‘I DIDN’T KILL MY WIFE!’  An Oral History of The Fugitive: 

There was no finished script or even an ending and a key cast member became fatally ill during the production. Three decades after the release of the landmark Hollywood thriller, the cast and crew look back at the film’s chaotic creation and reflect on the legacy of the instant classic that almost fell apart.

When Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert sat down at the end of 1993 to pick their 10 favorite movies of the year, they largely selected prestige, Oscar-bait films like The Piano, The Age of Innocence, The Joy Luck Club, and Schindler’s List. They skipped nearly all of the big multiplex hits of the year, including Jurassic Park, Sleepless in Seattle, and Mrs. Doubtfire, making an exception only for The Fugitive. It’s an honor they didn’t give to Die Hard in 1988, The Terminator in 1984, Aliens in 1986, or many other great action movies of the VHS era.

But The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, is a special work that rises above nearly every other movie of its kind. Based on a long-running — and slyly subversive — TV show from the Sixties, the film grabs you right from the opening scene where Ford’s character, Richard Kimble, a respected doctor falsely accused of murdering his wife, escapes from police custody when his prison bus collides with a freight train. And it keeps up the relentless pace until the final scene where dogged U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, played by Jones, tracks him into the bowels of the Chicago Hilton. There’s no CGI, romantic subplots, or anything that distracts from the central narrative or feels the least bit inauthentic. (Well, besides Kimble’s swan dive off a dam that almost certainly would have killed him.)

“Thrillers are a much-debased genre these days, depending on special effects and formula for much of their content,” Ebert wrote in a four-star review. “The Fugitive has the standards of an earlier, more classic time, when acting, character and dialogue were meant to stand on their own, and where characters continued to change and develop right up until the last frame. Here is one of the year’s best films.”

To celebrate The Fugitive‘s 30th anniversary, we compiled an oral history of the movie featuring new interviews with actors Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pantoliano, Sela Ward, Daniel Roebuck, Jeroen Krabbé, L. Scott Caldwell, and Tom Wood, director Andrew Davis, screenwriters David Twohy and Jeb Stuart, producers Keith Barish and Stephen Joel Brown, editor Don Brochu, and casting director Candy Sandrich. (We tried to track down Harrison Ford, but much like Samuel Gerard, we just couldn’t seem to catch him. To be fair, he’s just a teeny bit busy at the moment.)

Read the whole thing.

OPEN THREAD: Speak, friend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Watch China test fire new engine for its planned crewed moon rocket (video): Rocket engine is part of plan to put astronauts on the moon.

BILL WHITTLE: The True Story of the Atomic Bombs.

This is must-see TV.

FIRST CRYPTO MINING, NOW THIS: AI Keeps Using More And More Energy. Where Will It End?

QUESTIONING ELECTION RESULTS IS UNAMERICAN! The last time the Democrats admitted that a Republican had legitimately been elected president was in 1988.

HEY, IT’S LUCRATIVE: Pediatrician group reaffirms support for gender-related care for minors.

INSERT KISSINGER IRAN-IRAQ WAR JOKE HERE: Radical environmentalists glue themselves to road to halt Cycling World Championships.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Remember that Biden Dinner That Joe Biden Never Attended? Well, he did.

“The Bidens are the best at doing exactly what Chairman wants.” That WhatsApp message to a Chinese business associate was the perfect epitaph for the entire Biden corruption scandal. Part of the brilliance of the Biden influence peddling operation was to invest the media in the denial of any scandal. That is no more evident than the much discussed 2015 dinner of President Joe Biden with his son’s foreign associates. The alleged dinner demolished Joe Biden’s long denials of any knowledge of his son’s dealings. Accordingly, the Biden campaign denied he ever attended and the media happily dismissed the account. Well, the dinner meeting reportedly occurred, he attended, and, as usual, most of the media has not fully informed their readers or viewers.  Indeed, even though Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates was central to this denial, most of the media cannot be bothered with such trivialities.

In 2020, the New York Post reported that Hunter introduced then-Vice President Biden to a top executive at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was giving him more than $50,000 per month.

The Biden team and its media allies went into full crisis mode. Andrew Bates, who was still with the communication team of Biden’s 2020 campaign, assured the public that it was false. Politico reported that he had “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” It also reported that Biden’s campaign was “punching back” on the Post’s story as false. Biden associate, Michael Carpenter, denounced it as part of “a Russian disinformation operation” and added “I’m very comfortable saying that.” You will recall that they said the same thing about the Hunter Biden laptop before the election … which the media also unquestioningly accepted.

Related: Burgum Angers Stephanopoulos by Refusing to Discuss Trump, Brings Up Hunter Instead.

