Why Millennials & Zoomers Should Watch Westerns | Andrew Patrick Nelson | Align

Andrew how are you doing today I'm very well Kevin how are you I'm really excited uh because we get to talk about westerns and um I've heard that you really enjoy Western I I do enjoy the occasional western movie um so I am excited anytime I get a chance to talk about Western so what makes for um good Western and and makes a Western literary makes a Western literary those are good questions well when the Western was at the height of its powers it was so popular that there were so many different types of westerns so it isn't one thing that makes a western great because there's no one thing that makes a western a western the wonderful thing about the Western is different westerns appeal to different people so this sounds like I'm you know punting the question but there are just so many out there that you can't boil it down to to one thing and I think that's a mistake people sometimes make not only with westerns but with popular movies in general we think oh this type of movie was popular because it was doing this one thing that appealed to everybody which is not true uh movies are successful if they do different things that it appeal to different sorts of folks uh as for literary though I think that term does come up a lot a lot some some you know Westerns famous westerns are based on novels but those novels were not you know pretentious literary exercises they were popular so when we talk about literary not westerns I I think we're talking about a more highbrow take on the genre that we maybe begin to see more in the 1970s still see to this day let's say like a lonesome dove type yeah well you know Lonesome Dove even though it's based on a book you the famous story with L of Dove is Larry merrye actually originally conceived of that story as an epic Western film that was going to Star John Wayne Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda oh man and as The Story Goes uh he and I think it was Peter bonovich that he was working with were able to get Henry Fonda on board and they were able to get Jimmy Stewart on board but the Duke wouldn't do it so eventually MC merry you know pivot and turns that what was originally a script idea into a novel so you know then it becomes a very popular and very successful television miniseries L Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorites in westerns um and you you just gave three of the biggest names right there uh do do you have a favorite actor or director yeah I have all of the above I I love Jimmy Stewart I like Jimmy Stewart a lot in westerns um I like him in dest Rides Again which is a comedy western from 39 he's of course very good in the series of films of me Anthony man uh so I I like Jimmy Stewart but my my favorite actor in westerns and maybe in general is John Wayne I think it's tough to top the dup when it comes to Western yeah that's what I struggled with um as I was doing this uh this research because I was trying to come up with a list of westerns and it was just John Wayne John Wayne John Wayne so I'm gonna do I'm gonna do a list of underrated westers and a list of John Wayne yeah no I I like that I I think that's a great approach and you know one thing that happens with any kind of canonical art form is it kind of gets to still down and we begin to think that you know the Western was only John Wayne and John Ford maybe a few other guys it was actually a lot more than that and even within the filmography of a Ford or a Wayne there are uh underrated films I would say so one of the things that um you I hear the most with regard to westerns is that it's uh sort of gone the way of disco it's in Decline but I've always thought of it as you know the the gold Golden Era of Hollywood is has vanished so is is the Golden Era of the western part of that is is the Western what's the future of the western what's the trajectory yeah no that's a great question and I I like that framing because it's you know it's true that we don't have as many westerns today as we did in 1948 but we also don't have as many musicals today as we did in 1948 we actually don't have in some ways as many big Hollywood Productions as we did because the media landscape is completely different you know movies so feature films occupy a much smaller space in our media diet than they did at a time you especially before television when it was really only print and film and radio so that's a great way for people to to look at it it's not just the Western's changed Everything's changed um yeah Western dying out yeah it's kind of a cliche that's somebody is always declaring Western dead there's sort of like these two types of articles that you encounter right when you're reading about westerns the one is the the Western is dead article and then the other is Oh look The Western is back and sometimes they're out at the same time so what what I encourage people to how I encourage people to think about this is that the Western changed from a a popular to a specialty genre in the 1970s so once upon a time westerns were about popular repeal but beginning in the 70s and then you know accelerating through the '90s and this is the case today the average Western that makes it to a cinema is designed to win Awards it's usually a filmmaker like a Tarantino or the Cohen Brothers or it's you know it's an actor like an Ed Harris who wins an Oscar and then decides he wants to make a western it's it's just different it's trying to attract a different type of audience a more specialized audience and that's you know not a bad thing because that means we still get westerns but you know attempts to make just sort of Blockbuster popular westerns invariably fail U you know the Lone Ranger failed megas seven remake failed but when there's a kind of overriding Interest like a Tarantino for example or a Cohen Brothers then people are interested in the western big so that's I I think the way to think about the Western and that's sort of been the the second chapter of the Western's story as a is a movie genre going from a really popular genre for about 30 years to a more prolonged period of being more of a niche form so part of what interests me about that is that Western's