Topic: ? The greatest "Western" of all time?

[dresden]

This is a bit off topic but is related to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN because I read on Wikpedia that BBM was the 5th highest grossing "western" of all time. I don't consider it to be a "western" myself, rather a drama that takes place in the West. I think calling BBM a "Western" is absurd. Just as I think the great Bette Davis film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? is a DRAMA and NOT a Horror film which it is often labeled. Anyways...

In my opinion the "greatest Western" of all time is hands down ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. It has that haunting musical score by the great Ennio Morricone who was a young man when he composed that filmscore way back in 1968 and he is still going strong! (It took the Italians of all people - Sergio Leone - to make the best Western of all time!).

Two questions and I'll leave ya'll alone...

Do you think of BBM as a "Western"? and...

What is your favorite WESTERN of all time?

[aimi15]

Hi. I read about this a bit back, and although i admit i'm not a big fan of the western genre (so unfortunately can't answer your two questions  :-[), i have to say i felt a hint of pride that BBM crossed over into the genre. Although i do see it as a romantic drama, that it has managed to cross over into the longtime 'macho' realm of the western and do so fantastically well in amongst the Clint's and John Wayne's made me smile and feel a little smug.
Hopefully these types of crossover's will give more people the impetus to watch BBM, they might recognise it as a film they could enjoy, and fall in love with it like so many of us have.

[tpe]

One can certainly classify it as a western in the same way that Johnney Depp's Dead Man is classified a such.

It is incidental in one level, and yert the setting si integral to the whole.

I tend to look at it this way:  it could be classified as a western, but it is much much more than that...

[welshwitch]

I tend to see it as carried on the back of the western genre ( the themes of which run in the background as DOS used to in computers) but Westerns as such to me mean cattle drives and baddies, posses and guns and I've never been a great fan, though I can see that plenty of the older ones have much more to them than that. BBM has made me look at some of them, even a couple of John Wayne ones, which I have problems with because of John Wayne...

[edgar]

I do consider BBM a western. It is absolutely about the sort of life characteristic of the American west--herding, rodeoing, changing jobs, farm equipment.... It's got guns, buddies, drinking, scenery, independent spirit, etc. Also, remember that Annie Proulx said that the homophobia of that setting was what the story was about. So I think it's a western; the setting is not just incidental.

It's been a while since we've had many of the "typical westerns" (John Wayne and all that) which defined the genre fro a long time. Most of the more recent westerns have been a little genre-bending.

Probably the best I've see in the last ten years (BBM excepted, of course) was Clint Eastwood's *Unforgiven*. It de-romanticized the whole gunfight thing. Also just good script, good actors, good cinematography, good, music....

Of the traditional westerns, I have a soft spot for *The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*.

[dresden]

A Rose by any other name is still a rose. IMHO BBM is NOT nor can be nor ever will be a "Western" as the old west was long gone before Jack and Ennis's time. The "old west" ended in the very late 19th century, and along with it the Frontier itself and the Cowboy.  Alaska was called "The Last Frontier" in the late 1890's as the Industrial Revolution loomed and the "Iron Horse" ended the era of the Western Frontier. In a review of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST it was written so sadly and beautifully "...it is a tale of the Old West doomed from the beginning of the movie to death by progress". BBM is an outstanding DRAMA but it is NOT a "Western".

Ang Lee weighs in: "Ang Lee, returning to themes he first explored in The Wedding Banquet, has specifically denied that his film is a gay Western. "For me it's a love story," he told the LA Times in early November. "It has very little to do with the Western genre." (BFI Sight & Sound)

IMDB weighs in: BBM's genre is listed as "Drama/Romance". Out of the 9,639 "Westerns"  listed BBM is not among them. imdb.com

[tpe]

A Rose by any other name is still a rose. IMHO BBM is NOT nor can be nor ever will be a "Western" as the old west was long gone before Jack and Ennis's time. The "old west" ended in the very late 19th century, and along with it the Frontier itself and the Cowboy.  Alaska was called "The Last Frontier" in the late 1890's as the Industrial Revolution loomed and the "Iron Horse" ended the era of the Western Frontier. In a review of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST it was written so sadly and beautifully "...it is a tale of the Old West doomed from the beginning of the movie to death by progress". BBM is an outstanding DRAMA but it is NOT a "Western".

