Liliputins-323

A man can go to the straw dogs in no time ... "
Dustin Hoffman


Liliputins. What, the heck, is this ?
http://www.stihi.ru/2012/08/18/5368

***
Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay, by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, is based upon Gordon M. Williams's 1969 novel, The Siege of Trencher's Farm.[4] The film's title derives from a discussion in the Tao Te Ching that likens the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog to forms without substance.

The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and a complicated rape scene. Released theatrically the same year as A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry, the film sparked heated controversy over the perceived increase of violence in cinema.[5][6]

The film premiered in U.S. cinemas on December 29, 1971. Although controversial in 1971, Straw Dogs is considered by many to be one of Peckinpah's greatest films.[7] A remake directed by Rod Lurie was released on September 16, 2011.

***
25 Things You Didn't Know About 'Straw Dogs'


Posted December 29th, 2011 by Gary Susman 


 You'd never know from the way this past September's 'Straw Dogs' opened and closed with so little fanfare that it was a remake of a movie whose unflinching depiction of graphic violence created a controversy that has never fully abated. Nor would you know that the original 'Straw Dogs' (released exactly 40 years ago, on December 29, 1971) was a landmark film that gave Dustin Hoffman one of his meatiest roles, made a star of Susan George, solidified Sam Peckinpah's reputation (fairly or not) as Hollywood's most macho and bloodthirsty director, and influenced countless filmmakers who followed (most notably, Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, who wear their 'Straw Dogs' fandom on their sleeves). As notorious as 'Straw Dogs' was in its day, you may not know the story behind the making of the film -- a tale of mismatched lovers, alcohol, rage, and bloodshed that seemed to echo what ended up on the screen.

1. The movie's title comes from a passage in the Tao Te Ching. It refers to the Chinese ceremonial objects used in sacrifices and then casually discarded. In the 2011 remake, the protagonist makes clear the analogy between the disposable canines and the men in the town.

2. The movie was based on novel 'The Siege of Trencher's Farm' (1969) by Gordon Williams. Aside from different character names, there are a number of key plot differences. In the book, the couple have a daughter, there's no rape, and the attackers are not killed but seriously injured and left alive to face charges.

3. 'Straw Dogs' was Peckinpah's first movie that wasn't a Western. The director had scored in 1969 with 'The Wild Bunch,' a revisionist Western whose extravagantly bloody finale had revolutionized the way violence was portrayed on screen. But he'd become a pariah in Hollywood with his follow-up, the gentler 'Ballad of Cable Hogue,' on which he'd run 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget, only to see the film flop at the box office. The director felt forced to make a change and work in England. "I'm like a good whore," Peckinpah said at the time. "I go where I'm kicked."

4. Peckinpah adapted the novel along with screenwriter David Zelag Goodman, a recent Oscar nominee for his script for 'Lovers and Other Strangers' (1970). Peckinpah's rewrite of Goodman's script was informed by his reading of Robert Ardrey's books 'African Genesis,' 'The Social Contract,' and The Territorial Imperative,' drawing from them the idea that man is instinctively a carnivore who is prone to turf wars. It was also informed by the real-world violence of the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings. Early in the film, young wife Amy criticizes mathematician David for fleeing campus life (and, it's implied, faculty and students engaged in anti-war protests) and for refusing to take a stand, but by the end of the film, he'll be forced to take a stand and defend his home.

5. For the role of David, the filmmakers considered Beau Bridges, Stacy Keach, Jack Nicholson, Donald Sutherland, and (most interestingly) Sidney Poitier, before 'Midnight Cowboy' star Dustin Hoffman agreed to take the part.


6. Up for Amy were such young British actresses as Judy Geeson, Jacqueline Bisset, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Rampling, and Hayley Mills, before 20-year-old Susan George, a former child actress, landed the role.

7. Peckinpah wanted Richard Harris to play Charlie Venner, Amy's ex-boyfriend-turned-rapist. The role eventually went to Irish TV actor Del Henney.

