![]() And I sought out other Abbey books I learned of a recent collaboration with the great photographer Philip Hyde. Trapped for the time being in Kentucky, I still kept my watch on mountain time. Along the way, I discovered the author Edward Abbey, and I read ‘Desert Solitaire’ again and again. More revelations lay ahead…Ī decade later, I had finally seen the West, first with my family, and later on my own. Somehow, for reasons I still can’t explain–except that maybe this is how my DNA was wired from birth-I came to identify with the film and Jack Burns in a profound way-it would shape my life. ![]() Why, as a ten year old, did all this resonate so deeply with me? For the next two hours, I sat transfixed by the story, by Burns’ loathing of a society hellbent on destroying everything he held sacred, and his solitary escape attempt over the mountain, by the film’s disturbing last scene. Jack replies, “A fella can always keep something.” In the rest of the film, Jack Burns tries to do just that. If you don’t go by the rules you lose…you lose everything.” Out there is the real world and it has real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. “Jack, the world you and Paul live in doesn’t exist…maybe it never did. Drop dead…And they got those fences that say: ‘This side’s jail and that’s the street.’ Or ‘here’s Arizona and that’s Nevada.’ Or ‘this is us and that’s Mexico.’īut Jeri Bondi, the wife of the man Burns hopes to break from jail, sees Jack as an anachronism in a society that discourages anything resembling individualism… You ever notice how many fences there are getting to be? And the signs they got in ‘em…No hunting. “Basically you’re still an easterner…A Westerner likes open country so he has to hate fences and the more fences there are, the more he hates them…It’s true. ![]() Early in the film, Burns tries to explain himself: The film was about a world he loved-his beloved West-but a world that was fast spinning out of control. This story wasn’t taking place in 1882…this was 1962-the “Modern West,” and Jack Burns was trapped in it. Burns reluctantly lifts his eyes to the sky, not out of surprise but bitter resignation, to the sight of a squadron of screaming jet aircraft, their contrails fouling a faultless New Mexico sky. But when Douglas, as ‘Jack Burns,’ leans back to savor his hand rolled smoke and offer a few soothing words to his horse Whiskey, the desert silence is disrupted by something out of place. As the opening scene played out, I assumed it was set in the Old West, that it was another ‘Wyatt Earp/Gunsmoke’ kind of movie. I’d turned the channel to NBC to catch that week’s presentation of “ Saturday Night at the Movies.” It was a western, a film I’d never heard of, ‘Lonely Are The Brave,’ starring Kirk Douglas and Walter Mattheau. I was a kid, maybe ten or eleven and at home alone one evening with a bowl of popcorn and the TV. Then come back here for the rest of the story-volume one….JS Finally, this story will only have meaning to you if you’ve seen the film. If you know the Albuquerque area and can offer additional information, or corrections, I welcome your observations. In most cases I was successful, but other scenes stumped me. ![]() In searching for those sites, I did not initially seek additional information from other sources I wanted to find these locations–or at least attempt to–on my own. NOTE: This is a story about the film ‘Lonely are the Brave,’ based on the book, ‘Brave Cowboy,’ by Edward Abbey and my efforts to find, in 2014, the original film locations from the 1961 production. ![]()
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