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I love a good western. But in nearly every one, even the very best,
all the men (without beards) are almost always clean shaven. And their
clothes are clean and the characters are well washed. Lets get real
here, hollywood: 150 years ago, people didn't bathe every day; they
didn't shave everyday; they didn't wear clean clothes every day. In
short, they were grubby looking! How about we have grubby looking
characters in westerns from now on, what say??
MK
Follow Ups:
Dawn Rider (2012)
Deadwood (2004) (TV series)
Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years (1995–1996)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
The Appaloosa (1966)
Vera Cruz (1954)
~~~
Hide it~ nothing looks better in Audio gear, than invisible....
What was the last western you saw? Rio Bravo? Westerns have been gritty since Fist Full of Dollars.
"We're chained to the world and we all gotta pull." Waits
"Realism", even if achievable, will only take you so far.
The western is the quintessential American myth.
Westerns tell us as much about the times in which they were made as their subject - the myth refracted through contempoarary mores and aesthetics. Any particular western movie is for the age that creates it. They're not created usually created to be a history lessons or archives, these movies are meant to move an audience - and make money, if possible. Super-realism is/was not the goal.
In eras when American heroes (and commercial interests) deemed actors should be cleanshaven with short hair and clean clothes, this is how the actors appeared onscreen. Even sillier looking IMO are the way women appear in many western, with hair and make-up emblematic of their times, even when their is some attempt to have the men look more "authentic". These ladies date a film quite obviously.
Also, lots of lead actors dislike facial hair and don't like to "act through it" - they feel. Actorly vanity famously kept a beard off John Wayne in the first true Grit.
In addition, facial hair - or lack of it - was often visial shorthand for character traits. A typical cinamtic convention was the dirty guys with beards and or mustaches were often the bad guys - the cleancut fella in the white coyboy hat was usually a good guy.
Also, confronted with many hairy bearded guys in a single shot, it can be difficult to tell them apart unless they are dstinctively costumed or have vastly different hair colors/styles (and there are just so many).
;-)
Moreover, if one were to be historically accurate to the point of adding blackened/yellow teeth, pockmarked faces, shabby clothes, dirty skin, long hair and shaggy beards, the result might be so visually distracting as to detract from the actual storytelling. Besides, not everyone was equally clean or dirty - a settler living in a sod house was undoubtedly harder pressed to bathe than a storekeeper in a large western town with a hip bath in the kitchen.
Plus...you know...fashions in hair, clothing (facial & otherwise) changed over the 100 or so years of history in which most westerns take place (mainly circa 1820-1920, that's a vast chunk of time).
By the 70s, revisionist westerns like McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the Leone with his spaghetti westerns were changing the look and introducing the anti-hero to audiences.
Other grungy, hairy or more "realistic" westerns:
True Grit (2010 from the Coens)
The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
The Proposition
The Ballad Of Little Jo
The Claim
Ride With the Devil...among several others.
What a joke?
~~~
Hide it~ nothing looks better in Audio gear, than invisible....
Sure it is. Take this exchange between Billy Bob Thornton and Iggy Pop in Dead Man , discussing Johnny Depp's hair:
"It's like a girl's."
"By God, it is soft. Now how do you get it that way? See, this old stuff of mine, it just-- Well, it's just like old barn hay. Cain't do a darn thing with it."
Conclusion: historical evidence shows that psycho, murdering possum hunters from the Old West were much more concerned about the state of their tresses, and personal hygiene in general, than is commonly thought.
"dammit"
To this day I use the 'It's like old barn hay' line when describing my hair to my hair cutter, and I'm sure she has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
I'm sur JJ is a love or hate director to many, but somehow he's a natural 'like' to me. And you're right about the cast-I've never really given it a rundown as you have, and just seeing that list makes me laugh. And as an aside, Crispin Glover has got 'creepy' down to a T - maybe a little too well.
"dammit"
...does the writer-director get to cast Iggy Pop as a psycho in a western.
Dead Man's still pretty damned singular, even by Jarmusch standards, but what other western can boast Johnny Depp, Billy Bob, Iggy Pop, Robert Mitchum, Crispin Glover, Gabriel Byrne, Jared Harris, Lance Henrikson - hell, I get dizzy just typing those names much less watching the movie, lol.
NT
.
*
fds
N/T
" Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination." -Michael McClure
Word is that Clint Eastwood cut his own hair with a razor to prepare for his look in Unforgiven.
evidence free you, after all?
Busier than ever at work. Kids' Booster Board. Kids' Cub Scout Board. Swimming lessons. Karate lessons. Cub scout meetings. Basketball practice. Football practice. Soccer practice.
d
There's good busy and bad busy...
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