Everything I Needed to Know I Learned by Watching Old Westerns

If you go out looking for trouble, you’re going to find it. You know? That’s just how it is, one of those eternal verities, and this sage advice comes to us from at least as far back as the Greeks (insert arcane Classical reference here), and is just as true today as it ever was. Attitude counts, and if yours is surly and fractious you cannot deem yourself ill-used by Fate or discommoded by the Gods if you purposefully provoke fractious surliness from those you encounter. N'est-ce pas? 

But I didn’t learn about the Greeks until later, because for a variety of cultural and socio-economical reasons we were not raised on the Greeks, but instead on black and white Westerns, and later color Westerns. They both featured many of the same tropes. Why, the very first film ever was called The Great Train Robbery, and from there it was more than a hundred and twenty five years of what were known as Horse Operas, whether in darkened theaters, or flickering through black and white televisions, and whether shot on a back lot somewhere near LA, or out in Monument Valley. It seemed as if the entirety of western expansion relied upon guns and horses and landscapes of all types, from burning deserts to snowy mountains, and every kind of prairie in between, vast seas of plains covered with buffalo and spreading out from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean, with the Rockies thrown in for variety’s sake. Western movies play a vital role in how we understand our country, and how the world understands America. 

Let’s start with the basics. Who can’t be trusted? Gosh, railroads and banks, of course, and then hired guns and painted ladies who frequent saloons. But this of course is entirely upside down in the warped Tinsel Town analysis of our history. Without railroads and banks we would have no settled land, and what if you’re making money as a hired gun and your girlfriend is a floozie leaning on the bar in lace and feathers down at the Silver Dollar? Well, the old-timers would tell you, it’s a living, and every man has his price. How important are the horses? Vitally important, and when you see them on film they are well groomed and cared for—unless there are stunts where the horses get injured. Every horse also has his price, I guess. And now that I’ve seen all the Westerns, I mostly just watch them in the background, when I’m typing, with the flatscreen on Mute, because the script is rarely well written, and I’m mostly glancing up and looking at the faces and the horses and the landscape. 

And I remember each and every lesson. Ride into town nice and easy, moving slowly but steadily, keeping your eyes open. Find the stable and blacksmith, and then retire to the saloon. Have a drink and ponder where you will be staying the night, and what the Hell you’re doing with your life. But there’s always another level to all of these towns. Conflicts will have to be confronted. You can’t run from trouble, any more than you can run from yourself. It’ll follow you to the next town. So pick your time, lay down your marker, and call out that bushwhacking sidewinder for a showdown in the street. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Just like the dentist’s office: it’s okay to be scared, but don’t show it. Everybody carries a Colt—“God created Man, and Colonel Colt made them equal.” Good luck finding a Schofield or Remington revolver. Is that the schoolteacher clutching her handkerchief and gazing at you with concern? Why does it always come down to gunplay in the streets? As Wyatt Earp told a reporter who asked about his body count as a lawman: “Some men just need killing.” There’s always some kind of trouble, and if diplomacy and tact doesn’t solve the trouble you may have to step outside. 

And who’s looking for trouble? Well, the drunken cowpokes just off a trail drive, and the hired guns from the big ranch, and the crooked sheriff and the boozy doctor and the hanging judge, and the Native Americans (for good reason), and the quiet fellas carrying a grudge, or dealing with some old hurt, and a prospector crazed on hooch, and even the inconsequential-seeming bartender who has a 12-gauge shotgun under the bar. Always study the mirrors in a saloon. Watch out for balconies and doors that open suddenly. Civil War veterans always deserve close scrutiny, whichever side they served upon. The backdoor of any building is always of interest. Any ticking clock will get louder as the time for a showdown approaches. Good luck finding an outhouse—none are ever shown. When men start spinning the cylinders of their revolvers to check that all the chambers are full it’s time to be very careful. 