what I love is that Western's it's half a a trip back to the wild west yeah but it's also Hollywood it's it's you you're not getting a full west wild west experience and what what I find so interesting about contemporary westerns like um you just said is that they kind of add another couple layers to this yeah well yeah there are yeah there are lots of layers in play I mean one other thing that happens in the history of the western is you know there's a kind of implicit argument when a new Western comes out it's it's saying to you you know those old westerns now that that was all fake this is the way it really is right but but this happen so you know the joke I like to tell is that I have you know no question that when movies like mcab and Mrs Miller and little big man uh and you know uh films like that came out in the 1970s I am sure that audiences saw those and thought ah yes this is the way that the West really was but when I show those films to my teenagers in class today you know they do not look at the sideburns and the bell bottom pants and think ah yes that was how the old west was M me what we're really dealing with is is not realism but veritude you know aesthetic standards that change over time so if you have that mindset then you can appreciate a western from the 50s for being yes a reflection of the old west but more a reflection of what we thought the old west looked like in the 1950s and the same thing happens in the 90s and the same thing is happening today I mean the Western is ultimately fantasy um it's you know in a way it's always been more fantasy than reality and I think that's part of the appeal it's a you know it's an imaginary space where you can imagine yourself living a more exciting and authentic life and a scary one at times you know it's like I could get hanged today like yeah people are getting hanged a lot well you that's the other funny thing about westerns is of course you know historically you about a thousand times more likely to die from a disease than from Outlaw or an Indian arrow but you wouldn't know that from from watching Western because it's it's dramatization of History it's to make it very exciting have you played red the Red Dead Redemption games of course I have of course I good good good answer uh I take it you're a fan I like I you know I like the games um actually I'm I'm editor of a book series and we put out a book on Red Dead Redemption last year which I'm really proud of um what I what I think the games are most interesting though is is the way that they are not about the historical West really what they're about especially the first game is about the West as envisioned by Sergio Leone and S pek and you know the other the second game gets away from that to a certain degree but it's it's really about how the West has been mediated through layers and layers of popular culture which I I just find fascinating and what you know Red Dead Redemption allows you to do what you can't do when you watch a movie is you can just you can just exist in that world right like yes you can rob banks and you know you can have shootouts at high or you could also fish all day so that that kind of um I'm glad you mentioned your books uh because you you're you edit several Series right several different um one of them really cut my eye is um love in Western film and television okay sure yeah because I thought I had never thought of the role of love in a western we get caught up with masculine like a vision of masculinity yeah no yeah yeah so that so that was a book that was uh edited by my good friend Sue mat and I wrote an essay in that about the westerns of Barbara Stan um and so it kind of coming at it a similar way that we we think of the western as being so masculine this kind of Mao genre and I I think that's true I think it's to a degree it's it's actually more complicated because I think when you one thing I find my students are surprised at when I show them westerns is they aren't the kind of the straightforward one-dimensional triumphalist machismo drench form that you know the cliches about the Western especially from its critics might say but it it's still you know it's still a masculine genre but you know within that there are you know amazing female characters uh love interests who are complexed and nuanced and you know have complicated relationships with Heroes that's the case in almost every major Western and then you have somebody like Stanwick who you know for for the 30s and 40s is kind of the biggest female star but who just loves westerns and ends up making not only a ton of films but then a TV series so that I guess gets back to what I was saying at the start that the Western was just so big it was so diverse it can accommodate so much that it's just for someone like me you know endlessly fascinating I you know I I kind of look at the hand ringing over oh they don't make enough westerns now and I think well there are thousands of westerns that you've never seen let's go let's go watch those and geek out on that so and back to that idea that westerns have become more cinematic uh um does that augur well for the future of the western oh I think so I mean the the nice thing about the media landscape today it's so Diversified that you can make things that appeal to smaller audience so you know I think people are more likely to take a risk on a western knowing that you can promote it in a very specific way so you can have you know you can have a channel like INSP which is dedicated to western western themed content makes their own original TV movies you know are CBS or Fox going to make a western probably not but then you've got paramont plus who can make endless iterations of the Yellowstone Saga and it it doesn't have to have the millions and millions and millions of viewers that a TV show back in you know the 90s did so those you know economics actually work in favor of something like the Western where you don't need as many people to watch it in order to make it a viable economic activity okay so let's talk anti-heroes that's such an important part of the western all right uh is there a difference between the L the general literary conflict between what it means to be a hero and what it means to be