Man, I love Westerns!

Just finished watching HIGH NOON, which I caught for about the fiftieth time on AMC. Why are Westerns so damned awesome!? They're like pizza, even when they're bad, they're still pretty good. I think what appeals to us about Westerns is the way they strip away all those layers of stuff that separate modern humans from the realities of daily life and force characters to deal with things head on, and often all alone. Think about the lives we lead... has there ever been a more cushioned, protected, leisurely generation than the one currently ruling the roost? I don't say that as if it's a bad thing, in fact, I think this is what we've been striving for lo these 230 years... a peaceful easy life where we are free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in all the ways we, as individuals, see fit. The harsh realities of life on the Western Frontier are things to be regarded from afar, like exhibits in a museum... not to be longed for like a lost treasure. Life on the Western frontier was cruel, difficult, and often tragically short... and even though it was crucial period in the building of our national character, we are well rid of it.

Now, of course, in modern America, every now and then, desperate problems DO enter into our lives... but we have doctors, and policemen, and soldiers to deal with things that get too crazy for us to handle individually. Not so much for Western heroes. Out on the frontier, law was what you made of it. There was a basic moral code that everyone instinctively understood... don't kill anyone unless it's in self defense, and keep your hands to yourself. Other than that, it was, well, the Wild West. But of course bad men were drawn to the anarchy of the lawless frontier, and as energetic, ambitious Americans made their way west, those predators followed. A soldier, or a real man of the law might be a hundred miles away when trouble started, and so early Westerners had to learn to take care of themselves in a way that no modern American ever has to.

I think John Wayne put it best in his tour de force performance in THE SHOOTIST...

"I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."

But to be fair, Wayne's character was a gunfighter, and was quite used to living that sort of life and to backing up those words with decisive action when required to do so. In HIGH NOON, however, Gary Cooper faces a different reality... the reality of what happens when that Shootist philosophy runs smack dab into men who are more adept at killin' than you are, and who don't necessarily appreciate or understand the meaning of a "fair fight."

HIGH NOON is not about a gun fight, though that IS what ultimately ends it. HIGH NOON is a philosophical treatise on civic responsibility. Gary Cooper sends a man up for murder, and as a result, criminals far and wide get the message that law and order is here to stay in Cooper's town. Because of Cooper's sacrifice, putting his life on the line for his fellow townsfolk, women and children can once again walk the streets in peace. But a northern judge pardons the murderer who then comes back to town looking for revenge.

And yet Gary Cooper's life is not all that hangs in the balance... this is not just a battle over some long lost grudge... within this battle, and hundreds of others like it across the West, hung the very fate of the Western frontier itself. Would it be a land of justice and peace in the best spirit of a fledgling Democracy? Or would it descend into lawlessness... on this day, one man, Gary Cooper, will help answer that question one way or the other, and not the US Army, or the President himself, can help him. That's what's great about these stories... within this structure, one single man can hold the future of the country itself in his hands.

Of course, I'm no screenwriter, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that Cooper's charcter's ex-girlfriend in the film puts it much more succinctly...

"Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it. I am all alone in the world. I have to make a living. So I'm going someplace else. That's all."

She knows the message Cooper's death will send back East... Cooper's friend Martin knows it too... he makes an impassioned speech to the Church congregation in which he talks about how the big money men back East are watching this town, trying to decide if they should invest money in stores and factories... and stories of death and murder will convince them to put their money somewheres else. Their town will die, and with it, the West itself.

In other words, Cooper has a civic responsibility... or to quote the current summer box office leader TRANSFORMERS... "There can be no victory without sacrifice."

Hollywood development executives always talk about these kinds of movies in terms of stakes... always asking the writers they work with to raise the stakes so that the audience will care about the story and engage itseif in the action that will determine how those stakes shake out. Harder to imagine bigger stakes, isn't it, than the very future of the entire western half of a developing nation?

It occurs to me that we have become a country that does not understand this simple reality anymore. Maybe that's why I like watching Westerns, because it reminds me of an America that people believed was worth fighting for. Now we expect wars to be over in a week and we don't want to see a single body bag on the news. Hell two soldiers wandered off during the bombing of Bosnia back in the 90's... WANDERED OFF mind you... they weren't captured, they weren't lost securing some beachhead or taking out some critical enemy position, they just got lost... and a local politician here in Southern California (where one of the men was from) named a particular day of the week in their honor.

I like to think that any of the characters John Wayne played during his storied career would be insulted at the very idea of being honored for what amounts to poor soldiering.

