Art imitates life? Learn from the movies???

[patrick_g]

Note: Allow your imagination to be stretched and you may make a connection between this post and the heading under which it is posted.

What movies have depicted tractors and or associated equipment actually in use and what if anything could be learned from your observation. Did they get it right or did they depict a patently unsafe operation. Or maybe the tractor was just "background" as in the tractor tilling the fields above the secret underground Government facility in "The Andromeda Strain."

Pat

 

[Iplayfarmer]

I've noticed that most of the tractors depicted in cinema are old. It seems if a director puts a tractor in a shot, he/she's trying to conjure nostalgia for a simpler, more organic way of life. GPS equipped 200+ hp tractors with rounded fiberglass hoods, A/C cabs, and CD players don't really accomplish this.

I came to this thread from the tips/tricks thread where Minority Report was mentioned.

Yeah, OK flick but there were no tractors in it! See my new post on that topic.

Pat

(Is it legal to quote from an entirely different thread?)

My thought was, "But just imagine what the tractor may have been like had they shown one in that movie."

Sci-Fi Tractors? Maybe someone will do a spin-off of Stealth.

 

[RobS]

The first thing that came to my mind Pat was the movie "KillDozer". Had to have been from the early 70s? I learned to be nice to my tractor from that movie!

 

[bota7800]

Not a movie but I just saw the series premier of "Life." In it the main character bought an orchard including the "big red tractor." The tractor was a big current model dual wheel CASE. Easy to drive! There was a predictable stupid scene with the city boy sidekick accidentally backs the Case over the hero's Bentley.

John Deere had a good ad a number of years ago. It showed a couple sitting at the breakfast table. The narrator says something like "The JD such-and-so can till the average vegetable garden in 2.7 seconds" -- A huge dual wheel tractor (the $Six figure kind) passes by outside the nook window. Then the narrator says "But you might like the JD XXXX garden tractor better" Don't remember the model numbers but it was an effective ad.


Whenever I see something that I know a something about in a movie or TV show I cringe. The writers usually are using them for plot devices and don't care about accuracy at all. Whenever you see aviation depicted, for example, it is almost aways wrong.

 

[LOOPHOLE]

I tend to lean toward music w/tractors. "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy "

 

[goneandbrokeit]

There is a Chuck Berry moview "Hail Hail Rock n' Roll", 1987. It is a documentary about Keith Richards ( Rolling Stones) setting up Chuck with a "quality" band for his 60th birthday concert.
In it there are a couple of shots of Chuck using a then relatively new Kubota with FEL to feed a fire.
I learned from this that Rock Stars should learn to remove the MMM when using the FEL.
OK so I really learnt this myself, that's why I noticed it in the movie.

 

[N80]

I remember a Mel Gibson movie with Sissy Spacek called The River. It was truly awful, just a series of misfortunes befalling a struggling farm family in Tennessee. I seem to remember Spacek working under some peice of farm equipment that was portrayed as ominous and dangerous. Seems like she got her hand caught in it or something.

 

[Iplayfarmer]

There's a pretty nice old tractor in Walk the Line about Jonny Cash. It's in the scene where he's stoned out of his mind and he's trying to show off his new tractor to his dad after Thanksgiving dinner or some other holiday get-together.

I don't know enough about these good old tractors to tell you what it was, but I'm sure some of you recognized it immediately and could tell us the year, make, model, and part number for the oil filter.

 

[gotrocks]

This old codger remembers John Wayne in the "Sea Bees" sp.
The Jap tank got pushed over a cliff when Big John got his big ole bulldozer working. That was a long time ago. I think it was b/w movie.

 

[Toolguy]

If I remember correctly it was an Oliver in "Walk the Line" Maybe a "70". Ol' Johnny was trying to pull out a big stump. Not the right tool for that job. His dad got mad at him for "abusing" the tractor. Seem to remember the tractor ended up at the bottom of a big hill in a lake or river. I still thought it was a great movie.