the western hero by definition is a fairly obsessive type. clearly, in "the searchers," that type of character is pushed to absolute extremes, where it's not simply obsessive but virtually psychotic behavior. maybe you don't know my brad's been sitting up -- i'd be obliged if you'd come to the point, ma'am. it's just that i know that martha'd want you to take care of her boys as well as her girls. and if the girls are dead, don't let the boys waste their lives in vengeance. promise me, ethan! well, come on, if you're going with us. (thomas schatz) one thing that happens as we watch the film, that what we have learned to live with in terms of a character's psychology and set of behaviors, if pushed just a little ways, is pretty frightening. (henry sheehan) it becomes obvious as the film wears on that wayne does not want to rescue his niece,

he wants to kill her. nope. our turnin' back don't mean nothin', not in the long run. if she's alive, she's safe. for a while. they'll keep her to raise as one of their own until -- till she's of an age to -- i can't imagine a film in 1956 talking about american fears of interracial sexuality in such an explicit way, outside the bounds of the western. stand aside, martin. no, you don't, ethan. ethan, no, you don't. stand aside. i think that jean-luc godard is supposed to have said he always cries when wayne chases after natalie wood,

catches her and lifts her up and you are supposed to think that he's going to shoot her, or strangle her, or something. and he says... let's go home, debbie. (lindsay anderson) it works because ford was a canny filmmaker and he knew how to do a sequence like that, t it doesn't mean very much. my feeling is that the picture is not really a romantic film. not a very idealistic film and therefore is calculated to appeal to a modern audience and the modern filmmaker. (thomas schatz) the western dragged the past with it about 50 years ahead. as the western evolves, it's looking at civilization that becomes more and more sophisticated. the hero can no longer exercise his code in a way that's acceptable to himself or to society. he becomes an outlaw or a gun for hire.

(narrator) in 1960, john sturges made the "magnificent seven," one of the first films dealing with the west's end. (john sturges) what does a gunfighter do after his prime is past? what do you do when you're a gunfighter? how do you retire? you're forced to change. you're forced to be somebody else. you're forced to cope. that's good story material. your gun has got you everything you have, isn't that true? hmmm? well isn't it true? yeah, sure, everything. after a while you can call bartenders and faro dealers by their first name, maybe 200 of them. nted rooms you live in, 500. meals you eat in hash houses, a thousand. home, none. wife, none kids, none. prospects, zero. (music playing)

♪ mamma, take ♪ this badge offa me ♪ i can't use it anymore ♪ it's gettin' dark ♪ too dark to see ♪ feel i'm knockin' ♪ on heaven's door ♪ (annick smith) in the western, there's a quest for the freedom and individuality. but it's also a quest for conquering the land and conquering the people who lived on it before you. and taking anything in your way without anyone saying, no. it's very hard for me to see the kind of cowboy hero straight on. i mean to see him sort of uneroded by irony. the western kept on repeating its myths and legends. "billy the kid," "wyatt earp," "shootout at the o.k. corral."

what they sought was a variation on it. (narrator) a new, more self-conscious cycle of westerns took a fresh look at the form. directors such as arthur penn and sam peckinpah revised classic legends to include modern concerns. (arthur penn) this was an expanding nation at that point there was the constant problem of whether the deeds that were really accomplished or undertaken, really matched the images that they were creating. and that was the theme inside of "left-handed gun." (speaking spanish) mr. bonnet, you gave me a start. i suppose you know your name is prominent in the paper. i cut out the articles. here, i think this one might interest you. (narrator) the film portrays another side of william bonnet, better known as billy the kid.

your death notice. let me see, william bonnet, outlaw, you're dead. well now, how you like that? "billy bonnet burned to death, with no surviving relatives." (laughter) that's not necessary, mr. bonnet. (arthur penn) there's a major character who idealizes billy. i knew you weren't dead. then as that figure of billy deviates from his expectation he eventually ends up betraying him. the situation got to be one of the earliest forms of it, of the media dictating the events. you're not like the books. you don't wear silver stuff. you don't stand up to glory.

you're not him. (crying) you're not him. (john sturges) the appeal i think has to be answered with the word legend. they were legends of the west who did these outlandish things which if presented straight out of nowhere, it would not be accepted. but because this theoretically happened in the west, audiences were prepared to accept them as real people. (elmore leonard) that meeting in the street for that showdown must have been made up in hollywood. a typical gunfight out west was a man in a saloon with a shotgun or revolver and seeing who he wants at the bar and shooting at him. then the guy at the bar turns around and shoots at him and follows him out onto the street and shoots a couple of more times. and maybe eight shots are fired and one hits. i was under the impression that the real story

of these people was equally interesting to the fictitious versions of what they did. (john sturges) i found it exciting, but as i've often said, if i find something exciting and the audience doesn't, then i made a big, big mistake. (gunfire) (john sturges) and in that case, i was dead wrong. it was not exciting to audiences, possibly because reality violated rules of the legend. billy the kid is probably the most abused of them all. he wasn't really any kind of a character, but it was a name. it conjured up an image. had to be exciting. most outlaws, especially in the west, were psychotic and pathological and very bad guys.

but the myth of the outlaw, is really the myth of freedom we're talking about. and in the sense of the west, outlaws represented that myth. (narrator) in 1973, rudy wurlitzer and sam peckinpah, using the myth of freedom to justify a reversal of roles, created a world where only outlaws could be heroes. sheriff pat garrett sold out to the santa fe ring. how does it feel? it feels like times have changed. times maybe, not me. sam is an attacker of the establishment.

sam and i were going to do a television series on "the magnificent seven." kind of sorry we didn't. and it did come to pass, but when sam and i met about it he said, "this is a great opportunity to rip up the soft belly of hollywood." i'd never thought of that. i thought we were just going to make some westerns. (gunshot) keep the change, bob. (gunshot) (thomas schatz) the western as it develops seems to conceive of society in more and more sophisticated terms. as it gets more sophisticated, it becomes more corrupt. well, let's get to it. ten steps? suits me.

you count 'em. you ain't thought of another way? nah, i can't come up with nothin'. get to it. e, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... (gunshot) (rudy wurlizter) sam identified so much with billy that he didn't want him to die, you know. so there was a great freak-out on the end about whether sam was going to let him live or not. he was getting pretty loaded and we were all trying to get him to stop drinking, get him to go get some sleep and he says, "i don't want to kill him."

i said, "what are you talking about, sam?" "what if he lives, what if you don't shoot him?" "what if you don't -- what if we don't kill him?" i said, "you can't do that. i mean, the history's says --" he said, "history! we'll create a new myth." we know how much myth and nonsense was spun. and you can imagine what it's like after 100 years of spinning that kind of nonsense and having it be embellished and embellished and embellished by historians, legend-tellers and story-tellers. and pretty soon it's very hard to find out any center. (arthur penn) the most prominent level was the nature of the relationship between native american indian and the western.

(alphonso ortiz) western films perpetuate the notion in american minds that the indian is the enemy. the indian is the embodiment of the "other" to the american. i've sat with navaho children, watching grade-b westerns and when the cowboy or cavalry comes over the hill, they start clapping like mad. indians were defined uniformly as being in the way of the orderly march of progress and civilization. see this is how thorough the cultural conditioning is. (arthur penn) the indians had been portrayed throughout most of the westerns as these wild-blooded savages, who were given to all kinds of criminal, unchristian acts and dastardly deeds.

i don't understand it, grandfather, why would they kill women and children? because they are strange. they do not seem to know where thearth's center is. the fact of the matter is that we were covering up a large part of what would be construed in modern terminology as a kind of genocide, that we were conducting, which was simply taking territory from these people. (gunfire and screams) but "little big man" was not telling the indian myth the way it had been told. we were reversing that.

(narrator) by the mid-seventies, filmmakers were re-examining the role of indians. howdy. howdy. i'm getting tter at sneaking up on you. only an indian can do something like this. that's what i figured. you figured? only an indian could do something like that. (click of gun) (clint eastwood) the "outlaw josey wales" was written by an indian, or at least he was part indian. he was a man who spent an awful lot of time with indian issues in this particular country and had a lot of sympathy towards it. what appealed to me with the project is that it was one of the first stories that really depicted indians with a sense of humor. it's not right this d--- woman doing something like this. i used to have powers, now old age creeps up on me. (josey wales) well, it's more like old habits than old age.

(chief dan george) who the h--- is this woman? chief dan george was very funny in the film. and then will sampson played the indian comanches and tribe who -- and josey wales ends up, instead of -- they're both -- though they're both warriors, they end up understanding one another because they are warriors, but they also understand thnecessity for negotiation. it is good that warriors such as we meet in the stggle of life, odeath. it shall be life. (dramatic music playing)

so will it be. i reckon so. (narrator) the same year clint eastwood directed "outlaw josey wales," john wayne starred in his final film, playing a gunfighter dying of cancer, whose code is out of place in turn-of-the-century west. look out! (gunshots) (thomas mcguane) the western's gruesome elements, which strike you as romantic and idealized and it gets to be obsolete and dangerous. (gunshots) well, they have to change spiritual plateaus or end. that's the test that will either exterminate westerns, or change them into something that can go on living.

(thomas schatz) it's difficult not to see it as having run its course. (dramatic music playing) (glass shattering) (thomas schatz) it dealt with social probls that were crucial for decades. and that somehow we've worked through all that and we no longer need this form to help us process certain kinds of cultural concerns. our attitudes have changed. values have changed. clothes have changed. and so many westerns were made it just lost its punch. just when the western seems like it's gone away, someone else comes along with a different twist on it. (narrator) "dances with wolves" is a story of a u.s. cavalry officer whose encounter with indians leads him to question

his allegiance to his own culture. (rudy wurlizter) the whole myth of the west is that you can go out to some place and you can invent yourself. the western hero represented somebody who took advantage of this chance and could make something of it. and that could reinvent his life. so that he could go out and become a hero, not from what he was, but something totally different something totally new. (narrator) kevin costner's character emerges as a hero, but in a most unconventional situation. the audience cheers the indians as they defeat the cavalry.

(lindsay anderson) the western hero symbolizes the man of honor, the good man, the man of action. and that rule is something that will be eternal in people, wherever they are. whether in america, or in the rest of the world. the kind of western hero i'd devise, dog one today, is probably very much along traditional lines. i'd try something different in the scenario, thoh, a different approach. (narrator) in 1992, clint eastwood directed the story of a hero involved in a cycle of revenge that ultimately consumes him. well, sir, you are a cowardly s.o.b. you just shot an unarmed man. he should have armed himself. if he's decorating his saloon with my friend. you be william munny out of missouri, killer of women and children. that's right.

i've killed women and children. killed just about everything that walked or crawled at one time or another. and i'm here to kill you for what you did to ned. (henry sheehan) "unforgiven" attacks virtually every "hero" notion. there is a big question of who deserves to die? and if anyone deserves to die, who's going to do the killing? i don't deserve this. to die like this. i was building a house. deserve's got nothin' to do with it. i'll see you in h---, william munny. yeah.

(gunshot) (rudy wurlitzer) it's the great american form, because it's so simple and elemental and it represents all the schizophrenia of the american experience. it's as if we're between myths. the old myth doesn't really exist anymore. and what is the new one that's to come down the road? that'll be very interesting to see. (elmore leonard) i've never thought of westerns as mythology. i've never thought of the western hero riding in as some kind of a redeemer. i just saw them as good material for stories. ♪ see them tumblin' down ♪ pledging their love ♪ to the ground

(clint eastwood) well, i think he was a hero eventually. just a reticent hero, you might say, which i thought gave a certain humanity to him because he didn't rush to be a hero, it just sorta was forced upon him. ♪ cares of the past ♪ are behind ♪ nowhere to go ♪ but i'll find ♪ just where ♪ the trail will wind ♪ drifting along... ♪

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