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The Shootist and Family Plot

posted 18 years ago by ecarle
15 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS for The Shootist, Family Plot, Marathon Man, and The Cowboys

This post will drive you Western fans nuts, so I'd better say up front: "The Shootist" is one of my favorite movies.

1976 was a significant year for American movies, and a diverse one. Important or major films like "Taxi Driver," "Network," "All the President's Men," "Marathon Man," "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and even the heart-felt hit and Best Picture winner "Rocky" made it a memorable year.

But I'll always remember 1976 first and most as the year of "The Shootist" and "Family Plot."

The last films of John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock, respectively.

You could say those two were different, and you'd be right. But they had similarities, and so did their last movies in 1976:

1. Both were iconic "symbols" of a type of movie (the Western, the thriller), and both had dominated the American movie landscape in their specialty from the 40's to the 70's (with both of them starting in movies in the 20's.) Hitch and the Duke were of an era that came to a close in the seventies, and it was the last corral at the old graveyard for them in 1976.

2. With both "The Shootist" and "Family Plot," Wayne and Hitchcock swore that they would do other movies after. But both men were very ill while making these films. Hitchcock was so ill he almost couldn't finish directing "Family Plot." Wayne was so ill he had to leave the final barroom-shootout set for the hospital for a few days and almost didn't finish "The Shootist."

When both of those movies came out a few months apart, the feeling about them was the same: these ARE the last movies of these legends. And it was true.
Moreover, the two men died pretty close in time, a few years later, Wayne in 1979 and Hitchcock in 1980, less than a year apart.

3 Wayne's was the more "perfect final film": he played a gunfighter dying of cancer while he really WAS (slowly) dying of cancer. "Time" magazine wrote of "The Shootist" in 1976 that "It's a little early for John Wayne to be acting in his own eulogy" -- but the truth of the matter was, he was.

For its part, "Family Plot" was more laid back and mellow a movie than Hitchcock had done in a long time, with the heroine winking out at us at the end. Possibly Hitchcock's way of saying goodbye, and leaving us with a nice memory.

4. Because "The Shootist" had a younger director in charge (but not that young; Don Siegel was a veteran guy), it was a more crisp and professional-looking movie than old man Hitchcock's sluggish "Family Plot," but the two movies rather "switched energies": "The Shootist" featured older actors like Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lauren Bacall, and John Carradine. "Family Plot" featured young actors like Bruce Dern, Karen Black, and Barbara Harris.

5. Cross-overs: "The Shootist" featured Hitchcock player James Stewart and that opulent barroom was designed by Hitchcock's sometimes art director Robert Boyle ("The Birds.") "Family Plot" starred Bruce Dern in an uncharateristically light and heroic role -- hard to pull off only four years after he gunned John Wayne down in the back in "The Cowboys."

6. Wayne was an actor who dabbled in directing ("The Alamo," "The Green Berets.") Hitchcock was a director who dabbled in acting (making cameos in all his movies, hosting a TV show and his trailers.) And just one time, the two men crossed paths in the field: in 1960, Wayne's "Alamo" was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but Wayne didn't get a Best Director nomination. Wayne's directing nomination went to Hitchcock for "Psycho"...which didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Cruel fate. (Billy Wilder and "The Apartment" won both categories.)

7. Because neither John Wayne nor Alfred Hitchcock were top box office anymore, their final movies in 1976 were small, low-budget affairs. The big Western that year was Eastwood's "Outlaw Josey Wales" -- he was the hot cowboy of the time. The big thriller that year was the very expensive, star-studded "Marathon Man" (with William Devane, the "Family Plot" main villain, as the secondary villain behind Laurence Oliver. Roy Scheider turned down the villain role in "Family Plot" to do a cameo as Dustin Hoffman's brother here.)

But it really didn't matter that there were bigger, more important, more popular movies in 1976. If you'd grown up on John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock -- whose worlds of the Western and the Thriller weren't all THAT different (death solves conflicts in both) -- then 1976 was the year of "The Shootist" and "Family Plot."

And as this is "The Shootist"'s board, I'll note: it was the better of the two, the true classic.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] ecarle 18 years ago

I kinda squeezed that "thriller/Western" comparison in at the end. I think I should elaborate.

