Red Dog

The words are coming out of my head too fast, so I'll make this quick: I'm interning at the Sedona International Film Festival. As an intern / volunteer I get to go to two free screenings a night during this week before the festival starts. Tonight's included Red Dog.

PLOT SYNOPSIS:  family friendly G rated thing. Main character is a dog - Red Dog. He's the dog that belongs to a community of miners in the Australian outback in the 70s. They all love him. Story is set up as a viewer stand-in character shows up at this mining camp one night while Red Dog is sick in the back. Everyone from his life is standing around worrying and reminiscing. Basically each character gets one story with the dog.

Then there's this one guy who's the former master of the dog, the only master the dog every had. His name is John, and he's the only American, and he rides a motorcycle. He hasn't stayed in any one place for more than 2 years at a time.

Alright, let's pause there. We got an American rider who's always on the move and is the only one able to tame the dog AKA the obvious symbol for the natural world out there. What we've got here folks is a cowboy. His name

So John the cowboy (his name is JOHN, and they never tell you his last name. But I have an idea) falls in with this group of miners and eventually settles down with this gorgeous blonde girl. Two years and a day after coming here, he proposes to her, she accepts, and they go bang. Then the next morning he dies in a motorcycle accident. Very sad, lots of tears, and the little shopgirls mourn the loss of the ideal cowboy... but enough Kracauer.

Alright, so status report - the cowboy is dead. Did I mention that the last thing he did was tell Red Dog to stay and wait for him? Yeah. So the dog waits for him to return for three weeks, then decides (accompanied by very dramatic narration) that he's gonna go find John. He searches all up and down the continent, even hitching a ride over to Japan at one point.

After a few years, Red Dog comes home, befriends Red Cat (you can't make this shit up), and then we get back to the present day.

OKAY. So since the dog has become a symbol for all of us by this point, what we end up with is all of us as a culture and all of nature (because the dog still came from the untamed wilds by just showing up one day) searching desperately for the ideal cowboy so we can bring him home.

Guys. We're just trying to relive the glory days of our culture. We want to go back to the hero of the old west, but we can't! He's dead. But we just keep on searching, man. Keep on searching for that ideal that we've lost in our past.

But we remember him. We miss him and love him, so much so that when it comes time for Red Dog to die, he walks over to the grave of his former master and lies down there to die by his side, and we all go there with him. And then we replace Red Dog with a new dog and try as hard as we can to replicate what we had before. The viewer stand-in marries John's ex-fiance, because it's as close as we can come to him.

BUT IT'S JUST A POOR FACSIMILE. HE'S GONE, DEAD. STOP TRYING TO GO BACK, GUYS.

WE HAVE TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE. THAT'S WHERE THE WESTERNS ARE NOW. IN SCI-FI.

FUCK.

Maybe any of that made sense. Probably not.

SAM OUT