FORT A-PATCHY
Richard Asplin can hear the Outlaw Josie’s wails…
Think back. If you were anything like me when I was the green, bruiseless and thoroughly unripe age of eight, you wouldn’t go to bed. At all. Ever. Duvetsville wasn’t in any way, the place to be. (Naturally by the time I’d oozed greasily into late teen, overripe lethargy you couldn’t get me off my Slumberland with an AK47, but such behavioural modifications aside a mo). And to fob the fogies into allowing me an extra half hour “sans jimjams”, I would attempt any cocktail of cunning contrivances and pawky ploys; a favourite ruse being a feigned desire to watch any manner of late night documentary or tiresome round-table discussion programme (parents naturally thrilled to have me showing an interest in such groan-up stuff as “Estimated Sociological Westernisation of the Pakistani Free Market” at such a tender age – it made a reassuring change fomr dropping Luke Skywalker down the toilet).
But as surely as Sissons follows Day, of such highbrow hubbub I would grasp not one word – when you’re eight, a report on “western influence in India” sounds to you like Mr Patel will be installing swinging saloon doors in the corner-shop, start stocking Red Eye along side the Slush Puppies and be clinking around behind the counter in spurs and dusty leather chaps. (Let’s face it, if ignorance is bliss I spent my eighth year with a grin the size of Great Yarmouth). But the reason I mention this, dear reader, is that it seems my Morricone inspired misunderstandings were displaying more Brucey Foresight than the Generation Game. Hold your horses, stop your stallions, the covered band-wagons are circling up once more. Just when you thought Spaghettis were “pasta” their sell-by date, the Western is back. And it’s big.
Blame seems to lie with the galloping box-office bonanza of Costner’s 1991 “Dances With Wolves” and Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” in ’92 which caused every megaphone munching mogul on the west coast to deduce their wasn’t a script on earth that couldn’t be improved by the incorporation of a horse, a cluster of extras (all magnificently dolled up to the sevens in plaid neckerchiefs) muttering “dangnabit” to every passing stunt tumbleweed that happens to be ambling across the prairie. Just as Sergio Leone brought the western trotting moodily into the sixties and a new era, it was the faceless tuxedos that dish out Oscars deigning to tag cowboy films “the reel thing” that caused the recent glut of cinematic hoe-downs, low-downs and show-downs. If Clint can make a fistful of dollars, then everyone else can too.
So we have more pandering than the World Wildlife Fund with this year throwing up not two, not three but, count ‘em, eleven westerns (from Possee, Tombstone & Geronimo to Wyatt Earp, Lightning Jack and City Slickers II) making what is a world weary genre even more bloodyt knackered.
Because let’s face it pardoners, Peter popularity doesn’t always dine alongside Molly Merit. We saw it with the horror movie in the ‘80s – a bargain bucket-load of cheap, poorly performing plotless splatter flicks (Friday the 13th part XI – Jason meets Freddie and chases him with a big knife for ninety minutes”) all tempting to cash in on the popularity of Carpenter’s 1979 “Hallowe’en” (a cardio-vascular rollercoaster, even today). You can’t do it. Genres are like cows – they look sturdy and solid but milk them for long enough and they’ll fall over.
“Maverick” for example. Now I’m not grotesquely unpartial to a bit of Mel (although I was behind the petition requesting all prints of “Bird On A Wire” be destroyed in accordance with the Obscene Publications Act – another great Hawn in my side). But if he and director Richard Donner wanted to make Lethal Weapon 4 they should have gone right ahead and made it. Not presented us with the same tired stunts, chases, fast-talking wise-cracking buddy-cop banter under the transparent guise of the odd cactus. Or those sideburns. Maverick Shmaverick, he looked like an extra from “The Sweeney.”
We don’t need it. There should be too much respect for the Western to use it, as is currently vogue, as just another alternative vehicle for a Hollywood megastar. In 1964, no-one saw “A Fistful Of Dollars” for Eastwood, he was a cinematic nobody – the timeless appeal that makes the cowboy so consistently popular is that, stripped of the clichéd stage-coaches, Stetsons and composers saving money on expensive orchestras by simply finding a good tune and whistling the bloody thing, they are basic morality tales. Good versus evil in the most childlike sense. Bad guys wear black and spit a lot, good guys wear white and exercise a little more phlegm restraint. We know rootin’ tootin’ varmints from Van Cleef to Van Peebles will get their comeuppance in the third reel and therein lies the satisfaction. It would be a tragedy if such glossy, image lead drivel as “Posse” or the misguided breast-fest “Bad Girls” soured Joe Cinemagoer’s taste for the old cowboys through cinematic satiety. (incidentally, I say Joe, rather than Joanne, with no apology. The western is a male genre. Like lager, electric guitars and limericks with the word ‘Venus’ in them, they’re a guy thing. Women wanting a does of Kevin Costner will always rather sit through “The Bodyguard” than three hours of “Dances With Wolves.” Although that may be due to his moustache making him look like a member of the Village People).
Cowboys for me will always be as old and dusty as Sister Sarah’s mules. No-one should still be cutting anyone off at the pass. Let us remember them as great. I know, I know – fat chance. In another generation Channel 4 will undoubtably be premiering ‘Young Guns VII’ and eight year olds all over Britain will be machinating methods to stay up and watch it. As regards my future son, I’m going to leave him to it.
I’ll be having an early night, thanks.
