to those who dont think frd was a coward, read this...

What I don't get really is Ford's creepy persona, his motives of obsession or what type of idolization has occurred, and why was he like that? Can someone explain that to me? And how could he kill someone he like worshipped, and why did James hate him? But then kept him around, treated him nice, almost killed him, and like stared at him repeatedly in his own creepy way.. I don't know this whole movie stuck with me, but theres no info online about this

There is very little information about Bob Ford, so if you're talking the facts of who Bob Ford in real life was and what precisely motivated him, what there is that's tangible is limited. There's really only that rather haunting child-seeming photo of Ford after he'd killed Jesse (http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-outlaws/BobFord-500.jpg) and a few accounts of things he said. In itself that photo seems to suggest something of Bob Ford though - at least that when he killed Jesse he really was only a boy.

So, I can only go by the film/book. In real life though, the Fords were from the same area as the James family. So while when they were kids I suppose dime novels of Jesse James would be available to everyone, there was likely even more for Bob to hook onto, knowing of the family and (as obviously happens) the case of one day meeting and becoming involved with Jesse to is a real possibility in child-Bob's world. It's conveyed really though as that Bob simply idolises Jesse. I noticed once that you know in his box of Jesse stuff in the film - Bob lifts out the top novel first and it seems like that one is separate, special. It's called "Jesse James' Protector". Maybe in Bob's fantasies he imagined this position being his place.

The way Bob is obsessed with and ingratiated himself within the James gang is a little creepy and he's certainly a bit odd. But this said, surely every person has their obsessions - has had things they've fantasised about. Usually such fancies are more fleeting than Bob's, but equally Bob is young - as a child Jesse has been his hero. The world was smaller than and Jesse was as Bob describes "as big as a tree" - something to aspire to. Given a few years, likely Bob would have instead been able to look to this and use it as inspiration to achieve by his own means, but at 19 he is still the child who sees the only (and best) way to achieve something akin to Jesse as by getting close to him, almost like he might become part of the stories he's read just by being there, talking with the man.

Obviously when he becomes entangled with the James gang, things don't go as Bob hoped. No-one takes him seriously as it has always been in his life and Jesse is not much like the Jesse he knows and idolises in reality. But he doesn't and can't let go of his idolisation entirely despite this.

The turning point for Bob in terms of what's possible is his killing Wood Hite 'cause Hite is Jesse's cousin and if/when Jesse discovers Bob's involvement (as if he ever found Dick Liddel) he'd kill 'em - it's not a question, but a fact that'd occur.

Even so, Bob's demeanour and feelings towards Jesse change the most not when this happens but when, when he next sees Jesse, Jesse begins to mock him and tells the story about the guy who betrayed him…

Bob and Jesse are similar in the sense that they both crave fame (not in the same way as people do today… or maybe in the same way - in the sense that they crave the immortality of fame and the general pubic love and to be something in this life - to be something lasting - to do something people will remember) and Bob wants the notoriety and to be the hero in the dime novels he read Jesse as. Killing Jesse he thinks is his way to achieve this. He thinks he'll be loved for it. He kills Jesse for the hope of fame, because in the end Jesse would kill him otherwise and for money. He was young and didn't think it's implications though or even understand what they'd be. But even (in the film at least) as you see Bob kill Jesse, you still see there's a part of him that still sees him as his idol and wants not to do it. 'Course the film includes much complexity regarding Jesse's involvement in his own demise also. But Bob is terrified and really does not want to kill Jesse - but at the pint where he does kill him he has to do this - it really is a choice - kill Jesse James or soon be killed yourself. And this is certainly his only chance.

The saddest thing for Bob is that in killing Jesse, he kills his own future at just 20 too as he's then forever defined by that act and nothing he can do can change people's perception's of him. In real life, despite the public hatred of him he did go on to be a successful business man, with his own Saloon and there's such a sense of the man he perhaps could have been had he not been involved with Jesse. I've read the novel which contains a lot more detail regarding Bob's life after shooting Jesse. I think the film as is conveys the feeling of Bob's future fine, but in the book Bob is again and again forced to start over and yet still achieves fair success, even though he never at all loses the public perception as the coward who shot Jesse James. Bob thinks of readjusting his hopes even - he never gives up. Where once he wished to be the kind of hero Jesse James was, now he merely hopes that one day he could achieve enough that he might do some thing that people might at least recall other than that one event. He knows he cannot escape it, but he remains hopeful for the smallest of escapes from who he is perceived as.

