GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1072: BILLY THE KID

 

I recently got MGM+ again because FROM has a new season. I'm all caught up now. and I'm canceling after the season finale. But they also have BILLY THE KID, and I just watched the final season. (I also noticed they have the show, 12 MONKEYS. I lost cable before the final season aired, so I'm finally getting to watch that. I'll probably write about that experience at some point soon, because it's a little bizarre for me.)

When I first started watching BILLY THE KID, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was written by Michael Hirst. I love his historical shows, like The Tudors and Vikings. Now that he's turned his attention to one of my favorite western outlaws? I was all in.

And I watched as it did its best to distance itself from the Young Guns movies. I can't tell you how much I love those two flicks. But because they're such an important part of the legend, this show needs to steer the boat its own way.

Hirst obviously loves history, but he's not beholden to it. If it comes down to a decision between what really happened (or at least the agreed upon facts) and what makes more sense for the story, he will always go with the latter, never the former. So you can't watch his stuff and expect an accurate history lesson, but he gets the spirit of history rather than the letter.

So the whole time I watched this show, my biggest question was, is he going to go the Brushy Bill route? If you don't know, back in the 'Fifties, an old man named Brushy Bill Roberts claimed to be Billy the Kid, that Pat Garrett hadn't killed him, and that he'd been keeping a low profile for decades. He had a lot of scars that line up with injuries Billy the Kid was known to have had. There were still a few Old West outlaws alive at the time, and when they trotted Brushy Bill out in front of them, they more or less agreed: this really was Billy the Kid. But in an age where DNA testing didn't exist, and the actual location of Billy the Kid's corpse was unknown, it couldn't be definitively proved.

Here there be spoilers. If you're going to watch the show, you'd best stop here. If you've seen it, or you don't give a fuck, please continue.

After Pat Garrett shoots Billy and leaves, Billy still breathes, and a friend rushes to get him out of there. I thought, YES! They're doing Brushy Bill! Because I believe that he really was Billy the Kid. I think that's legitimately part of the story.

But Hirst actually *doesn't* do Brushy Bill. He takes a much bigger swing at history. Like, I'm talking a Babe Ruth kind of swing.

Because later, after Billy is nursed back to health, HE GOES BACK TO GET REVENGE ON PAT GARRETT. He flat out guns Garrett down, and that's it.

Holy fuck, that is huge. It then occurred to me that I actually didn't know how Pat Garrett died. I never had much interest in the guy, although I tend to agree with Young Guns 2, that Garrett was in on Billy faking his death. So I looked it up, and Garrett died under mysterious circumstances, much like the real life Johnny Ringo. In fact, it's very similar to the swing Tombstone takes when it suggests that Doc Holliday killed Johnny Ringo. I've read up on the subject, and the popular belief is that he committed suicide. I think that's the case. But we don't know for sure, just like we don't know who actually killed Garrett.

Could it have been Billy the Kid? If you believe the Brushy Bill story, like I do, then it's within the realm of possibility.

But then Hirst follows it with Billy going up against Thomas Catron, the local politician that was hellbent on eliminating Billy and his Regulators. In the series finale he shoots Catron in the head, which simply did not happen. Catron went on to become a US Senator and died in 1921. But that is par for the Hirst course. It made for a good ending to the series, something that ties up all the loose threads but wasn't necessarily true.

I'm certain that, if he went on for another episode, he would have depicted Brushy Bill. In the end Billy literally--and I mean LITERALLY, not figuratively as many people use that word today--rides off into the sunset with his wife and kid.

That last episode was good. It wrapped up everything. But I don't think it was great, which is also par for the Hirst course EXCEPT FOR THE TUDORS. That show had a final episode that was awe-inspiringly beautiful, one of those moments that takes your breath away. The only reasonable response is to stare in astonishment and silence.

BILLY THE KID was a lot of fun. I'd recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1010: THE AGREED UPON FACTS

 As much as I love history, there's an unfortunate side to the beast. It's plagued me since I discovered how interesting history really is, but it wasn't until Gore Vidal that I discovered the perfect phrase for the problem. History is the "agreed upon facts."

The nature of history is kind of dubious. We have all sorts of records, from newspaper articles to journals kept by historical figures. We have a treasure trove of this stuff. But the problem is, what if these primary and secondary sources lied? What if they had skin in the game and decided that history should remember this version of events over another version of the events. To say nothing of the problems of the relativity of perception . . .

I hate to do this, but Mark Twain is just such an instance. A lot of his stories were actually news articles. He just lied to sell more papers. And that really is how newspapers began, more as tabloids than anything else. Twain wasn't the only one playing fast and loose with truth, so how can we trust any of these documents in said treasure trove?

Thankfully there are corroborating sources, but more or less we have to figure out which of these things we can agree upon as facts. That bothers me a great deal. Memories of college return to me. Ghastly things creeping through my head. "What is truth?" it asks through a sewer of a mouth. "What is Truth?" it answers itself. The horror.

It also means a lot of history gets swept under the rug as unimportant to the big picture. So I'm going to put a few quotes here you most certainly never heard during your school years. I'm pretty sure any teacher who dared tell you about it would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Let's start with John Adams. If you'll recall I mentioned that a few of the Founding Fathers were Deists, a euphemism for atheists. John Adams was not one of them, but he had some interesting words in regards to religion. For those who believe this is a Christian Country(TM), you may want to avert your eyes.

“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”
– John Adams

We discussed Benjamin Franklin a little bit in GF #1000, but here's a deeper look at his opinion of the Constitution that you never read in a textbook.

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

How do I know that these men said these things? I don't. Not to a certainty. And a lot of people wish they hadn't said anything of the sort. But enough people agreed on these facts. I'm sure most would call it revisionist history (a phrase I dislike), but to be fair, a lot of people worked really hard to make sure we didn't encounter these quotes in the course of our regular lives.

The root of the problem is lying. I forget the movie's name, but there was a flick about a world where people were incapable of lying, not even little white lies like, "I'm fine," or "You look great," or etc. I don't advocate for that kind of world, but to quote Metallica, "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world." But, since you come here for class, I'll dig back further into the vaults. I'll leave you with a quote from Montaigne:

Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. We have no other tie upon one another, but our word. If we did but discover the horror and consequences of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.