“HAVE YOU EVER ROOTED FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES EVER? THERE’S A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING:” Oberlin College Sues Insurers For Refusing To Cover $36 Million It Paid Gibson’s Bakery For Defamation And Other Torts.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME: The Lucid Air EV Should Be a Road-Trip Champ. Our 2,300-Mile Trip Exposed a Problem. “It’s not surprising DC fast-charging infrastructure proved to be the Achilles’ heel of our cross-country road trip.”

SCHADENFREUDE MANIA! The USWNT are out of the World Cup — and everyone seems delighted.

“Any men’s team that was as cocky as this US women’s soccer team and got eliminated this early in a shocking upset would get absolutely obliterated by sports media,” tweeted radio host Clay Travis.

“Maybe next time they can find girls who are proud to play on behalf of the United States and it might up the moxie,” wrote Grabien’s Tom Elliott.

After a languid and leggy group stage performance that saw the USWNT fail to win for the first time since 2015 and go through to the knockout stages in second place, America’s ladies looked much more positive in regulation time against Sweden. But a gargantuan performance from Swedish goalkeeper Zećira Mušović kept the US at bay in regulation time — and after 120 minutes it was time for penalties.

To the delight of many, Megan Rapinoe was one of the three to fluff her lines for the US. After coming on in extra time for Alex Morgan, who had a weak penalty saved in the opening match against Vietnam, Rapinoe skied her effort well over the bar — a dispiriting final kick of her career. Then for Sweden, Lina Hurtig’s shot was initially saved by Alyssa Naeher, but the ball rebounded off the woodwork and was shown by the video assistant referee to have fully crossed the line: the US were out.

Exit quote: “‘On a positive note, Ms. Rapinoe wants to pack the USWNT with biological males, so they should win everything going forward,’ joked Piers Morgan after the US defeat.”

Speaking of Piers:

🤣🤣 They just put in their worst ever World Cup performance and most of them refused to sing the National Anthem. Who did they make proud, exactly? https://t.co/83J4sDK1rw

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 6, 2023

And there’s even more good news. As America’s Newspaper of Record noted in December of last year when the original US men’s national team “was dealt a crushing 1-3 loss by the Netherlands:” Nation Relieved To No Longer Have To Pretend To Like Soccer.

THE KYŪJŌ CONSPIRACY: How a Group of Japanese Officers Planned to Overthrow the Emperor and Continue WW2.

STACY MCCAIN: American Journalism Is Decadent and Depraved.

[Wes Pruden of the Washington Times] died three years ago, but his memory lives on, and I have to wonder what he would make of a headline that appeared this week in the Huff Post: “RFK Jr.’s Latest Tweet Is Being Widely Interpreted As A Nazi Dog Whistle.” The key phrase there is “Widely Interpreted,” by which they mean, random people on Twitter are saying stuff.

Where did it come from, this business of turning Twitter content into “news”? The root cause of this phenomenon is probably laziness. Rather than pick up the phone and call some sources about what’s happening in the real world — or, God forbid, leave Mommy’s basement to see for yourself what’s happening — it’s much easier just to cut and paste something you found on the Internet and pretend that this is “reporting.” But I digress.

What was the “dog whistle” transmitted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was, according to Huff Post’s “sources,” a secret signal of his admiration for the Third Reich? To quote his Tweet in its entirety:

Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.

Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request.  Secretary Mayorkas: “I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.”

Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.

Does that make you want to blitzkrieg Poland or what? But perhaps you don’t have a Secret Nazi Message Decoder Ring (which various kooks on the Internet seem to possess) and so you missed the Telltale Clue, i.e., the proximity of the number “14” to the number “88.” Indeed, these numbers do have a significance for neo-Nazis, the “14” referring to the notorious “Fourteen Words” creed of terrorist David Lane, and “88” referencing the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH” = Heil Hitler.

As James Taranto famously wrote, if you can hear the whistle, then you’re the dog.

And it’s good to see that Andrew Breitbart’s Eeeevil Plan For The Huffington Post Continues To Bear Fruit, even at this late a date.

SELF-DEFENSE: What’s on your hip isn’t as important as important as what’s inside your head.

BOOK OF THE DAY: SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere. #CommissionEarned

WOW:

If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill.

No limit.

Please let us know.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2023

UPDATE (From Ed):

I think I qualify. ☺️ https://t.co/t2MryUFLtS

— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) August 6, 2023

(Updated and bumped.)

QUESTION ASKED: Hiroshima 1945: Didn’t the Atomic Bombs Prevent the Red Army from Sweeping through Western Europe and the Entire Continent from Falling Under Stalin’s Iron Fist?