8. Cast as village idiot Henry Niles, whom the couple first injures and then protects, David Warner had already established himself as a character actor. He'd co-starred as the villain in 'Tom Jones' (1963) and had played a preacher in Peckinpah's previous movie, 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue.'

9. The movie was filmed in the ancient Cornish village of St. Buryan, whose most famous resident (then and now) is spy novelist John Le Carrй.

10. Shooting the scene where Hoffman's newcomer first visits the pub, Peckinpah wasn't getting the hostile, suspicious reaction he wanted from the actors playing the locals. So he did another take in which he had Hoffman enter with no pants on. That did the trick.

11. Peckinpah used alcohol to bond with the actors playing the violent villagers. The actors would frequently get into brawls; during one rehearsal, T.P. McKenna (who played the Major) broke his arm in a fight and had to wear a sling throughout the shoot. Ken Hutchison (who played Scutt, the second rapist) cut his arm while smashing some bar glasses; George had to take him to the hospital. Another time, Peckinpah and Hutchison spent the pre-dawn hours drinking tequila at the shore in a winter rainstorm.

12. As a result of that incident, the director came down with pneumonia, and producer Daniel Melnick (who had resisted warnings from others in Hollywood that Peckinpah's drinking made him an unreliable hire) was forced to close down the movie for a few days until Peckinpah agreed to dry out. Peckinpah didn't go on the wagon, but he cut back on his drinking and was able to finish the movie with speed and clarity. The shoot ran five days over schedule -- hardly any time at all, compared to some of Peckinpah's other overruns.


13. The film's most controversial sequence comes when Venner rapes ex-girlfriend Amy, then holds her down while Scutt does the same. Critics thought Amy seemed to enjoy the assault (though it's clear later in flashbacks how traumatized she is) and that the film seemed to celebrate, or at least exploit, violence against women. In fact, the sequence as Peckinpah wanted to shoot it would have been even more graphic, but George talked him out of it, persuading him that the complicated play of emotions on her face was all he needed to show.

14. Part of the controversy over the rape had to do with the editing necessary to earn the film an R rating. By trimming some of the most horrific moments from the scene, the resulting sequence seemed to eroticize the rape and make it look like Amy was taking pleasure in the attack. So argued the British Board of Film Classification, which initially banned the film's home video release in the U.K. when it was first made available on VHS in 1984. The BBFC's remarks accompanied the release of the uncut version on DVD in 2002.

15. Defending the rape sequence, Peckinpah suggested that the film was a way to work out personal demons over his own violent temper and four failed marriages (three of them to the same woman). "In a film, you lay yourself out, whoever you are. The one nice thing is that my own problems seem to involve other people as well," he said. "'Straw Dogs' is about a guy who finds out a few nasty secrets about himself, about his marriage, about where he is, about the world around him ... It's about the violence within all of us. The violence which is reflecting on the political condition of the world today." He did not deny the cathartic effect of the scene but added that it doesn't let the viewer off the hook for his own voyeurism. "Someone may feel a strange sick exultation at the violence," Peckinpah said, "but he should then ask himself, 'What is going on in my heart?'"

16. In fact, some critics thought the film too fond of violence overall, calling it sadistic, as if it endorsed David's descent into savagery. (Pauline Kael called it "the first American film that is a fascist work of art.") Peckinpah insisted he wasn't endorsing violence, merely exploring it. Indeed, he thought, you could consider David the villain, not just for his violent behavior, but for indirectly provoking (through his refusal to act) all the terror directed at the couple in the first place. He explained,

“ I am not saying that violence is what makes a man a man. I'm saying that when violence comes, you can't run from it. You have to recognize its true nature, in yourself as well as in others, and stand up to it. If you run, you're dead or you might as well be.
17. The film came out at a time, just three years after the end of the Production Code, when movies seemed to be pushing new boundaries in the portrayal of violence. Released around the same time were 'The French Connection,' 'Dirty Harry,' and 'A Clockwork Orange' (whose director, Stanley Kubrick, was also a fan of Robert Ardrey's books). Still, 'Straw Dogs' seemed to stand out; at a test preview screening, a third of the audience walked out in revulsion.

