Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) on Netflix
GP19711h 54mActionAdventureDrama
Hank Stamper and his father Henry cut and ship logs in Oregon. The loggers' union strikes a lumber conglomerate, the Stampers refuse to join, and Hank's half brother Lee comes home.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.9/105,075 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Logging supports the town of Wakonda, Oregon, and the local union has called a strike against a large lumber conglomerate. The independent Stamper family refuses to join it. Henry Stamper and his son Hank keep cutting and shipping logs while the town goes broke, and their neighbors treat them as traitors. The whole household shares one compound, and Henry's good-natured nephew Joe Ben lives there too. Hank's wife, Viv, wants him to give up the territorial struggle and spend more time with her, though she expects him to go his own way. Hank's half brother Lee, the youngest of Henry's sons, comes home from college and city living, a heavy drinker uneasy among relatives he barely knows.
Cast
- Jim Burkas Biggy Newton
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film holds a place in TV history: it was the first movie ever broadcast by HBO, airing in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on November 8, 1972, shortly after the network's launch and less than two years after the film's own theatrical debut, right after a Rangers-Canucks hockey game as HBO's second program overall.
- Sam Peckinpah and Budd Boetticher both wanted to direct the adaptation before Richard A. Colla got the job in May 1970; five weeks into filming Colla quit over "artistic differences over photographic concept" and a required throat operation, and star Paul Newman broke his ankle, shutting production down on July 29.
- After Colla left, Paul Newman considered hiring George Roy Hill to take over directing, but Hill turned it down, so Newman ended up directing the film himself while also starring in it.
- When the film was finally aired on commercial television in 1977, it was retitled Never Give a Inch, a reference to the Stamper family philosophy at the heart of the story.
