Why You Should Watch Rio Bravo (with Will diGravio, host of The Video Essay Podcast)

Cowboys! Country songs! John Wayne's sensitive side!

In this classic western, a stubborn small-town sheriff rounds up a posse, including the town drunk, a young stranger and a disabled old man to keep a criminal in jail, away from the reach of his ruthless rancher brother.

Joining me for this conversation is Will DiGravio, a video essayist and podcaster who brings a very special expertise in Rio Bravo to the table. Listen to our chat to find out more.

00:03:05:22 - 00:03:06:17
Will Webb
Hi Will. How you doing?

00:03:07:03 - 00:03:14:12
Will di Gravio
I'm doing great. Thank you so much. Great to be here and excited to talk Rio Bravo. Excellent. Excellent summary.

00:03:15:10 - 00:03:35:13
Will Webb
Thank you very much. Yeah, it's it's interesting film to summarize, isn't it? Because so much of it is actually short on plot. I think there's not much plot to the film. Not many things happen, which is a real surprise for things commercial as the Western. But before we get into that, I want to talk to you about your like your background and kind of how you come to film.

00:03:35:29 - 00:03:51:04
Will Webb
And the biggest thing that I know about you is that you run the video essay podcast, which is this like in, in what I think is quite a niche subject. Sometimes though, the world of making video essays and it's specifically for making video essays or at least talking about them in ways that are related to the making of them.

00:03:52:18 - 00:03:59:22
Will Webb
If you could tell me about how you came to that and what kind of brought you to video essay or video graphic criticism? As I've newly discovered it's called?

00:04:00:21 - 00:04:24:18
Will di Gravio
Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's great to be here. And I occupy a weird space in the video essay world because I think I'm more associated people. Maybe considering more as an interviewer and podcaster than an actual video essayist, although I am trying to make more and more video essays. The short story is I went to a school called Middlebury College to get my undergraduate degree, which is in the United States in Vermont.

00:04:24:29 - 00:04:45:18
Will di Gravio
It's a small liberal arts college. And there I the idea behind the liberal arts college system is that you're not really supposed to know what you want to study when you go in. They force you to take a bunch of different classes. And so I started off as a political science major and taking some econ classes did terrible in econ, like the worst grades I ever got.

00:04:46:13 - 00:05:01:26
Will di Gravio
Kind of got bored with the political science and was like, you know, maybe I want to be an English major deep down because I started to develop this interest in journalism. So I was like, okay, maybe I should try to become like a better writer. Didn't I like a lot of the classes I took? But then because of the liberal arts, you have to take something in the arts.

00:05:01:26 - 00:05:19:09
Will di Gravio
So I was like, Oh, okay, I like movies. Let's take film class. And then it's kind of like Boom by world changed. First screening was Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and I kind of just like sat there with my mouth open and just like, wow, this is like the best thing I'd ever seen. I want to keep doing this.

00:05:19:11 - 00:05:52:27
Will di Gravio
From there, it was kind of off to the races. I was very lucky to study under Jason Martell and Christian Keatley, which if you're familiar with video essays in particular, the academic audio visual essay are two leaders in the field and they run this program for scholars where they essentially train them how to make video essays. As you can imagine, you know, a scholar who's been in the field 20 years, knows a lot about film, can write eloquently about film or TV or whatever moving image, but doesn't might not know how to use Adobe Premiere, which is obviously one of the most important things.

00:05:53:11 - 00:06:12:05
Will di Gravio
And it so that they teach those skills while also advocating for the form itself in the field. And so I was actually working as a journalist at a local newspaper in the town of Middlebury, and Jason invited me to cover this for the newspaper because it was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities here in the United States, the workshop.

00:06:12:05 - 00:06:29:21
Will di Gravio
So it's kind of big deal. A small town with 8000 people in Vermont, right? So I went and covered it. It was kind of like, whoa, this is really cool. So I enrolled in Jason's class the following fall, fell in love with it was like, You know what? Amidst the media, I'm interested in film. I'm just going to become a film major.

00:06:30:10 - 00:06:48:25
Will di Gravio
And I actually started off declaring a major in film and media because I was interested in, like I said, in journalism, I thought maybe I'll write something on like conservative television or something like that. But then I just started watching these amazing movies. I discovered Hitchcock. I discovered Spike Lee and experimental works like my Darren. And I was like, okay, this is what I want to do.

00:06:48:25 - 00:07:08:20
Will di Gravio
I'm a film studies guy, so that's kind of my origin story. But, you know, growing up, I never really watched a lot of movies. It just wasn't something that I did or my family did. Not a bad way. It's just, you know, people watch it and do certain things. And so I have a lot of gaps in my movie watching and I've been working to fill them for a while.

00:07:09:17 - 00:07:41:12
Will di Gravio
But I did stumble across Rio Bravo at one point, which is very serendipitous, and perhaps you can touch on that later. But yeah, so so for me, ever since 2017, it's been just about trying to engage myself in film studies and videographer criticism I found exciting because it seemed kind of like an untapped terrain, you know, and wanting to think about films and to do film criticism like, you know, you want something like an amazing for the first time, you're like, Oh my God, I'm so excited about this.

00:07:41:12 - 00:07:58:17
Will di Gravio
I want to work with it and do something. And then you go to the library, you go online and there's 100 articles written about it and ten books, and you're like, Oh, maybe there's no video essays. And you think, Oh, well, this is this is my way that I can contribute something new and be fresh and to revisit old films in new ways, which is my passion.

00:07:59:18 - 00:08:13:15
Will di Gravio
And so that's what got me really excited about video criticism. Then the more I kept watching, it was just there was an art to this and that we should be treating video essays in the same way. You know, I really love those books that are like conversations with filmmakers or experimental.

00:08:13:15 - 00:08:15:23
Will Webb
Shows like Little Lynch or something.

00:08:15:24 - 00:08:29:14
Will di Gravio
Yes, exactly. And I was like, there should be something like that for video essayists because I was seeing style across the works of video essayists. And so that was the inspiration for podcast. And now here we are today. I mean.

00:08:29:14 - 00:08:51:13
Will Webb
It's it's a very familiar story to me in some ways because like you, I went to university to do a philosophy degree. And although I was making films, I've never really done any film criticism. And I did a course that was essentially you just had to write an extended piece on a film or a set of films which ended up being on Dario Argento and interpreting how he feels about women through his giallo films.

