ABSOLUTELY WESTERNS
SADDLE UP. THE WEST IS WAITING.

Category: Western / Action / Adventure / Frontier / Classic Cinema
Network: Absolutely Indie Network
Programming Spirit: Cowboys, lawmen, outlaws, pioneers, gunslingers, cattle drives, frontier towns, sweeping landscapes and the stars who rode across them.

AIN STORY
Saddle up.
The West is waiting.
There is a horse tied outside the saloon.
Somebody just rode into town.
The sheriff already knows there's going to be trouble.
The piano stopped playing.
The bartender ducked.
And somewhere on the horizon, a lone rider is getting closer.
Welcome to ABSOLUTELY WESTERNS.

Few genres are as inseparable from the history of American movies as the Western.
Long before spaceships traveled to distant galaxies and superheroes flew across movie screens, filmmakers looked toward the horizon.
There they found cowboys.
Outlaws.
Lawmen.
Pioneers.
Settlers.
Cattle drives.
Stagecoaches.
Posses.
Saloons.
Railroads.
Horses.
Dust.
Danger.
And an enormous landscape where practically anything could happen.
The Western didn't simply give Hollywood stories.
It gave Hollywood mythology.

JOHN WAYNE RIDES IN
You cannot travel very far through the history of the Western without meeting John Wayne.
Before he became one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world, Wayne spent years learning his craft in Westerns.
Some were prestigious.
Many weren't.
Some were made quickly and inexpensively.
But those early pictures helped create the screen presence audiences would eventually recognize instantly.
The walk.
The voice.
The stance.
The confidence.
The silhouette.
Then came Stagecoach.
Under director John Ford, Wayne's entrance as the Ringo Kid helped transform him into a major star.
Over the decades that followed, Wayne became almost inseparable from the Western itself.
Red River.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Rio Grande.
Hondo.
The Searchers.
Rio Bravo.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
El Dorado.
True Grit.
By the time Wayne rode across the screen with the reins in his teeth, audiences weren't simply watching another cowboy.
They were watching decades of Western mythology riding with him.

BEFORE THE DUKE WAS THE DUKE
But AIN loves beginnings.
Before John Wayne became John Wayne, there was a young actor still learning how to carry a Western.
That's part of the Treasure Chest.
The early Western allows us to watch stars becoming stars.
Filmmakers learning.
Genres developing.
Techniques evolving.
The polished icon we remember didn't appear fully formed.
He worked.
He learned.
He made movies.
Lots of movies.
And sometimes those earlier, smaller films tell us more about the making of a star than the masterpieces that came later.

WALTER BRENNAN: THE FACE OF THE WEST
Then there's Walter Brennan.
That voice.
That face.
That unmistakable presence.
Brennan could walk into a Western and somehow make the whole town feel more authentic.
Prospector.
Sidekick.
Rancher.
Old-timer.
Friend.
Troublemaker.
Comic relief.
Wise man.
Sometimes several of those at once.
He appeared opposite some of Hollywood's greatest stars and became one of the most beloved character actors in American film.
Put Brennan beside John Wayne in Rio Bravo and watch what happens.
Wayne brings the authority.
Dean Martin brings the wounded cool.
Ricky Nelson brings youth.
And Brennan?
Brennan brings Walter Brennan.
Nobody else could.

THE GREAT WESTERN DIRECTORS
The Western also gave some of cinema's greatest directors an enormous canvas.
John Ford transformed Monument Valley into mythology.
His landscapes weren't backgrounds.
They were characters.
Howard Hawks understood the camaraderie of people doing dangerous jobs together.
Raoul Walsh brought muscular action and relentless movement.
Anthony Mann explored darker psychological territory.
Budd Boetticher found extraordinary complexity inside lean, economical Westerns.
William Wellman, Delmer Daves, Henry Hathaway, King Vidor and many others discovered their own West.
Then later generations arrived and challenged everything the earlier Western had established.
That's what great genres do.
They evolve.

THE LANDSCAPE
Western landscapes can make human beings look very small.
That's part of their power.
Mountains.
Deserts.
Canyons.
Plains.
Rivers.
Open sky.
A rider can cross the frame and suddenly we understand how enormous the journey really is.
The Western turned landscape photography into storytelling.
Where a character lives matters.
How far they must travel matters.
Whether help can reach them matters.
Distance creates danger.
The horizon creates possibility.
The landscape can promise freedom and threaten death in the same shot.