I haven't seen "The Hired Hand," but I have seen the other Westerns you mention, and death DOES solve the heroes conflicts -- if one counts the bad guys KILLED by the heroes in gunbattles:

Ricky Nelson tosses Wayne a rifle and together they kill all the bad guys sent to hassle them early in "Rio Bravo"; a few more bad guys are killed in the final gunbattle that ends with an explosion breaking the will of the bad guys. Butch and the Kid kill the Bolivian banditos who rob their payroll and then are killed by the military. Wayne and Mitchum kill quite a few people in "El Dorado," finishing with the head bad guy (Ed Asner) and his gentlemanly hired gun (Christopher George.)

Meanwhile, in thrillers, Hitchcock often (but not always) killed off his villains to save his heroes (see "Shadow of a Doubt," "Strangers on a Train," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "North by Northwest.") And oftimes in Hitchcock's thrillers, the VILLAINS solve their personal or emotional conflicts by killing people (see "Vertigo," "Psycho," "Frenzy," "Dial M for Murder.")

In film comedies and dramas, conflicts are resolved without resort to killing. There are negotiations, discussions, arguments, trials, etc. But both the thriller and the Western postulate a world in which the "final solution" (death) is the normal means of issue resolution.

That's why Westerns and thrillers are exciting, don't usually win Oscars, and are usually called "genre films."

P.S. Bruce Willis said of "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon" and other cop thrillers of the 80's/90's: "Face it. They're just modern Westerns."

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] ecarle 18 years ago

OK. The head villains ARE killed in "El Dorado" . "Rio Bravo" is perhaps more amiable fare, but the Burdettes give up only after Wayne and company have gunned down quite a few of their men and blown up their stronghold (Hawks shows Burdette and his guys then march out like losers in a battle, hands on their heads in surrender.) Frankly, if you look at "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado", the "good guys" are pretty merciless about KILLING bad guys who basically show up just to negotiate or take them prisoner. The message being: if they start it, finish it first.

Societal interests are a different matter, I suppose. Thrillers and Westerns usually pit small groups against each other in " a closed universe." Though I suppose "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" makes a statement for society's need to stamp out anarchic OR corporate-sponsored "evil" to survive.

In thrillers, bad guys kill people or try to kill people to get what they want: power ("Chinatown"), inheritance money ("Dial M for Murder") ransom ("The Taking of Pelham 123.") And then there are the horror thrillers, in which bad guys kill people simply because their urges make them: "Psycho," "Silence of the Lambs." ("Dirty Harry" proposes a mix: a psychotic sadist also out for ransom money.) The good guys often (but not always) have to kill the bad guys to stop the evil.

In any event, I think these worlds are strongly linked: the thriller and the Western.

[–] joekiddlouischama 18 years ago

Going back to The Shootist, I haven't seen it since 2003, but the last time that I watched it, I had a feeling that Wayne, directly or indirectly, prevented Siegel from making the movie that the director really wanted to film. My sense is that without Wayne in the lead role, Siegel would have made a more genuinely anti-heroic movie, with the fading shootist coming to grips with his suspect moralism before dying of cancer. But Wayne didn't usually play characters of suspect moralism (or men who suspected their morality, in any event), and I'm sure that he dictated the nature of his character (explicitly or implicitly) and thus, to a certain degree, the sway of the film. Instead, such suspect moralism that the film offers is merely a mythic backdrop to be rebuked and disproven. Clearly, Wayne is a heroic gunfighter whose nasty reputation is unwarranted and unjust. Without the Duke in the role, perhaps the situation would have been more ambiguous, which is the way that Siegel usually liked it.

The Shootist is kind of an odd Western in that it's more a chamber piece and a drama focused on the characters and their uneasy, but usually not discordant, relationships. I think that Siegel withdrew some of his usual style and energy and realized that he was guiding legends first and foremost (Wayne, Stewart, Bacall), and that the movie was more a Wayne Western than "A Siegel Film." The result, in my view, is a sensitive, thoughtful, somewhat sentimental, slightly compromised, and entirely tasteful elegy. I don't think that The Shootist represents one of Siegel's or Wayne's best films, but it marked a perfect last movie for the Duke and a higher grade of Western than most of his late oaters. Best of all, Siegel and his actors capture the sense of uneasy grace that marks the ticking clock of a legend's final days. The film evokes portending doom, and yet it rejects dreary gloom, thus remaining true to Wayne's earthy, folksy resilience, at once indomitable and vulnerable. That spirit was always curiously, subtly paradoxical, and the filmmakers capture it in The Shootist with fresh remembrance.

