Fistful of Dollars network TV prologue part 2:

When A Fistful of Dollars aired on ABC in the 70s, the network added a 4 minute prologue in an attempt to justify the film's cynical tone & amoral violence. The prologue was directed by Monte Hellman & stars Harry Dean Stanton. Part 1:

The Bounty Hunter starts with credits, a foreword about bounty hunters & Randolph Scott's bounty hunter riding into an ambush. For a Few Dollars More starts with a man riding into an ambush by a bounty killer, credits & a foreword about bounty killers, mixing around scene order & character roles...

One of the big influences on For a Few Dollars More is André De Toth's The Bounty Hunter (1954) starring Randolph Scott. It's fascinating to see Leone expand on scenes from The Bounty Hunter, sometimes building whole sequences from a single visual or an interesting prop. A 🧵...

Never judge a book by its cover. Now titles, on the other hand...

Bill Sienkiewicz's unused poster designs for Unforgiven:

Learn more about Asa Carter & the making of The Outlaw Josey Wales & find out how the film's progressive depiction of Natives worked as a smokescreen for Carter's Lost Cause propaganda* on the Wrong Reel episode below 👇 *despite all that, I still like the movie wrongreel.com/podcast/wr64...

Happy 96th Birthday to Clint Eastwood

Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986), written, directed & animated by Jim Reardon youtu.be/uKE-kP-daaY?...

Supposedly, this is the prop of Alfredo Garcia's head in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia:

The Autry Museum Website (where I cribbed these from) has this listed as the costume for Chet Avery, played by Al Ferguson (who, like Joe De Yong, went uncredited). It looks more like the costume for Jake Pindalest (played by Frank Faylen), but what the hell do I know?

Next is Mitch Moten, played by Ben Corbett:

First up is Frank Reardon, played by Tom Tyler:

As a supplement to my Joe De Yong/Shane thread, here are some of De Yong's costume sketches for Blood on the Moon (1948) alongside how they ended up in the film...

The climactic gunfight in Mail Order Bride added some fog & cattle to liven things up, but otherwise, it's lifted from Ride. I had to cut these scenes down because of Bluesky's video limits. The similarities are even more apparent when seen in full (which you can do at my profile at the other place)

Mail Order Bride makes reference to Kate's Place, the brothel in Ride the High Country & the wedding dresses & hairstyles on Marriette Hartley & Lois Nettleton are almost identical...

First up are the opening credits:

Happy Birthday to the late Michael J. Pollard, born Michael John Pollack Jr. 87 years ago today

Happy 90th Birthday to Keir Dullea

The Hateful Eight & Fair Game comparisons part 2

The Hateful Eight is based on Fair Game, a 1960 episode of The Rebel. A bounty hunter stuck at a stagecoach stop is poisoned in order to rescue his female prisoner & everyone is a suspect, etc. Tarantino borrows the concept, reworks dialogue & more. This video🧵is an appropriately long, slow burn...

Happy Birthday to the late Clint Walker, born Norman Eugene Walker 99 years ago today

Happy Birthday to Howard Winchester Hawks, born 130 years ago today

am i having a stroke

This is mesmerizing.

I can't stop watching this

Happy Birthday, Bob. I just made this for you. Hope you like it!

Happy Birthday to Bob Hope, born Leslie Townes Hope 123 years ago today

Having said that, I really want to see Fritz Lang's Billy the Kid movie

This happens a lot with Old West history. The assumption is that we've romanticized the West & the reality was that everyone was filthy & moronic & that every gunfighter was an inbred backshooter. This view is as myopic & ill-informed as the romanticization it rails against...

He definitely did some dumb shit & he should've high-tailed it to old Mexico after escaping the Lincoln County Courthouse, but all evidence points to Billy being clever, witty & articulate. His letters alone dispel any myths that he was some illiterate dunce...

Unfortunately, the only widely available photo of Billy the Kid at the time was a badly retouched image of the Kid based on the Dedrick Tintype, which gave a lot of people the idea that Billy was a moron. Was he?

In the 40s, Fritz Lang wanted to make a film about Billy the Kid. Here's what he told Peter Bogdanovich about his vision for the project:

Happy Birthday to the late Sondra Locke, born Sandra Louise Smith 82 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the great Jim Thorpe, born 139 years ago today

Well now I’m imagining Al Swearengen casually picking up the phone just to swear at Rutherford B. Hayes.

can be combative

Deadwood circa 1876 & a few years after. Note the huge hole being dug in the street in the first pic. Despite its primitive look, in 1878 Deadwood was the first town in the country* to have citywide phone service (with a line directly to the White House). There was only one phone available though.

Happy 56th Birthday to Joseph Fiennes, born Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes

Happy Birthday to the late Louis Gossett Jr., born 90 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late Christopher Lee, born 104 years ago today

Dustin Hoffman was named after cowboy star Dustin Farnum. Hoffman's parents weren't expecting a boy, so his mother hastily picked the name from the cover of a movie magazine:

it all makes sense

Happy Birthday to Vincent Price, born 115 years ago today

Happy Birthday to Dustin Farnum, born 152 years ago today.

Wild Bill Hickok was born James Butler Hickok 189 years ago today

A lot of excellent stuff here (including a bar of soap with packaging drawn by yours truly), but I want to single out Pete Dexter's novel Deadwood, which is one of the greatest Westerns ever written

Happy 61st Birthday to John C. Reilly

"That Prince of Devils" My drawing of Antonio Carrasco. While facing a firing squad, he saw one of the men about to kill him shaking. “What are you trembling for?" he said, "I’m the fellow that’s going to die. If I had a chance to kill all of you, I’d be glad. I wouldn't shake."