Harrison Ford shows us the way

The wisdom behind some F-bombs while filming Indiana Jones

Hello friends and readers! There is a lot going on in the world that represents the constant tide of change. Did anyone see the launch of Apple Vision Pro, the tech company’s new VR headset that promises to change our relationship with the physical and virtual world? I’m not excited. No surprise there.

Please tell me dear reader, what are you optimistic and pessimistic about when you watch the promo video for Vision Pro? Tweet me at @ stephen_kent89, post in the comments or Reply via email.

On a related note. Reality isn’t very popular these days. That’s why I took note when I read a story in Variety about Harrison Ford.

I wrote about it for the Washington Examiner. Here’s an excerpt.

---

On the set of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Ford has been causing a little trouble. The good kind, of course. Ford has been in the midst of a career renaissance, taking his first-ever roles on television, both in Yellowstone's 1923 as the Dutton family patriarch and in Apple TV’s psychiatric comedy series, Shrinking. In both, he’s been leaning hard into his age, with all the grace, respect, and occasional bouts of frustration that growing old involves. We could all stand to learn something from Ford’s firm grasp on reality.

As reported in Variety, Ford was completing a scene for Indiana Jones on horseback and suddenly found himself surrounded by stagehands wanting to help him down from the horse. Ford said he thought at that moment, “‘What the f***?’ Like I was being attacked by gropers. I look down, and there’s three stunt guys there making sure I didn’t fall off the stirrup.”

As he was being set upon by the stage crew, Ford reportedly said to them, “Leave me the f*** alone. Leave me alone. I’m an old man getting off a horse, and I want it to look like that!” Anyone who has ever watched Ford in anything can picture the words rolling off his tongue effortlessly.

The charm of Ford standing up for something so simple as awkwardly dismounting a horse cannot be overstated. We live in a time of incredible defiance of nature. To say nothing of the milewide divide in America over the biological realities of sex and gender, we’re watching in slow motion as the pervasiveness of on-screen special effects blends with real life in the form of virtual reality platforms such as Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse.

It feels like we’re entering a new chapter in human history in which we are finally able to divorce ourselves from certain realities as simple as eventual death. It’s everywhere. Black Mirror on Netflix, Upload on Amazon Prime, Succession’s final episodes on HBO, which see the Roy children promoting a retirement community called Living+ where residents could live curated lives enmeshed with Disney World-esque experiences. Oh, and they seemed to casually suggest pioneering eternal life technology to make the Living+ value proposition even greater. This is not far removed from our own world in the slightest.

Please go read the article in the Washington Examiner. It’s painfully relevant to so much happening before our very eyes in a world that refuses the mantle of what is real.

Our heroes are those who show us both how to live and how to die. Soon, we’ll learn what happens with Indiana Jones in The Dial of Destiny, but in the meantime, Ford continues to show us the way. If you’re going to ride a horse at 80, you dismount on your own, and slowly.

One for the road

Don’t you hate the phony uplifting music of technology ads? I fixed it.