starring David Janssen. Most people are familiar with the story from the 1993 Hollywood remake starring Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimball and Tommy Lee Jones as the obsessed Lt. Philip Gerard.

It’s powerful storytelling because its hero is an innocent man who’s been gobbled up in the maw of an indifferent power structure more interested in tidy endings than actual justice.

An even more compelling parallel is Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne in 1994’s “The Shawshank Redemption,” one of my top five all-time favorite movies. The movie closes with Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, paroled from a life sentence after nearly five decades, seen strolling up the beach to to embrace the escapee Dufresne.

I can’t watch that moving scene without thinking, man, I wish I could be there for that party.

That’s why I felt such a vicarious thrill when just four of the Uighurs after seven years in Guantanamo were released to, of all places, the tropical paradise of Bermuda (thirteen of their countrymen remain marooned at Guantanamo).

The freed men’s translator, Rushan Abbas, told NPR: “They’re doing great. They’re going out shopping, enjoying restaurants, going out for ice cream, swimming and fishing. They’d never seen the ocean before Guantanamo and never been in it before Bermuda. They’re really enjoying that. Everyone’s treating them very well.”

Imagine the wonder if all.

I try and think of all I’d have missed if you’d have wiped out my life since 2001.

I’d have missed nearly the entirety of my eldest daughter’s wonderful life, the conception of my second daughter, two Steeler Super Bowl championships, a Penguins Stanley Cup victory, the death of my father, blissful evenings with my lovely wife, golf with my friends, tender moments with Mom, the introduction of the iPod and the two great Simon Pegg movies, “Hot Fuzz” and “Shawn of the Dead.”

Maybe even more important, I’d have missed the daily delights even those of us for whom earning a living is a constant struggle can wring out of this world. No joy. No jokes. Just a longing for liberty.

On the upside, I’d have missed the near entirety of George W. Bush’s presidency, so it’s sort of a wash.

Going from Guantanamo to Bermuda must be exactly like going from the woes of this world to heaven, albeit a heaven where rastafarian bartenders charge $8 for warm bottles of Red Stripe beer.

I can’t help but wonder if this godforsaken world is our Guantanamo. That some day some overseeing authority will liberate all the sick, the poor, the deprived, the heartbroken and those longing for justice from this mortal incarceration to a paradise where all our earthly cares will be forgotten.

And I hope all the Red Stripes are part of the all-inclusive.