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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Canoerebel on one of his trips to the Apalachians

Yeah, those banjos are easier to play with six fingers . . . [:)]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

Dan -

No worries, I just found a picture of Cap'n from their recent Thanksgiving party at work.

That is absolutely slanderous sir! I no longer have that pimple on my neck!

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Canoerebel on one of his trips to the Apalachians

Yeah, those banjos are easier to play with six fingers . . . [:)]

[:D]

Obviously from Georgia.

I'd be more specific and say NW Georgia...

Tony is one of these guys...

I'm on the left of this picture

How I often feel my gunners look after an air to air or naval battle

How I often feel my gunners look after an air to air or naval battle

ORIGINAL: Skyros

Obviously from Georgia.

SOMEBODY'S cousin . . .

ORIGINAL: jrcar

I'm on the left of this picture

You're gay? (Not that there's anything wrong with that. [:)])

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


You're gay? (Not that there's anything wrong with that. [:)])

[:D][:D][:D] Bullwinkle...always good for a laugh but no social filter.

ORIGINAL: USS America

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Canoerebel on one of his trips to the Apalachians

Yeah, those banjos are easier to play with six fingers . . . [:)]

[:D]

Here is the real story of Banjo Boy. It seems even with 6 fingers he couldn't fake the fretwork so the director had another kid stick his hand up his sleve for the shot[:D] Also, Bajo Boy (Lonnie) thought Burt Reynolds was stuck up.[:D] Here is the question for Canoerebel..."Do you live in Rabun County and how many digits do you have?"


The Pictures
The Return of Banjo Boy
by Tad Friend November 17, 2003

Billy Redden is synonymous with a singular type of movie role: the banjo boy. He got his start in the 1972 film “Deliverance,” which followed four urbanites on a canoe trip through rural Georgia. After a bit of exposition, the film really begins at a backwoods gas station, where Redden, as Lonny, sits with a banjo on a porch swing, arrestingly still, his pale, flat eyes and stony face those of a fledgling buzzard. (On a casting call at the local Clayton Elementary School, the filmmakers had chosen Redden for his insular look.) Ned Beatty’s character, Bobby, glances at Lonny and murmurs, “Talk about genetic deficiencies—isn’t that pitiful?” But when Drew, played by Ronny Cox, strums a chord on his guitar, Lonny answers it, and soon the two are locked in a gleeful call-and-response, the bluegrass hit “Dueling Banjos.” “Goddamn, you play a mean banjo!” Drew shouts, going to shake Lonny’s hand—whereupon the boy turns away. Redden’s scene-stealing inscrutability foreshadows the events to come, including Drew’s death and, notoriously, Bobby’s being forced to squeal like a pig.

As it turned out, though, there wasn’t much demand in Hollywood for banjo boys. Several months ago, when the director Tim Burton was on location in Montgomery, Alabama, shooting “Big Fish,” he kept asking where the boy from “Deliverance” was now, because he had a banjo-picking role in mind for him. No one knew. “The state film commissioners down there tried to placate me, or laugh it off,” Burton says. “But I was serious; the banjo boy was such an iconic figure to me. Whatever that visceral thing is in film, when you can’t explain why a scene grabs you—well, that scene had it.” Eventually, two “Big Fish” crew members drove through northeast Georgia one Sunday, asking, “Anyone know where the banjo boy lives?”

They finally found him in Dillard. Redden, who is now forty-seven, works ten-hour days as a cook and dishwasher at the nearby Cookie Jar Café and spends much of his leisure time playing an equally insular on-line wargame which seems a cross between Risk and Civil War re-enacting, He was hesitant at first about taking time off to appear in another film. For one thing, he had always regretted being the poster boy for “Deliverance” ’s Gothic view of rural America. For another, he hadn’t enjoyed working with the film’s star, Burt Reynolds. “Burt didn’t want to say nothing to nobody,” Redden says now. “He wasn’t polite. And he made us look real bad—he said on television that all people in Rabun County do is watch cars go by and spit.”

What’s more, Redden’s relationship to banjos remained complicated. For starters, he didn’t know how to play. John Boorman, the director of “Deliverance,” had presented him with the instrument he used in the scene, declaring, “You pick a mean banjo!” Redden had always treasured the remark, particularly because—after he proved unable to convincingly fake the left-hand fretwork—Boorman had had to deploy another boy to hide behind the swing and slip his hand through Redden’s sleeve to finger the changes. But Redden’s mother, a custodial worker, had promptly sold the banjo. “I told her, ‘I’m not mad,’ ” Redden says. “My daddy had died when I was a baby, and she needed the money so bad for bills. It did mean something to me, though, that banjo.”


