Customer Reviews

American Experience: Buffalo Bill

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Well done DVD with historic clips and plenty of information and history. I would reccomend this DVD to anyone who is looking for the inside scoop on Bill Cody. I especially loved the old film clips which are hard to find.

Brad Pitt's film showed how Jesse James' fame was made by books that were inaccurate. Banderas made a movie in which Pancho Villa's attempt to make a film was more important than the cause for his revolutionary activities. This work illustrates that B. Bill was a showman who worked their entertainment, rather than history.
If I remember correctly, the AE series has completed documentaries on Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull before this one. Since those two performed in Bill's show, I wonder if footage was lifted from those former works. As B. Bill's show had a famous woman, famous Native American, and famous white man, the interviewees reflected those three groups as well.
Surprisingly, this work made me think about African-American history at times. The work basically says Europeans liked Bill's show because it was exotic. The Black vaudeville shows of the early 1900s that introduced Josephine Baker to France depended upon exoticism. In film at least, Sally Hemmings' brother refuses to leave France with Jefferson and go back to being a slave in the US. This documentary said some Lakota hated being in Europe and away from their tribal community, but some blossomed in the new environment.
The work says film basically killed off big stage acts like B.Bill's. Whelp! "Video killed the radio star." Plenty of people my age have never touched a vinyl LP in their lives. You see less pay phones in the public because it's assumed that everyone has a cell phone. The way new inventions basically kill off old favorites fascinates me.
This work said Queen Victoria loved B. Bill's show. That reminded me of how "The Simpsons" have suggested that Queen Elizabeth is one of its fans. B. Bill tried to divorce the wife he abandoned and the public condemned him for it. Luckily, the couple had a happy ending. Still, Frank Lloyd Wright assumed that his architecture was so fabulous that no one would care that he left his wife for a younger woman, but he was wrong. Putting M. Lewinsky in my head, the public can look down upon famous men for their improprieties; it's a centuries-old practice.