Has anyone seen the movie Powwow Highway?

[fishwax]

I'm watching the DVD right now.

I don't know anyone--outside of my wife and a guy I used to work with--who has seen the movie.

I like the movie. It has problems, compared with the book (which has problems of its own)--but it's a good flick.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I saw it some time ago and loved it.

[fishwax]

2. Sweet. I'm glad to know another DUer has seen it :)

I love it too, even though it is flawed. The only reason I watched it in the first place was because part of it (the part where they buy a CB radio for the car and then tear up a Radio Shack) was filmed in the town I grew up in. But once I saw it, I really fell in love with it, and wound up writing about it and/or the novel upon which it was based for various undergraduate papers :)

FWIW, Gary Farmer, who plays Philbert (the big guy) in this film, is really and truly a great actor, too. I wish he would get more parts, but I guess there aren't many roles for an oversized native american in hollywood these days.

:toast:

[Zomby Woof]

3. I love that film

One of the few honest films about the realities of life for modern Native Americans.

Much of it was shot in my Mom's hometown of Sheridan, WY. Can't say that about too many films, either. :-)

[fishwax]

5. get the fuck out! I'm from Sheridan

[Zomby Woof]

8. We had another DUer from there

She no longer posts here, unfortunately, but there was a DUer some years ago named "fromsmalltownAmerica" who hailed from there.

My Mom was born there, as was her sister, and their parents too. My grandfather's parents moved there because of my great-grandfather's job with the CB&Q Railroad taking him there, and my grandmother's parents were Polish immigrants who moved there because my great-grandfather got a job as a coal miner in the nearby now-defunct town of Monarch. My Mom still has a cousin who lives there, by the way.

[fishwax]

11. OK, I've PM'd you for details

b/c your grandfather's parents sound similar to my grandfather-in-laws parents, and I'm extremly curious. It's not every day we ex-wyomingites encounter anyone remotely familiar with the state, let alone someone who has relatives in our hometown :)

Alas, though I've been here since damn near the beginning, I don't remember "fromsmalltownAmerica," or at least I never knew she was from Sheridan.

Have you ever been there to visit?

[Zomby Woof]

14. Huge family reunion in 1970

I was very young. But I remember my grandfather's parents at that gathering. My grandmother's parents were long dead by then. I also spent some time there briefly in 1988 while taking a road trip.

My Mom and her family left the state when she was 12 and headed to San Diego, which is how I came to be from there. My grandfather was tired of the climate. In WW2, he was a plane mechanic in Los Angeles, and that planted the seed for him to relocate the family more than a decade later, lol.

My parents lived in Cody for a spell, and now live back east. But they have a plot in Sheridan reserved near my Mom's grandparents at the cemetery there.

[fishwax]

15. cool ... oddly enough, my wife's folks went from SD to sheridan

fools! :rofl:

They went to high school in Sheridan, but lived in SF and SD right after they were first married. They when they found out they had a kid on the way, they moved back to Sheridan. My wife (the kid) has never quite forgiven them for that :rofl:

[KitchenWitch]

4. Yes I have seen it

I enjoyed it.

[fishwax]

6. i'm glad you've seen it and i'm glad you liked it

I really liked the movie for a variety of reasons. It's been a while since I've seen it, and I've really enjoyed watching it tonight. And I'm happy to know at least a few DUers have seen it :) :toast:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. I did see it too.......

But it was a looooong time ago, and I only dimly remember it now....

I do remember that I thought it was very well done.....

:hi:

[fishwax]

9. it was independent before independent was cool

It definitely had momenbts of greatness, though it also was definitely an independent film. It was made in the late 80s, before indie movies had the same cultural cache they acquired in the 90s, but it had some really great moments.

I'm glad you liked it :hi:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

18. Well it was George Harrison's Bandit Films so it was a bit less

independent than most indies.

[fishwax]

19. well, but still

It was actually harrison's "handmade films," but harrison was hardly a major player in hollywood at the time, and even the more recent films distributed through handmade (like lock, stock, and two smoking barrels) have been, most definitely, independent.

It wasn't a studio release, by any stretch :)

[RoyGBiv]

10. Yes!

Good film. I own it in fact.

