The Last Days of Lehman Brothers TV - Ancient Aliens TV - George Carlin - Days that Shook the World TV - Jesse James TV - The Sopranos TV - The Book of Eli 2010 - Horace Greeley - Fritz Lang - Buffalo Bill TV - Kit Carson TV - Brad Meltzer TV - Ken Burns TV - America: The Story of the US TV - James Burke TV - Ray Mears TV - Unsolved History TV - Mystery Files TV - William A Tunstill - Donald Lavash - Elise Gomber - Frederick Nolan - Tony Robinson TV - Rich Hall TV - Sergio Leone - Quentin Tarantino - Renata Adler - Robert Redford’s The West TV - In Search of … TV - Shelby Foote - Roger Ebert - Noam Chomsky - Samuel P Huntingdon -
The West is fucked. We fucked it up. Oh not just you and me. All of us. The West. It’s done. It’s over. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, Hank Paulson
Aurora, Texas, 1897: ‘An airship supposedly run into a windmill.’ Ancient Aliens s3e1: Aliens and the Old West, History 2011
Adams County, Ohio, Serpent Mound is a giant prehistoric structure that looks as if it’s meant to be viewed from the sky. The 1,330-foot-long structure winds across the land and depicts a coiled snake. ibid.
The upper Missouri River – this is the home of the Blackfoot Indians, a tribe whose ancient legends include strange tales of star-beings visiting the region from other worlds. ibid.
The Thunderbird – their description of it was almost identical to that of the giant bird witnessed by cowboys in Tombstone in 1890. ibid.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto never got their laundry done. George Carlin, More Napalm and Silly Putty
In Tombstone, Arizona, the most notorious gunfight in history is about to unfold. Days that Shook the World s3e2: St Valentine’s Day Massacre/Gunfight at the OK Coral, BBC 2005
A gunslinger is a new phenomenon in the West. ibid.
Who fired first? ibid.
A romantic figure of the West and a man bold enough to defy the rapacious villainy of a newly industrialised America. Jesse James, PBS 2006
In the Spring of 1864 Jesse James rode to war. ibid.
Over the next year and a half Jesse James alongside Frank and a half dozen bushwhackers ... robbed one bank, two stage-coaches and two railroads. ibid.
What he was was a thief and a cold-blooded murderer. Jesse had little interest in a fair fight. ibid.
The biggest threat to Jesse’s life came from the private sector. ibid.
The dramatic death of Jesse James aged thirty-four only increased the reach of his name. ibid.
Take it easy. We’re not making a western here. The Sopranos s1e3: Denial, Anger, Acceptance starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Uncle Junior, HBO 1999
Bird tied to shopping trolley: Where are you going?
Eli: West.
Her: Can I come with you?
Eli: No. The Book of Eli 2010 starring Denzel Washington & Gary Oldman & Mila Kunis & Ray Stevenson & Jennifer Beals & Evan Jones & Joe Pingue & Frances de la Tour & Michael Gambon & Tom Waits & Chris Browning et al, directors Hughes brothers
Go West, young man, and grow up with the country. Horace Greeley, founder New York Tribune, Hints Toward Reforms, 1850
Don’t forget the Western is not only the history of the country, it is what the Saga of the Nibelungen is for the European. Fritz Lang
One of the most famous people in the world – William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. The sixty-seven-year-old Cody was directing his first movie – a re-enactment of the Wounded Knee massacre. Buffalo Bill, PBS 2012
He had grown up in the real West, knew the sorrow and cruelty and courage that had created it. But he understood that the West was something more. ibid.
He was a hero to the working men who crowded the theatres. ibid.
Cody, Salisbury and the Wild West [show] left New York Harbor for England. The Wild West had become one of the most elaborate shows on Earth. ibid.
He convinced the most famous Native American of all – Sitting Bull – to join the Wild West. ibid.
The White man knows how to make everything but he does not know how to distribute it. Sitting Bull
To some he was one of America’s greatest heroes. A man who had helped open a vast continent. Kit Carson, PBS 2008
To others he was a villain who waged a merciless campaign against one of the great tribes of the West. In the end his contradictions would define his legacy. ibid.
The fearless warrior portrayed in dozens of best-selling books. ibid.
Remove them to a reservation, and clear the way for American settlement: ‘All Indian men are to be killed wherever you find them’. ibid.
In the field reports that were scribbled out in the course of the fighting his name appears again and again. ibid.
Some seventy books would be written in the years to come. ibid.
Everything we know about Billy’s death comes from one book: The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid [by] Pat Garrett. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded s2e8: Billy the Kid, History 2011
Some of his [Garrett’s] story just doesn’t add up. ibid.
The West stretches from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. From the northern plains to the Rio Grande. More than two million square miles of the most extraordinary landscape on Earth. Its terrain has always beckoned and repelled. Ken Burns, The West I, PBS 1996
The West is a land of endless seas of grass. Unimaginable distances. Infinite horizons. But it was never empty. People came from every point of the compass. ibid.
There once lived a great people – remembered now as the Anasazi. For centuries their civilisation thrived. ibid.
They were forced to abandon it all ... Not the first people to be displaced by another in the West. And they would not be the last. ibid.
1528 Texas: A handful of Spanish Soldiers staggered ashore... Converting thousands of Indians, and stripping the Aztec and Inca cultures of their enormous wealth. ibid.
‘We came here to serve God and His Majesty,’ one Conquistador wrote. ‘To give light to those who were darkness, and to get rich as all men desire to do.’ ibid.
The horse ... spread across the West ... numbered in the thousands. ibid.
The great father was Thomas Jefferson, president of the new United States, who had just purchased from France half a billion acres. ibid.
By 1821 two young Republics claimed most of the West. The vast territory Thomas Jefferson had bought from France gave the United States claim to nearly half of it. Ken Burns, The West II
Others who called themselves Latter Day Saints fled to the West hoping to find sanctuary. ibid.
There were black trappers as well as white. ibid.
There were now nearly 35,000 American-born immigrants and their slaves in Texas. ibid.
Three independent republics in North America: Mexico, the United States, and under president Sam Houston the new Republic of Texas. ibid.
Everywhere they went, the Mormons gathered converts. And everywhere they went, they made enemies. ibid.
The Mexican-American war lasted more than a year and a half. ibid.