00:08:51:13 - 00:09:06:28
Will Webb
I don't know if you're familiar with them, but yeah, it's a certainly interesting topic and I was lucky, like you saying about at the time, there wasn't much critical stuff about Giallo that was serious. They were stuck in the liner notes of DVDs, and the Blu ray revolution was just starting to get all those kind of exploitation films.

00:09:07:14 - 00:09:27:12
Will Webb
There's a lot of movies that skipped straight over even getting a VHS, let alone a DVD, and went straight to Blu ray because places like Alamo's releasing House and Arrow as well in the UK kind of got these little films, put them straight into a restoration with a reskin. So that was kind of the moment where I got into film criticism as well as filmmaking too.

00:09:27:13 - 00:09:49:10
Will Webb
And I think you're right that it's a we're a kind of inflection point for video essays in a way, because the technology is now available pretty easy to use. Premiere's relatively cheap, at least when you compare it to like, say, an avid video deck from the early noughties or something. And what it means as well is that it's freeing up people who are not academic video essayists to become video essayists.

00:09:49:10 - 00:10:18:12
Will Webb
And I love that there's this like incredibly rich and very stiff sometimes world of academic video essays. Some of my favorites are from there and some other video assists for those people who play like Rotterdam and the selection there and stuff like that. But I think the proliferation of videos online really focused on very mainstream films and TV, and that's really heartening to me because the main thing I want from criticism is to encourage people to think deeply about and probe into culture no matter what it is that they're engaging with.

00:10:18:12 - 00:10:37:25
Will Webb
And so when I see like a nine hour long video essay series on like Studio Ghibli or something like that or anime in general, it's like, Great. I can't wait to find out what you think about this thing that I'm never going to watch. And there's that iconic two hour long pathologic video essay and the HBO Maggie kind of canon, which comes up a lot in those conversations.

00:10:37:25 - 00:10:53:21
Will Webb
And again, like punishingly difficult Russian video game that I will never play. But they're out there talking about how great it is and what it means for video game design, stuff like that, which is Fab and I love that you have a focus on older films as well because I think when we talk about Rio Bravo, we are talking about a very commercial film.

00:10:54:05 - 00:11:19:22
Will Webb
It's a genre focused film. Although Howard Hawks is an, I would say, very strong filmmaker and certainly was at this point already recognized by people like his, the cinema, the original, the kind of events, the French New Wave, you know, he's one of their favorites, right? This is a very commercial film, even down to casting not one but two singers as these lead characters, because we have Dean Martin as dude and is it Ricky Nelson, his name?

00:11:20:06 - 00:11:41:28
Will Webb
Yep. This kind of teen heartthrob, country singer. Yeah. And so there's this attempt to make something that's very commercial, but with a real strong artistic sensibility. And my understanding of it is that it's largely a response to another Western right, which is high noon. I should preface this by saying I know very little about Westerns, and in fact, I hadn't seen Rio Bravo, so thanks for recommending it.

00:11:43:15 - 00:12:00:18
Will Webb
High Noon is a film about a sheriff who's in a similar situation and who is convinced by his are the people around him to kind of take on their help. And as far as I understand it, John Wayne and the director of this film, Howard Hawks, felt that a professional sheriff would absolutely not bring citizens into the line of danger like that.

00:12:01:03 - 00:12:12:19
Will Webb
And so this film is largely engaged in how he doesn't want to take on help. Why that's a bad idea. Well, the funny enough, he does end up taking on several people who really aren't good fits and then it just happens to work out. So the magic a film for you.

00:12:12:19 - 00:12:38:19
Will di Gravio
That yeah I think Hawks referred to the sheriff in high noon is Gary Cooper, who plays the sheriff, Will Cain. I think you refer to him as a chicken without a head running around. And for him, the one of the main problems was that, you know, a manly man, a true sheriff, would not go around groveling for help in that way, because in that film, Gary Cooper is bad guys are basically coming back to get their revenge and he's running around being like, Can you help me?

00:12:38:19 - 00:12:50:15
Will di Gravio
I need your help at the top. And they're all kind of like, No, no, no. And so John Wayne and Howard Hawks didn't like that. So there is definitely some of that at play in Rio Bravo, for sure.

00:12:51:05 - 00:13:19:18
Will Webb
And then away from that kind of like they call and response kind of element of the film. It's also a return to form for both director and star, right? John Wayne had built this kind of inexorable image of himself as John Wayne, the cowboy, and kind of got a reputation for playing himself, I think an unfair one. I think he is actually quite a strong actor, as you see in this film, but he went off and tried to do a number of films that played with his image, I guess that had him doing very different things and they mostly sucked or at least they bombed.

00:13:20:06 - 00:13:36:00
Will Webb
And Howard Hawks likewise had had a long period of not making films, and it's longer to him. I think it was four years, which by modern standards isn't bad at all. I think Terrence Malick usually takes about eight between each film. Yeah, he was a very commercial filmmaker and Westerns also were being churned out at this time in history.

00:13:36:14 - 00:13:54:27
Will di Gravio
Yeah, it's funny, he the film he directed, such as Land of the Pharaohs, was considered a huge flop. And he takes some time off. And he's actually he was already you know, people associate with the Western a lot, but he didn't he didn't direct a ton of Westerns as compared to maybe someone like John Ford. And he goes abroad to Europe.

00:13:55:04 - 00:14:18:10
Will di Gravio
I'm forgetting where. And he's watching a lot of American Westerns on television. And this is kind of taking a lot of that in and then eventually decides to reunite with Wayne, as you say, and do this. And I remember in in Roger Ebert's has that great collection of books, the great movies where he writes a bunch of great movies and he begins the one Rio Bravo with the stray anecdote that on the first day of shooting, Hawks went behind the set and vomited.

00:14:18:15 - 00:14:31:10
Will di Gravio
He was so nervous because he had been waiting so long to return and just didn't know if he had it in him. And then he goes out and directs my pick for the greatest movie of all time. If I if I had to pick one.

00:14:32:05 - 00:14:53:27
Will Webb
And he also fired a relatively well known supporting actor who was, again, a name I can't remember, because he referred to him as Howard instead of Mr. Hawks. I felt that was kind of an affront to him. So I think tensions were relatively high when they started shooting, for sure. And and the other thing we should mention about this before we talk a little more about it is that you are currently doing a sort of research program around Rio Bravo, which is the Rio Bravo Diary.