[–] ecarle 18 years ago

Nice writing on "The Shootist," joekidd. You write...I'll "talk." (And go pro someday, will ya?)

Word is indeed that "The Shootist" was from a book in which John Bernard Books was a nastier sort of man, who inflicted very sadistic bullet wounds upon his foes and was ultimately killed by the Ron Howard character. And for all the perfection of the dying John Wayne playing a dying gunfighter, the role supposedly was shipped around to Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, and George C. Scott as well -- as they were considered "hotter". All of those guys might have been willing to "mess Books up a bit."

"The Shootist" IS a chamber piece, and Siegel does rather bow to Wayne's dictates. Though not entirely. I'm sure you've read in Siegel's autobio how Wayne wanted to be camera-covered EXACTLY like Richard Boone had been entering the saloon for the final gunfight. Siegel told Wayne: "No, I won't do that -- and I'll tell you why" -- and did. Whereas the camera had come in WITH Boone as he walked around the bar and sat down, Siegel wanted Wayne to enter in a big long shot taking in the whole bar -- with Wayne looking at his foes all at once in a mirror.

I think "The Shootist" ends up being one of Wayne's best AND Siegel's best, practically by default. It certainly wasn't seen as "The Searchers" or "Rio Bravo" when it came out. Westerns were fading, and few of his fans really wanted to see the Duke (or anybody) die of cancer on screen. Moreover, as with so many "Siegelfilms," the movie was scaled tightly, with action kept to a minimum until the blazing finish.

But the legend grew on this one. There they are, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, doing a scene together in which a decrepit Stewart tells a tuckered Wayne he's going to die. It's the death of the West! And Stewart is his surprisingly ornery and ominious self breaking the news: "You've got a CANCER," the old sawbones practically spits out. Can you cut the cancer out, doc?, asks Wayne. Stewart's biting drawl responds: "Ah'd half to gut ya like a fish."

A parade of old co-stars pay episodic homage to Duke: Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Richard Boone, John Carradine, Harry Morgan. Young pup Ron Howard (now the great film auteur) hangs out as Wayne's surrogate son -- thus giving the movie retroactive gravitas. Scatman Crothers and Hugh O'Brien contribute lively cameos (the square, handsome O'Brien plays a rather sinister fast-gun of a Faro dealer, who eventually goes up against Wayne just for the sport of it.) The delightful seedy Sheree North (fresh from her ambivalently shady performance as a small-time crook in "Charley Varrick") shows up with real poignance and bite as Books' old girlfriend out for some last cash.

The way the movie starts is beautiful pop culture: as Ron Howard's voice gives us a "gee-whiz" recital of the career of gunman John Bernard Books ("He was a lawman for a time,") Wayne grows up before our eyes in film clips: Red River, Hondo, Rio Bravo, El Dorado...in 1976, this was an exhilarating and profoundly sad montage: that was our OWN lives passing on screen with the Duke.

Siegel and his screenwriter keep things from getting maudlin (many of the lines have the spark and archaic polish of "True Grit," except better), but things are always sad in "The Shootist," especially when Books leaves Lauren Bacall's widow woman for the last time (they've had no time for romance, only for a tenative yet deep friendship of a few days time.) In between, the tale is the study of a famous old gunfighter fighting for his reputation against a crew of folks out to either honor him or rip him off. (This is, in its own way, the much more mellow forerunner to Clint Eastwood's tale of an old legendary gunfighter in "Unforgiven," except William Munny is a much scarier old guy than John B.)

The "real Don Siegel" comes out to play with the film's final shootout, which plays to his great strengths as a filmmaker of great visual style and compelling pace and energy. Each man enters the bar differently; the metronomic sound of several overhead fans paces the build-up to the gunfight. John Bernard Books pours himself a drink. And a great gunfight commences. No "Wild Bunch" spectacle. Just vintage Don Siegel: crisp, a bit oddball in certain choices of angle and character action, quick and deadly.

Working on "The Shootist" with a proud and ailing John Wayne was no picnic for Don Siegel. Wayne almost had to leave the picture permanently before shooting finished; and when he came back from the hospital, Wayne was considering the firing of Siegel for doing things "behind his back." But together the two men kept it together. Wayne got "the perfect final film." Siegel got something meaningful that didn't involve Clint Eastwood for once ("Charley Varrick" had been great, but didn't hit and "last" like Wayne's walking eulogy did).

