"The Vast of Night" and Snippy the Horse — Below Decks: Bannon Edition
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
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Now Show: The Vast of Night (2019)
It was front page news in 2006 when Snippy the Horse was put on display in the lobby of Dell’s Insurance in Alamosa, Colo. I was probably 16, and Snippy was a relic from a famous UFO encounter decades before. Everyone in town went to see the horse skeleton, and Dell’s likely had more foot traffic for the weeks Snippy was there than at any point prior. The story was that beginning in the 1950s extraterrestrials — grays or little green men or something else entirely — had come down from the heavens periodically to visit local farms and mutilate horses and cattle. Snippy was one such horse that was supposedly taken up in 1967, cut apart with lasers or some other high tech cutting tool and then deposited back on the desert floor along with some green goo, burn marks and radiation.
Snippy’s is a true story, to a certain extent. The horse was a real horse and a lot of people continue to believe that the Appaloosa was abducted and mutilated by aliens. Whether that’s actually what happened is an open question, of course, but the furor created by the discovery of the horse and the way the story ricochetted around local newspapers and radio broadcasts until it captured the attention of the U.S. Air Force, national newswires and even the foreign press is typical of unexplained occurrences during the early decades of the Cold War. The golden age of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial experiences was the 1950s and 60s, and it has had an indelible impact on American culture and entertainment ever since, from The Twilight Zone to the X Files, and now, The Vast of Night.
The Vast of Night is the first film from director Andrew Patterson and was made on a shoestring budget of just $700,000. It deliberately follows in the footsteps of The Twilight Zone and begins with a Rod Serling-esque monologue introducing the story. From there we enter the 1950s and follow a small town radio DJ and news junkie and a young switchboard operator as they try to determine the origins of a mysterious radio broadcast and flashing lights that are appearing in the sky. Everett Sloan, the radio DJ (Jake Horowitz), and Fay Crocker, the switchboard operator (Sierra McCormick) own the screen, and huge sections of the film are comprised of tense, audio-centric sequences of one or the other of them talking to callers or listening to sounds coming in over the wire.
The rest of the time we follow them around the environs of fictional Cayuga, NM (a nod to Serling’s production company, Cayuga Productions) as they uncover the secrets of the extraterrestrials paying them a visit. The story is taught and uses sound, light and shadows to create a deep and mysterious world. The fun of the film comes not just from trying to figure out the mystery alongside the characters but also from getting to steep in the paranoia and technological excitement of 1950s America. The budgetary limitations also forced Patterson to tackle the story with the tricks and styling of classic TV and films. Most importantly, expert sound design renders the world of The Vast of Night totally immersive and gives it an undeniable texture of realness.
The one failing of the film is its limited canvas. We learn little about the lives of Fay and Everett before the night in question, and we see only a slice of the town. These limitations are both a result of budgetary constraints and in their way a deliberate recreation of the settings of many episodes of The Twilight Zone: a small town or a city street or a house with a strange occurrence. In Serling’s show, these were short stories, limited to just a little over 20 minutes. At feature length, audience members who have not been steeped in American science fiction and pulp may find themselves wishing for more. Nevertheless, The Vast of Night is an entertaining and chilling fable about the night something arrived in a small New Mexico town. It’s the perfect diversion for a hot, late summer night.
Below Deck: Bannon Edition
In case anyone missed it, Steve Bannon was arrested for fraud yesterday. He was plucked from a super yacht that had been trawling the waters off the coast of Connecticut by none other than U.S. Postal Service investigators. No joke, the Post Office got the guy! Not only that, but the yacht in question is owned by a Chinese billionaire with his own checkered past. It seems the universe has a sense of justice after all. The only unfortunate aspect of this is that Bravo didn’t have a Below Deck film crew on the yacht. Can you imagine the First Stew drama on a boat with Bannon as primary? Did the deck crew pull their weight? Did they serve champagne to the Postal Inspectors when they boarded? Inquiring minds need to know, and this is a story that deserves the reality TV treatment.
Reading List:
Here’s a look back at the 50-year history of Snippy the Horse from Alamosa’s own Valley Courier.
Top GOP political operative Stuart Stevens gave a far-ranging interview over at Politico about the state of the Republican Party and his responsibility for the current political climate. Must read material for political junkies.
Lastly, don’t miss the New York Times Magazine profile of a castle-dwelling British orthodontist who has been lionized by incels for bucking the conventional wisdom about… braces and soft foods. No joke.