Ang Lee weighs in: "Ang Lee, returning to themes he first explored in The Wedding Banquet, has specifically denied that his film is a gay Western. "For me it's a love story," he told the LA Times in early November. "It has very little to do with the Western genre." (BFI Sight & Sound)

IMDB weighs in: BBM's genre is listed as "Drama/Romance". Out of the 9,639 "Westerns"  listed BBM is not among them. imdb.com

I do tend to be sympathetic to this viewpoint.  But I see edgar's point.  Whether or not it is in the classic (i.e., early 20th century) mould of an American "Western", there is little doubt in my mind that the story and the screenplay conjure up an image of an unromanticized, more gritty facet of the American West.  As Annie Proulx had said: Ennis and Jack are enamoured of the cowboy myth.  This myth weighs heavily as a character in BBM -- just as heavy as the Mountain itself is a character.

[welshwitch]

Yes, but the cowboy era ddn't last more than about twenty years and even the western frontier with all it implied was shifting and moving and never very long-lived in any one place or time. It was movies that recreated the west, I think, and conflated a number of differnt aspects, echoes and reflections of which underlie BBM. It's ore that Ennis and Jack have unconsciously absorbed some of those, as their parents have, and that's what they try to live up to in their different ways.

That said, BBM still seems to me a love story with the idea of the west underpinning it, and with the scenery binding it firmly into the wilderness/frontier notion.

[Tom]

BBM to me is more akin to what we class in the UK as a kitchen sink drama. It deals with rEal life, gritty, tough folk not the glammed up people froM your teen flicks or rom coms. It deals with real social issues and a story and setting which just happens to be set in the western states.

When I think of the greatest western. I think of John Wayne and Natalie Wood in The Searchers, a movie that to most folk outside the US portrays the old west with all it's flaws ( just think of the racism of JW's character) I also love this movie cos even after the 50+ times I've seen it I still choke up at the end. Something I think BBM will also always do to me   :\'( :\'(

[tpe]

Yes, but the cowboy era ddn't last more than about twenty years and even the western frontier with all it implied was shifting and moving and never very long-lived in any one place or time. It was movies that recreated the west, I think, and conflated a number of differnt aspects, echoes and reflections of which underlie BBM. It's ore that Ennis and Jack have unconsciously absorbed some of those, as their parents have, and that's what they try to live up to in their different ways.

That said, BBM still seems to me a love story with the idea of the west underpinning it, and with the scenery binding it firmly into the wilderness/frontier notion.

Wonderfully said, welshwitch.

As Gyllenhaal said, this is the last frontier.

[dresden]

Yes, but the cowboy era ddn't last more than about twenty years and even the western frontier with all it implied was shifting and moving and never very long-lived in any one place or time. It was movies that recreated the west, I think, and conflated a number of differnt aspects, echoes and reflections of which underlie BBM. It's ore that Ennis and Jack have unconsciously absorbed some of those, as their parents have, and that's what they try to live up to in their different ways.

That said, BBM still seems to me a love story with the idea of the west underpinning it, and with the scenery binding it firmly into the wilderness/frontier notion.

True the "cowboy" era lasted roughly from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, the "old west" from abou 1830 to the turn of the century. The setting of Brokeback Mountain is about 100 years too late to be considered a "Western".

"Talk about genre bending. The movie Western has long defined iconic American masculinity, from Gene Autry and John Wayne to Clint Eastwood. "You have Montgomery Clift. It's always there," says Ang Lee, who insists that "Brokeback" is "not a Western". No gunslingers. I don't want to undermine the sanctified image of the American Western man. It's a love story of real people in the West." -The Hollywood Reporter

[welshwitch]

And long ago Leslie Fiedler argued that there was an underlying homoerotic attraction between Huck and Jim when they were on the raft and off to the western frontier and beyond. BBM is western in that it's set in what for somepeople passes for a western state, though I reckon the west as seen by movie watchers is more the plains and the rocks formations of Monument Valley - the mountains either don;t get a mention or show up as simply obstacles. I love the way that BBM makes them a part of the western experience.