And the reputation of "The Shootist" just keeps on growing. Oddly, its a greater movie perhaps in the love expressed towards it than in the movie that was actually MADE.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] joekiddlouischama 18 years ago

Smart comments, ecarle. I agree with pretty much everything that you've said here. The Shootist is, in a sense, more memorable for what it represents than for the actual movie in and of itself. I've also had the thought that The Shootist could have been something of a precursor to Unforgiven, but I think that Wayne kept it from heading in that direction. (Consider that in Unforgiven, William Munny is actually worse that his nasty reputation.) But the Duke didn't want to head down that dark road, and I don't blame him. While it might have been more challenging to have seen an aged, dying Ethan Edwards (The Searchers) conjuring with his violent, hateful past, it also wouldn't have made for as elegant an elegy. Indeed, the self-conscious opening montage filled with clips from old Wayne Westerns indicates that the film that we're about to see is really a meditation on John Wayne, not some character named J.B. Books. And for a screen legend's swan song, The Shootist seems unmatched in terms of a summarizing and epitomizing eulogy.

I agree that Siegel's action-suspense sensibility comes to life in that taut, anticipatory, expertly timed final saloon shootout. And seeing Wayne and Stewart together again in a Western is indeed a treat. One senses that they were headed here back in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence a decade and a half earlier, and here they are, having passed through middle age and come out as old men confronting their mortality. Lusty Sheree North is also a nice touch, as always. (Eastwood used many of the same actors as Siegel, but unfortunately, he never cast North in one of his films.)

The Shootist's writing and visuality indeed evoke a sense of archaic authenticity. It's not a visually stunning film, but its pictorial color and craft, along with its quaint dialogue, stand out.

[–] NForest 18 years ago

The Duke was certainly an icon and this is a fine film...marred only by the dodgy 1970s wigs sported by Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

The Searchers, True Grit and Hondo are the ones I remember most fondly from my youth, though.

"I was playing the RIGHT notes...just not necessarily in the right order"

[–] joekiddlouischama 18 years ago

The Duke was certainly an icon and this is a fine film...marred only by the dodgy 1970s wigs sported by Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

When did Stewart start wearing a wig? And does anyone know when, exactly, Wayne started wearing one?

[–] sharonrobinson7777 18 years ago

She wore a yellow ribbon, but it was only part of a wig as Duke still had a good head of hair.

I think Stewart started wearing one in the mid 50's.

[–] NForest 18 years ago

Indeed, when you see pix of Jimmy Stewart as a pilot during the war he was
very bald. I think the Duke started quite early on too. Just goes to show, no matter how much cash you have...a syrup is a syrup and always looks like one.
Ditto those people who have plastic surgery and pretend that they haven't, thinking no-one can tell. We can.

I read a book by Herb Solow about the production of Star Trek and the funniest thing in it is the fact that William Shatner used to steal the wigs made for him for the show...but deny all knowledge.

"I was playing the RIGHT notes...just not necessarily in the right order"

[–] ecarle 9 years ago

The Duke was certainly an icon and this is a fine film...marred only by the dodgy 1970s wigs sported by Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

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Ha. Well a different era. Probbaly wouldn't have been good for Wayne and Stewart to play their characters bald, though.

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The Searchers, True Grit and Hondo are the ones I remember most fondly from my youth, though

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Hondo and The Searchers are from Wayne's "early prime" when he seemed to make one hit after another.

"True Grit" and of course "The Shootist" are "late Waynes" -- he's old, heavy, a bit tired...but still possessing an incredible amount of danger, moral weight, and gravitas.

[–] Duck (13) 6 years ago

The stories I have heard is that the Duke hated his wigs. The studio made him wear it, if you see his home movies he was not wearing one. Also in interviews his family and friends say he never wore a wig when not working.

[–] joegerardi (376) 6 years ago

He didn't hate it, but wore it only as part of "doing" John Wayne. Off the set, he never wore it, and didn't care if people saw him without it. There are home movies shot by friends on his yacht, and he never once had the rug on; in "North to Alaska" it got knocked off in a fight scene: the director offered to re-take so it could be shot with the wig staying on, and Wayne demurred- he just didn't care.

Also, guys- in all these posts, you're getting it wrong- Wayne WASN'T dying of cancer. Yet. He was just quite ill with influenza, and the high altitude was problematic on his remaining lung. The cancer he contracted on "The Conqueror" shoot (like over 50% of the cast had) wouldn't come back for 2 more years.

..Joe