The Big Picture - The Top Five Westerns Since 1993 | Discussion (Ep. 93)

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

In honor of ‘Red Dead Redemption 2,’ Sean Fennessey sits down with Chris Ryan — the Doc Holliday to his Wyatt Earp — to list and discuss their top five Western films of the last two and a half decades. Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’ Closed the Book on Movie Westerns, K. Austin Collins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wretched slugs! Don't any of you have the guts to play for blood? I'm your huckleberry. That's just my game. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with one of my oldest friends chris ryan the ringer's chris ryan chris what's up i'm kind of the doc holiday to your wider wow i don't know what does that what does that really mean uh i'm the like tuberculosis suffering uh wildly talented but problematic sidekick in your quest for justice in the west we hopefully we're not sickly today but hopefully we'll have bars.

We're doing a top five, Chris. Top fives is becoming a part of this show. And we did one last week with Bill Simmons about horror movies. And we're doing one today about Westerns since 1993. And the reason that we're doing that is because, and maybe this will seem a little stupid when I explain it, Red Dead Redemption 2 came out last week

and it made $750 million in its opening weekend, which is approximately five times the amount of the most successful movie of the year. So this is a video game podcast. So we've made a strategic mistake with this show. However, we do love Westerns. Yeah. And Red Dead has us thinking a little bit more about Westerns. You edited a piece on the site about sort of what you're calling the new Western canon.

The modern Western canon. Yeah, sure. So explain what that is. I decided to take it from Unforgiven on because I remember growing up when Unforgiven came out, there was almost this sentiment like, we don't have to do this anymore. He made the ultimate Western. He's closed the book on the Western. Everything that you ever wanted to say about the Clint Eastwood character, about the lone gunman, about all these ideas about the West and revenge and modernization and civilization

versus the sort of rough-hewn natural world. Like Eastwood did it, best picture, we can move forward now. And obviously that's not the case. We've continued to make Westerns since then, really good Westerns, and there have been modern Westerns, and there have been movies like The Revenant that are kind of almost colonial. But it's just this genre that is constantly open to reinvention. And I think that the reason for

that is that it puts characters, if you're making a Western, you're putting characters in a place where there are real consequences to decisions and to moral actions. And that's going to always be an incredible backdrop for drama. Before we go into the kind of modern Western, what are some of your classics? I am a real Bravo fan. I'm actually a Howard Hawks Westerns guy. I think you can be a Howard Hawks Westerns person or a John Ford Westerns person when it comes to the classics, or you can be like an Anthony Mann person and be difficult. But I think that-

What about Bud Boddicker? Yeah, right. But like, you know, I love Sergio Leone movies, but when it comes to the very classic ones, I think I go more Red River, Rio Bravo than The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Got it. But I love Hangout Westerns. I love any Westerns that use the trappings of a Western narrative,

whether it's like a cattle drive or these guys are stuck in a jail and have to defend it as a place to have characters interact with each other. I love that. I'm probably more of a peck and paw person the more I think about it, though I love the Hawks movies too. Let's get right into this.

Why don't you start with your number five? Yeah, okay. So my number five movie is Lone Star. Forty years ago, under Sheriff Charlie Wade, Rio County was as corrupt as they came. is Lone Star. Forty years ago, under Sheriff Charlie Wade, Rio County was as corrupt as they came. Then, Buddy Deed showed up.

How about you lay that shield on this table and vanish? You're a dead man. Directed by John Sayles, 1996 film starring Matthew McConaughey, Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Chris Christopherson, a great cameo from Francis McDormand. I don't know

if John Sayles is a very fashionable director right now, but it's weird. We always talk about like, I wish they would just make movies like they did in the 90s. And strangely, I think we talk about that in relationship to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. We only talk about it when we're like, we want these thrillers.

But all the things that most people claim to love about movies, like the ability to go deep into a set of characters, to tell this story in a contained space, to use visuals to emphasize the narrative. Sales was really, really good at that. He still is good at that. And this was sort of his,

I don't know if you'd call it his Hollywood movie. He made it for Castle Rock. And it's a mystery that unfolds in a couple of different timelines or two timelines, really, a present and a past. And it's about dealing with the past and sort of finding resolution with your past to move forward into your future. It takes place in this border town in Texas where Chris Cooper has come back to become the sheriff of this town called Frontera where his father is sort of this famous figure

in the town's past. And he meets up with his old high school sweetheart played by Elizabeth Pena. And it's this beautiful love story. It's a beautiful mystery. And it definitely grapples with a lot of the myths and legends of the West. It's great McConaughey.