an anti-hero and the version of that in the western yeah I mean one of the the the worst silliest things that gets said about the Western is the cliche white hats and black hats right the idea that it was very simply coded that the good guys were white and the bad guys were black and you could tell them apart and it was a very kind of bifurcated moral Universe you know the Western has always been more complicated than that because the Western hero in almost every iteration so you know whether it's um William S Hart or if it's the Virginia or if it's you know G Heroes played by Gary Cooper they always kind of straddle this line between different worlds like between right and wrong between savagery and civilization so the the idea of a western anti-hero I think is is actually a little bit of a mistake because the Western Hero has never been just sort of straightforwardly heroic um you know I guess with a few exceptions maybe like The Lone Ranger he's he's usually a very complex character and oftentimes you know like I guess the example I I could give you is is is a question you why does the Western hero have to ride out of town the end of the mov this is a cliche well because we recognize that he has a kind of a special ability that's tied to violence and so you need that violence to rid the town of evil but then because the hero is so associated with violence he can't be a part of the society that he helped create so he's a kind of tragic figure um which which I think explains why he's so resonant that it's not just kind of like good guys and bad guys it's a complex character who's ultimately a tragic one who says something about you know the inability of society to accommodate exceptional individuals who are tinged with Darkness so I'm um that's very well said and that's what I'm drawn to as well this like zone of indistinction where you have sort of the um the the sacred nobody the the person who who who can go to town and doesn't blend in with the animals in the woods and is sort of lost and I feel like that can offer a lot to modern society yeah I I think that's right and you know we often like to talk of about popular genres in terms of in terms of society you know how they reflect the Ze guys so I I believe what I said earlier that you know westerns were popular because they were in fact diverse but I would still concede that there's there there is something about that kind of tragic hero that is fundamentally you know appealing to us you know I think you know most of us feel a little bit lost sometimes we feel like the costs of progress are not worth it and so when you you see that that hero who's at home in in in neither world but is ultimately kind of superior to all of them I mean that's that's an attractive that's an attrative tragic figure so you you might have already answered this um but I'm thinking specifically of Millennials and gen Z who maybe didn't have the same connection to westerns that our parents did where it was very firsthand um what what can Millennials and gen Z pull from watching westerns why why should they watch westerns that's a great question you know no one's ever asked that to me in that way um and I so I think I'm actually a good person to mention this because I I guess by some definitions I technically am an elder Millennial um I I didn't grow up with Western right so I grew up in the you know the popular culture of the 80s and 90s science fiction superheroes um my parents you know didn't watch westerns I didn't have a grandfather who watched gunm smoke reruns in the evening or anything like that U which which I think are are the ways that people of my generation if they do know anything about Western have been introduced me so I came to the Western in college in film classes so I guess I kind of came at it as a as an academic subject which maybe explains why I'm here today but I I now you know spend a lot of my time talking about talking with Millennials or what what do we call gen Z Zoomers I don't know maybe Zoomers yeah yeah uh yeah dating myself here I spent a lot of time talking with those Generations about you know about westerns and I I think there's just there's something Timeless about them and I I think once you you know once you get over the simple fact that media looks different at different moments in time and that you know what is once you acknowledge that okay maybe that movie from the past looks fake to you but the movie that you watch today I tell my students this all the time I'm going to show your children the movies you're watching today and that movie today that you think is so great that is so believable that the effects are so awesome 20 years from now 30 years from now I will show that to your children and they will laugh at how fake it looks like so we you know once you adopt that historical perspective and you begin to realize that you know movies have a style that changes I think you begin to have access to these you know almost time stories that are you brought to life through some of the greatest performances ever committed to Celluloid there just you know it's kind of like a something Transcendent about the Western and the stories it tells that I find certainly resonates with my students and you know maybe you need a capable guide like me in order to access those but I really don't think so I think I think so many of these films speak for themselves I like that I like that idea that there's a universality at play um but also sty stylistic elements that date it that can date that as art and the the thing that has popped up in my mind at several points when you've been talking is you watch um different Western and you might as well be reading the Odyssey right right yeah I suppose if we if we con seeed that time has somehow compressed a little bit no I mean it's you know it's we're talking in 2024 um you know mo most of the kind of the big canonical westons that we talk about um you know accepting some silent films you know were made in 1939 as was a big year for the Western that's the year of stage coach Jesse James Union Pacific dri Rides Again so you know in 15 years we'll will'll be a hundred years from from that moment and I I I think it's I I think though it's a little bit different