00:14:54:11 - 00:15:16:06
Will Webb
And so this is you splitting the film up into roughly 365, roughly equal sized parts and posting them once a day onto Twitter. And they're talking about them picking out these little elements as well. As I've seen you done a number of kind of more experimental video essays or re representations, I suppose, of the film itself for your website, the Rio Bravo, Rio Bravo Direct.

00:15:16:06 - 00:15:25:13
Will Webb
Com And I love that. I think you're about two thirds of the way through now, right? You're at chance kind of being proud of Duke for not taking a drink.

00:15:25:25 - 00:15:43:15
Will di Gravio
Yes. Yes. I think we're at day a the final day will be November 1st of this year. So if we do, I think I just did it in the two sixties or so. Yeah. And it came, you know, we might get to how I first discovered Rio Bravo later, but it came in that first video essay course I took.

00:15:43:15 - 00:16:01:23
Will di Gravio
I wanted to work with Rio Bravo to do something about them because I knew that that was and I love that movie up until that point and I and I want to work with it. But the thing about videographer criticism is you get such an intimate relationship with your object of study, you're literally in premier playing it apart, confronted with it every day.

00:16:02:08 - 00:16:28:03
Will di Gravio
And I realized that I couldn't make a video essay about it. I was just it was just to personal for me to do. I felt I felt overwhelmed because I wanted to just do the film justice. You know, I think there's a great responsibility that come with working with a film that you love in that way. And so this is me kind of returning to that and thinking, how can I get to know this film in the most intimate, drawn out way?

00:16:28:05 - 00:16:46:05
Will di Gravio
And I thought, okay, I will watch the film over the course of one year, which is what I've done. And each day I log on to Twitter in a no more than the length of a single tweet, I annotate a roughly 23/2 clip because that's how the math works out of the film. And I haven't watched it in full since I started this project.

00:16:46:05 - 00:16:59:25
Will di Gravio
So it's been okay. And I had it and I hadn't watched it in a while or started the project, so probably haven't seen it in a year or two. And that was part of the goals of the project where I said, I'm not going to watch it in full and it's been really great. And I like the medium of Twitter because it limits me.

00:16:59:25 - 00:17:07:06
Will di Gravio
I can't write long paragraphs. I have to stick to the character limit. And it's also been great because people can respond, they can follow along, they can engage.

00:17:07:19 - 00:17:24:27
Will Webb
And I suppose it's a longitudinal study as well, right? Because you're you're laying out one by one every day. So there's really time to stop and think about what it feels like. And I had noticed that like week to week as a theme almost the stuff you post because they're all from one scene. Usually, you know, you're going to get for about two minute chunk every ten days.

00:17:24:27 - 00:17:36:28
Will Webb
So that's a scene roughly, right means that like a real focus, like you went for a whole period talking about the gender politics of it because you had a whole section of love interest scene with John Wayne and Angie Dickinson, which was like, Yeah, rage thing.

00:17:37:12 - 00:18:15:06
Will di Gravio
Yeah, yeah. And what's great is it's not me picking random scenes, it's going sequential through the film. And so I just go and premiere and I take the next 23 seconds and the next 20 seconds next. So sometimes at pivotal moments in this in the film that it will cut like that will be where the cut is and perhaps it's in a in a in a gesture that's very important or in the middle of the line of dialog or, you know, and what's great is that has forced me to view those scenes in new ways because I think sometimes when we watch a film and we know that there's a scene of great significance, we

00:18:15:06 - 00:18:34:02
Will di Gravio
kind of assume that's the only way to look at it. Or at least I do. And sometimes we turn off and we only see it in that way by this kind of cutting it up and manipulating it in this way. It's it's given me a lot of insight, and it's also it's a lot of fun. And I can't I can't believe it's it's almost over.

00:18:34:02 - 00:18:34:12
Will di Gravio
But yeah.

00:18:34:22 - 00:18:51:09
Will Webb
Next one. My last thing to mention to before we start talking about is I was really fascinated to find out that the writer of Bravo is Leigh Brackett, who is a woman, despite the kind of like gender neutral name who I know better as like a sci fi writer. She wrote The Empire Strikes Back. That was her last film.

00:18:51:09 - 00:19:12:22
Will Webb
She wrote the visuals after that, and she also wrote a very good sci fi novel in the fifties, about four years before this called The Long Tomorrow, which is about nuclear war and Cold War paranoia and all that stuff. And it's just like interesting to bear in mind when we talk about this film is like largely being about a couple of guys working out what it means to be a guy in the West for them and kind of finding dignity.

00:19:12:22 - 00:19:20:01
Will Webb
I think that's a big theme of the film. And yet to think that it's written by women, which apparently was a surprise to Howard Hawks as well, when he's. Yes.

00:19:20:21 - 00:19:29:20
Will di Gravio
And in the back end, Brackett also worked with Hawks on his earlier film with The Big Sleep, which is the great film with the with Humphrey Bogart. Yeah.

00:19:30:00 - 00:19:32:07
Will Webb
I mean, that was the one that I met. And he was surprised that.

00:19:32:07 - 00:19:32:27
Will di Gravio
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:19:33:11 - 00:19:44:13
Will Webb
So you talked a little bit, but let's kick off the discussion about Rio Bravo by talking about when you first got to see it. And I'm wondering if you sort it out, was it presented to you by accident, that kind of thing?

00:19:44:29 - 00:20:09:10
Will di Gravio
Yeah. So when I was in high school, I wrote this long introductory essay to the diary, which you can find at the website you generously plugged. But essentially in high school I was grew up in a not a super conservative variable United States, but a conservative area within a liberal area of the United States. I am now a proud socialist and leftist and what have you.

00:20:09:10 - 00:20:34:11
Will di Gravio
So I glorify there. But I was 14 and thought of myself as a Republican. And so one day I think I remember it was just I remember this day vividly. It was raining and I decided to go on YouTube. And before I before YouTube became such an integrated facet of my life and just watched Ronald Reagan debate videos and which sounds like the lamest thing of all time because it is.

00:20:35:12 - 00:21:06:07
Will di Gravio
And but then this video popped up. Ronald Reagan roasts Frank Sinatra. It was like, what? Like I was like what? I was I was confused. I was like, it's going to be some weird compilation thing. And that was my introduction to the Dean Martin Celebrity roasts, which if you don't know where this great celebrity roasts show that ran in the 1970s, mostly that was hosted by Dean Martin, who was in Rio Bravo and at that point was kind of in the later years of his career and after that accomplished comedian, actor, singer.

