Smoke Signals

When it was released in 1998, Smoke Signals-the first film written, directed, and co-produced by Native Americans to receive major national and international distribution-was applauded by Rolling Stone as \u201cone of the best films of the year.\u201d In the New York Times, Janet Maslin noted the \u201csplendid screenplay\u201d written by Sherman Alexie, based on a story from his acclaimed book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. On its twentieth anniversary, Alexie, the beloved author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, reflects on Smoke Signals in a new introduction to the screenplay.

As one of the film\u2019s actors remarked in The Guardian, \u201cSherman has managed to almost single-handedly dismantle the popular and populist image of the American Indian. He\u2019s given us a voice.\u201d This voice emerges clearly in the story of two Coeur d\u2019Alene Indian boys on a journey: Victor, a stoic, handsome son of an alcoholic father who abandoned his family, and Thomas, a gregarious, goofy young man who lost his own parents in a fire when he was a child. When Victor\u2019s estranged father dies, the two men embark on an adventure to Phoenix to collect his ashes. The result is a poignant tale of friendship and reconciliation, one that touches on \u201chistoric injustices and contemporary issues in Native American culture . . .with wry, glancing humor\u201d (Los Angeles Times).

As Timothy Egan observed in the New York Times Magazine, Smoke Signals is \u201ca sweet, funny, sharply written tale,\u201d revisited here with characteristic wit and insight by the author, one of America\u2019s most gifted and critically acclaimed writers.