than than the a in the sense that even if the story The Odyssey tells is one we're still telling ourselves today the the language of moving pictures has not actually changed that much and you know anyone who's been to film school will know this that you know really after the 20s there haven't been that many revolutions and and why should there be because it's only been hundred years you know that's the the great thing about film and studying film I tell this to my students all the time is that you know you can take one of my classes and or maybe two of my classes and over the course of a year you can get a pretty good sense of the entire history of the art of Cinema so you know 100 years 150 years but if you to take an art history class or you know a class on Ancient you know medieval literature you know that 150 years that could be a day so there's a kind of there's a benefit to looking at film as a young medium and I think that those continuities actually make it easier for you to get over the the what you perceive to be the kind of the trappings of artificiality um that's I think that's a great advantage that film historians have over historians of other art forms as teachers and also as just people who like to enthuse about the art that they love so are we gonna see like a cinematic version of Renaissance or or like eras like the Golden Era you know yeah that's great question I mean those those terms have already been used to describe the Western so you know many people talk about something called a classical Western which is the Western you know roughly from the late 30s to the mid 1960s um so that already exists and that lines up with something you mentioned earlier the the idea that there was a golden age or a classical Hollywood Cinema so you know those ideas that have come to us from you know our appreciation of our history you've already been applied to film but you know whereas a classical age of an art form could last for hundreds of years with film it's a matter of you know a few decades so so we already talk about it that way we already you know we think about the Western as having a kind of golden age and then revisionist age and then a arotic age and one thing that I have tried my best to do in my career is tell people that that is not a productive way to think about the western or really Art In general the idea there's a kind of like a predetermined evolutionary pattern of experimentation and then it reaches classical Perfection and then there's revision and then it declines into parity and the Western you know can you can you can hand select westerns that fit that but there are just so many that defy that Paradigm that you know genres are constantly revising recombining and so you know films that we might think of as being classical today are in fact incredibly revisionist you know like films like the Searchers or High Noon which most people would call classical westerns were really at the time very self-conscious very critical very revisionist text so that you know historical perspective I I think is helpful and uh you know gets us back to trying to appreciate what the the films were actually doing at the time and getting us away from Grand narratives about how art or maybe just Society in general develops I I like that and I one question I have is about like I is the acceleration of society and technology that we're experiencing is that kind of why we're cycling through um it seems like we're cycling through everything very quickly yeah well it it could be I mean I think technology has a part to play but part of part of that is just and this is kind of speculative on my part but I'll go there um it's just the diversity of media right so in Homer's time you have an oral tradition by W by which things can be passed down so you've kind of got a couple of options you can either speak it or you can write it down right now when we look at a western the Western as a genre is not confined to a single medium right so you can look at the Western's lifespan in film and you could think it's quite short but if you were to look at it as a genre that also included painting and literature and sculpture and now video games you would come up with a much longer and more diverse timeline so I I think that's you know that's the difference that we just have more representational media at our disposal different places of the same genre can you know can can pop up and that's a great thing it it also seems like the best genre that I've encountered that I can think of which forces you to slow down yeah slow down that's interesting um slow down so what do you mean by that like like you're talking about when you when you watch a film it's how you feel yeah like tell me more yeah no absolutely uh so I was watching um slow West last night that beautiful absolutely just artistic Mastery at work um but I felt this this I had this experience exp erience that I often have with Western where it's like even if you know there's there's a gunfight at the saloon and you know the anti-hero is the only one who surv survives you you get these moments of in betweenness right that it forces you to kind of linger and even if it's like a fast-paced western it seems like even like the enormity of nature is sort of breath taking in a way that slows you down I think that's right um slow West is is a great example of that because the film is actually very short it's actually under 90 minutes um but it has some you know features that we might think of as being quintessentially Western so those you know I mean and it's the film that was filmed in New Zealand not that that matters anymore but you know the epic shots of the landscape and this the characters moving through the landscape you get a sort of a sense of the the enormity of the space and just how much time it takes to Traverse it um I I I certainly think that that's a key part of the western and the way you describe it is right that even westerns that you know have dramatic moments there are still these interstitial moments let's say of of picturesque shots of the landscape the characters moving through the landscape that do kind of evoke a more maybe contemplative I don't know position in the viewer than you might otherwise