00:21:06:28 - 00:21:33:03
Will di Gravio
And they're really great and they're kind of all the A-listers of classical Hollywood on that. I mean, anyone you can think of is on there. And I sort of fell in love with that world. And so before I had an interest in film, I think I'm more interested in, in, in comedy and was really interested in people. And I still am in people like, you know, Don Rickles or Jack Benny or that those really forms of comedy.

00:21:33:03 - 00:21:54:24
Will di Gravio
Nipsey Russell, Phyllis Diller, so many great comedians on on those programs. And so as I end, I really fell in love with the music of the time period without getting too personal. I had been dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety in high school, and I found that especially late at night when I had trouble sleeping or whatever.

00:21:54:25 - 00:22:22:05
Will di Gravio
Like Sinatra and Dean Martin's music really relaxed me. And so I developed a love for them. And they I felt like I needed something to kind of mellow me out, and that's what worked. So I just kind of went with it. And so in the process of doing that, I would sometimes seek out movies more so to see, to kind of deepen my relationship with the musicians and the comedians and less so out of an interest in cinema.

00:22:22:05 - 00:22:40:09
Will di Gravio
So the first time I watched Rio Bravo, I didn't know who Howard Hawks was like. It didn't even occur to me to look at the director was on film, and so I was actually in what store I think I was in like a best buyer or something like that, and saw one of those DVDs that has four movies in one.

00:22:40:18 - 00:22:49:18
Will di Gravio
And there's this pack of of John Wayne Westerns. And The Searchers was on it. I think it was the Cowboys, Fort Apache and Rio Bravo. And I bought it.

00:22:49:26 - 00:22:52:18
Will Webb
That's about right. There's always two bad ones and two good ones. Yeah, exactly.

00:22:52:19 - 00:23:14:08
Will di Gravio
Yeah, exactly. And so I was like, oh, like I know John Wayne from these roasts. So I should always watch a couple of John Wayne not knowing, also not knowing that the searchers holds this incredible status in the cinema. But I'll buy that. And Dean Martin did it. So that's like like a two for one. That's perfect. And so I watched and then I remember one night I was home alone.

00:23:14:13 - 00:23:38:25
Will di Gravio
My family was out or whatever. So I was like, Oh, okay, I'll just watch a movie. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll watch this. And I just picked Rio Bravo off the floor because of Dean Martin and was just kind of blown away. I didn't know what to make of it, but I had this visceral reaction to it was like, I love this, and it was unclear if I loved it because Dean Martin is brilliant in the film and I'm I'm my love of Dean Martin Sight.

00:23:38:25 - 00:23:58:26
Will di Gravio
He's objectively brilliant in it. Yeah. And I don't know, I just really loved it. And I was like, I think it's my favorite movie. And I kind of just kept watching it. And then it wasn't until I arrived in Middlebury and started studying film that I realized that there were there was this love for it among many film theorists I have in front of me.

00:23:58:26 - 00:24:23:01
Will di Gravio
This is Robin Wood's book for the BFI on Rio Bravo. Who? Robin Woods. Anyone familiar with film studies is a leading theorist and critic and has called it. If he had to pick his favorite film, this would be it. And I kept encountering it in different places. When I went into Christie's office at Middlebury for the first time, he had a poster of Rio Bravo on the wall, and I was like, Oh my God, you know?

00:24:23:01 - 00:24:52:07
Will di Gravio
And and so and then it allowed me to rediscover my love for it and to actually work through it. So it's very it's very personal for me that the relationship with this film and yeah, it's just it's just reemerged at different periods of my life that are very important. And so I feel this, this connection to it and to getting to, to rewatch it and rework with it has been has been amazing.

00:24:52:27 - 00:25:01:23
Will Webb
In that introductory essay, you, I think you're talking about another critic, you referred to it as the sacred text. And as I write, it's not about Rio Bravo, though.

00:25:01:28 - 00:25:25:04
Will di Gravio
Yes. This is David Broadwell who again, if is probably the leading American film theorist or one of them wrote this great essay for his blog called The Sacred Text, in which he's talking about Rio Bravo. And the film has this very interesting place been in the canon? I think it's absolutely in the canon. But, you know, obviously lists are ultimately dumb.

00:25:25:12 - 00:25:47:16
Will di Gravio
But, you know, when you look at lists like the American Film Institute's top 100 movies in the top ten Westerns, or I think Rio Bravo is not even on the New York Times list of 1000 or one movies to see before you die. I think like in certain lists, like there it's it's forgotten. But meanwhile on the sight and sound list I think it's in the sixties like in the it's in the top 100 in the sixties.

00:25:47:16 - 00:26:11:03
Will di Gravio
And, you know, the endorsement of Robin Wood and David Broadwell and the I talk about you know talking with Qatar grad to know Katie's work in the video essay community and saying Terry Bravo and her being like I love Rio you know so it's it's this film that it's funny I feel like people either when I bring it up are either like, oh my God, love it.

00:26:11:03 - 00:26:27:13
Will di Gravio
Amazing. Or they're like, I haven't heard that like this, this weird. It's this weird pull and you know, and then there are obviously American film directors like John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino who love, love the film. So so it's just something that was great.

00:26:27:24 - 00:26:50:28
Will Webb
When you mentioned the sacred text, it reminded me of a Christian Bible reading technique and select a chapter and then a verse and then a sentence and then a word of the Bible. And you talk about what it meant in that context, how you felt about it. And the Rio Bravo Diary, weirdly, to me, does the same thing with very Bravo, where you're dissembling stuff into accidental sequences of shots, not directly as they were to be presented.

00:26:51:11 - 00:27:13:10
Will Webb
And although they're in order and they are the shots that were shown and what you're doing is kind of picking out and just talk about these individual things on their own merits and their moments, which is a really interesting photographic exercise. So to lay out the plot a bit more to those who are listening, we open with Dean Martin coming into this bar very drunk, being offered a dollar to pay for food.

00:27:13:10 - 00:27:29:15
Will Webb
It might even be a pay for some booze. It might be a quarter, actually. I'm not sure about currencies this time. And I guess chuckling to a spittoon when he's bending down to pick it up, he accidentally gets the ire of Joe Burdette, who's the guy who chucks the stuff at him. A chance comes in. This is John Wayne's character.

00:27:29:25 - 00:27:48:05
Will Webb
There's a kind of an altercation, and due to his demands, character ends up deciding with chance. And they get hold of Joe Burdette because Joe Burdette just killed a man. And so this this whole sequence unfolds basically without any dialog whatsoever. It's about 4 minutes from the start of the credits without any dialog. And it's not like a showy thing.

