Redford's Johnson (Greenhorn) Print

[first lines] Narrator: His name was Jeremiah Johnson, and they say he wanted to be a mountain man. The story goes that he was a man of proper wit and adventurous spirit, suited to the mountains. Nobody knows whereabouts he come from and don't seem to matter much. He was a young man and ghosty stories about the tall hills didn't scare him none. He was looking for a Hawken gun, .50 caliber or better. He settled for a .30, but damn, it was a genuine Hawken... you couldn't go no better. Bought him a good horse, and traps, and other truck that went with being a mountain man, and said good-bye to whatever life was down there below. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You've learned well, pilgrim. You'll go far - provided you ain't burnt alive, or scalped. Jeremiah Johnson: I will do my best. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You can cut wood and leave it up on the "Judith." The riverboat captains will leave you gold, if you put out a pouch. Good thing to know, when times gits hard. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Watch your topknot. Jeremiah Johnson: Yep. Watch your’n. Jeremiah Johnson: Where you headed? Del Gue: Same place you are, Jeremiah: hell, in the end. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: I am Bear Claw Chris Lapp; bloodkin to the grizzer that bit Jim Bridger's ass! YOU are molesting my hunt! Del Gue: Jeremiah, maybe you best go down to a town, get outta these mountains. Jeremiah Johnson: I've been to a town Del. Jeremiah Johnson: [Jeremiah and Caleb find Del Gue buried to his neck in sand] Are you all right? Del Gue: Sure, sure, I got a fine horse under me! [sneezes] Del Gue: Got one of them feathers in my nose. Jeremiah Johnson: You keep sneezing, it'll come out all right. Haven't seen anyone pass by recent, have you? Del Gue: Nobody's gone in front of me. Can't say what's happened behind me, though. Jeremiah Johnson: The Injuns put you here? Del Gue: T'weren't Mormons. A Chief, name of Mad Wolf. Nice fella, don't talk a hell of a lot. Say, you wouldn't have an extra hat on you, would you? Shade's getting' scarce in these parts. Jeremiah Johnson: What'd you shave your head for? Del Gue: Mad Wolf figures like every other Injun I know. Says this scalp isn't fit for no decent man's lodgepole. Ain't the first time I've protected my head in such a way. Name's Del Gue, with an "e". Jeremiah Johnson: How does the war go? Lt. Mulvey: Which war? Jeremiah Johnson: The war against the President of Mexico. Lt. Mulvey: Why, it's over. Jeremiah Johnson: Who won? Jeremiah Johnson: I make damn good biscuits boy! [Jeremiah has just killed a Crow warrior who has been stalking him] Del Gue: Is it always like this? One at a time? Jeremiah Johnson: Yep. Del Gue: Lucky they were Crow. Apache would have sent fifty at once. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You're the same dumb pilgrim that I been hearin' for twenty days, and smellin' for three! Del Gue: Ain't that Hatchet Jack's rifle? Jeremiah Johnson: Yep. Found him froze to a tree. Del Gue: Damn! He was a wild one, old Hatchet Jack. He was livin' two year in a cave up on the Musselshell with a female panther. She never did get used to him. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: [Seeing the striped military trousers Jeremiah's wearing] Missed another war down there, hmm? Del Gue: [to Jeremiah] You turn down this gift, and they'll slit you, me, Caleb and the horses from crotch to eyeball with a dull deer antler! Del Gue: I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent... Jeremiah Johnson: Just where is it I could find bear, beaver, and other critters worth cash money when skinned? Robidoux: Ride due west as the sun sets. Turn left at the Rocky Mountains. [Jeremiah and Del are parting company] Jeremiah Johnson: You'll do well, Del; providing you don't get into trouble with all that hair. Del Gue: Ain't this somethin'? I told my pap and mam I was going to be a mountain man; acted like they was gut-shot. "Make your life go here, son. Here's where the people is. Them mountains is for Indians and wild men." "Mother Gue", I says "the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world," and by God, I was right. Keep your nose in the wind and your eye along the skyline. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You've come far pilgrim. Jeremiah Johnson: Feels like far. Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Were it worth the trouble? Jeremiah Johnson: [pauses] Huh? What trouble? from ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ (1972) Starring The Sundance Film Festival Kid (The Twilight Zone: ‘Nothing in the Dark’), Will Geer (Bandolero!), Josh Albee (Tom Sawyer), Allen Ann McLerie (All the President's Men), Joaquin Martinez (The Cowboy Way), Stefan Gierasch (Carrie), and Matt Clark (Back to the Future Part III). Screenplay by Edward Anhalt (The Mad Woman of Chaillot) and John Milius (Swayze’s Red Dawn). Directed by Sydney Pollack (Death Becomes Her). Based on the book ‘Crow Killer’ by Raymond W. Thorp & Robert Bunker and the book ‘Mountain Man’ by Vardis Fisher. Jeremiah Johnson is a 1972 American Western film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford as the title character and Will Geer as "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp. It is based partly on the life of the legendary mountain man John Jeremiah Johnson, recounted in Raymond Thorp and Robert Bunker's book Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson and Vardis Fisher's novel Mountain Man. The script was written by John Milius and Edward Anhalt; the film was shot at various locations in Redford's adopted home state of Utah. It was entered into the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor, director, and activist. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Appearing on stage in the late 1950s, Redford's television career began in 1960, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone in 1962. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newly-wed husband of co-star Elizabeth Ashley's character in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). He started with Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) which won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. He starred alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. He had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 he had the greatest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, a reunion with Paul Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; that same year, he also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford. In the 1980s, Redford began his career as a director with Ordinary People (1980), which was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford. He continued acting and starred in Brubaker (1980), as well as playing the male lead in Out of Africa (1985), which was an enormous box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He received a second Academy Award—for Lifetime Achievement—in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. Redford is also one of the founders of the Sundance Film Festival. Sydney Irwin Pollack (July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008) was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack directed more than 20 films and 10 television shows, acted in over 30 movies or shows and produced over 44 films. For his film Out of Africa (1985), Pollack won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. He was also nominated for Best Director Oscars for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?(1969) and Tootsie (1982). Some of his other best-known works include Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Absence of Malice (1981). His subsequent films included Havana (1990), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Firm (1993), The Interpreter(2005), and he produced and acted in Michael Clayton (2007). Pollack also made appearances in Robert Altman's Hollywood mystery The Player (1992), Woody Allen's relationship drama Husbands and Wives (1993), and Stanley Kubrick's erotic psychological drama Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Pollack is probably best known to television viewers for his recurring role playing Will Truman's father on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace (2000–2006). John "Liver-Eating" Johnson, born John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston (July 1, 1824 – January 21, 1900), was a mountain man of the American Old West. Johnson is said to have been born with the last name Garrison, in the area of the Hickory Tavern near Pattenburg, New Jersey. During the Mexican–American War he served aboard a fighting ship, having enlisted under a false age. After striking an officer, he deserted, changed his name to John Johnston, and traveled west to try his hand at gold digging in Alder Gulch, Montana Territory. He also became a "woodhawk," supplying cord wood to steamboats. Rumors, legends, and campfire tales about Johnson abound. Perhaps chief among them is that in 1847, his wife, a member of the Flathead American Indian tribe, was killed by a young Crow brave and his fellow hunters, which prompted Johnson to embark on a vendetta against the tribe. According to historian Andrew Mehane Southerland, "He supposedly killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians and then devoured their livers" to avenge the death of his wife, and "As his reputation and collection of scalps grew, Johnson became an object of fear." Accounts say that he would cut out and eat the liver of each Crow killed. This led to him being known as "Liver-Eating Johnson". One tale ascribed to Johnson (while other sources ascribe it to Boone Helm) is that while on a foray of over five hundred miles (800 km) in the winter to sell whiskey to his Flathead kin, he was ambushed by a group of Blackfoot warriors. The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies. He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a teepee with one guard. Johnson managed to break through the straps. He then knocked out the guard with a kick, took his knife and scalped him. He escaped into the woods and fled to the cabin of Del Gue, his trapping partner, a journey of about two hundred miles (320 km). Eventually, Johnson made peace with the Crow, who became "his brothers", and his personal vendetta against them finally ended after 25 years and scores of slain Crow warriors. The West, however, was still a very violent and territorial place, particularly during the Plains Indian Wars of the mid-19th century. Many more Indians of different tribes, especially but not limited to the Sioux and the Blackfoot, would know the wrath of "Dapiek Absaroka" Crow killer and his fellow mountain men. Johnson joined Company H, 2nd Colorado Cavalry, of the Union Army in St. Louis in 1864 as a private and was honorably discharged the following year. During the 1880s, he was appointed deputy sheriff in Coulson, Montana, and a town marshal in Red Lodge, Montana. In his time, he was a sailor, scout, soldier, gold seeker, hunter, trapper, whiskey peddler, guide, deputy, constable, and log cabin builder, taking advantage of any source of income-producing labor he could find. His final residence was in a veterans’ home in Santa Monica, California, where he died on January 21, 1900. His body was buried in a Los Angeles veterans' cemetery. However, in 1974, after a six-month campaign led by 25 seventh-grade students and their teacher, Johnson's remains were relocated to Cody, Wyoming. Jeremiah Johnson is a 1972 film by Sydney Pollack starring Robert Redford depicting his life. Source: Wikipedia Artist's Note (10/30/21): Whoa, okay. So I just had a ‘Simpsons Already Did It’ moment. While working on a painting (ironically entitled Brian’s Johnson - "Did your mom marry Mr. Rogers?") and watching The Simpsons episode ‘The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson’. I noticed in Homie’s flashback a sign that read: Jeremiah’s Johnson. Which was actually the "working" title for this painting. Since I watched the episode when it aired, it made me think: "Have I had Redford’s Johnson floating around in my head for over twenty years?". Well, the answer to that.. is a definitive "Yes".