itsjustified

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Your Bourbon Watch posts just gave me life. I didn't even know I needed them. But being that I live in bourbon country and know it well despite rarely drinking it myself, your posts were so interesting!

Comments like yours give me life. Thanks so much!

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The crazy wall in action. I told you this was relevant to my interests. Check out the headlines:

“Aliens Attack Kentucky Town” “Harlan Mayor Hides Alien Body in Basement” “Ancient Astronaut Proof Found in South Kentucky”

How was this not the show? Nicky Cush was just begging for a visit from the Mulder-Scully division.

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This is relevant to ALL of my interests. Dave Blass, you are a blessing. (And so is this @crazywalls blog.)

Justified, season 4

We’re sympathetic to crazies here. I mean, it’s hardly their fault the whole world is against them, right? When everyone’s trying to get you… or the people who should obviously die are only going to die with your help… or if the entire universe is on the verge of collapse and only you can save it… that’ll send anyone a bit crazy. So we don’t blame them for making crazy walls. It’s only natural. We’ve all been there!

But if someone confesses to fabricating a fake crazy wall, you have to wonder about them. Dave Blass, the production designer of Justified, sent in these shots of a crazy wall he had made, and even a video in which he describes it. He appears sane, as if this is solely for entertainment but, really, we know… We know it’s a cover. He lives here. He’s ready. That wall’s his plan.

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Today, in things that are killing me and/or making me want to write an AU season 6.

You trust me?

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Things I miss: Raylan checkin’ on Art, Art checkin’ on Raylan.

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The Bitter Southerner: Kentucky Gets Hip to Hemp

For Kentucky, for Appalachia and for small-scale agriculture, hemp could be another step in the move away from the mono-economy of coal, a volatile industry that is everything hemp is not: single-use and dirty. Hemp roots are literally pulling these mountains back together, bringing hope for farmers and the entire region. Whether it fulfills that hope remains to be seen.

After all the strip mining and slurry spills and mountaintop removal I’ve talked about during Justified, a different side to that story is long overdue. This is a great photo essay. If you’re interested in the region, it’s worth checking out. Maybe, just maybe, a tentative hope for the future isn’t all fiction. 

(Although you know Loretta McCready will be all over that shit.)

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I didn’t realize this question was asked at my main blog until I posted the answer, so I’m reblogging it here if any of you guys want to chime in.

hi! long-time reader of your justified blog here. i have sort of an odd question, i guess. i'm an english major, i study english translation in poland and i've been thinking of writing my thesis on translating, well... "cool" language, so to say. i thought elmore leonard would be perfect for that, but aside from some "when the women come out to dance" (duh), i haven't actually read much of his work tbh. would you be able/willing to recommend some book that i could use? thanks so much in advance.

My pleasure! What a great idea for a thesis.

I would say Rum Punch could be a good place to start. That’s the book Tarantino adapted into Jackie Brown, and between Jackie, Ordell Robbie, and every other character in its pages, it exudes coolness in about a dozen different ways. Swag could be another good one— lots of great dialogue, and its two main characters prove that Elmore gave even his pettiest and dumbest of criminals their own style and voice. If you’re looking for the single coolest character that Elmore wrote, I could write my own thesis on Robert Taylor, the smooth-talking blues-loving mastermind at the heart of Tishomingo Blues. He walks and talks the Boyd Crowder gospel of Always Be Cool.

And I promise it’s not just because I’ll always find a way to recommend Split Images, but if this would be interesting to you: it has, besides my favorite kind of hero (the soft-spoken, working-class good guys), a great Polish character in the form of corrupt ex-cop Walter Kouza, with a great fondness for Hamtramck, Detroit’s Polish city-within-a-city.

Really, though, you could pick a book of Elmore’s off the shelf and find some kind of gold. There’s no wrong place to start. And if you’ve already got When The Women Come Out To Dance, that’s a great sampler of the different styles and eras of his writing, from the westerns to the crime stories to the character studies of all different kinds of his people. Oh! And I can suggest Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard by Charles Rzepka for some in-depth analysis of that very subject.

I hope that helps! If you’re looking for something specific, hit me up here or via email with any questions. And if anyone out there has recommendations, feel free to pass them along!

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I’ve been saying this for YEARS.

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My backyard Labor Day reading.

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I haven’t had the chance to listen yet, but with that list of names, it’s gonna be good!

BONUS episode today! From ATX Television Festival​, the Justified​ finale panel! Esquire’s Andy Langer chats with writer/creator Graham Yost​, writer/producers Dave Andron and Fred Golan, director Jon Avnet​, and co-star Nick Searcy​ (“Art Mullen”) about ending the brilliant FX series based upon the Elmore Leonard story.

itunes // not itunes

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I'm so sad I found this blog, right after the show (well, not RIGHT after) ended. My SO, who is a bourbon nut, and I were just talking about, the other night, how we should go back, and look at all the episodes where people are drinking bourbon, and play "spot the bottle". Maybe even go all the way to crazytown, and try to source/price how much got drunk over the series run. I mean, some of those are NOT cheap.

On the contrary, I am happy to welcome you to crazytown! In my unofficial sourcing, where Blanton’s runs $60 a bottle, I would bet Art Mullen has the highest bourbon budget per capita.* But then, who needed it more?

*Well, save for Quarles sipping Pappy like iced tea.

For all you non-bourbon-nuts out there, the coolest thing to know is that each bourbon tells a story. When Art’s drinking Blanton’s, or when I’m writing up a Bourbon Watch, it’s because what they’re pouring is also informing who these characters are. The bourbons they drink define them not only personally, but sociologically and financially, as Taylor Elmore has said. It’s something the writers and crew took great care to do.

So Anon: if you get a more official count you’ll have to let me know.

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so we know that boyd went into the military after the mines, and that raylan went to college (i can't remember if that was ever outright said in the show but i vaguely remember hearing or reading something like that) -- but has it ever been mentioned what raylan studied while in college? (and if not, do you have any theories on what he might've studied?

Actually, in Elmore’s books, Raylan is a Marine who then joined the Marshals, so he went the military route just like Boyd. But TV Raylan makes no mention of that, nor what Raylan did study once Aunt Helen got him out of Harlan and on his way to a college eduction. (You’re probably remembering Save My Love, where Boyd tells Carol Johnson how they knew each other growing up: “Until the age of 19, when Raylan went off to college and the Marshals, and I went off to Kuwait.” It gets referenced a couple times throughout the show, though Raylan is ever cagey about details.) 

Knowing Raylan, and knowing Raylan’s defiance of Arlo and early great love for Rawhide and Have Gun — Will Travel, my guess is that he went straight for the law enforcement track: criminal justice, criminology, anything that would give him a leg up on the gunslinging career he wanted.

That said, it’s kinda fun imagining Raylan in a lit class, writing papers on Emily Dickinson.

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“Look. I got people maybe out to kill me, Derrick. You came just to get back together you’re a damn fool.”

It’s so nice that Loretta is biding that advice Raylan gave her to take it easy on the boys.

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My summer reading: Elmore Leonard’s Glitz. Raylan and Tim should just start a book club already, because I give you Givens and Gutterson in Alive Day: 

Raylan: Wonderful things can happen when you sow seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes. Tim: You just come up with that? Raylan: I read it somewhere. Tim: Well, do me a favor and say it again slow so I can write it down.