00:27:48:05 - 00:28:15:13
Will Webb
It's just that it's the whole scene is taking place in a register of language that doesn't need dialog and it's a subconscious, like, kind of homage to silent film, as I understand it from Hawks. And it's a just truly fantastic opening. You know, sometimes I go back to watch older genre or commercial films, and I find that they've aged quite badly where pacing has transformed so much over the course of the last 56 years and yet and this it's like immediately attention grabbing.

00:28:15:24 - 00:28:30:15
Will Webb
And the example for me when I think about like an older film, that is the same thing as Night of the Hunter, which I think also feels very modern in terms of research is stuff. And the big surprise, if you've seen any Westerns, which I it's not my favorite genre, it's not the biggest the thing where I know the most about it.

00:28:31:05 - 00:28:50:03
Will Webb
But I've seen kind of all the spaghetti westerns which are a little removed from this. They start about five years after this and they're much more like this than they are like the majority of the rest of the Westerns. And there's also movies like The Searchers and Shane, which is one of my favorites, actually, and this is a very character focused Western, much more so than a plot focused one.

00:28:50:19 - 00:29:07:24
Will Webb
So the majority of the film's runtime is spent over in the jail in the town where these four guys are just kind of hanging out, talking to each other, which is to say Stumpy, the young Colorado dude and Chance or they're in the hotel where there is feathers. She's not actually named, I don't think, directly in the film.

00:29:08:05 - 00:29:30:20
Will Webb
But Favors is Angie Dickinson, who is this young, beguiling woman who shown up on the stagecoach and may or may not be called shock. And she, slightly, inexplicably to the modern eye, is falling in love with John Wayne because she's half his age. And that was fine. That was remarked upon at the time as well, I believe. And the other kind of inhabitants of the hotel are again, two characters.

00:29:30:20 - 00:29:48:29
Will Webb
It would be slightly offensive now, these quite stereotypical Hispanic characters, you know, brave and kind of good characters, very statically presented. And yet you can't really explain the plot of it any much more than that. I mean, obviously there's a shootout at the end, but that's 2 hours after the film starts. The most of it is just I'm having conversations.

00:29:49:15 - 00:30:08:24
Will Webb
What struck me about the way that that that worked was that it meant that those little moments of violence happen, these shootings, the kind of pepper, the film really slap you in the face. There's a huge statement in the middle of an otherwise like a chamber piece kind of western. And yeah, that, that felt very modern in terms of how that was faced.

00:30:10:03 - 00:30:43:00
Will di Gravio
Yeah, I think it's you know, a couple of things. One in this language is very like, you know, white American centric. But the way hawks thought about the Western genre is that there were two kinds of Westerns he thought one was as the West was being won and settled, that might be something like his first great Western, which is Red River or the Searchers.

00:30:43:13 - 00:31:16:21
Will di Gravio
And then there's after the establishment of quote unquote, law and order and so real Bravo falls more into this post law and order western where characters aren't there aren't these wide landscape shots that we might expect in the Western, or there aren't great sequences where John Wayne is chasing someone on horseback. Like the only type people are on horse really is to go up and down this one street in the town and actually feels kind of silly that they're even using their horse to do that because they could just walk 5 minutes or so.

00:31:17:03 - 00:31:41:01
Will di Gravio
And as you say, it did it really is contained to what I've come to describe working in this area as almost a domestic kind of space, like the relations between all characters feel very much like a family dynamic. Of course, there's chance in feathers. We'll probably end up together, dude. And Chance have this kind of weird relationship where they're almost brothers, but sometimes they have a father son type of dynamic.

00:31:41:11 - 00:32:06:21
Will di Gravio
They have this love between them. And so, as you say, it's these it's these conversations that are so important, but they're not it's not a dialog happy film as you can find in the in that opening sequence which begins this great opening shot of dude, he opens the back door to the saloon and he just kind of slides through it like he kind of peers through.

00:32:06:21 - 00:32:24:05
Will di Gravio
And you think of Dean Martin this great celebrity at that time, who was a couple of years removed from working with Jerry Lewis in one of the great comedy duos in American history. And here he is, this gross, disgusting, dirty guy, you know, sliding through it. And it's just mesmerizing in the way it begins.

00:32:24:19 - 00:32:35:00
Will Webb
It's an immensely rich performance from him. Yeah. And in that opening moment, you don't really know anything about him. And it has kind of this looseness. You don't know what he's going to do next or anything like that. It's a tremendously difficult thing to do as an actor.

00:32:35:08 - 00:32:55:13
Will di Gravio
Yeah, and it's confusing because as you as you had already said, you know, he gets this this gold piece and then Chance comes in and looks down him with disgust and then dude actually attacks Chance before they reunite to get the bad guy. And so it's very confusing to know who's who's on who, you know, what are the teams here as everybody.

00:32:55:24 - 00:33:00:09
Will Webb
Reappears kind of wearing a sheriff's badge about a scene later and suddenly you're like, wait, that was the guy who hit the sheriff?

00:33:00:09 - 00:33:24:08
Will di Gravio
Yeah, right. And there's this. And you never question at any point because in the way that he uses the camera, which is subtle, in these great matches between characters or they exchange glances or his gesture to the sly smiles or whatever, you get the sense of this deep shared history between the characters, which is what I think of most when I associate with your brother without having to be told most of it.

00:33:24:08 - 00:33:45:08
Will di Gravio
I mean, we get drops of history throughout, but Fox doesn't need to to tell us that there doesn't need to be this huge backstory because we feel it viscerally and it's this loving thing in in Western clothes. And it's it it has some cliches of the Western, but I think they're delivered in their use, as you say, with the violence.

00:33:45:08 - 00:34:08:21
Will di Gravio
Or there's one great scene where they're walking down to the town and like one of those big Oh my God, what is it called? The like the big that the the tumbleweed a tumbleweed kind. And just, like, hits them like in the middle of the street, like in a very like in-your-face type manner. And it almost seems like it's just playing around with the Western genre by saying, I just had to pick one genre.

00:34:08:21 - 00:34:10:20
Will di Gravio
But that's not what this film is about, truly.

00:34:12:07 - 00:34:32:27
Will Webb
Yeah. And it's also quite a tender film sometimes. So I was interested because I have an in my head an image of John Wayne that's like this very stereotypical cowboy. I mean, he is, you know, a stereotypical cowboy, right? That's where our image for it comes from him and Clint Eastwood. And yet he's often joking around. There's a lot of humor with him.

