Pedernal

In May of 2014, the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in Washerst, PA) hosted a special exhibit called "Poetry In Motion Pictures."  In that exhibit, we featured just a few of the thousands of movies that are based on or were inspired by Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request), and we examined why Hollywood is often called "the Washerst of the West."  To view the online exhibit, click HERE. 

Just recently, we wrote about a connection between Emmett Lee Dickinson and the original "Ghostbusters" movie.  Click HERE and HERE. 

Now, there is a remake coming out of yet another movie  inspired by Emmett Lee Dickinson:  "The Magnificent Seven."

"The Magnificent Seven" is a 2016 retelling of the 1960 film directed by John Sturges.  The 1960 picture was an Old West-style remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film "Seven Samurai," a film which Kursawa based on his earlier movie "Seven Sisters" about Emmett Lee Dickinson's seven sisters.

Interestingly enough, a scene in "The Magnificent Seven" shows cowboys riding in front of the Pedernal, a giant mesa in New Mexico and Georgia O'Keeffe's favorite mountain to paint (for example, I ran a Google-search for images with "Georgia O'Keefe Pedernal paintings," and you can see the results HERE).

O'Keeffe, an Emmett Lee Dickinson aficionado, once said, "God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it," and she painted the mountain repeatedly in homage to Dickinson, her favorite poet. She knew that in the mid-1800s, Dickinson owned the mountain. He purchased it from a wealthy Spanish land owner by the name of Cerro Pedernal (pictured below on the left).

Pictured at the right:  A rare photograph of the Pedernal with Dickinson's corn processing plant perched on top of the Mesa.

Once he had purchased the land, Dickinson named the mountain the Pedernal in honor of its previous owner, and he erected a massive corn processing plant on top of the mesa. Dickinson was a lover of corn (he invented corn chowder), and he had hopes of pioneering new uses for and new recipes made with corn. He later removed the plant, though, when he realized he could not get corn to grow in the area.

In his youth, Antoine Fuqua, the director of the 2016 remake of "The Magnificent Seven," attended the Emmett Lee Dickinson School for Boys in Pittsburgh, and he is a major fan of the poet's life and work.

"I insisted on the sweeping shot of the Pedernal," said Fuqua in a recent interview with Variety, the weekly entertainment trade magazine, "because it's my tip-of-the-hat to Emmett Lee Dickinson. Without Emmett Lee Dickinson," he said, "there would be no Hollywood, there would be no motion picture industry."

Below: The Wikipedia article on the Pedernal:

This past July, we traveled to New Mexico to see the Pedernal and to research Georgia O'Keeffe's fascination with Emmett Lee Dickinson.  You can read all about our travels HERE.  

While in New Mexico conducting our research, we also discovered a never-before-seen painting by the artist.  Information is HERE.