[tpe]

I sympathize with the different points of view here.

Indeed, Ang Lee is loath to associate BBM with the Western genre.  But Annie Proulx is certainly not that squimish.

In her famous Jackson Hole interview, she elaborates:

How did you come to write "Brokeback Mountain"? What inspired the story?

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.


And again, in her Associated Press interview:

AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.

[edgar]

And long ago Leslie Fiedler argued that there was an underlying homoerotic attraction between Huck and Jim when they were on the raft and off to the western frontier and beyond. BBM is western in that it's set in what for somepeople passes for a western state, though I reckon the west as seen by movie watchers is more the plains and the rocks formations of Monument Valley - the mountains either don;t get a mention or show up as simply obstacles. I love the way that BBM makes them a part of the western experience.

Forgive me, ww, but the setting of Huck Finn (eastern Missouri, the Mississippi river, and the south) is not really western, certainly not "Western" in the sense of the movie genre we're discussing. (Twain is associated with the west, but mostly for the stuff he wrote about California. or are you alluding to the very end of HF?)

Meanwhile, the Wyoming setting of BBM is quintessential "Western" territory. The license plate of Wyoming has a cowboy on it to this day, I believe. (or is ist a bucking bronco? same idea.)

[welshwitch]

The west of myth kind of began where the frontier was, and at the end of HF Huck is trying to get away from the settlements in Missouri, out into the Territory ie what eventually became Oklahoma, which is indeed the SW; but it's also (till 1893) the frontier which to me is tied up with the western myth in its links with lawlessness, wilderness and the rest. I guess I don;t define the western in terms of the cowboy and the related images. Yes, I've seen Wyoming plates- I assumed what was on them was a bucking bronco too.

[dresden]

I sympathize with the different points of view here.

Indeed, Ang Lee is loath to associate BBM with the Western genre.  But Annie Proulx is certainly not that squimish.

In her famous Jackson Hole interview, she elaborates:

How did you come to write "Brokeback Mountain"? What inspired the story?

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.


And again, in her Associated Press interview:

AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.

"Rural" does not = "Western".  Yes the story takes place in the "west", as Lee says, but once again a story that takes place in the West does not magically become a "western". Again BBM is about 100 years to late to be in that genre. Had the setting for BBM taken place in 1863 instead of 1963 we would not be having this conversation.

[dresden]

And long ago Leslie Fiedler argued that there was an underlying homoerotic attraction between Huck and Jim when they were on the raft and off to the western frontier and beyond. BBM is western in that it's set in what for somepeople passes for a western state, though I reckon the west as seen by movie watchers is more the plains and the rocks formations of Monument Valley - the mountains either don;t get a mention or show up as simply obstacles. I love the way that BBM makes them a part of the western experience.

We all know there were homosexual men in the old west and certainly homoerotic attractions. BBM is NOT a "western" simply because it takes place in a western state, that is absurd. And it doesn't take the beautiful settings of Monument Valley to make a "Western" either. What it takes is place and time - and that time and place is in the West in the late 19th Century. And the mountains, for all their beauty and glory don't make BBM "a part of the western experience" - the moutains were and are  a part of the western experience in the real world (and not only in movie/fantasy=land), ie. Leadville and Central City CO. for example.

[tpe]

I sympathize with the different points of view here.

Indeed, Ang Lee is loath to associate BBM with the Western genre.  But Annie Proulx is certainly not that squimish.

In her famous Jackson Hole interview, she elaborates:

How did you come to write "Brokeback Mountain"? What inspired the story?

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.


And again, in her Associated Press interview:

AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.

