The Searchers

"Well, Reverend, that tears it! From now on, you stay out of this. All of ya. I dont want you with me. I dont need ya for what I got to do."

"[repeated line] Thatll be the day !"

"I figure a mans only good for one oath at a time. I gave mine to the Confederate States of America."

"The Biggest, Roughest, Toughest ...and Most Beautiful Picture Ever Made!"

"It just so happens we be Texicans. Texican is nothin but a human man way out on a limb, this year and next. Maybe for a hundred more. But I dont think itll be forever. Some day, this countrys gonna be a fine good place to be. Maybe it needs our bones in the ground before that time can come."

"Another speaker, Amanda Milius, is the daughter of John Milius, who was the screenwriter for the first two Dirty Harry films and Apocalypse Now. She grew up in L.A. and wound up in the Trump administration. She argued that America needs to get back to making self-confident movies like The Searchers, the 1956 John Ford Western. This was an unapologetic movie, she asserted, about how Americans tamed the West and how Christian values got brought to “savage, undeveloped land.” This is about as dumb a reading of The Searchers as it’s possible to imagine. The movie is actually the modern analogue to the Oresteia, by Aeschylus. The complex lead figure, played by John Wayne, is rendered barbaric and racist while fighting on behalf of westward pioneers. By the end, he is unfit to live in civilized society. But we don’t exactly live in an age that acknowledges nuance. Milius distorts the movie into a brave manifesto of anti-woke truths—and that sort of distortion has a lot of buyers among this crowd."

"Natalie Wood - Debbie Edwards (older)"

"He had to find her... he had to find her..."

"Jeffrey Hunter - Martin Pawley"

"Our turnin back dont mean nothin, not in the long run. Shes alive, shes safe for a while. Theyll keep her and raise her as one of their own til, until shes of an age to... Injun will chase a thing till he thinks hes chased it enough. Then, he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns theres such a thing as a critter thatll just keep comin on. So well find em in the end, I promise you. Well find em. Just as sure as a turnin of the earth."