Transcription:

Chris Matthews, opinion at the end of his Chris Matthews Show, Sunday, June 12, 2005.

"The Lone Outrider was once a gung ho part of American popular culture. Think Gary Cooper, or Humphrey Bogart or James Dean. Today we've got to go to Australia for this sort. I first noticed it with Bryan Brown's powerful performance in the Thornbirds. Then came Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee. Hogan said he got the idea for his over the top character from a visit to New York. He couldn't get over the difference, he said between the Big Apple and the Outback. Now we've got, some say, the greatest actor of our time, Russell Crowe - and no excuse for the trouble he caused in New York last week - but this chap picks up Oscar nominations with the swagger of some outback bloke reaching for a cold lager at the end of a hot day's work. These guys all reek of that frontier toughness that we Americans seem to have lost on the way to the city.

Russell Crowe told me this week [cut to film of Russell Crowe interview from Hardball, 6/9/05] "I mean the reality of the Australian Outback [it's] a tough place."

They still see themselves as underdogs. They don't like Empires - don't like the sort who build them. Whether it's Mel Gibson fighting Edward Longshanks in Braveheart or Jack Thompson standing up to the imperious General Kitchener in Breaker Morant, you don't miss the bloody, wonderful anti-colonial attitude; an American instinct we Americans have lost.

Why did it take an Australian director, Peter Weir, to dig up something so clean and good in the American roots as he did with the Amish farmer in Witness, or Russell Crowe to bring alive an Irish American boxer from the Depression days?

Yes, the Aussies have given us another Katharine Hepburn [cut to film of Cate Blanchett] and another Grace Kelly [cut to film of Nicole Kidman]. But most important they brought us something real, unfinished, not quite civilized, something with a bite to it and a yearning for the next best thing to our old beloved frontier."

This was accompanied by many clips, including Russell in Gladiator, CM, M&C and with Danielle, and from most of the films he mentioned.

Thanks, Lo