yeah I like that it's there is an element of you know you got to sit next to the lake and look at the still water with him as well um so was there a moment when you began to encounter westerns for the first time in these classes was there a like a kind of Humane moment or what was that Epiphany like was there a certain Movie that that spurred it yeah oh I appreciate you asking that uh there was there was in fact I don't get to tell this story uh very often so the the film for me that I kind of identify is that epiphanic moment where I maybe didn't know it at the time but ended up committing a significant portion of my life to westerns uh was a screening uh during my undergraduate degree of Once Upon a Time in the West oh now this was a while ago now I mean I said Millennial but Elder Millennial so uh so once upon West is serg Leone's fourth Western and uh at the time it was very hard to find this movie so you you could find it on VHS but then it was it was cropped so we have this beautiful widescreen film that's cropped down to the old 43 aspect ratio so uh one of my professors had a laser dis copy of Once Upon a Time in the west from Europe that was going to be you know the right axe decoration iO Digital quality laser desk very Advanced at this time and he arranged a supplementary screening so an extra movie screening on a Friday afternoon um and you know again I became a professor so obviously I was the type of guy who went to those things and you know it's maybe me and five other people who start uh in the cinema watching this and then by the end I look around and I was probably the only one there um but but as I as I was watching it I I just just I don't know just was was overcome with the sense that this was just like the epitome of cinematic art and it's maybe appropriate because once panima West is a very like self-referential film it's a western about Western so it's I guess maybe it's like an academic film almost it's almost like a thesis about what the Western is so maybe it maybe in the grand Narrative of my career that makes sense that it was that film that got me excited about the possibilities because it was a film that itself was looking back on and referencing the totality of western movie history up to that point in time I like that emphasis on the Cinematic because um that is an important part of it obviously you know we've talked about the sort of philosophical underpinnings that go into it and we've talked about a lot of the um Humanity um but this the Cinematic part part of it is fascinating to me too in in the the like that willing suspension of disbelief yeah yeah well I think the Western gosh I mean we can have a debate about you know what is and is not cinematic and you know whether you know particular films are you know living up to the potentials of the medium these are you know interesting uh questions to ask in debates to have but you know we have to remember that the Western is drawing upon a pictorial tradition that goes back to the you know really to the 1800s so you know artists like Albert beat through people like Remington and Charlie Russell and tri Vogal and others so there's already kind of a history in the western genre broadly conceived of this kind of Epic portrayal of American History you know often times you know dramatic human events may be happening but it's it's always against a backdrop that is much larger and almost kind of DW dwarfs them and I think you know that lent itself very well to film and especially to the greatest filmmakers who recognized that you could take those dramatic moments from Western Art you know some of the greatest art American art ever and you could dramatize them you could dynamize them you could energize them with the camera uh in ways that would you know by the standards of you know the 20s or 30s become almost kind of immersive experiences allowing people to travel to this mythical place the American West that you know most Americans will never visit I that's the case for Americans today Mo most will never come to where I am you know they'll they'll fly over they'll visit it uh you know when they when they tune into Yellowstone but it's you know kind of a just an imaginary space brought to life dramatically by some of the greatest filmmakers it's funny you say that because my my personal uh connection to westerns um came from my dad um okay who who was he grew up in Ireland very very poor and his one escape from that poverty was going to the cinema and he fell in love with Western and he it's the the reason I'm here because he decided I want to go to America someday from a young age and he so he went to California as far west as you can go yeah um so yeah there there's I feel like that that gets overlooked like that aspect of it the sort of human connection we we um no I I I agree I mean I think you know critics of the western sometimes portray it as you know in the ways I said earlier kind of like one-dimensional Macho form yeah but you know other people will also make the case that the Western was you know racist or sexist or Advanced an agenda of American imperialism or something like that and you know you you can make those cases you know obviously judging the past by the standards of today is something we need to be careful and we do so you know we don't want to suggest that the Western was always um you know to use a more contemporary term you know Progressive or anything like that there again as I've said before there are a lot of westerns but what is amazing is how resonant the question was with different people in very different circumstances across the world um that it it you didn't have to be in America you could be in Europe you could be in Africa you could be in Australia you could be in Asia and you could see yourself in that mythical West and and then we you know so that kind of takes hold around the world that there's almost something Transcendent about it and then what's fascinating is when you know people from those those Nations those continents begin to make westerns of their own really beginning in the 1960s when we to get Italians making westerns and then we get you know Japanese films that are influenced by Ford and that you know that tells us that the