We are led to believe by watching Westerns that outbreaks of violence in our communities are inevitable and always lead to a better day, where the upright citizens and good people of any given town can build a church and a school and make it a decent place to live—but first there has to be shooting. That’s just the American way, right? We have always been heavily armed and easily provoked, and we seem unlikely to change at this late date. If the sheriff is around he will be a problem—unless you are the sheriff: then you will have a problem. If there is no duly appointed guardian of the law just saying “I’m the law here” is always a definitive statement. And how best to organize the gunplay? You can’t go shooting folks in the back—that’s bushwhacking. You need to go out in the street and call out your chosen nemesis face to face, maybe with adjectives such as “yellow belly” and “polecat”—and let him draw first. If this results in him killing you dead you’re going to look like an idiot, so make sure you have practiced sufficiently to draw quickly and then unerringly hit whatever you are shooting—because speed is fine, but accuracy is final. 

Afterwards a grateful town will stare at you like a mad dog—because you are a killer. But you saved the town for a moment, and they are slightly thankful but still afraid of you and a bit ashamed. And they may well be more ashamed when they realize that this country was built on a foundation of genocide and slavery, as much as a desire to be free, and that constant and pervasive violence has always been the main theme of much of what Americans have managed to accomplish. Is this too cynical a conclusion? Not really. The Natives had to be pushed back violently until they lost the entire continent, and the British chose not to gift us a free and independent country, but instead had to be shot and bayonetted into leaving, and the entire business plan of both South and North from 1800 on was based upon poorly-paid or even enslaved workers, and then when we can’t find someone else to fight (like the British or the Mexicans) we are perfectly happy to have a Civil War on our very own and rack up 750,000 casualties in a mere four years during a catastrophic event that devastated the landscape and ruined a generation as it set the US back by about forty years because of the bloodshed and hard feelings—and in many ways, that war continues. 

Watching old Westerns can give you tremendous insight into the roots and destiny of our great country—as well as teaching you how Hollywood works, and how not to write a script, and why the most quiet guy in the bar might well be the most dangerous. Cowards and bullies can be loud, we know. Shane doesn’t yell at anybody—he doesn’t have to. He speaks quietly. And when it’s time to go to town he puts on his gunsel uniform of buckskin with fringe and straps on his guns—and we all know what’s coming. And after the fireworks he rides away—wounded, discouraged, but sure he’s done the right thing, and killed several bad men—because there is no future for a pistolero. Towns need families and schools and churches. Not gunmen. 

At the end of The Searchers John Wayne’s character Ethan just ups and leaves—having sacrificed his entire life to a violent quest in reaction to a Comanche raid. And at the end of High Noon there is no help for Gary Cooper’s beleaguered sheriff—he has to walk down the street by himself as noon approaches, and do what a man has to do—which is to confront the inevitable trouble and somehow make it through to the other side. Or die trying. At almost every turn in an old Western we are confronted with the essential question of what do you do in the face of trouble? Stampedes? Rattlesnakes? And there’s always some kind of trouble as well as all kinds of answers to trouble. 

Perhaps some of the most thoughtful observations can be gleaned from the revisionist Westerns of the late 1960s and 1970s, such as The Cowboys, where John Wayne helps some kids learn how to work hard, and they then have to grow up mighty sudden like when their mentor is slain. Further intriguing advice and partial answers to life’s big questions can be gleaned from films like The Wild Bunch, when Pike and his crew go back for Angel, and Jeremiah Johnson, who sacrifices his life for revenge, and in Little Big Man, where the traditional script is flipped and we see Colonel Custer as he most probably actually was—pretty darn full of himself and headed for a date with deadly hubris and deathly disaster. 

But you can’t run from your fate. Butch and Sundance realized that, whether jumping off cliffs or blowing up safes. The real trick in life at the very end and in the final analysis is to kick open the doors and charge out into the plaza even if the entire Bolivian army is out there waiting for you. That’s one of the most important things that watching old Westerns taught me.