On a Greyhound bus from Tennessee;
No need to worry,
I ain't in no hurry -
Missouri loves company..."
- 'Missouri Loves Company',
Ringo Starr
Well folks, we made it! They said we were mad, but we've finally broken the back of this beast and we've crossed the half-way point. So symbolically we're heading back upstream and crossing the Mississippi at St Louis, Missouri, 'the Gateway to the West'.
So let's pause for a moment beneath the Gateway Arch and look around. What is Missouri? Across the wide Mississippi it is symbolically the start of the great Midwest. It has a famous city in St Louis on its eastern border, and another on its western in Kansas City, the 'city of fountains'.
Okay, so Kansas City isn't that famous. I only know of it because I used to work with a guy from Missouri who always wore his Kansas City Chiefs cap and who told me tales of his upbringing in the marvellously-named town of Knob Noster. I cannot honestly say how many of his stories of twisters and storm-shelters, santeria-practicing Mexicans and uncles in the KKK are true. But he has certainly made me think more about Missouri than I ever would have done before. Pre-Tim all I could really have told you was that President Harry S. Truman hailed from the state, and it was in Fulton, Missouri, that Winston Churchill first coined the phrase "Iron Curtain" (just think how different the history of the Cold War would have been if he had called it "the Ferrous Drape"...).
So with Ringo's atrocious pun ringing in our ears, let's settle down and turn our attentions to this week's three films. The three I have chosen are:
- Winter's Bone (2010)
- Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
- Waiting for Guffman (1997)
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