"Rural" does not = "Western".  Yes the story takes place in the "west", as Lee says, but once again a story that takes place in the West does not magically become a "western". Again BBM is about 100 years to late to be in that genre. Had the setting for BBM taken place in 1863 instead of 1963 we would not be having this conversation.

But from the above statements, it is quite clear that Proulx takes them as together in these works (i.e., there is no correspondence between urban and Western).  This is indeed true, in the classic pioneer phase of American Literature.  Also, Larry McMurty concurs with this opinion in his essays on 'Lonesome Dove'.

"Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations

You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

The literary genre of the American Western has a magnificent pedigree that goes much deeper than Hollywood in the 1930s.  This is the genre that BBM seeks to be a part of.

[dresden]

I sympathize with the different points of view here.

Indeed, Ang Lee is loath to associate BBM with the Western genre.  But Annie Proulx is certainly not that squimish.

In her famous Jackson Hole interview, she elaborates:

How did you come to write "Brokeback Mountain"? What inspired the story?

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.


And again, in her Associated Press interview:

AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.

"Rural" does not = "Western".  Yes the story takes place in the "west", as Lee says, but once again a story that takes place in the West does not magically become a "western". Again BBM is about 100 years to late to be in that genre. Had the setting for BBM taken place in 1863 instead of 1963 we would not be having this conversation.

But from the above statements, it is quite clear that Proulx takes them as together in these works (i.e., there is no correspondence between urban and Western).  This is indeed true, in the classic pioneer phase of American Literature.  Also, Larry McMurty concurs with this opinion in his essays on 'Lonesome Dove'.

"Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations

You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

The literary genre of the American Western has a magnificent pedigree that goes much deeper than Hollywood in the 1930s.  This is the genre that BBM seeks to be a part of.

No one's talking about Hollywood in the 30's. And AP does not claim BBM is a "Western", in fact, she states quite clearly in the Jackson Hole WY interview that...
Jack and Ennis are NOT "Cowboys" at all. She rightfully states that a "tractor salesman" and even one-time sheephearders are hardly (real) "cowboys". Really, can you imagine a "Western" where one of the main charachters lives above a laundry mat and the other is a tractor salesman? But no one would know better than writer AP right? AP says they both TRY to live up to the cowboy ideal but neither of them make it.

PJH: I think it's clear to anyone who reads "Brokeback Mountain" that above all it's a wrenching, starcrossed love story. It is about two cowboys, but it seems inaccurate to call it gay literature. How do you feel about the film being assailed as gay agitprop emerging from liberal Hollywood? Did you ever intend for the story to be controversial?

AP: Excuse me, but it is NOT a story about "two cowboys." It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage. The only work they find is herding sheep for a summer ­ some cowboys! Yet both are beguiled by the cowboy myth, as are most people who live in the state, and Ennis tries to be one but never gets beyond ranch hand work; Jack settles on rodeo as an expression of the Western ideal. It more or less works for him until he becomes a tractor salesman.

[tpe]

But from the above statements, it is quite clear that Proulx takes them as together in these works (i.e., there is no correspondence between urban
No one's talking about Hollywood in the 30's. And AP does not claim BBM is a "Western", in fact, she states quite clearly in the Jackson Hole WY interview that...
Jack and Ennis are NOT "Cowboys" at all. She rightfully states that a "tractor salesman" and even one-time sheephearders are hardly (real) "cowboys". Really, can you imagine a "Western" where one of the main charachters lives above a laundry mat and the other is a tractor salesman? But no one would know better than writer AP right? AP says they both TRY to live up to the cowboy ideal but neither of them make it.

Cowboys do not make a Western for sure. But equally so, the fact that they are not cowboys does NOT exclude it as a Western.  She refers to BBM as addressing "rural Western" (with a capital W) situaltions.  One does not need cowboys, of course, to have a Western.  This is a misunderstanding bred from the images popularized  in Hollywood movies from the 1930s onward, which is wehy I made it a point to refer to them.  So many classic Amercan Westerns deal with the frontier, and not cowboys per se.