THE WESTERN TOWN
Then we arrive in town.
One main street.
A saloon.
A jail.
A hotel.
A general store.
Maybe a church.
Maybe a bank.
Definitely a problem.
The Western town is one of cinema's greatest storytelling machines because everyone eventually has to cross the same street.
The lawman meets the outlaw.
The stranger meets the locals.
The cattlemen meet the farmers.
The gambler meets the sheriff.
Secrets become difficult to hide when everybody drinks in the same saloon.

THE LAWMAN AND THE OUTLAW
Western morality often appears simple from a distance.
White hat.
Black hat.
Good guy.
Bad guy.
Except the great Westerns complicate that almost immediately.
What happens when the law is wrong?
What happens when there is no law?
What happens when a decent person has to commit violence to protect others?
What happens when the outlaw has a code?
What happens when civilization arrives and discovers that the people who created order aren't necessarily welcome in the world that follows?
Those questions gave the Western longevity.
Underneath the horses and gunfights are stories about law, justice, loyalty, revenge, community, freedom and responsibility.

THE GUNFIGHT
Two people.
One street.
Everybody else wisely disappears.
Western cinema transformed the showdown into ritual.
We know what's coming.
So do they.
The suspense isn't merely who shoots first.
It's everything that brought these two people to this exact patch of dirt.
The best Western gunfights aren't about guns.
They're about decisions.

THE CATTLE DRIVE
If you're wondering how many things can possibly go wrong while moving thousands of cattle hundreds of miles—
Watch a Western.
Rivers.
Weather.
Stampedes.
Rustlers.
Arguments.
Exhaustion.
Bad decisions.
Worse decisions.
And cattle who appear entirely unconcerned about the production schedule.
The cattle-drive Western transformed work itself into adventure.
Howard Hawks' Red River remains one of the towering examples.

THE HORSE
And then there is the real Western movie star.
The horse.
No horse?
Different genre.
Horses gave Westerns movement, beauty, danger and scale.
Actors who could genuinely ride brought an entirely different physical credibility to the screen.
Stunt riders and stunt performers created extraordinary sequences long before digital effects could manufacture them.
The relationship between rider and horse became part of the iconography of the Western.
One rider.
One horse.
One horizon.
You already know the genre.

THE WESTERN SIDEKICK
Every hero needs somebody who isn't impressed.
Enter the Western sidekick.
Gabby Hayes.
Walter Brennan.
Andy Devine.
And generations of wonderful character actors who brought humor, warmth and humanity into landscapes filled with danger.
The sidekick could complain.
Tell the hero he's being an idiot.
Provide information.
Save the day.
Get into trouble.
And occasionally steal the entire movie.
AIN respects a good scene thief.

WOMEN OF THE WEST
The history of the Western is frequently told through male stars, but women have always been part of its mythology.
Ranchers.
Settlers.
Saloon owners.
Homesteaders.
Outlaws.
Mothers.
Teachers.
Performers.
Women trying to survive in environments where survival itself was work.
And Hollywood gave the Western formidable stars including Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur, Maureen O'Hara and many others.
The best Western women aren't waiting for the story to happen.
They're already in it.

THE B-WESTERN
Here's where Absolutely Indie Network feels particularly at home.
Not every Western had Stagecoach money.
Hollywood produced enormous numbers of lower-budget Westerns designed to entertain audiences quickly and economically.
These films helped train actors.
Directors.
Writers.
Editors.
Stunt performers.
Cinematographers.
Entire careers developed while somebody was trying to get three horses, twelve extras and a camera up a hill before losing the light.
Sound familiar, independent filmmakers?
Exactly.

SERIALS AND SATURDAY MATINEES
Western heroes also flourished in movie serials and Saturday matinees.
Audiences returned week after week.
Cliffhangers kept them coming.
Heroes rode again.
Villains escaped again.
And children across America spent Saturday afternoons traveling to a West that existed somewhere between history and imagination.
That tradition helped make Western imagery part of American popular culture.

