As Joel Goodson’s father tells him in “Risky Business” (1983):
Sometimes you just gotta say “what the heck.”
I’ve long wanted to visit Monument Valley, a natural wonder and part of the Navajo Nation Reservation. It’s perhaps made most famous in the Westerns of John Ford… but the location has also appeared in any number of other films, from Forrest Gump to 2001 to National Lampoon’s Vacation and beyond.
And so when I saw there was a sorta, kinda, marathon … ok it’s really going to be a 50K race but at least I didn’t pick the 50 miler option… well, I punched in my Amex card and with a click of a “process” button, the stage has been set. I’ll rustle up a wagon train and a bedroll later but come March 25th, I’ll be amongst the buttes and mesas.
What the heck, right? A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
Oh, and that’s one of those infamous movie misquotations. It sure SOUNDS like something John Wayne might have said in a John Ford Western. But according to MentalFloss.com, it just ain’t so.
They write:
In Hondo, The Duke says, “A man oughta do what he thinks is best.”
It’s also often thought to be from the Alan Ladd movie Shane, but he didn’t say it, either. There are two similar quotes from the movie, though:
“I couldn’t do what I gotta do if I hadn’t always knowed that I could trust ya”
“A man has to be what he is.”