Personality traits for A No.1 and Cigaret if recast

Really? Think maybe you should stick with the Glenn Beck thread - you're obviously more at home there.

You're making an interesting point, as it addresses an intention of the director:

"It was Robert Aldrich's intention that the characters played by Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Keith Carradine represented the Establishment, the Anti-Establishment and the Youth of Today respectively."

So, the Establishment figure today would NOT be a viscious conservative, but a hypocritical liberal sort who would mouth piously caring monologues about how much the smoke from the locomotive contributes to global warming, how taxes should be raised to help the downtrodden and THEN... out where nobody can see him, is throwing hobos off the train and beating them up whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Lee Marvin's character would be a Tea Partier ex-serviceman type, recognizing that the railroad owns the rolling stock he and the other hobos try to use, and that they have a right to protect their property from free use, from fires being set in cars as was depicted, etc. He could even point out to the young kid, "look kid, every 'bo riding the rails takes that much more coal to push the train up the incline. Loads ain't free, but we're trying to be. We're trying to make OUR problems the railroad's problem... don't be surprised if they don't like it and try to throw us off. After all, if they allowed everybody to ride for free, the trains would be literally packed with freeloaders and the railroad would be broke in a day."

Keith Carradine's character (am I the only one who found him extremely annoying and needing a good working over by Ernest Borgenine? Seriously, I was rooting for Shack to grab Cigaret and really hammer him!) would be an even more annoying Occupy Wall Streeter. Even more ignorant of life and of people and of himself, an even bigger mouthier liar, and of course, loaded with an iPad, and iPod, a manbag,and always trying to call mommy and daddy for money so he can continue his journey of self-discovery and material gathering for his Great American Expose' Novel.