But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century
John Ford's reputation today can be summed up perhaps best by a quote from the poster of Orson Welles Citizen Kane. "Some called him a hero...others called him a heel." Welles himself said Ford was one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, while Quentin Tarantino called him a white supremacist. Ford and his leading man John Wayne have come to stand in, for some modern audiences, for America's legacy of colonialism and white washing, for the worst crimes committed in the name of American exceptionalism. And yet in their movies is breathtaking poetry and emotional catharsis second to none in the American cinema. This director, the great poet of the cinema, also kept in his images the malicious violence of the American mission. But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century is a reckoning with all the beauty and the white hot pain in the movies of Ford and his Right wing stars. Ford the socialist, Ford the anti-communist, Ford the general, Ford the artist, they all lived in one body and this book is an attempt to track his art and politics, to make sense of the greatest contradiction of the American cinema, as well as show just how much his influence is still felt today.
With a Forward by Adam Piron
Cover Design by Tony Stella
8.5” x 5.5”, Softcover, 253 pages
Acclaim
"A young cinephile meets an American legend and the effect is electrifying. Scout Tafoya explores every Ford film, making dazzling connections between those who influenced the master (e.g.Murnau) and those he influenced, as he passes effortlessly between past and present, [citing Ford’s visual echoes in so many modern directors]. Tafoya addresses performances, politics, and social context, but what grabs the reader is his own unique style—rambunctious, lyrical, conversational, but deeply knowledgeable. This is a wizardly book of first-class scholarship."
-Molly Haskell, pioneering film critic and author of From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, and Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir
“Scout Tafoya revisits the movies of John Ford neither to praise nor bury him, but to show how alive his movies are 60 years after his death. To paraphrase Tafoya, reading about Ford’s films in chronological order has rewards far beyond the poetry with which the filmmaker used his camera and with which Tafoya uses his words.”
- Carrie Rickey, award winning feminist art critic for The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, The Boston Herald, and Artforum
“Scout Tafoya takes a deep dive into Ford’s psyche, pinpointing both why the director is so significant to American cinema, and why he’s so easily dismissed by modern audiences. He doesn’t shy away from the full history and injects his own feelings on Ford’s work, with full awareness that his subject is a complicated and eccentric one. He sheds light on innuendo and masked themes, reminding us that Ford may’ve even had a biting sense of humor. Required reading for any student of the great American story.”
- Joel Potrykus, Director of Relaxer and The Alchemist Cookbook
“When some folks are ready to say, “So long, ya bastard!” to John Ford, Tafoya instead marshals his work into the present, wrestling with the sociopolitical complexities and lasting influence of the American master. Tafoya’s casual, contemplative prose guides readers on a voyage through the complete Ford oeuvre as he draws connections to filmmakers as disparate as Robert Bresson, Jacques Tati, and Roland Emmerich. God Made Him a Poet is not only a personal reflection on a complicated artist but a timely reminder that great art should continue to challenge us.”
- Jared Gores, Reel Fanatics
About the Author
Scout Tafoya is a filmmaker, critic, and author from Doylestown, PA. His writing has been featured in The Village Voice, Film Comment, and The Los Angeles Review of Books among many other publications. He’s the creator of The Unloved at RogerEbert.com, the longest running continuous video essay series on film. His movies include Eyam, House of Little Deaths, and Hang The Pale Bastard, and his first book is Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the first book length analytical study of the director of Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.