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The Great Westerns

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Anonymous

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Is anyone writing western novels any more? (besides larry Mcmurtry)
Some are great. Others are rotten!!!.. I Like Lonesome dove....


I guess another good question would be... Do or did brits like westerns. I know it's mostly americana stuff, and I'm curious to find out if playing cowboys and indians was a big hit with the kids or not. (I don't even think kids play cowboys and indians anymore)

Actually I was never really bg on it. Only when my much older brothers were around. I think it was the only game they knew how to play with a child. 4 year olds aren't very good at risk.

Well....I'll shut up now. But really... Is that somthing that we (US and GB) share as nostalgia?
 
Yes, there's certainly Wild West re-enactment societies in the UK.

Up to about 25 years ago, bookshops used to have sections devoted to Westerns, but you don't see them around much any more, as a genre it seems to have fallen by the wayside, though there's probably specialist bookshops covering the genre.

So yes, Brits did like Westerns, I doubt whether there's much interest amongst kids, as there aren't any current western TV series like Maverick, Bonanza or Wagon Train, which I watched in the 60s, and there are very few Westerns in the cinema either.
 
Thanks Timble...Always a help.
Yeah... The cowboy thing was on it's way out as I was on my way in.

I love reading about it. Not really from an historical standpoint...(Most histories are mostly fiction anyways), but from an imaginary world sort of direction. The sense of exploration and space. I mean... It seems like wonderland to me. So foreign. Oh well. I'm ramblin...Read Lonesome Dove....
 
yes i played Cows Boys and Injuns...but it all got poluted by reality realy... now its ok to blow away aliens and not reskins...i had a white and crome plated winchester with underarm loading... i loved that toy gun.
 
There was a thriving western re-enactment society in my area a few years back. I went to the wedding of one of the women involved in it and it was great fun, everybody involved in the society dressed up in all their glory which left the handful of guests in 'civvies' looking a bit odd.

Kids don't play cowboys and indians anymore, it's true, but maybe that's because the tv is not exactly saturated with cowboy movies these days. Also, from my days working in a public library I can say that western books were seen as only appealing to elderly gentlemen, very few were ever published and if I remember rightly were being gently pushed out the back door stock-wise when I left.

It's strange to see the death of a genre, but I suppose the western one was based on a specific time and place and so could not be transplanted into other settings/times like sci-fi etc.
 
I've never read any westerns but I did grow up watching western films on TV as my Dad is a big fan.

Like a lot of Film buffs I'm a bigger fan of the later Westerns, the Spaggetti Westerns and the Films of Clint Eastwoood but I do have a soft spot for a few of the older ones.

True Grit
"I call that big talk for a one-eyed fat man."
"Well fill your hands you son of a bitch"

Eldorado
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking at a tin star with a drunk pinned to it"

To mention just two.

Cujo
 
Blueswidow said:
It's strange to see the death of a genre, but I suppose the western one was based on a specific time and place and so could not be transplanted into other settings/times like sci-fi etc.
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most SF is cowboys and Injuns in space!
 
For ages ive ment to look out for anythign by Carl May... a favorite of Hitler and a purely Eurpean Cowboy writer. I think perhapse the pureest from was the writers who just never were part of the wild west or its history. The stories bear very little realtionship to any reality after all. Films like the latter Clint eastwood ones subverted the form till no one could make a true western only new age tripe like Dances With Wolves etc..
 
As a kid growing up in the 60's I had a cowboy hat on my head for so long it had to be practically removed by surgery.

In those far off days there always seemed to be westerns on TV, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian, The Big Valley and others.

As for movies, I reckon the last great western was Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. The "classics" since then, Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven and Dances With Wolves have been well made films but they just didn't float my boat.

Other fave western movies: Shane, The Searchers, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Ride the High Country (a little known gem from Sam Peckinpah) Once Upon a Time in the West and, my all time favourite The Magnificent Seven

Now folks, let's round up a posse and head 'em off at the pass!

Yeeeehaw!
 
I've never read a Western but I like some of the films-anything with Clint Eastwood is good (not cause I fancy him-they are just a bit weird IMO which is a selling point for me) e.g Paint Your Wagon, The Good The Bad and The Ugly and that one where he rides into a town and gets them to defend themselves against outlaws , can't remember the name,he rides a pretty grey horse , like a rocking horse(Pale Rider maybe?)
 
Marion said:
that one where he rides into a town and gets them to defend themselves against outlaws , can't remember the name,he rides a pretty grey horse , like a rocking horse(Pale Rider maybe?)
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High Plains Drifter.... a fortean film indeed!... for some reason we had it as an Xmas film one year at school... got complaints about the "if youd wanted to get better aquainted, you shoda just asked" scene.
 
Pale Rider is sort of a remake but the "hero" is "death on a pale horse" and good rather than an avenging angel.... all very strange that Eastwood made two westerns about ghosts.
 
Does Westworld count?

Outland is generally acknowleged as being High Noon in space.

Marie
 
My fave westerns:

1) Evil Roy Slade with John Astin as the most evil gunfighter ever. Great fun!

2) Once Upon A Time In The West , and really all the Leone westerns (even Duck, You Suckers)

3) Rhustler's Rhapsody is quite fun.

4) Lone Ranger & Tonto with Clayton Moore & Jay Silverheels.

5) Can't remember the name, but there was a western time travel movie with Klaus Kinski as a future traveler who wanted to mess up a famous gunfight, and William Devaine was a modern day history professor sent to stop him by another time agent.

6) Adventures of Brisco County Jr... nuff said.
 