PJH: I think it's clear to anyone who reads "Brokeback Mountain" that above all it's a wrenching, starcrossed love story. It is about two cowboys, but it seems inaccurate to call it gay literature. How do you feel about the film being assailed as gay agitprop emerging from liberal Hollywood? Did you ever intend for the story to be controversial?

AP: Excuse me, but it is NOT a story about "two cowboys." It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage. The only work they find is herding sheep for a summer ­ some cowboys! Yet both are beguiled by the cowboy myth, as are most people who live in the state, and Ennis tries to be one but never gets beyond ranch hand work; Jack settles on rodeo as an expression of the Western ideal. It more or less works for him until he becomes a tractor salesman.

As in the case that the Illiad is not just a war poem.  It is also a love story, a tale of treachery.  A story of human nature.  So is every great Western more than just a Western.  A Western and a love story are genres that are NOT mutually exclusive.  That is the richness of literature.

Again, I stress: Proulx is correct in that Ennis and Jack are not cowboys.  She said that they were enamoured with the cowboy myth.  This is all consistent with the idea that BBM as a Western.  The concepts are NOT mutually exclusive.

[tpe]

But from the above statements, it is quite clear that Proulx takes them as together in these works (i.e., there is no correspondence between urban
No one's talking about Hollywood in the 30's. And AP does not claim BBM is a "Western", in fact, she states quite clearly in the Jackson Hole WY interview that...
Jack and Ennis are NOT "Cowboys" at all. She rightfully states that a "tractor salesman" and even one-time sheephearders are hardly (real) "cowboys". Really, can you imagine a "Western" where one of the main charachters lives above a laundry mat and the other is a tractor salesman? But no one would know better than writer AP right? AP says they both TRY to live up to the cowboy ideal but neither of them make it.

Cowboys do not make a Western for sure. But equally so, the fact that they are not cowboys does NOT exclude it as a Western.  She refers to BBM as addressing "rural Western" (with a capital W) situations and builds on the idea of homophobia in the "land of the pure cowboy".  One does not need cowboys, of course, to have a Western.  This is a misunderstanding bred from the images popularized  in Hollywood movies from the 1930s onward, which is why I made it a point to refer to them.  So many classic Amercan Westerns deal with the frontier, and not about cowboys per se.

PJH: I think it's clear to anyone who reads "Brokeback Mountain" that above all it's a wrenching, starcrossed love story. It is about two cowboys, but it seems inaccurate to call it gay literature. How do you feel about the film being assailed as gay agitprop emerging from liberal Hollywood? Did you ever intend for the story to be controversial?

AP: Excuse me, but it is NOT a story about "two cowboys." It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage. The only work they find is herding sheep for a summer ­ some cowboys! Yet both are beguiled by the cowboy myth, as are most people who live in the state, and Ennis tries to be one but never gets beyond ranch hand work; Jack settles on rodeo as an expression of the Western ideal. It more or less works for him until he becomes a tractor salesman.

As in the case that the Illiad is not just a war poem.  It is also a love story, a tale of treachery.  A story of human nature.  So is every great Western more than just a Western.  A Western and a love story are genres that are NOT mutually exclusive.  That is the richness of literature.

Again, I stress: Proulx is correct in that Ennis and Jack are not cowboys.  She said that they were enamoured with the cowboy myth.  This is all consistent with the idea of BBM as a Western.  The concepts are NOT mutually exclusive.

[tpe]

So that we are clear about things here, may I point out the following entry in Wikipedia, which discusses the concept of the contemporary Western:

Contemporary Westerns
Contemporary Westerns, as the name implies, are films that have contemporary American settings but nevertheless utilize Old West themes and motifs (a rebellious antihero, open plains and landscapes, climactic gunfights, etc.). For the most part, they still take place in the American West and reveal the progression of the Old West mentality into the late twentieth century. Examples include John Sayles' Lone Star (1996), Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World (1993), Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Robert Rodríguez's Once Upon a Time In Mexico (2003)

Also, may I note that the Wikipedia entry defines the classic American Western as devoted to telling stories set in the 19th Century American West.  Note that there is no direct reference to cowboys.  It is incidental that cowboys WERE A PART of this story.