THE WESTERN GOES AROUND THE WORLD
The Western may be closely associated with American mythology, but filmmakers around the world made it their own.
Italian filmmakers created the Spaghetti Western.
Sergio Leone reinvented the visual rhythm of the gunfight.
Ennio Morricone reinvented how the West could sound.
Clint Eastwood's mysterious gunslinger carried Western mythology into an entirely new cinematic era.
And the influence moved in both directions.
Akira Kurosawa's samurai films profoundly influenced Western filmmakers, demonstrating how stories of honor, violence and isolated warriors could travel between cultures.
The Western was never really confined by the frontier.

THE WESTERN CHANGES
Eventually filmmakers began questioning the myths earlier Westerns had helped create.
Heroes became more complicated.
Violence became less romantic.
History became harder to ignore.
Stories increasingly challenged simplistic depictions of Native peoples and frontier expansion.
The genre began examining its own mythology.
That didn't kill the Western.
It made the Western more interesting.
Because great genres survive by allowing new generations to argue with them.

WHY WESTERNS STILL WORK
The frontier is gone.
The Western isn't.
Why?
Because its fundamental questions haven't disappeared.
What is justice?
What do we owe one another?
When should we fight?
When should we walk away?
What makes someone brave?
What happens when the world changes and leaves you behind?
Can violence create peace?
Can a person outrun the past?
Those aren't Western questions.
They're human questions.
The cowboy simply asks them from horseback.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
Western films reach back to cinema's earliest decades. Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery from 1903 became one of the landmark early narrative films associated with the genre.
John Wayne wasn't born John Wayne. He was born Marion Robert Morrison, with his middle name later changed to Mitchell.
Before becoming a major star, Wayne appeared in numerous lower-budget Westerns, giving modern audiences the wonderful opportunity to watch an icon developing his screen persona.
Wayne's breakthrough in John Ford's Stagecoach in 1939 permanently changed his career.
John Ford repeatedly filmed in Monument Valley, helping make its landscape visually synonymous with the cinematic West.
Walter Brennan became the first performer to win three Academy Awards for acting.
Western stars frequently developed strong associations with particular horses, costumes, weapons and physical mannerisms.
The B-Western became one of Hollywood's great training grounds.
Actors learned to ride.
Stunt performers learned to fall.
Directors learned to shoot action efficiently.
Editors learned to create momentum.
And producers learned the eternal filmmaking lesson:
Get the shot before you lose the light.
Many Western locations were nowhere near the historical places the stories supposedly depicted.
California, Arizona, Utah and other Western states became cinematic stand-ins for an enormous portion of the frontier.
The Western's influence traveled internationally, most famously through the Italian Spaghetti Western.
Sergio Leone's Westerns later influenced generations of American filmmakers—cinema borrowing from cinema and sending the ideas back again.
The genre also has an important and complicated history regarding representations of Native Americans. Earlier Hollywood Westerns frequently relied on stereotypes or treated Native characters merely as obstacles to white protagonists. Later filmmakers increasingly challenged those portrayals and expanded whose experience of the West could be represented.
That's part of watching classic cinema intelligently:
Celebrate the filmmaking. Understand the history. Recognize what changed.

THE AIN WESTERN CONNECTION
Absolutely Westerns opens an enormous section of the AIN Treasure Chest.
Enter through John Wayne and discover early B-Westerns.
Follow Wayne and find John Ford.
Follow Ford and discover the power of landscape.
Follow Western character actors and find Walter Brennan.
Follow the crime stories and suddenly you're standing beside film noir.
Follow the action and you've reached Absolutely Action Adventure.
Follow the history and you've reached Absolutely History.
Follow the older films and you're back inside Absolutely Nostalgic and Absolutely Classics.
And follow those low-budget Western filmmakers closely enough and something else appears:
Independent filmmaking.
Limited money.
Limited time.
Real locations.
Inventive solutions.
Get the actors on the horses.
Get the camera rolling.
Tell the story.
AIN knows something about that.

THE TRAIL NEVER REALLY ENDS
Somewhere a rider is still approaching.
Somewhere a train is coming.
Somewhere the sheriff is watching the clock.
Somewhere an outlaw thinks he can escape.
Somewhere cattle need moving.
Somewhere somebody should definitely not walk into that saloon.
And somewhere, against an enormous sky, a horse and rider become silhouettes.
More than a century after filmmakers first pointed cameras toward the frontier, we still recognize the image.

That's the Western.
SADDLE UP. THE WEST IS WAITING.