It's amazing McConaughey. It's kind of in that sweet spot of McConaughey's time to kill, dazed and confused, still an indie darling, not a super duper star. And he's also kind of sparingly used in this movie and he's used as like the myth maker because he plays that father role. I really like that movie. What's John Sayles up to right now? I think he's still making films and I think he's making films in that way that he always has,

which is that maybe he does work on a couple of other things in the shadows. He's a legendary rewriter and ghostwriter in Hollywood. Usually did mostly genre stuff for B-movies. And then he would take whatever money he made doing a pass on a script and go make very small, independently funded movies that he had complete creative control over. And I was watching an episode, actually, before we did this, I watched an episode of Charlie Rose last night from when Lone Star was released.

And it's Chris Cooper and Joe Morton who were in the movie with John Sayles. And they're just talking about like, yeah, we only have three takes. You have to keep it moving because we only have X amount of dollars. So we are, everybody is on the top of their game because we're basically moving as fast as possible to make this film

the way we want to make it. It's a great recommendation. People probably know Sayles from Eight Men Out. I would say that's his most well-known. And Meituan, maybe. Meituan, Return of the Secaucus Seven. I'm trying to think of

what are some of my favorites. I mean, he's actually had a fairly quiet century. Sure. His last film was Gopher Sisters in 2013, which I don't even think I've seen. No, I didn't. And I mean, you know, this was around the time when I think that he was, yeah, you're right. This is his sort of peak in terms of notoriety. He'd made Passionfish around this time. Yeah, Secret of Ronin-ish. Yeah. So I think 8 Men Out was probably his commercial peak, but this was, you know was probably his most critically acclaimed film. Janet Maslin wrote this absolute rave about it in The Times.

I just remember seeing it, and it made me feel... It has really one of the great endings of movies in the last couple of decades with one of the great final lines that I don't want to ruin, but it really has this like, it's postmodern in that it understands the iconic mythology it's playing with, this idea of this sheriff who's going to regulate a town that's on the verge of lawlessness, while also just telling a very simple, beautiful story. So I really love that movie. I like that one a lot. One thing that's going to happen here,

in part because Chris and I are tight, but also because there is some notion of objective truth in this conversation, we're going to have some crossover. So I'm going to give you my number five. If it's not on your list, I'll die on the spot. My number five is No Country for Old Men. Is it on your list?

So let's use this as an opportunity to talk about No Country. You stopped to watch your backtrack. Don't shoot my dumb ass. But if you stop, you stopped in shade. No Country, of course, is the Coen Brothers Oscar-winning adaptation of cormac mccarthy's novel uh essentially about a bag of money and a murderous man and a chase to elude him is it the second best movie of the century is it the first best movie of the century what

it's in the it's in the conversation yeah i was thinking about how we have not done this movie as rewatchables before yeah it's also is it, is it rewatchable? It's very tense. I mean, the performances in it are electric. It's basically a three-hander and the three hands are all playing Django Reinhardt. It's wild how good these guys are in this movie. Is this the origin of your love for Josh Brolin? Well, this is the Brolin sense. It definitely is when it starts because he had been begging. He basically had to beg to get into this movie. He shot his own audition tape and sent it to the Coens. And I think I've talked about this before,

maybe another podcast with you even, you know, when you read that book, so I read the book and then the Cormac McCarthy novel. And then the second that they announced the casting, I was like, Oh yeah, I don't need my imagination.

Perfect. Yeah. It was absolutely perfect. Yeah. It's not like, Oh man, Tommy Lee Jones as a gri oh, yeah, I don't need my imagination. Perfect. Yeah. It was absolutely perfect. Yeah. It's not like, oh man, Tommy Lee Jones as a grizzled sheriff.

I don't know. It was like, this is exactly right. Even Kelly McDonald, who's like, does a pretty good job with the Texas accent. Always had a crush on her.

Yeah, she's great. And yeah, I mean, this movie is a great example of why I think Westerns are so, they can never really go out of style because this is a film that I think I think westerns are so they can never really go out of style

because this is a film that I think it's hard to tell but I think it's set in the early 80s is the in the book I think you never really

can tell in the movie he's a Vietnam veteran and he's still pretty young so I think he has it has to be around that time period but it doesn't matter when it's set

because it could be set in 1870 or it could be set in 2015 there's certain elements to it that are just like, this is what happens when you build civilization on the edge of the wilderness. And this is what happens when concepts of civilization are seen as constructs and they just start to fall away. And like when you actually get out there in the desert, you're really just what you amount to as a person and the choices you make. And that's what I think fascinates me most about this genre. And it's certainly a major theme of McCarthy's work.

