"Ah, the days when Hollywood harbored existentialistic realists, and the entirety of America—from its back roads and highway saloons to its hinterland betting subcultures, working-class desolation, gone-wild farm fields, and small-town cafeterias—was a metaphor for itself, and for all of our postwar lostness. Monte Hellman’s career peak is easily the greatest film I never even heard of as a film-hungry 1970s kid, vanished and hardly ever TV-broadcast, even as I thought the sobering, grown-up likes of Deliverance and Chinatown and Scarecrow were emblematic of an American cinema that had finally reached adulthood. Then came Star Wars."

"Earl Long, younger brother of Huey Long and a two-time governor of Louisiana, was one of the most colorful politicians in the South. By the time A.J. Liebling came to Louisiana in 1960 to write a profile of him for The New Yorker, Long had compiled a truly tumultuous political career. His addiction to betting on the horses was legendary, his affair with the stripper Blaze Starr had been the stuff of gossip columns for years and, most notably, he had been committed to an insane asylum (by his wife, “Miz Blanche”) while he was the sitting governor. Realizing he still held the reins of power even though incarcerated, he fired the head of the state hospital system, discharged himself from the asylum, and simply walked out. As Liebling’s profile became a series of articles and then finally a book (which I treasure), his regard for Long evolved from one of bemused contempt to respectful admiration for a wily politician."