idea that the film was you know straightforwardly evil and imperialist clearly didn't work because if if you were actually living in a condition of colonialism why why would you see the Western as a as a means of emancipation and yet you know that is exactly what's happened in a number of countries so you know people have have seen themselves in the Western in ways that I find like endlessly fascinating and and defy straightforward arguments about what the Western was about and who it was for so um you mentioned specifically like the accusations of sexism yeah sure and earlier we talked about the importance of women historically in the film especially with regard to love um is there anything else that the Modern Woman could find uniquely in the Western that is that's a great question um so I mean one way to come about that come at that question is to tell you a little bit about why westerns became popular as movies in the first place so you know in the 1920s there are some big epic westerns that do well covered wagon um the Iron Horse some of John Floyd's early films um but by the time we transition to sound you know the Western is mostly what we call a b genre these are short cheap inexpensive films that are made to fill out a program of movies so this was a time when you going to the movies wasn't just seeing a feature you would see a longer feature which is expensive you'd see a b film you'd see a cartoon you'd see a news reel might see a musical act so it a very different experience um so so one question question that gets asked is why all of a sudden at the end of the 1930s do is is Hollywood interested in again making big budget westerns when initial attempts to make those in the 1930s uh films like uh the big trail or um Billy the Kid those are two really expensive Western made in the early 30s you failed so there's different ways to answer that but one is that around that time Hollywood Studios began to think that the majority of Their audience was women and not only that that when it came time for couples to make decisions about what movie they were going to see it was the woman who had the most influence over those choices so that helps to explain why we begin to see films in the late 30s and early 40s that are sometimes called women's films about you know like strong female characters played by great actresses like Stan Rook or Betty Davis or Joan Crawford or so on but it also explains why suddenly you have this interest in these romantic stories with very attractive young men male stars that actually had a strong appeal to female audiences of the time so so not only you have the attractive males but they're sensitive you know they're they're troubled they have difficulty relating to women and women characters often have a degree of agency that they don't in other types of jarras because they they play an important role now is it a is it a secondary role yes I mean we have to concede that these these spells were still made in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s but there was a strong appeal to women of the time and I think there's still something of that for women today when they look back with fresh eyes and in some ways things were better then in media than they were in in later moments of at least the Western's history so I think with that I'm making an assumption and correct if I'm I'm wrong um this presupposition that there's a practice involved where there's kind of like that these fil this as artwork is actionable is that correct yeah I think that's one that's a common argument um and I mean it it kind of has its root in in academic approaches to myth right so I every a new representational medium comes about right it's initially usually abstract but then very quickly we as humans decide we need to use this to tell ourselves stories right so cave painting goes very quickly from abstraction to actually recording narrative history uh in you know in more recent history you know you have to just look at social media or YouTube you know initially it was very non-narrative very experimental but now it's about telling stories particular way so you know why do we tell ourselves stories is an interesting question and one answer is that we tell ourselves stories so that we can resolve in fiction problems we can't in our everyday lives so if the Western was really popular as a story form in the middle of the 20th century it may be that the the Western was solving some kind of fundamental psychological problem that people were having that it was resolving a conflict that we knew couldn't be resolved in real life and that's often phrased as this binary this conflict between savagery and civilization or Wilderness and civilization let's say right the idea that these are opposed that America was carved out of a Wilderness with a Westward moving Frontier on which the forces of these you know savan civilization were fighting on a daily basis now that's an oversimplification of history but it is true that that that is the way America was formed as a nation a Westward moving Frontier which is different than almost every Other Nation on Earth and even you know Canada had a very different Frontier than than did the United States so maybe this idea of savagery and civilization the idea that we've lost something that there's a consequence to modernization maybe that mattered to large numbers of people in the 30s and especially in the 40s and 50s after the second world war um that's the argument at least but I I find that far too simplistic and there are just so many westerns that aren't about that that you have to ignore to make those arguments work so again I would go back to the Western was popular not because it did one thing or meant one thing because it did so many amazing things that so many different types of people could watch a western and say ah yes this is for me that's that's the amazing thing that I think we lose sometimes I like that emphasis um and part of what captures me part of what stands out to me is um this the it's sort of like a pre- n world that we're participating in when we watch a western and I think an important part of that is a total lack of cynicism about the role or existence of God um specifically Christianity