Two old movies I saw last night: Part 2

So after The Hustler was over I was hungry, so during the credits I made some sandwiches. Then when I was eating them the next movie started, and it was The Shootist. This was John Wayne's last movie, and it has some neat parallels between the actors and the characters. The main character, J.B. Brooks, is an old, famous outlaw who comes to Carson City to confirm with a trusted doctor that he indeed is dying of cancer. Just a few years earlier John Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer and thought he might die (but instead he had a lung out and was fine for a few more years until it came back and got him in the stomach in the end). But besides the exact disease, the parallels are a lot cooler. J.B. Brooks wasn't an outlaw for the glory or anything, he lived by the motto "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." By all accounts John Wayne himself lived with a similar attitude (case in point: he made them change the script of this very movie so that he would get to ride his own favorite horse and so his character wouldn't shoot a dude in the back).

We don't know too much about his past, but there is a cool montage right in the beginning where acts and deeds supposedly in Brooks' past are represented by actual clips from previous John Wayne movies (I couldn't name them all, but I definitely noticed one scene from Rio Bravo). The lead female and vague romantic interest (this is an awesome aspect of the movie, that the romantic interest story is all a what-may-have-been) is played by Lauren Bacall, who in real life had watched her real husband Humphrey Bogart die of cancer. In 1976 the kinds of Westerns John Wayne had made a career with were getting to be out of style (is this even true? I'm no film scholar but it seems like it is. I mean, there were still Westerns, but I think they were getting more gritty and Clint Eastwood-y), and Wayne himself must have been feeling a bit like he outlived his time. Same with J.B. Brooks, who is surrounded during the whole movie with the beginnings of running water, electricity, and increased law and order in what used to be the wild wild west.

So J.B. goes to this wise old stuttering stammering doctor who seemed familiar, and it was because it was freakin' Jimmy freakin' Stewart.

Figure 12: Jimmy freakin' Stewart

So great old wonderful old Jimmy Stewart has to tell John Wayne how he's gonna die, but then suggests if he were a brave man he would find a cooler way to die. John Wayne takes it to heart. With the help of a young Ron Howard (you don't need me to link Ron Howard's wikipedia page, do you? I mean, come on, you know who Ron Howard is, he is in or has directed like every single movie there is) and that guy who has the Shining, he sets up an awesome way to go down in a blaze of glory.

Figure 12: That guy who has the Shining, aka Scatman Crothers

Figure 12: Not this kind of blaze of glory, but then again not too far off

All the while he is being hilariously taunted by that dude from MASH, and he also totally dresses down the father of the dude who would try to take that pebble out of that dude's hand.

Figure 12: The dude from MASH, who is freakin' hilarious in this movie

Figure 12: The dude from whose hand the dude in this movie's son would try to take a pebble

Also for good measure the producers originally didn't even want John Wayne, but rather this dude named George C. Scott, maybe you heard of him.

Figure 12: Maybe you heard of this dude

This movie is fucking brilliant. It is a great story in its own right, as nothing more than a story. The pacing is perfect, with little titles that count down from "1st day" to "6th day" or so to "last day." The humor is honest-to-god laugh-out-loud stuff, especially that dude from MASH and a lot of times the Duke himself. There is also some biting satire in the form of all the minor characters trying to make a buck off the death of a famous outlaw. But then it is also a really touching depiction of time passing one by, and of a proud and stubborn man facing his inevitable decline and death, which I can tell you is one of the saddest things. It really struck a chord with me on some of my own feelings about dying, like for instance when the Duke talks about a man's death being the most private part of his life. I mean, I cried.

You wanna cry too? Get this: the horse the Duke made them write in was his prized horse, and he wouldn't let others ride it. In this movie he gives away his horse to the young rascal Ron Howard, like he is saying, here, kid, my time's up, now you can ride my horse. And it kept its name it has in real life ("Ol' Dollor") as a character in the movie. So it was like the Duke was literally giving up his horse. It is eerie, a little, and sad, and beautiful. Go see it.