It's a lot more poetic and other books that he's written. This is a much more straightforward, almost hard boiled thriller, but yeah, I mean, that's actually why it's my favorite of his books because it doesn't, it's not working so hard to send you the message of the book even though I you know McCarthy obviously is a wonderful writer

and amazing but in Blood Meridian it's this high level grand scheme of humanity life, death, the devil like everything that is happening in the cosmos

and this is just on the surface it is on the ground get the money quick thing about this movie I feel like it has been in the last 10 years a silence of the lambs a bit which is to say you know that silence of the lambs comes out it's a huge hit it's celebrated by everyone who saw it it wins the big five oscars

and then slowly over time it just becomes the h Hannibal Lecter movie. Yeah. And the only thing people can really remember or talk about from it is... I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. And I feel like Bardem's character, Anton Sugar... And call it, yeah. And call it, yeah, all of those iconic moments are kind of how this movie is slowly being remembered. Does that sound right to you? Yes, which is a shame because there's moments like, what amounts to essentially a cameo,

but in basically zero playing time, Woody Harrelson almost steals the movie. There's a really memorable scene. I mean, like, honestly, the last scene between Tommy Lee Jones and Barry Corbin is remarkable. And Brolin's performance is so great. And he's, I guess, the Clarice in this movie, but is actually, they invert how it's supposed to,

how you're supposed to feel about that hero because of what they do with him towards the third act and how he kind of disappears. It's a really fascinating movie. How do you feel about it just really quickly in relation to other Coen Brothers movies? I was thinking about this. So, I mean, obviously the Coens are returning the west in november with the ballad of buster

scruggs and it's interesting to look at the westerns they've made true grit as well i think you'd make the case of blood simple is kind of a noir western also and it has nothing to do with any of those movies i don't think yeah in a very odd way it feels like they're most like studio hack job like they're most for hire work, but it also is the culmination of a lot of their powers too. It's kind of funny when Woody Harrelson is on screen and there's something kind of sickly funny about Bardem. The way he runs the trailer park, he's just like, you want to leave a message? That's very Coen brothers, but yeah. But Brolin and McDonald is deathly serious. Everything happening between them is real and Bardem is

brutal. Yeah. And Bardem is brutal. Yeah. And brutal in a way that is not like Sam Raimi funny, we got our star making evil dead way. It's like,

it is viscerally unnerving. And I don't know. I mean, it doesn't really fit and that's part of what makes it special. They have only made like one movie

that I think is not interesting, which is remarkable over a 25 year, 30 year career. But this is definitely the sore thumb in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. What about number four for you? So I did pick Unforgiven

for number four. You'd be way money out of Missouri. Kill women and children. That's right. I've killed women and children. Which I don't mean to say in a way, I don't mean to say, like, in a way, I don't want to say that it's not a masterpiece,

because I think it is. This is, I guess, cheating a little bit, because it's 92, and you're talking about since 93. Well, no, but it's inspired by the framework you're setting. When's the last time you've seen this movie? Long time. Long time. I remember Cameron Collins, who used to write for the site, you know, he's a huge Clint Eastwood fan,

and we had talked about Unforgiven a bit. He wrote a big piece about Unforgiven for the site a year and a half ago or so, and I had been desiring to sit down and really watch it. And I think it's on Netflix right now, actually. Yes, yeah. But I just haven't done it in maybe five or ten years. So I think that the one good way to sell this movie

is if you're not interested in Clint Eastwood reckoning with his lifetime of violence on screen, which I think the years since Unforgiven have kind of changed it because it's like, but you're still doing that. You know what I mean? Like you're still making these kind of, this kind of was like a career renaissance for him

around the time of In the Line of Fire. And I think that then he kind of really went on this run where he just was directing a movie every 15 months pretty much and legendarily being done at lunch for the day of shooting and stuff he really kind of took off as a director after this um this is a gene hackman masterwork uh and if you watch it for that little bill yeah it's it's a great way to re-approach the movie is just to go back and watch this guy just give the thesis statement yeah the back and back and forth at the beginning of the movie

with Richard Harris is like one of my favorite exchanges. I mean, that's such high level, incredible actors going toe to toe. It's an interesting movie. It's weird that the lesson he took away from it was not the tragedy

of Eastwood's character, but the triumph. Like anytime he acts in a movie now, he kind of wins in a weird way even in Million Dollar Baby Gran Torino these movies that he appears in I think one of the reasons

that Unforgiven resonated so much is because it kind of dismantled you know the man with no name or the outlaw Josie Wales it kind of

it deconstructed a lot of that mythology that he had been such a big part of and it feels weirdly like he turned into the guy talking to the chair at the convention. That's not true through every film, but American Sniper 2, I felt like there was something

like a little unexamined going on in that movie. Unforgiven is the one where he really seems to be trying to take apart every aspect of everything he's been a part of. Clint Eastwood's westerns are actually quite brutal. Like if you go back and watch Outlaw Josie Wales or High Plains Drifter or some of these movies, they're not actually good hangs. Not in the way that Rio Bravo

is. Not in the way even something is sort of throwaway as Young Guns is. But they are so dark that to see him actually wait around in that darkness and unpack what's going on in them was kind of a fascinating moment.