MASSIVE RESISTANCE: Bid to end race preferences at military academies blocked and censored. “The student group that got the Supreme Court to end affirmative action in college admissions reviews is now targeting the nation’s military academies. But there’s an unexpected hitch. The effort has been slapped down as harmful by the leading international presswire outlet that refused to distribute a press release about it. EIN Presswire told Students for Fair Admissions that it would not accept the press release, citing an ‘intent to harm’ clause in its rules and restrictions.”

Disagreeeing with leftist politics is now considered “harm” by our ruling class.

TRANQUILITY BASE HERE; THE EGO HAS LANDED: George Soros Thinks He is “Some Kind of God” and That Made Him Uncomfortable Until He “Started Living It Out.” No Really, He Said This.

It seems that Soros believes he was anointed by God.

“I fancied myself as some kind of god …” he once wrote.

“If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble.”

When asked by Britain’s Independent newspaper to elaborate on that passage, Soros said, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.”

Since I began to live it out.

Those unfamiliar with Soros would probably dismiss the statement out of hand. But for those who have followed his career and sociopolitical endeavors, it cannot be taken quite so lightly.

Soros has proved that with the vast resources of money at his command he has the ability to make the once unthinkable acceptable. His work as a self-professed “amoral” financial speculator has left millions in poverty when their national currencies were devaluated, and he pumped so much cash into shaping former Soviet republics to his liking that he has bragged that the former Soviet empire is now the “Soros Empire.”

Now he’s turned his eye on the internal affairs of the United States. Today’s U.S., he writes in his latest book, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” is a “threat to the world,” run by a Republican Party that is the devil child of an unholy alliance between “market fundamentalists” and “religious fundamentalists.”

We have become a “supremacist” nation.

“Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad,” Soros once confided on British television.

“In fact, my grandfather was actually paranoid. I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”

But has he? Why Billionaires are Obsessed With Blocking Out the Sun.

At the Munich Security Conference last week, George Soros got onstage to talk about the existential risk that climate change poses to human civilization, as well as what appeared to be the 92-year-old Hungarian-American billionaire’s preferred method of addressing it: brightening the clouds over the Arctic to reflect the sun’s energy away from the melting ice caps. But questions aside as to whether Soros—ludicrously maligned in conspiracy-minded right-wing circles—is the best advocate for solar geoengineering, he’s not the only billionaire who’s recently become interested in bouncing the sun’s rays back into space. Among the world’s ultra-rich, plans to swat back the sun’s rays like they’re capital gains taxes (to, as it were, apply a generous helping of sunblock to the earth’s atmosphere) have seemingly been all the rage.

Note that this is an idea so out there, even the Obama administration didn’t try to implement it, despite its “science” “czar” bringing up the topic in an AP interview:

QUESTION: Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?

GOOD: Promising Drug That Can Kill All Solid Tumor Cancers.

SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT: FDA’s Approval Of A New Alzheimer’s Drug Is A Real But Very Modest Advance.

ROGER KIMBALL: The atomic bomb saved Japanese lives, too.

This year, the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb has given the controversy over the development and deployment of that awesome weapon a new urgency.

Something else that has contributed to the fraught atmosphere is the war in Ukraine. After all, one side in that conflict, Russia, controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, more than 6,000 warheads. My friend Roger L. Simon is right: atomic weapons are “as close or closer to being used today than ever since World War Two because of the endless war in Ukraine.”

That is a sobering thought.To his succeeding questions “Was this worth doing? Was it moral to build such an extreme weapon?” I would answer “yes” and “yes.” I also, by the way, support our use of this most horrible weapon in Japan. Why? Because its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War Two. In so doing, it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Data point: the military is still using the huge supply of Purple Hearts it manufactured in anticipation of an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Really? Somebody should make a video about that:

HEALTH CARE: Oregon university clinic bans patient after she criticized trans flag.

Barbera had sent a message through MyChart, a health portal that allows patients to see records and correspond with their doctors. Barbera thought her message through the app would only go to her physicians, but she was told later other staff had seen her comments.

Several weeks later, Barbera received a message from OHSU Practice Manager Stein Berger dated June 29, according to screenshots obtained by Reduxx.

“Richmond is an all-inclusive clinic and we value and advocate for diversity,” Berger wrote.

He stated Barbera had made “transphobic remarks…harmful to our staff.”

“Effective immediately, you [Barbera] are discharged from receiving medical care at the Richmond Family Medicine Clinic,” Berger wrote. “This action is being taken because of ongoing disrespectful and hurtful remarks about our LGBTQ community and staff … Please note that you are also now dismissed from all OHSU Family Medicine clinics, including Immediate Care clinics.”

“All-inclusive clinic,” indeed.