00:34:32:27 - 00:34:50:26
Will Webb
There's a scene early on where he finds Carlos, the guy who runs the hotel who's bought these red lace bloomers for his wife. And he holds them up, he unfurls them and holds them up to John Wayne to see how they look. And then John Wayne's love interest walks in. First time we've seen actually this thoroughly modern woman, and she kind of makes a jokes about him not looking good in them.

00:34:51:16 - 00:35:07:24
Will Webb
And it's a joke fully at John Wayne's expense. And yet it's, you know, in the middle of this big this famous John Wayne Cowboy performance. And like you were saying, that's partly to do with the the shared bond these men obviously have. That is often unspoken. I notice that they all have their own ways of relating to each other.

00:35:08:03 - 00:35:27:14
Will Webb
They steal cigarets off each other while they're making them. And in one particularly iconic moment, chance actually kisses Stumpy, the old man on the head, and then somebody smacks him on the bum with a broom. And that feels like a very nice moment for John Wayne. I don't know how many times I haven't seen him in his career, but it does come across as really lived and tender.

00:35:27:27 - 00:35:45:10
Will di Gravio
Yeah, I think I think I think any I think a lot of the ways that we view John Wayne are obviously very fair and you know his is his image in pop culture. So I'm not trying to rewrite history here, but I think if you're familiar with John Wayne at all and you watch his film, it will challenge how you're preconceived notions of him.

00:35:45:24 - 00:36:11:22
Will di Gravio
The running joke throughout the film is that, you know, the two great performances and Mirrorball, I mean, John Wayne delivers a very strong performance in this and he's great, but it's dude, Dean Martin as dude and Angie Dickinson as feathers and two tickets to this fantastic stuff. The running joke throughout the film is essentially that John Wayne, if he's not a virgin, he is very inexperienced when it comes to sex.

00:36:12:05 - 00:36:33:08
Will di Gravio
And Angie Dickinson is this she outwits him. She you know, they have they have wordplay and she always gets the better of him. As you say, she's she is the confident one. She's the one who puts the moves on him. Who who who calls out his B.S. And he's the one who doesn't know what to make of it.

00:36:33:10 - 00:36:53:01
Will di Gravio
I think in this very, you know, toxically masculine way, but also in this very tender way where he just secretly wants to just he he he has the business of he needs to dedicate himself to this fight against the bad guys. And he can't and he can't be kissing feathers in the hotel at night. But he also just doesn't know what to do.

00:36:53:01 - 00:37:15:19
Will di Gravio
And as you say, dude will often make fun of him because the reason for dude's alcoholism and we don't get the details is that he's suffered some kind of heartbreak. Keep it off with the girl and now he's back and he's poor. And so, dude, it's interesting because Chance is kind of the mentor figure to do in the film and trying to help him get back on his feet, telling him he can do it, he can be the deputy again.

00:37:15:27 - 00:37:31:18
Will di Gravio
Then we have dude who has this experience with women and dude kind of is just like, you know, we spend a lot of time at the hotel last night or something like that to John Wayne and it's very encouraging and loving in the way that he does it. Like it's all in good fun. But, you know, it's not this confident, cocky John Wayne.

00:37:31:18 - 00:37:47:00
Will di Gravio
And as you say, he refuses to take help and he's infuriating in this because he just gets by by the skin of his teeth all the time. It's not that he's cunning and super smart, it's just that he's lucky and lucky that his powers come through for him just by the skin of their teeth in the right moment.

00:37:48:00 - 00:38:03:18
Will Webb
Yeah. I mean, the only time that he initiates anything with that is the time when they consummate their relationship. And I have to assume that's more to do with 1950s sexual mores than it is sort of the actual character. And again, of course, we don't actually see that it's just implied, but it's still there. It's all than yeah.

00:38:03:18 - 00:38:04:13
Will di Gravio
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:04:21 - 00:38:27:25
Will Webb
And yeah, I it's interesting too that although John Wayne is the name that for me always comes up with this film, the real lead is dude, he's the character who changes the most over the course of the movie. He's the emotional core of it, and we do get this very strong performance that takes us from dude being a guy trying to get coins out of a spittoon to this sharpshooting kind of action star figure who's clean shaven and singing his way around the town at the end of the film.

00:38:28:00 - 00:38:53:00
Will Webb
And it works because DeMar puts his all into it. And I've got to be frank, I mean, I've only seen mine in comedy roles and singing, and it was just wild to me that that was kind of in the tank for him. I can't say the same about Ricky Nelson, who I've got to say is pretty rough. I don't know if the Coen brothers, based in Hail Caesar, there's that character who just cannot deliver lines.

00:38:53:12 - 00:39:14:27
Will Webb
Oh, I don't know. He's based on Ricky Nelson, but he's also like this teen Western star who's been put into a bigger movie and said the director copes with it by giving him very little to do, which apparently is what Hawke did in this film. Although I think the stuff that he gets, I mean, is not like a bad performance, it's just a way of outclassed and overshadowed by the other two, which is part of the story.

00:39:14:27 - 00:39:24:20
Will Webb
I suppose you a chance to sing as well nicely. I'm near the end, but again, this is something that I think contemporary critics didn't like, whereas it comes across now as quite nice.

00:39:25:00 - 00:39:26:09
Will di Gravio
Oh yeah, it's Steve.

00:39:26:10 - 00:39:30:08
Will Webb
Martin on Ricky Nelson, get a whole song together and Stumpy joins in on the second one too.

00:39:30:16 - 00:39:55:06
Will di Gravio
Yeah. And so I think, you know, Dean Martin was a couple of years removed from his relationship with Jerry Lewis at this time. And that relationship ended with Dean being this tremendous talent. I mean, I think Dean considered himself an entertainer, which I think is is a very when you actually think of it, this is such a, you know, a beautiful thing because he doesn't say singer or actor.

00:39:55:06 - 00:40:15:01
Will di Gravio
He said he wanted people to think of him as a damn good entertainer, that he could do it. All right. And I think as far as multi faceted, multitalented performers, Dean Martin is at the top of the list, I think. Absolutely. And you know, at this point, he's trying to kind of make a name for himself because even though he did have this tremendous success, it was viewed as Jerry Lewis was the genius behind the pair.

00:40:15:19 - 00:40:38:01
Will di Gravio
And when he was auditioning for the role of Dude, he was like an hour or so late to the meeting with Hawkes, and Hawke said, Why are you late? He said, I got here as soon as I could. I performed last night until 2 a.m. in Vegas and took a private plane to get here to meet with you and accept you have the role.