And I think, you know, just in terms of technical accomplishment and, you know, everything from the music to the cinematography to the screenplay to the performances, it is a perfect movie. It's just not one I watch a ton, but it is worth revisiting.

My number four is The Hateful Eight. That's Marco the Mexican? Precisely, yeah. Oh, shit. Now that I'm blowing his face off, Marco ain't worth a peso. And I thought about Django Unchained, and Django Unchained is not aging that well for me.

And The Hateful Eight is aging very well. And I think that's interesting because Django Unchained was much more lauded. I think it was considered a much bigger deal. More movie star parts. You know, Christoph Waltz won his second Oscar for his performance in that movie. Obviously, there was a lot happening, you know, with the concept of race.

There was something modern using like Rick Ross songs in Django. Hateful Eight is like one of the most fun kind of murder mystery chamber pieces in years. And I think all of the Agatha Christie inside the old West stuff that it was pitched as is true and is good. And kind of what's great about Tarantino

is he's still able to turn the knob ever so slightly to the left on genre. And if he'd already made one Western and he was going back to make another, when it was announced, we were kind of like, okay, cool. Jennifer Lawrence will be in this. And I remember that being the original break on this.

But I rewatched A Hateful Eight also streaming on Netflix. And I was enraptured. It's two hours and 40 minutes. Yeah, I remember we saw it together. We did. I think in the, I think we saw it at the DGA. So it was like the equivalent of the roadshow production. So there was an intermission and everything.

It's such a flex that this movie is almost entirely shot inside of a cabin. But anytime he's like, yeah, I'll show you the Montana skies behind it. It's like, he could have just shot this in Culver City and he just froze all these people's asses off shooting it in a cabin in like Alberta or wherever it was. It's crazy. I mean, there's obviously two incredible vista moments. One is the opening of the movie with the close-up on the on the Jesus Christ and then later on the famous sequence where Samuel L. Jackson is telling the

story about his dingus yes and we we kind of see the expanse of the old west yeah and it's interesting too because Tarantino famously hates John Ford uh-huh and has always been very critical

of John Ford who he thinks is a racist yes and it seems like and obviously to Quentin Tarantino has not been I don of John Ford, who he thinks is a racist. Yes. And it seems like, and obviously Quentin Tarantino has not been, I don't know, invulnerable to certain accusations, but he is always, and when he's making Westerns,

working to empower people who are not always empowered, even if those people are as disgusting as Daisy Domergue. I mean, the Jennifer Jason Leigh performance in this, I think has become, it's kind of been forgotten and it's a shame because it's, it is such a powerhouse. The abuse she takes, but also the abuse

she dishes out. And it has one of the great gasp I can't believe this just happened moments in recent movies. So it's, I'm glad you put it on there. How do you feel about Django? Have you rewatched that recently? Yeah, it's I think obviously Tarantino's a master

and he's able to do things that are incredible. I find, along the same lines as No Country, it's not super rewatchable. Yes. And it's not very exciting, and I find the conclusion, the kind of, like, hardcore shootout at the end of the movie, like, a bit of a drag.

Yeah. A bit of a bore. Can I... I just want to say, I don't actually think that Tarantino's, like, denouement set pieces are actually usually that good. I guess that that may sound weird, but like they're cathartic and anything can happen within them.

But just in terms of their staging, I often find them kind of lacking. Yeah, I think in Reservoir Dogs, there was something wow about that, where doing the standoff in that way was sort of confusing and thrilling, and you were trying to get a sense of what had really happened. And then obviously that cut to black, and you can still hear the cop cars and the cops descending upon the warehouse. And I know people love the Crazy 88 stuff and love Kill Bill, but I actually was like, this movie is great for lots of reasons aside from this giant homage to martial arts films and sword fighting. Definitely. Yeah, it's an interesting way to put it i mean the hatefully doesn't have quite the same big bang

there is there is a there is a melodramatic ending i suppose but um what's what's your number your number three so my number three is no country so i can give you my number two or would you want to do your number three my number three is broke back and i'll say it just once. Go ahead. Tell you what. We could have had a good life together. Fucking real good life. Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it in us. So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain.