what what role do you think um Christianity plays uh in westerns or even to a lesser extent kind of Vice Versa yeah that's that is a really interesting question and I don't get to talk about this very often if not ever but I guess this would be the platform where we would have this conversation is um I mean I I would say that the the Western is in many ways ways in its most famous iterations so like you know a film like the Searchers let's say um skeptical of authority in a way and I think with that skepticism of authority comes a kind of skepticism of religion um you know many westerns are you know so where does Christianity pop up in the western so uh John Ford's films are suffused with hyms right like shall We Gather at the river is um I it plays almost every 10 minutes in the Searchers for example and and yet without outright criticizing the belief system that produces that kind of hymn it you know emerges at moments where it suggests that that is not sufficient for us to advance as a society that or we can't just solely place our faith in that and I I think that you maybe maybe that's reflective of a the broader position of religion in un states which has always been one of kind of an ambivalence in some ways um yeah I might know if I'm making sense I might have to refine thought a little bit I like the social framing that that is involved here the other thing I would bring up too is is of one place in the western you often see Christian figures is as missionaries right and oftentimes the missionary characters you know they don't they actually don't know what they're getting into you know they are wrong headed when they're trying you know some of their christianization of the Indians or they are just crazy thinking they could go out into the Wilderness and they need the help of these like Savvy tragic characters who you know ultimately are usually excluded from the religion as well so you wrote um in still still in the saddle with is about the the 70s era right it is yes 69 to 80 what happened um in that era that was unique to westerns yeah so that was the Western's last great moment is a popular genre that was the last real period where most weeks of the Year there would be a western playing your local cinema right so there is a common story that's told about this and it's kind of a story that lines up with some of the things I said earlier were wrong right so the idea that this was a moment when the Western became revisionist that you know suddenly the sort of triumphalist ideology was no longer appropriate you know at a time when you know American imperialism seems to have reached its end point with the Vietnam War when we see crises at home and abroad you know the idea of gun toting Heroes riding into a trouble spot and coming out unscathed is is maybe not as table that that's the argument and you know part of that is new filmmakers like Robert Alman or Arthur Penn or even Sam peek andpa begin to make different types of westerns that iny against the violence racism and greed of the frontier experience that say and then that lines up with what we think of as America during the 70s a kind of time of a time of decline um a time of malaise in the world words of Jimmy Carter and so on so what I try to show in the book is that's that is a strand in a more complicated story that at the same time as those things are happening the most popular Western Star is still John Wayne the most popular western movies are by and large John Wayne's that you know some of these revisionist films that are celebrated by critics are not enjoyed by audiences so so even when the Western was you know on its way out as a popular genre it was still incredibly heterogeneous suggesting that it was trying to appeal to different types of people so I try to tell you know that story and to recover some of the you know remarkable variety of the western at a time when it you know it was declining and I kind of make the case that that variety at that that moment is in fact reflective of what the Western always always trying to appeal to lots of people always Reinventing itself and always kind of remarkably Dynamic the one of the many many many interesting things about John Wayne is he he's primarily I mean he he's in war movies and and all kinds of things but he seems to be unlike Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper and all those guys he's primarily the West the western guy yeah what is it about John Wayne that captures us yeah well I don't I don't think John Wayne is the Western right so I I think you know we we've reached a point where for some people John Wayne is the Western got but you know John Wayne is as much as Wayne said many times that you know he was always playing himself right I don't act I react many many you know delightful quotes from The Duke about acting you know he he was in fact a very skilled performer who probably at his best moments was able [Music] to offer audiences you know important VAR ations on the Persona that he had crafted so you know the Searchers another film behind me is a great example this right that is a film where John Wayne All-American hero is a sociopathic racist I mean that that that's what the film is and that's part of the power is you know John Wayne who is a great performer doesn't get the credit he deserves as an actor he was a great performer he's able to kind of you know at at John Ford's prodding dig deep and find something within himself that is you truly terrifying is is maybe one of the greatest performances ever committed to Celluloid and is is so appealing because it's still that hero is still in there right it's it's still the the Western hero we want but it is the darkness to a degree that we haven't really encountered and so you Wayne was able to do that and I I think a lot of his roles are are a little more complicated than than a kind of a straightforward the Duke playing himself um I mean to your question of though you know why why John Wayne and the Western of that kind of close Association he just he made more of them and he made better westerns in general and he made more popular westerns towards the end of his life so you know there isn't really an there isn't really an equivalent in the career of Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda or Kirk Douglas or Gary Cooper to true grd or even the shoest the idea that this guy who made great westerns in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s was still making great westerns in the 60s and in the 70s so his his longevity the fact that he kind of you know with the exception kind of of the silent era is is sort of there at every significant moment in the history of the western from 1930 up to 1976 just just means that he's kind of the main character in that story and that that's actually part of why I I wanted to write still in the saddle is to recover the the role that he played even towards that latter chapter of the western and his career so the that description you gave of John Wayne in the Searchers as um sort of like you see it with Peter Fonda a little bit where it's just kind of gross uh in some of the later films um yeah I feel like Tarantino did a really good job of capturing that with Leonardo DiCaprio oh sure oh in Jango and chained no in uh once upon the time in West oh Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sure yeah yeah yeah okay where he gives that scene it's just vile and beautiful yeah yeah that's actually great right I mean because that's I mean that is a very interesting film especially for fans of the western because you know it takes place in 1969 where a lot of things would happen the history of the western right that that that moment of Peck and PAW is coming in the the TV Western is trying to adapt and we also have the rise of the spaghetti western and so in in that film you kind of have this washed up Western Star trying to figure out how do I you know how do I chart my course in this shifting generic landscape and yeah that that one moment where he kind of you know digs into a kind of more modernist uh you know much more kind of like spaghetti western mode of performance because he has the really cute conversation with the young girl about really about method acting and how you do all of this um yeah and then that that is in fact you know what sets up the idea that he was able to successfully go to Italy and play these kind of Western quote unquote anti-heroes um yeah that is yeah that's an amazing moment last question unfortunately I I we I could talk to you all day um if if you were assigned with giving somebody who's never seen a western or somebody who only gets one Western for the rest of their life which Western would you choose you can do three how about three okay oh all right three all right so um my favorite Western and what I think is the Best Western is the Searchers right but I don't think that's the place you start when you're trying to get somebody jazzed about Western so so that would be somewhere that you would end up after you've seen a few um places to start that I think are are good um and we're assuming a more modern audience right now yes for sure all right so for a movie from the the so-called Golden Age I'm gonna recommend a movie called The gunfighter from 1950 that stars Gregory peek and he plays a kind of an aging Gunslinger who tries to reconnect with his wife and child but finds that his past uh always is going to catch up um which is kind of a Timeless Western story and seems more contemporary so that is a great place to start it's a lean movie we we we you know in terms of underrated westerns that's that's probably one of the most underrated westerns so I I would start there um I think if we were going forward in time I think Butch capity in the Sundance Kid is a great entry point for folks who are interested in the western because it's very comedic it has two charismatic performances from Robert Redford and Paul Newman it's it's very much of its time it's very 1969 but it was you know the really the most popular film of that period and still holds up to this day so that would be a good place and then gosh got one more Western so we got to go with something a little bit more contemporary you know okay this is kind of out of the box but good I like it yeah and and this yeah so I'm gonna recommend a film called The Ballad of Little Joe from 1993 um so this is a film written directed by Maggie Greenwald um and it is it tells a story that's based in history which is the case to many Western about a kind of Eastern Society woman who heads West and then lives a life in the west as a man masquerading as a man and it is a I think a very complex and interesting film that is aware of the genre's history but kind of you know TR tries to think more about the role of women so something that we've been talking about you know what it meant to be a man what it meant to be a women woman in the old west so you know that's I guess that's my kind of out of the box choice there's a new uh Blu-ray out of that film recently which is maybe why it's the top of mine uh so I'd go with that and if I had a fourth and they wanted a more contemporary one dead for a dollar for dollar yeah came out a few years ago it's got um William defo is in it um it's just sort of a great spaghetti western style contemporary picture from recent days so any of those four we we have to do this again because I still have like 10 questions for you every time every time you're like giving an answer I'm like oh man I want to know more about this part of it this was a lovely discussion thank you Andrew I'll come back I'll come back anytime Kevin I I love talking about westerns and I just I really appreciate the opportunity uh are you still doing your podcast I am yep How the West Was cast available on all major podcast forums and apps uh that's a podcast I co-host with my uh good friend Matthew chernoff who's an entertainment journalist and screenwriter based in Los Angeles and people can find your books on Amazon they can I'm on Amazon just look for Andrew Patrick Nelson are still in the saddle that'll come up and I'm at Andrew Patrick nelson.com thank you Andrew my [Music] pleasure [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] d [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] a

Channel: Kevin Ryan

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Length: 59min 20sec (3560 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024