Stunt Cowboy

So last night, my son was getting ready for bed and he asked me what a cowboy says. "Well, a cowboy says 'Yippee Kay Yea'," I said, leaving out the memorable addition Bruce Willis made in Die Hard. This led to 5 minutes of him trying to repeat the word, and 5 minutes more of me singing "home on the range" in a weak falsetto at the top of the stairs.

My kid was intrigued, so I thought I would show him a little more of what cowboy life was like through the magic of television. Now, I'm not a big TV watcher, but when I do watch, I usually spin around to PBS or FoodTV or G4 or BBC America. So searching for some cowboys on the 600 or so channels was a bit of a challenge and kinda fun.

Unfortunately, it turns out that it's hard to find cowboys on TV, and the closest I could find without keeping the kid up WAY past his bedtime was "The Dukes of Hazzard" on CMT. "Son, these are rednecks," I said. "Oh," was the response. And we sat there for 20 minutes or so watching something that touched way back into the files of my mind to a childhood filled with Atari, wacky packs and banana seats on bicycles -- all good things -- but something that "The Dukes of Hazzard" was not.

Still, despite the pants that showed me a bit more of then, mutton-chop heart-throb John Schneider, the thing that most impressed me about the show were the stunts. This particular episode, aptly titled "Carnival of Thrills" (Episodes 1-2 of Year 3) focused on Bo Duke falling for a girl and trying to jump his car over a bunch of other beaters from the last 70s. (In fact, I think that's what every episode centered around -- I can see the show's producers sitting around and saying to the writers "Come on, you hacks, we need to find something fresh. People don't want to see us jump over the same river every week. Think bigger! Like "The White House."

Today in movies and TV, special effects has reigned in the role of the stuntman in the same way cities and cars have crippled the role of cowboys and morphed them into massive arena monkeys, where they watch glittering singers -- or even worse --actors at dude ranches, where they live a lie based on nostalgic reflection for tourists who pay top dollar to live the same lie for a little while.

In the 70's and 80's, there were companies in Hollywood, like Stunts Unlimited, that modeled themselves after Evil Knievel and basically risked their lives to do stupid stuff -- not so much for the money, but for the sheer lunacy of what producers wanted them to do. They were rock stars, the top of the heap, crazy moffos with a taste for adventure -- so much so that when an actor today says that they do their own stunts, I think "Right. They hang on a wire in front of a green screen so a kid in front of a computer can composite in some explosions and gunfire." No, my friends, these guys were the real deal.



So when I sing "Home on the Range" to my kid from now on, I won't think of Robert Duvall or Kevin Costner sitting around a firepit talking about the coming storm; instead, I'll remember Bo Duke's stunt double jumping the General Lee over 32 cars.

(Epilogue: After "The Dukes," we stayed on CMT for a while and watched "Hee Haw." Besides Buck Owens' great singing, God that was an awful show.)