Great. Let's talk about Brokeback Mountain. There's two guys staring at each other from across a podcast recording table talking about Brokeback. Brokeback is beautiful. And it is beautiful for all of the sort of you know, sort of extra reasons. The sort of what it meant

to have a gay Western. What it meant for a filmmaker to make a movie like this. But it also is great for all the classical reasons. The performances are amazing. You know,

it's based on this Larry McMurtry story that is beautiful. Can we just give a quick shout out to Larry McMurtry, who wrote Brokeback, Last Picture Show, and Lonesome Dove? I mean, he's a titan. I feel like many a Saturday I've stumbled into your house and you've just been reading like a 900-page McMurtry novel that I've never heard of. And I'm like, wow, Chris, where does he find the time?

What is it that you like about McMurtry? Empathy. Like deep, deep, deep empathy for his characters. Yeah. He has... What better example than this movie? what is it that you like about McMurtry empathy like deep deep deep empathy for his characters yeah he has what better example than this movie

yeah and I think that he has a way of finding the heart and even the heart most heartless people even stuff that feels like it's ripped

from like a five cent comic like a lot of stuff in Lonesome Dove is just like and then Rooster shot that engine you know and it it still has like these layers and layers of depth Like a lot of stuff in Lonesome Dove is just like, and then Rooster shot that engine, you know?

And it's, it still has like these layers and layers of depth and every character has humanity. And I don't know, it's Larry McMurtry stories, especially the ones that don't take place in the world of like Texas Rangers are the kinds of stories that I hope still get told 20 years from now. It's funny, you know,

this Brokeback is based on an Annie Pruel story that I haven't read. And he wrote the screenplay for you. He wrote the screenplay with Diana Osana and they've collaborated many times together.

And it's interesting to me, I wonder what the differences are in that story. I'm sure someone will tweet at us that like, in fact, Jake Gyllenhaal's character goes on to become

a great hero or something. Yeah, right. But I wonder if there are what he and osana put in the story to change it a little bit um shout out to ann hathaway in that movie too one of my favorite i still remember her chipped fingernails oh man her bad like manicure that she has i i love her so much i love her in basically every movie um but she's very very funny brassy interesting complicated and she's only on screen for 15 minutes but she's very, very funny, brassy, interesting, complicated, and she's only on screen for 15 minutes,

but she's wonderful. Where are you at on Ang Lee? I mean, Ang Lee is a great craftsman. I don't have a favorite Ang Lee movie. Do you? I guess I love the Ice Storm. It's probably between this and the Ice Storm. You're not in on Hulk?

I'm not a big Hulk revivalist. Well, I remember this being an interesting thing when it was announced that Ang was going to make this because he had made Ride with the Devil, which was a huge failure.

Yeah. And kind of derided at the time in 99. And so he was, you know, he's obviously an admirer of all different kinds of films and he's known

for being this incredibly varied genre hopper. But, man, he was perfect for the same reason as McMurtry. You know, the empathy, the sort of like sensual and, I don't know,

admiration for the physical world that he has. We could do an entire other podcast that would probably be less popular than this one about great failed westerns like Cold Mountain or, you know, even Heaven's Gate, obviously.

I like Cold Mountain. Yeah, but like movies that just didn't quite, you know, even Heaven's Gate, obviously. I like Cold Mountain. Yeah. But like movies that just didn't quite, you know, live up to their box office expectations. Yeah. And Brokeback, for the record, made $178 million, which is insane. Yes. I'll never get over that. Anyway, give me your number two, Chris. Let's skin that smoke wagon and see what happens, Sean.

Tombstone. You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed? Go. This is the rounders of Westerns. Yeah. Every scene, every line has something quotable. Everybody is going at 105 and a 65. Val Kilmer, maybe.

I think you can make the argument that this is a Mount Rushmore Westerns performance ooh I'd love to talk about what the Mount Rushmore of Western performances is wow but Val Kilmer

as Doc Holliday in Tombstone is it's like an Anthony Davis night it's just like a 45 25

and 11 night it's so incredible and you know a very troubled production kevin jerry was uh wrote it was supposed to be his first film that he was uh directing as sort of a longtime screenwriter he fell behind on shooting wasn't getting coverage uh left the project and this guy named george p cosmatos came on and he was more of like a hard-knuckled action director. I think he'd done some Rambo movies. He was very obsessed with like period detail.