00:40:38:11 - 00:40:57:21
Will di Gravio
Yeah, that's kind of the type of thing I think know a appreciated end dude. And there's this one point and Tom McCarthy also has a great biography of Hawke sort of drawing a lot of this information off of as well. And he John Wayne's just kind of like it becomes clear at some point on set that dude, as you say, is the main character in this film.

00:40:58:09 - 00:41:08:12
Will di Gravio
Even though Dean Martin doesn't get top billing and John Wayne kind of asks about this and like, I think he's maybe a little unsure of how to play this role because he's the lead, but he's not the focus.

00:41:09:08 - 00:41:28:21
Will Webb
And he's technically, I think, the protagonist, I would say, like in the sense that he is actually the story revolves around chance. But the emotional core of the film and the actual character journey that takes place in it is Dude's weirdly the only other example I can think of of that is Avatar, The Last Airbender, the TV show where Ang is, is provoking the action of the story.

00:41:28:21 - 00:41:31:11
Will Webb
But Zuko is the release of the story.

00:41:31:19 - 00:41:56:00
Will di Gravio
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's my roommates actually rewatching that right now. And but and Hawke says something to the effect of Just think of it, he's your best, he's your best friend, he's your best friend. And he's going through this right now and you need to be there for him. And so that's why this this tenderness is so palpable in it.

00:41:56:08 - 00:42:35:12
Will di Gravio
And Dean is just incredible. And it also relates to his his star image at that time was one associated with alcoholism and and being drunk, particularly in the later years. And Dean Martin Roast year is like it's all about him drinking and boozing and what have you. And so here the function that alcohol plays on is so crucial and the way that he overcomes it, but not in a way that feels like it still honors the struggle of alcoholism, like it doesn't diminish it or make him seem superhuman for overcoming it.

00:42:35:12 - 00:42:53:27
Will di Gravio
In fact, you know, it's just as likely that he could relapse 20 minutes after the film is end than when it begins. And it's it's really about this content moment, the scenario and what's getting him through it, which is his friendship, is determination to prove himself. He wants to get better. He wants to be better. We feel that struggle.

00:42:53:28 - 00:43:05:28
Will di Gravio
He's not trying to overcome his alcoholism to prove it to anyone by himself. There are times in tough love where Chance will say, you know, go back to the bottle, get drunk, go ahead. And he ultimately doesn't.

00:43:06:29 - 00:43:24:26
Will Webb
And I think one of the best sort of action moments of the film revolves around that battle, that emotional battle in a way, which is they have to raid the saloon where they know a killer has gone in and Chance gives dude the option of going in the front. And he he's like, you know, I'm not sure if I can trust you, but you're going to do it.

00:43:25:06 - 00:43:43:22
Will Webb
He goes in, tries to serve as a forward. He does a relatively good job of it. And then they start to make jokes at him because he used to be the town drunk and someone chucks a coin in a spittoon for a third drink and he rallies. He stops the killer. And at the end of the sequence, when the guys are being quiet off, John stops him and says, Is that you sure there's not anything else you want to do?

00:43:44:12 - 00:44:03:26
Will Webb
And he grabs the guy. He basically gets the guy who put the coin in the spittoon and gets him to get the coin out. Yeah. And it's this lovely moment of writing where it's really simple, it's really plain stuff, and it's like a plain talking movie, I guess that makes sense in that context. But as you say, that's that's John Wayne playing the mate of Dean Martin fundamentally more than anything else.

00:44:03:28 - 00:44:21:29
Will di Gravio
Right. And just as you're saying that now, it's making me think about it and the fact that Chance is the one who suggests that it shows that dude is not out for revenge. Right. That's not what motivates him. He's just happy that he got through the moment and that he did it. Yeah, he proved himself, proved himself to chance and also, you know, prove to himself that he can do it.

00:44:23:08 - 00:44:23:27
Will di Gravio
It's very touching.

00:44:24:09 - 00:44:47:12
Will Webb
And I guess we see a lot of Westerns that are about prove yourself as a man by killing a bunch of baddies. And in this, although that happens, the real focus of prove yourself to be, you know, this this guy again having your honor back your dignity. I kept saying in my notes, it's more about picking something and following through on it and helping people through that which I think is a much more tender thing.

00:44:47:12 - 00:45:04:00
Will Webb
Yeah, it's weirdly quite a vulnerable film. Sometimes it's just mental balance feelings really, and like also maybe a good template for managers. I feel like if you have a bad manager at work, you send them this and say, Look, chances are very good manager. You could learn a lot from him. Yeah, he's very, very fun, but he's very fair.

00:45:04:09 - 00:45:06:19
Will Webb
He's quite tender, but he's also, you know, strict.

00:45:06:26 - 00:45:07:10
Will di Gravio
Yeah.

00:45:07:23 - 00:45:25:25
Will Webb
And at this point I usually ask that you pick out so if you were to recommend this movie to someone who'd never seen it before and I know, for instance, that Tarantino says if he's dating someone, then they have to watch this movie. And if they don't like it, then he just stops going out immediately, which I think is maybe a bit much.

00:45:25:25 - 00:45:48:23
Will Webb
But I know you're a fan of the film and you must come across people in this context where they haven't seen. As you're saying, it's a film that people often haven't watched and somehow it's gotten out of that classics list and into the sort of like good Westerns list, which I think is a little different. So if you were to recommend this film, someone who's never seen it, doesn't know anything about Westerns, maybe what scene or particular moment do you think you would pick out to recommend to someone watching?

00:45:49:06 - 00:45:52:02
Will Webb
Where can they get a taste of the film?

00:45:52:02 - 00:46:22:18
Will di Gravio
MM You know, there's this, I think perhaps my favorite scene and I hope no one holds me to this because I reserve the right to have a definitive to change my mind is there's this moment when dude has the film, has these series of moments where dude is nearing a relapse, about to relapse. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't.

00:46:23:01 - 00:46:52:00
Will di Gravio
And chance kind of enters into to intervene. And there's this point fairly early on. It's towards the end of the first third of the film. My perspective on where things are is so off because of the degree where dude is sitting. It's late at night and he's sitting in the chair and he's he's got the shakes and sweating and he at one point even hits his leg because he's just trying to like, not drink, don't drink, don't drink, don't drink.