Watch most modern action movies and you'll see these themes hashed out over and over again, so desperate are we to be tested as men, women, and Americans that we go to dark movie theatres on Friday and Saturday nights to watch made up men and women sacrifice for what's right. John McClane, Indiana Jones, Will Kane...

But back to the western, for a minute... if you think it through, I think you'll agree with my assertion that DIE HARD owes it's basic structure to movies like HIGH NOON.

One man trapped in a skyscraper (small western town) facing overwhelming numbers of gunmen who struggles to find even a single competent individual willing to help him. And in the same way that Gary Cooper assumes it will be a simple thing to deputize 10 able-bodied men in a town full of them, and then spends two hours going from Justice of the Peace, to Churches, to saloons looking for help and getting turned down at every location, John McLane looks for help from 911 dispatchers, cops, SWAT, even the FBI before realizing that if this thing is going to be stopped, he's going to have to do it alone.

They say DIE HARD created a new genre... for years, agents, producers, and executives pitched movies as "it's DIE HARD on a plane" or "it's DIE HARD at the zoo" or "it's DIE HARD at the petrified forest"... but was DIE HARD's structure really all the revolutionary?

Most good action movies and thrillers (hell even the bad ones) follow the same pattern. Think about THE FUGITIVE, THE BOURNE TRILOGY, UNDER SIEGE, CHAIN REACTION, and IN THE LINE OF FIRE... what must you do in order to make your hero into someone the audience can relate to? First you must take away his safety net... you must strip him bare. Now none of those movies I listed above do anything as overt as trapping their hero in a tall building... but putting them in a dangerous physical location from which they cannot escape without confronting the villain is not the only way to utterly isolate a human being. Harrison Ford's Richard Kimble is a rich surgeon with the world at his fingertips, and so we must take that all away from him and set him out on his own in order to begin his journey... or Clint Eastwood is a Secret Service agent with 40 years of experience and an army of agents willing to die for him... but to make his character interesting, we must strip all that away and set him out in the wilderness... discredited and alone... only then do we get to see what he's really capable of.

Now I do not intend for this to be some neo-conservative "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" screed... though I certainly think that there's a lot to learn about our responsibilities with regard to Iraq by watching HIGH NOON... rather, it's worth noting that the best Westerns are melancholy about sacrifice... rather than revelatory. When they come to the house of an old friend looking for any escape from the expert mercenaries tracking them to Hole-In-The-Wall, Butch and Sundance (populist, Robin-Hoodian heroes that they are) are told...

"You know, you should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had the chance. See, you may be the biggest thing that ever hit this area, but you're still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over, don't you get that? Your time is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where."

When Chico tells Vin in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN that his gun has gotten him everything he has, Vin replies soberly...

"Yeah, sure. Everything. After awhile you can call bartenders and faro dealers by their first name - maybe two hundred of 'em! Rented rooms you live in - five hundred! Meals you eat in hash houses - a thousand! Home - none! Wife - none! Kids... none! Prospects - zero. Suppose I left anything out?"

There is no victory without sacrifice...

Westerns are great because they break that equation down to its simplest, starkest terms... They strip away all the layers of law, bureaucracy, and authority that protect everyday Americans from the harsh realities of life and force us to face responsibility and consequence without filters and without safety nets.

Because that's really what we fear isn't it... being alone at the moment of truth? Hearing the sound of someone kicking your door in at 3 am and knowing that by the time the cops get there it will all be over? What would you do? Could you protect yourself? Your wife? Your kids? Fortunately most of us will never find out... but the reason why we love watching Chris and Vin turn a village of Farmers into the defenders of their own freedom to live and prosper as they see fit, is because it gives us faith and confidence in our own abilities to do those things for ourselves.

I've often said that if you really want to connect with an audience, figure out what they're afraid of, and hit them in the face with it. Sometimes that happens accidentally... like when Steven Spielberg found out quite by accident that most humans have a fear of the things that hunt us in deep dark waters.

I think what keeps us coming back to westerns, action movies and contained thrillers is our basic fear that when the shit hits the fan... we're not smart enough, or tough enough, or resourceful enough to make it on our own.

But Gary Cooper and Yul Brynner and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Steve McQueen and James Coburn and Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman and William Holden give us hope that maybe, on the right day... we can be.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:
HIGH NOON
THE SHOOTIST
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
THE WILD BUNCH
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
THE PROFESSIONALS
SILVERADO
GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, FIST FULL OF DOLLARS, and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
OPEN RANGE
DANCES WITH WOLVES