 

[dresden]

So that we are clear about things here, may I point out the following entry in Wikipedia, which discusses the concept of the contemporary Western:

Contemporary Westerns
Contemporary Westerns, as the name implies, are films that have contemporary American settings but nevertheless utilize Old West themes and motifs (a rebellious antihero, open plains and landscapes, climactic gunfights, etc.). For the most part, they still take place in the American West and reveal the progression of the Old West mentality into the late twentieth century. Examples include John Sayles' Lone Star (1996), Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World (1993), Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Robert Rodríguez's Once Upon a Time In Mexico (2003)


You make my point for me. BBM is none of these things save the landscape: Contemporary Westerns, as the name implies, are films that have contemporary American settings but nevertheless utilize Old West themes and motifs (a rebellious antihero, open plains and landscapes, climactic gunfights, etc.). For the most part, they still take place in the American West and reveal the progression of the Old West mentality into the late twentieth century. There is absolutely NO "Old West Mentality", no rebellioius antihero, no climatic gunfights, no progression of the Old West mentality into the late 20th century in BBM.

I think you doth protest too much. IMDB classifies it as a "Drama/Romance" and rightfully so as that it exactly what it is. Neither the writer nor the director of BBM consider it a "Western", nor even a "Contemporary Western" and no one has posted otherwise. You can call BBM a Western if you like, and I can call it a Comedy if I like, but neither would be accurate.

Also, may I note that the Wikipedia entry defines the classic American Western as devoted to telling stories set in the 19th Century American West.  Note that there is no direct reference to cowboys.  It is incidental that cowboys WERE A PART of this story.

There you go again. Are there "Cowboys" in BBM or not? You contradict youself, by your last sentence above: "It is incidental that cowboys WERE A PART of this story. "Cowboys" were NOT a part of this (BBM) story. The writer said so quite vehemently in the Jackson Hole WY interview posted previously. Had Annie P. put the setting of BBM in the late 19th Century, as I truly wish she had, then BBM could rightfully claim the genre of "Western". As it is, it is not, can not, and never will be.

When Annie P. refers to "rural Western" she is talking about geography NOT genre.

Ang Lee Planet Out BBM interview: I resent when it's described as a "gay cowboy" story. It's easy to do that, but culturally it has a funny connotation, like "Blazing Saddles." They also call it a "gay Western," and that's not provocative or accurate: the Western is a movie genre -- it's not really what I deal with. But it is a gay love story.


 

[edgar]

The west of myth kind of began where the frontier was, and at the end of HF Huck is trying to get away from the settlements in Missouri, out into the Territory ie what eventually became Oklahoma, which is indeed the SW; but it's also (till 1893) the frontier which to me is tied up with the western myth in its links with lawlessness, wilderness and the rest. I guess I don;t define the western in terms of the cowboy and the related images. Yes, I've seen Wyoming plates- I assumed what was on them was a bucking bronco too.

Very good, ww. After I wrote most of my earlier post, it hit me that you were probably referring to the very end of HF, which does lead them west. (Perhaps Twain once intended to complete the trilogy sometime with Huck and Jim in a more "western" setting.)
Wyoming is the setting of some of the old westerns, I believe.... Can't quote them here right now...

[tpe]

You make my point for me. BBM is none of these things save the landscape: Contemporary Westerns, as the name implies, are films that have contemporary American settings but nevertheless utilize Old West themes and motifs (a rebellious antihero, open plains and landscapes, climactic gunfights, etc.). For the most part, they still take place in the American West and reveal the progression of the Old West mentality into the late twentieth century. There is absolutely NO "Old West Mentality", no rebellioius antihero, no climatic gunfights, no progression of the Old West mentality into the late 20th century in BBM.