<cont>

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/1 ... alk_friend

Rabun County is in the northeast corner of the state.  I live in the northwest sector.  But Rabun County is beautiful country with good people.

I do have some inside scoop on Deliverance, though.  Back in the mid 1990s, I wanted to write an article about the movie.  So, using the Internet and telephone, one day I managed to find out where the author, James Dickey, was living.  At that time, he was Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina.  I called his residence, and lo-and-behold got him on the phone.  I spoke with him for about one-half hour.  He was very gracious and provided plenty of good quotes.  He also told me about the canoeing trip with two friends that inspired him to write Deliverance.  I wrote "A River Ran Through It" based on that interview.  Dickey died two or three years afterwards. 

Dickey wrote one other novel - To the White Sea (I think that's it) about a B-29 crew member shot down near Tokyo, who then escapes overland to the north.  I tried to read it, but it was pretty awful. Dickey did serve in the Air Force in the Pacific in WWII.

Deliverance is a very well written book, but it is vulgar and very dark.

Wow...cool story.

In 2009, Georgia Backroads magazine published a story ranking the "ten best novels about Georgia."&nbsp; Deliverance ranked third on the list.&nbsp; Here's&nbsp;the magazine's description:
&nbsp;
Deliverance (1970), James Dickey – A dark and gripping tale of four middle-aged suburban men out to enjoy a canoeing trip on a remote mountain river when circumstances suddenly immerse them in a life-or-death struggle against both man and nature.&nbsp; Of Georgia’s Ten Best Novels, this one best qualifies as a “page-turner.”&nbsp;

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Deliverance is a very well written book, but it is vulgar and very dark.

You aren't kidding! I had to read it in high school, and remember thinking along the lines of 'what the heck is this?'

Deliverance did for mountain people in the American South what Jaws did for sharks.
&nbsp;
There are still plenty of "outsiders"&nbsp; whose perception of the southern mountains is tainted by Deliverance.&nbsp; Of course it was an exaggeration.&nbsp; The Georgia mountain people are nothing like they were portrayed to be.
&nbsp;
If any of you AE gents ever finds yourself in need of a great summertime outing, accept my open invitation to visit us here in northwest Georgia.&nbsp; We will spend a day in the mountains swimming in one of the world's great swimming holes - the clean, clear water in the pools at Jacks River Falls.&nbsp; We'll finish our hike back with IBC Root Beer chilled on ice for hours.&nbsp; Then we'll finish the day with a massive feasting on "The Empire" pizza at Little Rome restaurant in Chatsworth.&nbsp; If there's a better way to spend a hot summer day, I don't know what it might be.
&nbsp;
So, y'all are invited!

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Deliverance did for mountain people in the American South what Jaws did for sharks.

There are still plenty of "outsiders"  whose perception of the southern mountains is tainted by Deliverance.  Of course it was an exaggeration.  The Georgia mountain people are nothing like they were portrayed to be.

If any of you AE gents ever finds yourself in need of a great summertime outing, accept my open invitation to visit us here in northwest Georgia.  We will spend a day in the mountains swimming in one of the world's great swimming holes - the clean, clear water in the pools at Jacks River Falls.  We'll finish our hike back with IBC Root Beer chilled on ice for hours.  Then we'll finish the day with a massive feasting on "The Empire" pizza at Little Rome restaurant in Chatsworth.  If there's a better way to spend a hot summer day, I don't know what it might be.

So, y'all are invited!

I assume there's some bass fishing in that invitation somewhere? [8D]

Those critters are probably in the 'perfect pool' of calm water...

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Deliverance did for mountain people in the American South what Jaws did for sharks.

There are still plenty of "outsiders"  whose perception of the southern mountains is tainted by Deliverance.  Of course it was an exaggeration.  The Georgia mountain people are nothing like they were portrayed to be.

If any of you AE gents ever finds yourself in need of a great summertime outing, accept my open invitation to visit us here in northwest Georgia.  We will spend a day in the mountains swimming in one of the world's great swimming holes - the clean, clear water in the pools at Jacks River Falls.  We'll finish our hike back with IBC Root Beer chilled on ice for hours.  Then we'll finish the day with a massive feasting on "The Empire" pizza at Little Rome restaurant in Chatsworth.  If there's a better way to spend a hot summer day, I don't know what it might be.

So, y'all are invited!

My family, Suttons, are from North Georgia. Aside from the occasional horsethief, they all turned out pretty good. [;)]