Blueswidow said:
There was a thriving western re-enactment society in my area a few years back. I went to the wedding of one of the women involved in it and it was great fun, everybody involved in the society dressed up in all their glory which left the handful of guests in 'civvies' looking a bit odd.
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My ex father-in-law's and active member of our local one. Twice a year at bank holidays the whole tribe, plus a lot of out-of-town visitors converge on a field and apart from sleeping in caravans, the whole thing is very authentic, even having fast draw shoot out competitions. They all have cowboy names, so if you eneter the shoot out under your own name YOU end up sounding ridiculous! (I know from experience, having entered many such shootouts when I was still married!)

As a slight diversion, they also have an American Civil War re-enactment gang, travelling to charity events. They've even got a cannon...

Back OT, the western as a genre is well and truly finished, due to the fact that people no longer accept that shooting native americans and stealing their land is no longer acceptable as entertainment.

My favourite is Stagecoach, due to the fact that it's as camp as a row of pink tents, and John Wayne was soooo pretty as a young man.
 
In no particular order:
High Plains Drifter
High Noon
The Magnificent Seven
Gunfight at the OK Corral

I don’t know if this counts, the film that contributed to the demise of the genre ‘Blazing Saddles’

I’ve seen one of the versions of ‘Heaven’s Gate’, which is supposed to be the nail in the coffin for big Hollywood westerns, but I didn’t think it was too bad.
 
High Plains Drifter (for it's Fortean content).
Silverardo. (for Kevin Kline in his undies and John Cleese; "Today my jurisdiction ends here".)
Magnificant Seven. (Although I prefer the original)

I don't like Westerns very much...
 
I think the main reason kids don't play cowboys and indians anymore is that you just can't get the toy revolvers with the rolls of paper caps any more, something to do with too may dim witted kids seeing what happens if you try to bite them i think.
Tthos guns and shooting your friends with those suckertipped arrows (which again because of some stupid people appear to have been banned :( ) was where all the fun came from in cowboys and indians games. I used to play it all the time in the summer when i was a wee sprog yet the only western I've actully enjoyed and been abl to sit all the way through is back to the future 3 and I'm not sure that really counts.
 
Fairly (but not exclusively) Clint-centric top five fave Western films:

!) High Plains Drifter - What can you say about a film, the least wierd thing about which is that it was filmed chronologically?

2) The "Dollar" Trilogy (With "The Good, et al." as finest part) - Defined what a 'Spahetti Western' should look, sound, feel and smell like.

3) The Outlaw Josey Wales - Clint is on screen for 20 whole minutes, gets beaten up, watches his family get raped and killed, is left for dead and found by soldiers before he even opens his mouth, and it's still compelling viewing.

4) Once Upon A Time In The West - Aside from "The Good, et al." Ennio Morricone's finest soundtrack score. The harmonica bits are soooo creepy (and more often sampled than you first realise....)

5) Jango - Come on. He walks into town carrying a Gatling Gun in his own coffin. There's no way the film could possibly be bad.
 
El Mariachi...anyone who sells his body to medical science to finish a film is showing real dediction.
 
"She Wore A Yellow Ribbon"

"Big Jake"

"True Grit"

"The Cowboys"

and "Tombstone" because Val Kilmer did such a unique version of I believe it was Doc Holliday.
 
Just remembered another offbeat one I liked - Can't remember the title exactly Z?????(name) Is Coming , I cant recall the name but it began with Z ( I think LOL). Maybe someone could put me out of my misery.
 
Marion said:
Just remembered another offbeat one I liked - Can't remember the title exactly Z?????(name) Is Coming , I cant recall the name but it began with Z ( I think LOL). Maybe someone could put me out of my misery.
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Is it "Valdez Is Coming" with Burt Lancaster?
 
Papa Lazarou said:
My favourite is Stagecoach, due to the fact that it's as camp as a row of pink tents, and John Wayne was soooo pretty as a young man.
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About a year ago there was a documentary about John Wayne. The next day at work a colleague and me couldn't get over how much JW reminded us of Bono!

PS; I'm more of a WW2 film-fan!
 
sidecar_jon said:
For ages ive ment to look out for anythign by Carl May... a favorite of Hitler and a purely Eurpean Cowboy writer. I think perhapse the pureest from was the writers who just never were part of the wild west or its history.
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Karl (w/a 'K') May was not just a favorite of Hitler's, but counted Herman Hesse, Albert Schwietzer and Einstein among his fans (go figure). Supposedly his books have sold around 100 million copies. They're pretty campy, and not very accurate, but Winnetou was a remarkly heroic Native American character given the era (turn of the 20th century).

Not much of a western fan here, but has anybody seen the LSD-Western Dead Man? The always strange Jim Jarmusch directed Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum and Iggy Pop, among others, in this extremely odd mid-90's release.
 
dead man

A great movie with a very odd premise. The educated native american Nobody mistakes ?? accountant Bill Blake for the poet William Blake or pretends to for reasons I couldn't quite work out. Neil young's mostly solo electric guitar score is also impressive.
 
My fave western films:

'The Searchers'
'Ride the High Country'
'The Wild Bunch'
'The Outlaw Josey Wales'
'Once Upon a Time in the West'
'Unforgiven'

:cool:
 
One dozen of my favourites in no particular order:

Unforgiven - Clint Eastwood
The Searchers - John Ford
El Topo - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Shane - George Stevens
Once Upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone
Django - Sergio Corbucci
High Noon - Fred Zinnemann
A Bullet for the General - Damiano Damiani
True Grit - Henry Hathaway
The Culpepper Cattle Co. - Dick Richards
The Magnificent Seven - John Sturges
The Big Silence - Sergio Corbucci
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Outland is generally acknowleged as being High Noon in space.
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Looks like you hit on the point that I was going to make.

The western never truely died, it evoloved into Sci-Fi.
The untamed western frontier became space, the final frontier.
 
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