18. Peckinpah followed the movie with an about-face, going to work on rodeo tale 'Junior Bonner' within weeks of wrapping 'Straw Dogs.' The low-key Steve McQueen picture didn't deliver on the action that the star's fans expected, and the film flopped. Peckinpah complained, "I made a film where nobody got shot, and nobody went to see it." Thereafter, he returned to the violent movies that had made his reputation, making films like 'The Getaway,' 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,' and 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.' He continued making thoughtful, idiosyncratic action films for another decade, until his death in 1984 at age 59.

19. Peckinpah met crew member Joie Gould on the set of 'Straw Dogs.' They married in April 1972, during the shoot of 'The Getaway,' but his alcoholism and abusive behavior proved too much for her, and the marriage ended after just four months.

20. After 'Straw Dogs,' Monty Python memorably parodied Peckinpah's fondness for extreme bloodletting and slow-motion death scenes in a sketch called 'Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days.' The extremely gory sketch earned the BBC some complaints from disgusted 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' viewers, but Peckinpah himself reportedly found it hilarious.


21. Today, it's hard to imagine the usually cerebral, nerdy Dustin Hoffman as a man of action, but there was a period in the '70s where he played several such roles -- not just 'Straw Dogs' but also 'Little Big Man,' 'Papillon,' and 'Marathon Man.' He'd go on to win Oscars for his regular-guy role in 'Kramer vs. Kramer' and his autistic genius in 'Rain Man,' but he did have one more action role (sort of) in 1995's 'Outbreak,' made when he was 58, in which he played a military epidemiologist who does a lot of running and jumping out of aircraft.

22. George went on to play similarly provocative roles in such 1970s features as 'Dirty Mary Crazy Larry' and 'Mandingo.' She remains active as a producer and a character actress.

23. Warner played a sympathetic character for Peckinpah again in 1977's 'Cross of Iron.' Otherwise, he has continued to specialize in villainous roles, including memorable turns in 'Time After Time' (1978), 'Time Bandits' (1981), 'Tron' (1982), and 'Titanic' (1997).

24. Colin Weiland, who played the vicar, went on to win an Oscar as the screenwriter of 1981's 'Chariots of Fire.'

25. David Goodman went on to write such memorable films as 'Logan's Run' and 'The Eyes of Laura Mars.' He was a script doctor on another movie involving a murdered housepet and a couple in a country home who are besieged by a crazed attacker, 'Fatal Attraction.' In fact, he claimed it was his idea that Glenn Close's character ought to be killed at the end. He died at 81 on September 26, 2011, less than two weeks after the release of the remake of 'Straw Dogs.'

 
***

Straw dog

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This article is about the Chinese ceremonial objects. For other uses, see Straw Dogs (disambiguation).

Straw dogs (simplified Chinese: traditional Chinese: pinyin: ) were used as ceremonial objects in ancient China.

In one translation Chapter 5 of the Tao Te Ching begins with the lines
"Heaven and Earth are heartless / treating creatures like straw dogs".

Su Zhe's commentary on this verse explains: "Heaven and Earth are not partial. They do not kill living things out of cruelty or give them birth out of kindness. We do the same when we make straw dogs to use in sacrifices. We dress them up and put them on the altar, but not because we love them. And when the ceremony is over, we throw them into the street, but not because we hate them."[1]

Popular culture:

The 1971 film Straw Dogs draws its title from the Tao Te Ching.
The band Something Corporate has a song titled "Straw Dog" on their 2002 album Leaving Through the Window. It includes the line "Hey, now, the straw dog's out in the street."
Professor John N. Gray's book of trenchant essays is titled Straw Dogs (John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, Granta Books 2002, ISBN 1-86207-512-3)
Guided by Voices song "Strawdogs"


***


go to the dogs
 
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.



go to the dogs

see under go to pot.

See also: dog, go, the, to

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.


go to the dogs

To go to ruin; degenerate.