I think you doth protest too much. IMDB classifies it as a "Drama/Romance" and rightfully so as that it exactly what it is. Neither the writer nor the director of BBM consider it a "Western", nor even a "Contemporary Western" and no one has posted otherwise. You can call BBM a Western if you like, and I can call it a Comedy if I like, but neither would be accurate.

dresden, I do not get your point here.   What would you call Ennis?  Is he not in the classic mould of the striong silent anti-hero glorified in the great Westerns?  As far as your comment regarding There is absolutely NO "Old West Mentality", it is completely false.  If you read the screenplay of BBM, you will see that McMurty directly references several great Westerns in a number of  BBM scenes.  One of them, being 'Giant', stars James Dean, who plays the role of a strong silent anti-hero.  This should not surprise you, because LARRY MCMURTY HIMSELF HAS SAID IN SEVERAL OCCASIONS THAT HE DRAWS A PARALLEL WITH ENNIS AND THE ROLE PLAYED BY JAMES DEAN. 

Second, would you call references and scenes to the RODEO as NOT illustrating the old West Mentality?  To me, this is quite obvious.  It deserves no further elaboration.
 
An old West mentality, landscape, an anti-hero, gunfights, etc. are examples of charactersitics of the contemporary Western.  A contemporary Western does not  have to have ALL THESE.  In this light, 'Dead Man', has an anti-hero and gunfights, but the mentality and landscape are all set in the forests and coasts of the Pacific Northwest, there are no cowboys, and the plot is ALIEN to the natures of both classic and contemporary Westerns.  By your definition (and mine, I would say), this will NOT be classed as a Western, AND YET, IMDB CLASSIFIES IT AS SUCH!!!!  Go figure. 

Incidentally, 'Giant', which is universally considered a Western, IS NOT CLASSIFIED AS SUCH IN IMDB.  Like BBM, it is classified as DRAMA! (Certainly not mutually exclusive with respect to a Western!)

There you go again. Are there "Cowboys" in BBM or not? You contradict youself, by your last sentence above: "It is incidental that cowboys WERE A PART of this story. "Cowboys" were NOT a part of this (BBM) story. The writer said so quite vehemently in the Jackson Hole WY interview posted previously. Had Annie P. put the setting of BBM in the late 19th Century, as I truly wish she had, then BBM could rightfully claim the genre of "Western". As it is, it is not, can not, and never will be.

Again, I do not get you here.  Something can be a part of a whole without defining the whole, am I correct?  Do you not agree that there are a LOT of Westerns with cowboys, BUT NOT ALL WESTERNS HAVE COWBOYS?  It is strange that you find this so contradictory!

"Cowboys" in BBM or not? Don't you think some of the rodeo participants in the Texas scenes ARE cowboys?   You cannot say that ALL of them were sheepherders, especially in that part of Texas.

When Annie P. refers to "rural Western" she is talking about geography NOT genre.

Although I think her meaning and context is clear enough, I suggest that we do not interpret her words as if WE were HER.

Ang Lee Planet Out BBM interview: I resent when it's described as a "gay cowboy" story. It's easy to do that, but culturally it has a funny connotation, like "Blazing Saddles." They also call it a "gay Western," and that's not provocative or accurate: the Western is a movie genre -- it's not really what I deal with. But it is a gay love story.

As I had said earlier, dresden, I am quite open here to different points of view.  If you read my initial post, you will see that I even lean to your opinion.  But what I cannot abide is any overt form of dogmatism in matters literary and artistic. I personally recognize the multiple themes in BBM as part and parcel of the overall richness.  If people can classify it as a Western, so be it.  To me, there is enough evidence to support such a contention, and BBM can only gain by the added level of meaning.

Such is always the case in Art.  And Art is NOT Dogmatic Religion.

 

[welshwitch]

Just goes to show that we all have our own definition of what a Western involves, and where the West is, if it's not a mythical country of the mind.

And that BBM is so many things to so many of us.

And actually, from where I'm standing ( sitting, in reality) you're all 3000 miles to the West and therefore probably all Westerners.