The Sunday Chicago Tribune with your movie challenge washed ashore on my island this morning.  Otherwise I would have read  it at my breakfast table Sunday morning in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Here are my selections.

The Sand Pebbles

Steve McQueen’s distant and innocent character just  wanted to hide away from politics and leadership so he could manage the engine room on a small gunboat.   It didn’t turn out the way he figured as he got swept up in human issues that became chess pieces for the militant leaders of the Chinese revolution.  The evolution of his character from isolated individual to  passionate participant was emotionally uplifting and exhausting.   I may not be able to watch this movie every day, but every month on my island there will be a place for Jake Holman and his personal mission up the Yangtze River.

The Searchers

War weary Ethan Edwards came back from the civil war to his brother’s dusty little farm only to see the whole family get slaughtered by the same Indians who kidnapped his little niece Debbie.  The Duke  is one of my favorite actors and this John Ford movie is one of the most  enjoyable movies ever made.  The intense fear on the face of Ethan’s niece Lucy when she realized they were going to be attacked is one of the most bone-chilling events in my young movie-viewing history.  I saw this film at the Dundee Main Street Theater and I think I paid thirty-five cents for it.   What a great deal.

National Lampoon’s Animal House

There are only a handful of movies that have ever  made me laugh like this one.   John Belushi was such a brilliant moron!   This reminded me of the time when I went to college and many of the guys who were  there were only in college to keep themselves out of the Vietnam war.  They had no business being there just like the students in Animal House.  Thank God this movie did not come out eight years earlier or we would have seen a lot more cars with “Eat Me” painted on their sides and there would have been more dead horses in  Dean’s offices all over the country, maybe the world.

A Hard Days Night

I grew up with the Beatles and this movie is about an innocent time of fun and music.  I love the Beatles and I cried when John  Lennon was murdered.   This movie brings them all back just like I want to  remember them; as a fun group of kids playing great music, causing mischief and searching for a good time.  Imagine being a young man and getting chased down the street by hordes of screaming girls with your best friends.  Wow!

The Magnificent Seven

Seven men go to a small Mexican village to save the  poor farmers from the seasonal ravages of a group of banditos and even though they are betrayed by those same farmers, they come back to complete their heroic mission that they set out to do. This Magnificent movie set the tone right away when a traveling salesman tried to pay to have a person buried up on boot hill.   The mortician said it can’t be done because an element in town says only white  people can be buried up there and old Sam was an Indian.  Surprised, the  salesman says, “how long has this been going on?”  The mortician replied, “Ever since we’ve become civilized.”  Chris and Vin stepped in and broke through the prejudicial barrier and unwittingly revealed their character to the Mexican peasants who were searching for help.  If the action doesn’t carry you, then open up your ears and be swept up by the music.  I love this movie.

The following are the circumstances that led me  to my island:

I was a stowaway in the Bok Choy bin on a UPS delivery freighter bound for China when a Boston Tea Party type riot broke out and the rioters dumped my Bok Choy bin overboard along with seven tubs of hot Chinese mustard in shark infested waters in the South Pacific.   I was running  away from daytime T.V. in the United States when I grabbed five of my favorite  DVDs with the knowledge that I may never see another great English-speaking  movie again and I hopped a freighter off some wharf in Marina Del Rey.  For five days I fought off the hungry sharks with the hot mustard when I finally landed on a deserted tropical island.   Upon exploring the island I found a beautiful unoccupied home built and forgotten about by M.C. Hammer when he was on one of his famous spending sprees.  It had all the entertainment amenities that I could possibly want, including a complete entertainment center with a big projection T.V. and the whole house was powered by a state-of-the-art fuel cell, but there  was a huge problem; there was no projection screen and there was nothing, anywhere that could be used as one.  I couldn’t even build one out of the sand from the beach since the sand was all black volcanic ash.  I was in a tainted paradise.

One magical foggy evening, after several months of trying to watch “The Magnificent Seven” projected onto the back of a white matchbook cover, I laid down my little screen and I got up to get a drink of coconut milk.   When I returned, I noticed the projector was pointing outside  through the window in the den and I saw the Magnificent Seven riding in full cinemascope glory on the fog bank outside.  Yul Bryner was twenty-feet tall as he walked bravely down the streets of that dusty little town looking for his buddys Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson.   My movie paradise was complete.

Those fog banks don’t appear in this paradise very often, but when they do, the Beatles come back to life and John Belushi’s mischief never gets old.  One evening it was eerie to see the quite night fog starting to disappear at the same time the Duke walked out the door at the end of the Searchers.   Ride away Duke, ride away.  You’ll be back to see me again  on another foggy night on this breathtaking beach.

To:                    Bob Greene
Submitted by:  Raymond Costello

Back in March of 2002, Bob Greene posed a challenge to his readers and I was up to the challenge.   He told his readers to tell him what five movies they would take with them on a desert island.  This was my contribution.