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Binding: School & Library Binding
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.4372
EAN: 9781417616411
ISBN: 1417616415
Label: Topeka Bindery
Manufacturer: Topeka Bindery
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 179
Publication Date: 1998-07-08
Publisher: Topeka Bindery
Studio: Topeka Bindery

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A good day to be indigenous . . .
Review: Not surprisingly, as in any culture, there are many voices speaking for and about American Indians, representing them from many points of view. Alexie's is one, and the director of "Smoke Signals," Chris Eyre, is another. Reading the extensive notes at the end of this screenplay, where Alexie describes the creative decisions that went into the making of the movie, you can see how each of them pushed for a different vision of the material. And the end result is a moving and humorous film about damage done and the journey that leads to healing - a theme certainly appropriate to a story about American Indians but also relevant to people of all cultures.

The debate among Alexie's readers is expressed dramatically in the movie, "The Business of Fancydancing," in which a writer who makes a career for himself outside the reservation (not unlike Alexie himself) is received coldly by old friends who feel that he's betrayed his people. The violence in that film (against a stranded white tourist) is a darker vision of Indian rage, the seeds of which are represented in the character of Victor, in "Smoke Signals." Looking at just these two stories from the same author, you can see something of the competing points of view that can produce either praise or derision for this film, where "It's a good day to die" is wryly transposed into the wonky observation, "It's a good day to be indigenous."

I can think of really only one reason for reading this book. For screenwriters, it reveals how a screenplay is transformed in the process of making a movie, in this case by the director, the performers, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, preview audiences, and in particular the editor. Scenes were shifted or eliminated, and dialogue has been added to patch over some of these structural changes. The result is arguably a very different film from the one Alexie originally wrote.

Anyone else should simply buy or rent the DVD. And then follow it up by reading the wonderful collection of stories the film is based on, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven." Also recommended: Adrian Louis' darkly humorous and angry novel set on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, "Skins."

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: offensive
Review: In this book about the reservation is full of caricatures of Native Americans. I find it hard to believe that a person who has not grown up on a reservation can write about reservation life and it's people. I am native american who grew up on the reservation, never have I seen people represented in this book in real life. The characters and situations remind me of what a non-native would think how natives act. If you really look around at other movies and stories, you will see these characters or I should say caricatures. This book and it's movie is on the level of the movie of Suzanne of the Rockies. If you really want to read a good book on Natives and Reservation Life read Skins by Adrian C. Louis, a person who has lived on the reservation. "Who's your favorite Indian?", "It's a good day to be Indigenous" come on Sherman, who really says that ?

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Why I use this film to teach troubled teens
Review: I work as a psychotherapist with adolescents and young adults. I use "Smoke Signals" with them by assigning them to rent and view the movie, which is always enjoyable because it's witty, humorous, wise, and significant. The movie poses two essential questions: 1) If someone else has mistreated, hurt, abandoned, or disrespected you, is it possible to forgive them if they've NEVER asked forgiveness, never done anything to "put it right," never returned in atonement to undo the damage, and never begtun to deserve it? And 2) if it *is* possible--and it may not be--SHOULD you? Because if you do, doesn't that just make you a willing victim by letting them "get away" with what they did, and pretending the relationship is okay again?

Victor lives in the tension of this dilemma. As a 12-year-old youth, he witnessed the effects of alcohol on his family. His father vascillated between being loving and instantly "turning" to become hostile, violent, and humiliating to the young boy. Victor finds himself becoming more deeply embarrassed by his family's domestic abuse and alcohol use, even defiantly scolding his own father that his favorite Indian is "Nobody...nobody...nobody!"

Victor's mother awakens the next morning to see Victor angrily smashing his father's beer bottles on the back of his father's picup truck (the two things he believes his father loves more than him), and the epiphany stuns the mother, who insists on an immediate end to family drunkenness. Proving Victor's fears true, the father--forced to choose between alcohol and family--flees the family, and never returns. It is within that unchanged arrangement that his father dies, 8 years later, having never returned home.

Victor and his oddball companion Thomas make a side-splittingly funny journey south from Idaho to Phoenix together to make arrangements for the father's possessions, confronted by the racism, peculiarities, and hostilities of the non-Indian "outside" world. Thomas, having never seen the dark side of Victor's father, irritates Victor with incessant stories and tales about the dad's greatness.

Victor, having been so deeply wounded and sold-out by his father's abandonment, has become tough, fierce, aggressive...and lonely. "You can't trust anyone!" he scolds. "People will walk all over you!" His mistrust poisons his friendships, family, and feelings about his father. He's become just another tough guy, hardened by family violence and substance use.

In Phoenix, Victor finds an essential artifact of his father's life: a worn-out photo with "HOME" written sloppily on it. At once, Victor begins to realize that his father's fatal flaw was COWARDICE: the father could confess his sins to new companions a thousand miles from home, but could never return home and undo the damage he'd caused. And so his son has suffered for 8 years. Victor begins to realize that he himself is allowing his actions to damage others, and that it is cowardice, not manly independence, that controls his decision to remain distant and fierce.

Victor slowly begins to repent of his own abusive toughness, cutting his hair in symbolic repentance (traditional hair-cutting is done either in grief, or in repentence for shameful behavior). The process of discovery continues when Thomas angrily confronts Victor about Victor's own behavior: remaining cold and distant from his own mother, acting forceful and ruthless to others, etc.

Victor ends the film by freeing himself of his 8-year hostility toward his unforgiven father, and in that final act of forgiveness we find that the greatest benefit is for VICTOR, who becomes kinder, funnier, gentler, and more confident in his friendships. The significance of forgiveness, he learns, isn't to let someone else off the hook, but to let one's own self off the hook of the pain caused by another, rather than carrying that pain inside for years.

In the final scene, this release of aged anger is represented by the cathartic release of his father's ashes into a river, meaningfully shown in film montage as expanding in power from streams into torrents, much like the energy of either a person enraged or a person set free.

It is at the end of the film that we really begin to understand Thomas' original cryptic remark at the beginning, "Some children aren't really children at all. They're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And some children are just pillars of ash, and they fall apart as soon as you touch them."

Not one single person yet who's watched this film at my urging has disliked it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: transcends culture
Review: Every now and then I find a book or a movie, ostensibly about a culture not my own, that does more than educate me; it reaches into my heart and shows me what we share instead of where we differ. This movie was one of those experiences. Anyone who has had a difficult relationship with their father will relate to this story. Beautifully acted, and some very funny moments too.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What can I say...
Review: What can I say about an author that evokes so many emotions in one time. This movie ranks in my top 5 of all time, right beside Stand By Me, Dances with Wolves, and Schindler's List. This is classic Alexie at his best: thought provoking and haunting at times, yet also witty and even hysterical (especially the song about John Wayne's teeth-I had to stop the movie for about 5 minutes I couldn't stop laughing!). He captures both good and dark perspectives in his own unique brand of writing. He is a highly talented author and a truly unique human being.

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