A professor in college turned me on to it, actully played it in class, which I thought was weird before I saw it. It was a class in Native American history, and he wanted us to see how a lot of what we were supposed to be learning wasn't just cold facts belonging to an ancient age.

[fishwax]

12. Awesome! May I ask

what professor, what class, and how long ago? (I assume it was at OU?) I'm really excited to know a professor showed it to his students. :)

[RoyGBiv]

13. ECU actually ...

East Central University, one of OK's regional schools. I took some classes at OU but didn't graduate there. Long story.

Anyway, it Dr. Thomas Cowger was the professor and my advisor actually. He got his PhD from Purdue, IIRC, which apparently has a rather respected program for Native American history. He was hired specifically to develop a Native American studies program at ECU. I was gone before he fully did this, but I got in on the development stage and took a lot of his classes just because I wanted to.

[fishwax]

16. oh, i know ECU ... sorry for being presumptive

It sounds like a cool class, though, and I'm happy to hear of academics throwing their weight behind the film. :hi:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. It's one of my all time favorite movies

A Martinez, one of the stars of that movie is someone I have known for a long time through a mutual charity that we worked on in the 90's. He loved making that movie. It's one of his favorite things he ever worked on...he said working with the cast was magical and that George Harrison was very hands on with the movie...so it was a thrill to be around him.

Oddly enough, the movie got a lot of complaints from certain groups of Native Americans as well

[fishwax]

20. that's cool

a martinez was really good in that movie.

I think part of the negative ndn response to that movie is based on time that has -passed--i remember reading an interview with sherman alexie (famous NA author and screenwriter of Smoke Signals) in which he talked about being so excited by that film--traveling a hundred miles or so to see it screened in a theater in Idaho--only to look back upon it later and realize that tere were definitely some strangfe compromises made.

The film was not an AN production, but it was made more than a decade before the first ever such feature film was made in america, so teh histoiracl context, I think, is important.

Anyway, should you see A Martinez again, you can tell him at least one DUer deeply admires his work on the film :)

[MnFats]

21. I did. in theater, then rental. read the book, too.

named my car "Protector, the War Pony" in honor of that movie. It was only slightly better quality than the vehicle of the same name in the movie...

it is a must-see film in my opinion....

[fishwax]

22. very cool that someone has read the book as well

I've written about the book in the past (as an undergrad) and hope to again (as an academic).

It really is an interesting book, I think, and was distributed almost entirely by the strength of will of the author--he was, for a time, selling the novel out of the trunk of his car.

To your "protector" :toast:

[cleofus1]

23. one of the few NA movies that really click

way better than dances with wolves...i watched it a couple of times in santa fe with a cross section of indians...and we all loved it...ok...so the two leads were not skins....at least they were believable...it's a great movie...reminds me a lot of being a knucklehead...i own the DVD and still slip it in occasionally...

[fishwax]

27. Gary Farmer is First Nations (Cayuga)

although you're right about A Martinez, the other lead :) His background is Mexican, I believe.

Farmer played Philbert, and I think he's just an incredibly talented actor. I'll see about any movie if I know he's in it, even though he usually only has minor roles :)

He also does a lot of work with culture and cultural activism--he founded a literary journal (Aboriginal Voices) that was published for several years, he put out a collection of his own short fiction a year or two ago, and he was the founder of Aboriginal Voices Radio as well. :toast: to Gary Farmer.

[skygazer]

24. YES! I've seen it and really enjoyed it

I thought it was a powerful movie and have wanted to see it again ever since - I think I must have seen it when it first came out. Found it in a video store and rented it.

Thanks - I'd forgotten the title until I saw this thread. :hi:

[fishwax]

28. Glad to help :)

And I think it's definitely worth another viewing :hi:

[Nailzberg]

25. Not only have I seen it, but one of the screenwriters was a prof. of mine.

I really enjoyed it, and I'm well out of school at this point, so I'm not just saying that to suck up for a grade.

[fishwax]

29. cool! Sounds like a good class

:hi:

[Jade Fox]

26. Hell yes.....

I used to have a car I named "Protector the War Pony".

[fishwax]

30. i can't think of any better name for a car

:rofl: