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Transcript

The Gunfighter • Member Bonus · The Next Reel Film Podcast

• 0:02
  Pete Wright: I'm Pete Wright.
• 0:03
  Andy Nelson: And I'm Andy Nelson.
• 0:04
  Pete Wright: Welcome to the next reel when the movie ends. Our conversation begins. The gunfighter is over. If he ain't so tough, there's been an awful lot of sudden natural deaths in this vicinity. I
• 0:25
  Andy Nelson: was wondering how high you were gonna go with that. Wow. You could've kept going up.
• 0:30
  Pete Wright: I actually I should've I should've practiced more on that. The Gunfighter, Andy, what a movie. Holy cowboys.
• 0:40
  Andy Nelson: Oh, look at you. Look at you pulling little holy cowboys.
• 0:43
  Pete Wright: I hadn't I hadn't seen it.
• 0:45
  Andy Nelson: I hadn't either. I hadn't either. I'm glad to have had the members pick this. You know, in in the scope of our, member bonus, we're right in the middle of our, platinum performances, the nineteen fifty best actress Oscar race series. And so we threw out a whole bunch of other nineteen fifty, Oscar nominees, and this won.
• 1:06
  So here we are, platinum performances, the nineteen fifty best writing Oscar race Crazy. With the gunfighter. I was debating starting with with the best writing Oscars. Or do we want to start with the movie?
• 1:21
  Pete Wright: I want you to just start. I want you to it's your special day. I want you to start where you feel good. You wanna start with writing? Let's start with writing.
• 1:27
  Andy Nelson: I just think that it's an interesting this isn't the kind of like the studio era of Hollywood lent to this like, the only reason this Oscar category really existed is because of the studio era. The best writing Oscar. Because you had the best writing Oscar and then the best screenplay Oscar. And best writing is that story by credit that we still see today sometimes. It's like, who came up with the idea before somebody else went and actually crafted a script out of it, put dialogue in it, and everything?
• 2:02
  This was, that era that, once the studio system kind of faded away, so did this Oscar category. They're like, oh, we don't really need this category anymore. It ended in, 1956, I think, was the end of it. So I just I think that's interesting. So in the scope of this film, that that's how it came to be because it started as this story written by two writers, William Bowers and Andre de Toth.
• 2:33
  Andre de Toth is also a prominent filmmaker. They wrote this story specifically for John Wayne, reportedly, because they thought it would just be a great story for him. And then they went to pitch it to him, and John Wayne loved it. And he offered the he offered William Bowers $10,000, and William Bowers was like, well, I think it's worth more than that. And John Wayne said, well, you wrote it for me.
• 3:02
  Don't you have any artistic integrity? And then, apparently, Bowers didn't according to Wayne because then he went and they they sold it to Fox, twentieth Century Fox, for apparently $70,000. And then Fox was going to try getting it made, but they couldn't do anything. And so they sold it to Columbia Pictures. And John Wayne was still interested, but he refused to work on it because Harry Cohn, who ran Columbia, had mistreated him when he was a young contract actor.
• 3:40
  And, apparently, there was also a woman involved between the two of them and all this sort of craziness. And so John Wayne's grudge was so deep that that they did nothing with it and or Columbia did nothing with it. That's when they sold it. Sorry. I had a background.
• 3:54
  They sold it to twentieth Century Fox, who then went ahead and cast Greg Gregory Peck in the role. And Gregory Peck ended up winning a Silver Spurs award for top western star of 1950, and John Wayne said, well, who the hell decided that you were best cowboy of the year? So he apparently he apparently is quite grumpy about the whole affair. So I just think that's kind of a funny thing. And just as an interesting little historic footnote, this story was sitting in the files over there at Fox, and no one is really paying attention to it.
• 4:28
  And one of the people who worked there as a as a young, I don't know, at this point, a young reader, Roger Corman, he found the script, and he actually is like, this is great. He actually put a whole bunch of notes on it and everything, and he showed it to one of the producers over there who was like, oh, this is great. The producer went and turned it in and took credit for it for finding it himself. Roger Corman was really pissed that this other the producer who we'll talk about, Nunnally, ended up getting the credit for having found the script. And that actually prompted Roger Corman to quit Fox, and then he, went to Oxford and then started up his or not started up his own, but he wanted to do stuff more independently.
• 5:22
  And that's when he started working with AIP and became who he was. So in a way, this film is why Roger Corman is who he is. Bless the fates
• 5:31
  Pete Wright: and sliding doors, Andy. Crazy world, isn't it? That's a that is a crazy world. I just wanna make sure I understand the credits because I think you said this is by Bowers and Toth, de Toth. But in on IMDb That's the story credit.
• 5:45
  Right. IMDb. And but did you mention William Sellers? Because he's the other one who has the screenplay
• 5:50
  Andy Nelson: by credit. I didn't because he ended up writing it after this whole thing happened. So they had done the story. So there was no script at this point. It was just essentially a treatment is what the story is.
• 6:01
  Yes. And that's what Roger Corman found. Roger Corman wrote all of his notes, gave it to Nunnally. Nunnally's like, this is great. Look what I found.
• 6:09
  Pete Wright: Stab Corman firmly in the back. Exactly.
• 6:12
  Andy Nelson: And then Drama ensues. And that's when they went and had sellers work on the script. So
• 6:18
  Pete Wright: Got it. Okay. So this movie fits in a really interesting place in and and we've talked about some of these bridge westerns before, right, where where the the fifties and sixties saw this kind of transformation, where the frontier hero is kinda fading away. And we have these guys who are, you know, maybe would have been celebrated heroes in the twenties, thirties, and forties, but now are reckoning with the weight of their past choices. And that's where this movie kind of fits.
• 6:53
  He's no longer this, like, righteous and rugged and victorious hero. He's a guy who killed a lot of people and now recognizes the regret that he has to live with, the weight of his celebrity. And I I was I'm fascinated by the fact that that I mean, that's fundamentally the story. His turn is something that happens before the movie starts, where he realizes I need to go back to this town, and I need to, you know, get back together with my with my lady and see my son that I've never really seen. And I need to make a a life for myself now that is more than just running and gunning.
• 7:35
  And and and it's soup it ends up being the super reflective kind of of journey. But the rest of the the world of young cowboys are out to out to get him to prove their mettle. And so he can't this is like this is such a testament to not being able to outrun your own celebrity. And it is just it's fascinating. And I see it, and you tell me that John Wayne was into it, and I don't see how this could have been anyone other than Gregory Peck.
• 8:10
  Andy Nelson: With that mustache?
• 8:12
  Pete Wright: I could take or leave the mustache.
• 8:15
  Andy Nelson: The studio head hated the mustache so much, he actually when the movie didn't perform well at the box office, he actually told Gregor Peck, that mustache cost us a million dollars.
• 8:27
  Pete Wright: Well, yeah, I don't know about that, but I do think there is something to to Peck's kind of internalized performance here. Like, he is he's just so incredibly thoughtful about what it means to be this kind of of person.
• 8:51
  Andy Nelson: Hey there, you hardboiled western aficionados. Andy here, and I've got a proposition that'll make you wanna saddle up and ride into the heart of darkness. If that little taste of our latest discussion got your trigger finger itching and your sense of frontier justice tingling, then it's time to upgrade to the full throttle experience by becoming a member. When you join our posse, you'll gain access to a whole cache of exclusive content, including monthly member bonus episodes that'll take you on a gritty journey through the world of cinema. You'll also unlock bonus content from our other shows, like Sitting in the Dark, Cinemascope, and The Film Board.
• 9:25
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• 10:07
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• 10:32
  Don't just take my word for it. Join the crew and find out for yourself. We'll be waiting for you.