Dusty Trails: My Summer Watching Westerns

I'm a movie fanatic. No really. I want to go to film school if I ever become completely insane. Because of this, I am now a rabid subscriber and unofficial spokesperson for Netflix. It's a brilliant business scheme, and cheap as sin. My first movie I received in the mail when I started two years ago was a Sam Peckinpah Western called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It was one of Kris Kristofferson's first roles. You might not know who that is, but if you've ever heard the Johnny Cash or Me First and the Gimme Gimme's song "Sunday Morning Coming Down" you'd be happy to know that he wrote that little gem. Anyways, at the time I wasn't that fond of Westerns, but only because I hadn't seen any good ones. I read all the Little House on the Prairie books as a kid, and figured Westerns were movies where people complained a lot about the weather and cried about unknowingly eating their pet pig.

GAME OVER: YOU DIED OF DYSENTERY

Needless to say, I stayed clear. I remember when I was 10 a babysitter once made us watch "Paint Your Wagon". She told my sister it was a musical and she told me it was a western so we would both be happy. Unfortunately it was both. From then on I was weary of any movie coming close to that sort of setting.

Fast forward to this man.

Bob Dylan

Got caught on his music when I was in high school and even saw him in concert. But what does that have to do with Westerns? Everything. His music is inspired by those movies, and is chock full of cowboy imagery. Listen to Knockin on Heaven's Door again. It's about a dying sheriff. Now try All Along The Watchtower, medieval allusions, but it's all the same. He sings about trains, dusty trails, outlaws, and Spanish missions. I had to listen to everything, but I couldn't get my hands on a soundtrack he did for a certain Peckinpah movie. That's the day I decided to get Netflix.

Billy #1 Pat Garret and Billy the Kid Soundtrack -You can download it here for iTunes, don't worry it's safe

I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazin' Saddles, No Country For Old Men, and Dirty Harry to get a feel for what I was in for. Good movies all around, but nowhere near Clint Eastwood at his finest.

Very few men can take baths with this much concentration

 

 

It wasn't until I finally sat down and watch the "Man With No Name Trilogy" that I began to appreciate what a Western should be and how it is supposed to move an audience. I started off with Fistful of Dollars. Not my favorite, but it helped me transition into Spaghetti Westerns. These types of Westerns were often shot in Spain or Italy, with a German financier and American stars. The extras would speak their own language and later on in a sound studio an American would dub over the dialogue with English. It makes for shoddy transition, but when Clint is the only one with words that match his lips, you listen to the few things he says.

After Fistful, you have For A Few Dollars More. I think it's my favorite in the series, just because Clint, or Blondie as his character is sometimes called, starts to fill out his role as a slightly-cocky-when-need-be-gun-for-hire. When he walks into a saloon to take a bounty on a man, he asks the sheriff which man at the poker table is the one with the price on his head. The sheriff lies and leaves. When everything is sorted out and Blondie comes looking for his reward he plucks the badge off of the lawman and throws it at two drunks hanging outside the jail telling them the town needs a better sheriff. If you watch the scene and don't get man bumps (a form of goosebumps when you witness something man-tacular), you better rewind and try again, because you weren't watching hard enough.

Next time we will explore why the genre is dying/died and where it's themes are being relocated to.