Why isn't life more like a summer blockbuster movie?
by Hal Jacobs
Why isn't life more like a summer blockbuster movie?
That's the question I asked during a recent family camping trip in North Carolina's Nantahala National Forest. After all, this wilderness is home to rugged mountains, streams, wildlife, and A FBI MANHUNT. That's right. Only 30 or so miles away, as the fugitive flees, Eric Robert Rudolph parked his gray pickup and fled into this countryside. Rudolph made the FBI's Top Ten Wanted List for the fatal bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, abortion clinic. He's also wanted for questioning in the three bombings in Atlanta that began with the Centennial Park explosion.
A family camping trip AND a desperate fugitive in the North Carolina mountains. You would think that would spell BLOCKBUSTER ACTION.
Or would you? For those media-impaired folks who can no longer tell the difference, here are two versions of the camping trip. The more-or-less true version and the commercial vision (or, my first draft for "The River Wild:
Part II - Making Bacon").
US: We spend hours cramming food and supplies into our 15-year old stationwagon. We are sweaty and cranky and leave three hours late. We are mom, dad, and two sons, ages 11 and 6.
THEM: They set the last wicker basket into the back of their 1999 Land Rover. They are glowing and chiseled-featured. They are mom, dad, daughter and son, ages 14 and 9 (to appeal to broader demographics).
US: We drive through ground-level ozone and blinding glare and over hot concrete past dead-eyed motorists ready to kick your butt from I-285 to I-985 in Gainesville "Poultry-Capital-of-the-Universe", Georgia.
THEM: They cruise down open highway and reach the countryside in under a minute. Light, airy soundtrack.
US: Site #3 at Rattlerford Group Campground. It takes us hours to unload car, pitch tents and set up primitive food court. Meanwhile, eight campers from Site #2 play volleyball, loudly, 50 feet away.
THEM: Primitive campsite under the trees looks like a page from an LL Bean catalogue. However, before family can finish their brie, a wounded man staggers into camp. He warns them of a dangerous fugitive lurking in the woods.
US: We spend the night tossing and turning inside tent. Outside, raccoons rummage through campsite, exiting with two loaves of bakery bread, leaving behind the loaf of white bread.
THEM: Wounded man spends the night tossing and turning inside tent. Mom, an ex-doctor who was wrongly sued for malpractice, refuses to move him. Dad takes daughter and drives for help. He leaves son "in charge."
Next Day
US: We spend the day walking, swimming, and thinking about the next meal. A late-afternoon stroll through the 500-year-old poplars and oaks in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest produces this irony. Kilmer, the poet many of us remember from: "I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree," died in action during WWI at the age of 31. Eric Robert Rudolph, on the wanted poster at the trailhead, was also 31 at the time of the abortion clinic bombing.
THEM: Turns out the stranger IS the dangerous fugitive. He flees with mom and son into the wilderness minutes before dad and daughter return with cute deputy.
US: Discussion on marshmallow-roasting. Everyone agrees, the blacker, more carcinogenic, the better tasting.
THEM: While dogs, copters and SWAT teams comb the woods, the fugitive forces his hostages to march -- or else. Irony after irony ensues. Turns out the fugitive is really an alien trying to save earth from toxic destruction.
US: Long uneventful lazy days. Days without windshield glare, road rage, junkmail, electricity, and Lewinsky headlines.
THEM: Dogs, deputies, copters, and SWAT guys finally corner the alien fugitive and hostages on top of mountain. No escape possible. Mom and son join hands with him, begging everyone to chill. But a sharpshooter, his sights locked on the fugitive's heart, squeezes the trigger. The alien starts falling, dragging mom and son down with him. At the last second, he releases their hands. When he hits the ground, his body vaporizes into a weird cloud that immediately repairs the earth's ozone damage and somehow enables France to become a world superpower. Credits roll.
And the moral is...
US: Long lazy days in woods are good for you.
THEM: Hollywood usually depicts fathers as idiots.
from Creative Loafing July 18, 1998