But behind the scenes, legend has it, this movie is largely directed by Kurt Russell. I was just going to say that's exactly right. And it's really fascinating to read about this movie because, you know, you got these movie stars, a lot of their careers are tied up in the choices that they make and how much screen time they get and what kind of lines they get. And the one thing you hear about Russell on

Tombstone is that he was so generous, allowing other people to get shine in these scenes when it's like, in fact, he was directing, doing a lot of the shot lists. And he could be like, it's important that Wyatt does this, or it's important that we do that. And, you know, they were doing a lot of rewriting on the set, you can tell that this was a movie in which the actors felt incredibly empowered. Sometimes, in the case of Stephen Lang, maybe too much, where they're just really overacting.

But then when it's like Billy Bob Thornton as Johnny Tyler, who's just like this card cheat, that scene doesn't have to do anything. And those guys put so much into it. And it's just such an exciting movie. It is pretty stupid in places, but man, I will, if you put Tombstone on right now, I guarantee you, it's going to be difficult to get out. It's so funny that you compare it to an

Anthony Davis game with Kilmer, because it's sort of like an NBA all-star game, the way that it plays out. It's sort of like everybody gets their moment to have a crazy dunk or an alley-oop or to break somebody down one-on-one. I mean, if you just go down the list of names in this movie, especially for the kinds of movies that we like, it is full of our people. Michael Biehn, Powers Booth, Dana Delaney, Sam Elliott. Shout out to Sam Elliott. Stephen Lang, who you just mentioned.

Bill Paxton, of course. Your boy, Jason Priestley. Yes. Shout out to Bill Simmons, Michael Rooker, John Tenney, who I feel like has now forgotten the time, but at the time was like, John Tenney is going to be the one. Billy Zane, Charlton Heston. I mean, this is just an incredible, and it's also, it's a movie that. I think it's, isn't it narrated by like Robert Mitchum?

Yes. Yeah. He does like VO on it. And it's a movie that has been, it's a story that's been told many times, many times in movies. It was told like a year later in Wyatt Earp for six hours.

I'm not a fan of that movie. Although Dennis Quaid very good in that is Doc Holliday. He is. Yeah, Tombstone is a great one. Also Tombstone,

the rewatchables, what are we doing? I know. How have we not done this? You die first. Not before I turn your head into a canoe. Okay, my next one, number two, and I'm surprised You die first. Yeah. Not before I turn your head into a canoe. Okay.

My next one, number two, and I'm surprised I haven't heard it from you, is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. For the Yankee Nation, I just don't give a damn. I'm glad I fought again, or I only wish we'd won. I ain't asked any pardon for anything I done. Chris, you're signaling to me that it might be on your list. That is my number one. Let's have that conversation right now.

Sure, let's do it. Why is it your number one? I think it might be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I almost just spit out my coffee. I don't think that there's a Western like this. I don't think I've ever seen a Western that looks like this that combines the idyllic fantasy that we have of what

it must have looked like back then with the harsh reality of what it must have really been like to live there. I can't possibly explain the plot. It's actually kind of a lot of boring minutiae about like infighting in the James gang and like backbiting

and like a couple of like romantic love triangle type things, but nothing that's really clear. And then it's like a completely other movie and it's Coda when after the assassination actually takes place and this guy living with the guilt and aftermath of this thing that's going to define him i adore that stuff in the movie i think it's fascinating and

i remember when that happens and you're kind of like looking at your watch and you're like oh wow they killed jesse james because movies probably get in soon and it just keeps going and then at a certain point you're like i just feel like i'm floating like this movie could go on for seven more hours and i would watch it. Speaking of casts, what a cast on this movie. Crazy one. Among my favorite two or three Pitt performances, actually underrated, possibly the best Affleck performance. And then the ensemble around them, Paul Schneider, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner, incredible Jeremy Renner performance, Sam Rockwell is phenomenal, Mary Louise Parker, Zooey Deschanel. Just in terms of the way it looks,

I think it's actually like, if you just watched the trailer, you're like, this is kind of Terrence Malick ripoff stuff. I think the only comparable director working like Andrew Dominick, or the only person I compare this stuff to more is Bertolucci. Because compositionally,

in terms of every single frame, maximizing what it's showing you, it's unbelievable. I could just watch a still image of Brad Pitt watching a field burn for an hour. The magic he conjures out of these well-worn landscapes is incredible. We had so much Andrew Dominic stock. Oh my God, dude. It was like IBM in the 70s. I was like, we did it. We got rich. And I remember loving Killing Them Softly too. I think you liked it as well. I did. And it just has not happened for Andrew Dominic, which is sad. You know, this movie had a famously tortured production. It costs about $30 million and it made

less than half of that. And it was produced by Pitt. And it also is, not unlike Unforgiven, this amazing deconstruction of the mythology around Brad Pitt. It's a movie star movie, even though he has very little dialogue, he's speaking in a famously weird Brad Pitt accent where he's testing the limits of how ridiculous he can sound while also having gravitas. And it's a movie about what happens when somebody goes into the slipstream of fame yeah and how they feel about themselves and then how the world sees and if you want to add on all sorts of intertextual layers Casey Affleck being obsessed with a more famous person big brother type yeah uh this idea that he Brad Pitt, that he thinks Jesse James is this mythological figure and it's got that great line. You know, they're all stories. It's all just made up, you know. But the sort of almost homoerotic attraction he has to this and then the sort of catastrophic aftermath once he finally does this thing that is the only thing he'll ever be known for,

even though he had all this other stuff in his life. I would very highly recommend, if people enjoy the voiceover parts of Assassination of Jesse James, that they check out Ron Hanson. Ron Hanson wrote the book. Ron Hanson also has a novel called Desperados, which I think is really incredible.

It was very influential on Scott Frank when he made Godless for Netflix. And it's a beautiful, beautiful book. It's really, really good. Also, our Andrew Dominick stock, not dead yet, because he's directing half of season two of Mindhunter. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah, he's got like three episodes. What a perfect fit. Yeah. This is also one of those movies, Assassination of Jesse James, that kind of features all the all-stars behind the scenes too

you know Nick Cave and Warren Ellis doing the score I think it's their best score it's amazing Dylan Titchener famously PTA's editor edited this movie Roger Deakins shot it it's just it's an incredible collection of people and you know produced by Brad Pitt and Dee Dee Garner and Plan B and that whole group of people who produce like Moonlight and have this incredible track record. Deakins also shot No Country for Old Men. Yes. Sensing a theme here. Nice job, Roger Deakins.

Yeah, he's good at movies. I'm going to go right to my number one. Please do. It's a movie that I'm obsessed with unhealthily and now I don't even really know why. And it's called Rango. Hark! Who goes there? Tis I, the much-anticipated hero returning to rescue

his emotionally unstable maiden. Unhand her, you jailers of virtue, or taste the bitter sting of my vengeance. Oh, good. I'm glad we're doing this. Yeah. Rango is an animated movie.

Yeah. And it is directed and conceived by Gore Verbinski. Your cinematic father. He was on the show a couple of years ago and he's such an interesting filmmaker to me and has made simultaneously some of the biggest and most important blockbusters of the last 20 years and also some of the biggest, most ill-conceived bombs of the last 20 years. He's very instrumental in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. His first movie is Mouse Hunt. Rango is essentially a meta-commentary on Westerns

told through the eyes of a chameleon voiced by Johnny Depp, which sounds very stupid and in some ways is very stupid, but is also really brilliant and funny and knows everything about everything we just talked about. It knows all about the tropes. It knows which tropes should be burnished and which should be thrown away it knows how to make you laugh it knows how to get you invested in the high tension of a sort of solitary town and what heroism means and what it doesn't mean it's an amazingly weird movie and i don't even know how it happened. It's like, akin to your conversation

about The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, like, most animated movies are made for children. Yes. And with the exception of Pixar,

they don't treat them like they deserve to be made for anybody else. And they treat kids like idiots. And Rango is a movie that I think

entertains children. It was a big hit. It made $250 million. And it was Paramount and Nickelodeon. It didn't really have anything to do with DreamWorks or Pixar or Disney or any of the traditional animation powerhouses. And Verbinski was just like, bet on me. Bet on me that I can make this cool.

And he's totally right. And I love that story. And I love this movie so much. Have you ever seen this movie? I have not. I've seen Lone Ranger, which is another Gore Verbinski Western,

which I'm actually surprised did not make this list. Yeah, it's kind of nipping at six or seven or eight. You know, Rango is just more fun to talk about because it's different. But yeah,

if people haven't seen Rango, check it out with an open mind. Is it funny? It's really funny. Who wrote it? It's written by the great John Logan. Oh, wow. I'm trying to picture him and Verbinski

sitting in a room, breaking down what does and does not work about Westerns. That would be an amazing podcast. So check that out. You want to do any shout-outs to some... I've got like 10 other movies that I thought were interesting that just couldn't fit. Yeah, sure. I mean, we can just go back and forth if you want. We talked Django. Somebody had

pitched the idea of Mad Max Fury Road as a Western. What do you think about that? I'll allow it yeah I mean I think that there's a there's a whole Australian post-apocalyptic western thing where you could talk about

the rover oh yeah and you could talk about Mad Max Fury Road so I'll certainly allow that I thought about putting Meek's Cutoff on here which is a similarly

slow deconstruction that is along the same lines as sort of like the Colonial Revenant Western where there's much more about the push towards the West

and what happens when you're on a wagon trail as opposed to a lone man defending a town when there's a shootout at the end. This is a very different movie.