I will also add that for me the film shows both Jesse and Bob as flawed individuals. Jesse is obviously portrayed as a sociopath, but not without awareness of this terrifying side to himself. He has no remorse for the crimes he has done and in fact craves and enjoys violence and crime and danger, yet his is very charismatic and is a loving husband and father. And he is aware of what he's done and who he is as he reaches the end of his life. Jesse James was slitting throats and I presume scalping people and goodness knows what else from the age of fifteen - when he began doing this it must have been a thing he learned from older men, but it became who he was as a man.

Bob, on the other hand is not portrayed as psychotic remotely. He's just a small person who dreams big and who maybe could have got there but instead got somewhere terrible.

On the topic, Bob Ford isn't a coward, but it is a cowardly act to shoot an unarmed man in the back… and yet it's also brave to kill such a dangerous man and to live with him with the knowledge that you're double crossing him for some time. And also it's noted that Bob missed Jesse too after his death and mourned his loss as a person. He was a friend and Bob did betray him.

Jesse shot friends in the back too so if we want to define this as cowardice, even in the film he shoots Ed Miller in the back.

It's late at night and I should have written this in the morning! Oh well! What was the question again?!

As for Jesse's feelings towards Bob: Jesse has reached the end of the line in terms of gang members - everyone else is in jail or dead - he doesn't have much choice by the end but to keep Bob and Charley around. There are many aspects to what Jesse sees in Bob - In once sense perhaps he sees the possibility for any future Bob has, which Jesse ow no longer does - Bob hasn't really as yet been involved in any crimes (that one train robbery he was there but didn't do anything) and Jesse is at a stage in life where his future is closing in: the public no longer want the outlaw standing for the South they once did - times have moved on. There's no place for him and yet he cannot put his crimes behind him, because they are part of who he is and what he needs to do and because he committed them. Bob on the other hand, to Jesse has infinite possibility. Jesse envies this and ironically in his killing of Jesse Bob strips this from himself.

On the other hand, Bob idolises Jesse in a way that the turning tide of the public don't any more - he helps his ego in some sense. Then, the reason Jesse is so unpredictable is his own mental state - he is depressed, increasingly and utterly paranoid, add in all the elements of what his childhood have made him to be as a man and he is a psychopath too. The film talks of him covering his mood swings by being overly cordial.

It's also implied that Jesse craves death to some degree certainly. If you want to take it to the extreme you could go so far as to say he sets the whole thing up from the start - takes in the boy who idolises him, plants the story in his head about a boy in the past who was similar and betrayed him…. but only because Jesse himself had betrayed the boy in an awful way in deed and in trust… he mocks Bob… he does what he can to turn him against him - love and hate so close and all…. in the end he presents Bob with the very weapon to kill him and even, ultimately with his own back, free of the weapons he's usually keep with him at all times. We see in the film that Jesse seems to see Bob pointing the gun at him in the moment before he dies. Is this what he wanted or expected? Is it akin to shooting the ice - he just thought he'd see what'd happen? It's oblique and you can interpret it to being this degree - Jesse knowing that he was soon to be caught anyway and would sooner die at Bob's hand knowing of the eventual fame that'd bring rather than go to prison and being hanged as a criminal… He could have had that much awareness of his own myth…. to at the other degree just being a vague craving for death/depression Jesse has and all else comes from Bob entirely.

What a long and incoherent paragraph! I am sure you can put together a lot more intelligible ideas than me in a few minutes at midnight, but I hope I've provided a place to start.

Maybe the best thing is that it just shows these two people as being humanly flawed - both have both admirable and negative aspects to them.

But for anyone who on viewing the film perceives Bob Ford to be a coward, you've missed the point of the film at least for whatever else this film is it is Robert Ford's eulogy. It is his story. And at worst you should surely at least find him pitiable, but if you are watching openly, then while you do also empathise a lot with Jesse, you should certainly empathise with Bob.

SORRY! LONG!

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