Steve McQueen – that object hanging out of his mouth is what we called a “cigarette”. It contained “tobacco” which we would light with a match and inhale. Don’t ask me why.

Saturday morning I’m up early and I see Steve McQueen in a movie looking rather rough, and yes it was the prison flick (flique since it was a French movie) Papillon. Like Brando and Bogart I never appreciated him until I was older. So I watched the final 90 minutes or so (its a 157 minutes I believe). Its a true story about Frenchman Henri Charrière wrongly convicted of murder in 1931. He spends the next 14 years in the French penal colony of Guiana and ‘Devil’s Island’. Needless to say the corruption of French prison authorities was legendary. Money or cooperation could purchase you a much easier sentence. A fascinating story. Reviewers say as good as the movie was it didn’t fully capture the hardship Charrière faced in real life.

It was a very good movie. They went on location with a couple of good actors. They took along a great story. Went past the 2 hour “barrier” and made a memorable story. According to IMDB they had a $12,000,000 dollar budget. By comparison another McQueen movie Bullitt, had a budget of $5,500,000. Thousands of books get published around the world every year. Of those there are hundreds of wonderful stories. Does Hollywood look to expand the art and make movies of any of those? Oh hell no.

To make my point, when looking up facts for the movie, I see they remade Papillon in 2017. I’m not kidding. They must be though. You think you’re going to top the original? Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman? You’re delusional. Just staggering the crap  that comes out of Hollywood. The amount of inspirational stories that are never told is mind-blowing. The thought provoking, the heartfelt, stories of wonder that will never see the light of day. Truly sad. Instead they’ll continue to remake Star Wars for another 40 years. The first 40 years of merchandising evidently wasn’t enough. We live in a sad and mediocre world. “Reach for the middle!“