This is Kelly Reichert's movie from 2013, I believe. But if you haven't seen Meek's Cutoff, check that out. The Proposition, speaking of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis,

another Australian film. Absolutely. What else? It cheats a little bit on the year. It's a little bit earlier in 92, I believe. Yeah, it's not that much earlier than Unforgiven. El Mariachi, the Robert Rodriguez movie. Yeah, great one.

Which I feel like, because it kind of got, he did a bunch of variations on that over the course of the 90s, pretty much. Like, it kind of got forgotten. But in terms of seeing, like, early Sam Raimi, Coen Brothers style DIY, you know, let's do all these tricks with, like, swinging a camera around

meets Leon meets John Woo action, it's really, really cool to check that out. I'm pro Desperado, too. I like Desperado. His follow-up, which is sort of just his big budget remake of El Mariachi.

It was a lot of time in Mexico. Have you watched that recently? Yeah, and you know, I'll be totally honest. I put it on this list to start just to kind of flex and be like, let's have a conversation

about this movie. I think it's better as like a stunt than as a movie, which is something that I've felt about a lot of Rodriguez movies in the last 15 years.

But there's some incredible shots, some incredible moments. Also, really weirdly interesting Johnny Depp performance. Yeah. That's the blind guy. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Uh, I would say we got, we got to talk about Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, we do. So sort of the poet of the West. He is our living bard. Yeah. Um, somewhat controversial, but very successful screenwriter of your favorite film Sicario. And he's a filmmaker now and also a TV

maker. And I got to admit, I haven't seen Yellowstone. I watched the first couple episodes of Yellowstone. It does exactly what it says on the package. I would say that if you like Westerns, Taylor Sheridan definitely shot this like a movie. So there's a lot of wide angle landscape shots. They did not just do all the interiors in Pasadena and then shoot a couple of Montana exteriors. He spent the money. Yeah, he really did. And, you know, it's part of this collection of films and TV shows, I guess.

Hell or High Water, Wind River, and the two Sicario films, which I guess, I don't know if I would put Sicario as a Western, but I would not put it as a Western. Day of the Soldado does remind me a lot there's a lot of kind of black hat and people friends

turning on each other stuff that is very resonant throughout those Hawks and Ford films. And the last third of Soldado is pretty much a Western. It's him coming back

from the dead to avenge you know his killing. Yeah. I'd love to know what Taylor Sheridan's favorite Western is.

That's a great question. Any guesses? Probably The Searchers right? Yeah. Problematic. Yeah. Brilliant. Classic. That's a great question. Any guesses? Probably The Searchers, right? Yeah. Problematic. Yeah. Brilliant. Classic.

Yeah, classic. Yeah, yeah. Any others? I've got Slow West on here. Did you ever see that movie? Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. How does that hold up?

I don't know. I only saw it the one time. I remember admiring it. You and I both love Michael Fassbender. And it's interesting to cast Michael Fassbender in a Western. He's probably the least Western-y guy of all time. Oh, yeah. An Irish-German.

Yeah. But, yeah. I guess Christoph Waltz might be like... That's a good point. At least he's playing German. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that movie is interesting. It's made by John McClane, who some people may recall was a member of the band The Beta Band.

Yeah. And also was the director of a lot of their videos. Has an incredible eye. It's a very odd movie that feels very indebted to the Co of a lot of their videos has an incredible eye it's a very odd movie that feels very indebted to the coens um speaking of no country and it features a truly great ben mendelsohn performance and a truly great performance by a coat that ben mendelsohn wears so if people haven't seen that yeah i dig it it's like it's one of those movies it's like it's over in 80 minutes yeah and it's fun can i ask you one other question? Please. Where would Deadwood rank

if it was available since it's a film, it's a TV show, obviously we're talking more exclusively about movies, but where would Deadwood place against all the stuff that you put here?

It would rank number one. Yeah. I mean, you know, like I put No Country at number five, but No Country could be number one tomorrow. Sure.

And I feel similarly about Deadwood. It's at the top of, you know, Chris, you and I, we really care about Deadwood. One's, it's at the top of, you know, Chris, you and I, we really care about Deadwood. One day we'll do a Deadwood recapables podcast together.

It's just going to be swearing for 120 minutes. Chris, thank you for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure. This has been the big pictures, top fives. See you next week. Thank you.