See also: dog, go, the, to

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.


go to the dogs

if a country or an organization is going to the dogs, it is becoming less successful than it was in the past (usually in continuous tenses) They sat in the bar the night before the election, moaning that the country was going to the dogs.
See call off the dogs, throw to the dogs
See also: dog, go, the, to

Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2nd ed. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006. Reproduced with permission.


go to the dogs

to become worse in quality or character ;go to hell (in a handbasket) He was a marvelous actor, but his drinking problems caused his career to go to the dogs. It is sad to report that this once first-class hotel has gone to the dogs.
Related vocabulary: go to pot
See also: dog, go, the, to

Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003. Reproduced with permission


***
Auf den Hund gekommen ( sein )

Auf den Hund gekommen ist eine Redensart mit der Bedeutung „in schlimme (aessere oder gesundheitliche) Umstaende geraten“. Die Redensart wird scherzhaft auch im positiven Sinne fuer Hundefreunde benutzt.


Ursprung

Fuer den Ursprung der Redensart gibt es verschiedene Deutungsansaetze:
In der Bergmannssprache wurde der Foerderwagen, mit dem das Erz oder die Kohle abtransportiert wird, frueher Hunt genannt. Der Hunt ist ein Holzkasten auf R;dern. Wer nicht mehr kraetig genug war, als Hauer zu arbeiten, wurde zum Wagenschieben (Huntstossen) degradiert, was deutlich geringeren Lohn bedeutete.
Eine andere Deutung bezieht sich auf die Kriegskasse, die zur Bezahlung der Soeldner waehrend der Kriegshandlungen mitgef;hrt wurden. Im unteren Teil befand sich ein Holzkaestchen (der Hund), in dem die „Notreserve“ aufbewahrt wurde. Wenn man also „auf den Hund kam“, war die Kriegskasse fast leer.
Eine andere Deutung behauptet, dass auf dem Boden der Kassentruhe ein Hund – Symbol fuer einen Waechter – aufgemalt war. War so wenig Geld in der Truhe, dass man den Hund sehen konnte, war man „auf den Hund gekommen“. Musste man die Reserve im Fach darunter angreifen, war man „unterm Hund“. Auf Burg Lauenstein bei Kronach ist in der dortigen Ausstellung Schloesser und Truhen eine solche Truhe mit eingeschnitztem Hund zu sehen.[1]
Eine andere Version aus dem Oberdeutschen besagt, dass Brautleute als Aussteuer eine Truhe voller Textilien bekamen. Wurden diese im Laufe der Ehe immer weniger, also nicht wieder aufgefuellt, kam man immer mehr auf den Grund der Truhe, den Hund (hunden im schwaebischen Dialekt identisch mit unten).
Die Brueder Grimm geben in ihrem Deutschen Woerterbuch als die ihrer Ansicht nach wahrscheinlichste Deutung einen Rechtsgebrauch an, der besagte, dass „dass, wie der verurtheilte […] den strang um den hals trug, er auch den hund tragen sollte, damit anzuzeigen, dass er wert sei, gleich einem hund erschlagen und aufgehaengt, an der seite eines hunds aufgehaengt zu werden“. Sie f;hren weiter aus, dass „auf den hund kommen, eigentlich bis zur strafe des hundetragens kommen“ bedeute, und „jetzt bedeutet es theils in veraechtliche oder schlimme aeuszere Verhaeltnisse, theils mit der gesundheit herunter kommen.“[2]

Widerspruehliche Bedeutung

Wie der Heimatkalender des Kreises Hersfeld-Rotenburg beschreibt, sei die Redensart „auf den Hund gekommen“ fr;her eher als Zeichen des sozialen Aufstieges zu betrachten. Es bedeutete in diesem Fall, sich ein Hundegespann leisten zu koennen, statt Muskelkraft aufwenden zu muessen. H;ndler und Hausierer, die sich dies nicht leisten konnten, transportierten ihre Waren aus eigener Kraft auf Schubkarren, Handwagen, Rueckentragekoerben, einem uebergeworfenen Quersack oder boten sie in einem Bauchladen an.[3]