How many times have I watched this movie?

It would be fun to figure that out….kind of like playing with a “Where’s Waldo” book.

It would be that kind of fun.

Maybe it wouldn’t be all that much fun.

It wouldn’t be fun for me….and it wouldn’t be fun for you.

I rented a VCR to watch this movie.

That’s how much I wanted to see it.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

I have better options for watching Jeremiah Johnson now.

I am not really sure if you can even rent VCR’s now.

That would be a funny quest….go out and canvass the area trying to rent a VCR so that you could watch Jeremiah Johnson.

Anyway….I’ve watched this movie quite a number of times.

It’s one of my favorites so I don’t mind repeating the experience.

I watched it again last night.

And, even though I can recite most of the dialog by heart at this point, enjoyed the heck out of it.

This is a pretty old movie at this stage of the game.

1972 was a while ago.

Robert Redford was a pretty young man.

I was a really young man.

I watched this movie again last night….and then started thinking about another Robert Redford movie that I watched recently.

That movie was called “All is Lost”.

This time around, Robert Redford is in peril at sea after a mishap with a shipping container.

I watched this movie and thought, “Good grief, this is a slow movie.”

I don’t know what I expected…there’s almost no dialog…it’s just Robert Redford on a sinking sailboat, trying to save the boat and his life.

I was pretty bored sometimes while I was watching it.

I shouldn’t start movies when I’m so tired at the end of the day.

That’s when I can start a movie though…when the little kids are asleep and the house has gotten quieter.

That’s my movie time, if it’s going to happen.

By the time this movie was over I was wide awake.

This was a great movie….quiet….moving.

I don’t know why I demand that a movie grabs me from the start….I should be more patient than that.

There’s nothing that’s blatantly “heroic” about “Our Man”s (I think that’s what Robert Redford’s character is known as in the movie) efforts.

Not heroic like the Bruce Willis “yippeekayaye, mofo” stuff we’ve come to be used to.

It’s not “cartoon heroics”…just a normal, intelligent man trying to cope with a hard situation.

And, in the end, that’s what stayed with me.

No matter how bad things get, he just keeps plugging away….just keeps trying to come up with a way to survive.

I don’t think that I’ll make a habit of watching “All is Lost” like I do “Jeremiah Johnson”….but it’s a movie worth seeing….and I’ll probably watch it again at some point.

I don’t know what is so appealing about these quiet stories of survival to me.

These quiet, normal men reminded me of something that I could relate to.

But… what?!

Life?

Maybe it was….life.