MICHAEL PALIN'S HEMINGWAY ADVENTURE: EPISODE 4 {CUBA; MONTANA; IDAHO} TV)
Summary
The fourth in this four-part documentary series in which former Monty Python member Michael Palin visits sites that figured prominently in the life of legendary writer Ernest Hemingway.
The program begins in Havana, Cuba, where Hemingway spent nearly 20 years of his life. Palin describes Cuba as "almost an American colony" prior to the Communist Revolution, and he visits the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Hemingway's former favorite room has been transformed into a mini-museum. He visits the writer's favorite local bar, the Floridita, mentioned in his posthumous 1970 novel "Islands in the Stream," and tries his preferred daiquiri, then travels to another bar for a few mojitos. Later, Palin explores the museum room at the hotel, though is rebuffed from actually lying down on the bed.
A very slow railway trip takes Palin to San Francisco de Paula, where he pays a $3 entry fee to another of Hemingway's homes, observing a back wall on which he carefully tracked his own weight. Palin also examines the Pilar, Hemingway's famous fishing boat, though again he is forbidden from sitting in the captain's chair. He attempts to score a meeting with Cuba's famed and controversial president, Fidel Castro, and then chats with the workers at a cigar factory. Nearby Cojímar boasts the first plaza dedicated to the writer, though Palin opines that the memorial bust doesn't really resemble him, and he sits down with centenarian Gregorio Fuentes, who knew and sailed with Hemingway on the Pilar; he dispels a few of the more popular rumors about the hard-drinking American. Next, Palin visits Marina Hemingway – a tourist resort, not a person – and participates in a marlin fishing tournament with a group of Americans, though he fails to catch any of the enormous fish. He is again denied a meeting with Castro before departing Cuba.
Palin then heads out to the American West and visits a "dude ranch" in Montana, nervously mounting a palomino horse and learning the basics of cattle herding, lassoing and fence-mending alongside some East Coast tourists. Noting that Hemingway disliked "phony cowboy business," he sits down to do a bit of writing. As elk-hunting season arrives, he talks with several local hunters about their near-misses with grizzly bears and why the animals' actual deaths are somehow "the saddest part" of the hunting experience. A local taxidermist shows Palin his many "stuffed" animals, like the ones mounted on Hemingway's walls; he reveals that his most challenging assignment was stuffing an elephant – for a price of $42,000. Palin drives past Yellowstone National Park and arrives in Ketchum, Idaho, and he stays overnight in the house in the house where the depressed and ailing writer fatally shot himself on July 2, 1961. He visits the unassuming grave, admitting that he's still "seeking approval" from his idol for his round-the-world voyage.
Details
- NETWORK: BBC (United Kingdom)
- DATE: 1999
- RUNNING TIME: 0:47:29
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:85607.004
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: International Collection - United Kingdom; Public affairs/Documentaries; Travel; Writers; Cuba; Montana
- SERIES RUN: BBC - TV series, 1999
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Anne James … Executive Producer
- Edward Mirzoeff … Executive Producer
- Martha Wailes … Producer
- David F. Turnbull … Director
- Michael Palin … Writer
- Howard Davidson … Music by
- Michael Palin … Host
- Gregorio Fuentes … Interviewee
- Fidel Castro
- Ernest Hemingway