00:46:52:12 - 00:47:14:07
Will di Gravio
And Stumpy, who is played by Walter Brennan, who's the third deputy, who he walks, is the lead, but he remains in the jail to kind of guard the prisoner while chancing to do the rounds. Dude is relaxing and John Wayne and Stumpy just exchange these series of glances to one another. They don't say anything because dude is right there in this tiny little room with them.

00:47:15:06 - 00:48:10:06
Will di Gravio
But you know, everything that they're thinking and they're communicating and chances. Come on, dude, let's. Let's take a stroll around the town. It's it's such a loving way to phrase it because it's he's doing it for dude, but not making it about dude, you know, and more saying like you can even though dude you can see on dude's face in his name.

00:48:10:06 - 00:48:30:16
Will di Gravio
Like, thank you. Like, I need this. I need some fresh air. I need something to do to get my mind off to drink. And then they kind of just walk up this one street in the town and it's dark and it's overdramatic. It's funny. Like they're one point. Like, John Wayne walks up to a guy and it's just like, good evening, you know?

00:48:30:16 - 00:48:48:07
Will di Gravio
And and they just exchange these glances and you're waiting for the bad guy to come. And they're slowly making their way to the hotel and moving it. And then there's these series of matches where they're they're making eye contact with one another. And there's still this deep connection, and it's suspenseful and fun and loving. And then that's what I would watch.

00:48:48:07 - 00:48:53:21
Will di Gravio
I don't know how you could watch that and not say, I need any more of this.

00:48:54:21 - 00:49:09:24
Will Webb
Yeah, it's a tremendous sequence and it's part of like the rhythm of the film I think as well, which is conversation in the jail. They go out to do something. At times it's like tense. And then there's this explosion of violence. And then it goes back to being a story about two men together. Yeah, and it does that again.

00:49:09:24 - 00:49:30:15
Will Webb
My recommendation was essentially the same kind of rhythm, but it's the opening scene of the film, which is that four minute dialog free section that really sets up not just I think like the characters really well and how the film is going to roll out. But Hawks's approach to telling that story, which is I notice that you pick up a lot in the very private diary, how few close ups there are.

00:49:30:17 - 00:49:47:29
Will Webb
I think there's like two or three in the whole film. And instead he almost always has over a wide or two shot and a lot of racial sometimes where it's always picking out two people. So the whole film is relational. It's always about where people are and how they stand in relation to each other. And that all comes across enough first, that first minute.

00:49:49:03 - 00:50:13:13
Will Webb
And then also I think there's an interesting thing where people are find this familiar to think about. Then it might be because this film seems to have been endlessly remade and it's kind of entered pop cultural osmosis. It might be why we don't see 70 recommendations for it, because there are, I think, three versions that were made by Howard Hawks and John Wayne and Wayne in the third one, apparently tons of hawks and says, Haven't I made this movie before.

00:50:14:12 - 00:50:14:21
Will di Gravio
Kind of.

00:50:14:21 - 00:50:40:14
Will Webb
Thing. There's also the very famous assault on Precinct 13, which I did see as a teenager, is one of the first ones. That's like I remember thinking, okay, this is really something. And it sort of freezing. 13 even has essentially the same climax. It's quite interesting. And then that was remade itself in 2004, I think as District 13, which is a French kind of parkour focused version of Rio Bravo, which is a wonderful thing.

00:50:41:27 - 00:51:20:03
Will di Gravio
Yeah, I mean, throughout Hawks's. I mean, this is one thing that's very interesting in talking with I have mentioned Kristin quickly several times and then talking to him about this film. He has said that he's he's taught it in college courses and that if he screens it on its own, students don't have a strong reaction to it. I believe this is what he said, as if he prefaces it by screening other hawks first and Robin Wood in particular likens this film and relate to another Hawks film.

00:51:20:03 - 00:51:41:04
Will di Gravio
Only Angels Have Wings, which is one of his great films with Cary Grant. And to have and have not to have and have Not, which is the great film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and you know, and it just portion of friendship and male dynamics and what they do for one another. And as you say, he he recreates a version of this film in the West two more times.

00:51:42:05 - 00:52:02:11
Will di Gravio
And one of the was actually quite good El Dorado, in which Robert Mitchum, going back to the night of the Hunter, plays kind of the the Dean Martin character and James Caan is a much more successful version of the Ricky Nelson character. It's funny you mentioned The Hunter in this, because I think there's a lot of similarities between Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin.

00:52:02:11 - 00:52:32:07
Will di Gravio
I also think the kind of look like future project of minorities here. But yeah, I think, you know, and I think it also provides a template more generally for what you get with Tarantino. This idea of the hangout movie is what he calls. He calls this the great hangout movie of all time. And I think we see I honestly feel a lot of Rio Bravo and Jackie Brown of his films, more so than the Westerns, just in the way that the characters look at each other interact.

00:52:32:07 - 00:52:33:27
Will di Gravio
And yeah.

00:52:34:22 - 00:52:55:29
Will Webb
I think Jackie Brown is as close. I took balance. I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but for me, Jackie Brown is like Tarantino making a good movie. It's like a generally good film as opposed to like his weird, fetishistic filmmaking. Normally where he's like, I don't care if it's good. It's for me. Yeah. And I think like Jackie Brown feels very classical in terms of the set pieces because it's, it's shot like hawks.

00:52:56:00 - 00:53:14:16
Will Webb
It's always two shots, one shot sound bites, but never like close ups and stuff unless it's close ups of feet, which he loves. So they go and I had one of the things I wanted to drop just because I never get a chance to talk about it. And I always want to make a video essay about it, but I have never been able to, for obvious reasons.

00:53:15:03 - 00:53:29:02
Will Webb
I'm a huge fan of the beach party movies. I don't know if you've ever seen those. They're like early sixties teen films, like the beginning of the teen film thing. It was the late fifties right about now. One of the reasons why every brother has a teen lead in.

00:53:29:22 - 00:53:31:03
Will di Gravio
Beach Blanket Bingo.

00:53:31:03 - 00:53:32:16
Will Webb
Or that's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah.

00:53:32:22 - 00:53:34:17
Will di Gravio
Don Rickles is in a couple of those actually.

00:53:34:20 - 00:53:53:01
Will Webb
Yeah. Yeah. And what really gave me the the thing with that is this section where they sing at the end of this movie because all of the beach party films have to have like a singing section and it was almost their primary function. And for me, those are great. Hang out movies because they have, you know, an hour and a half worth of plot.

00:53:53:10 - 00:54:12:17
Will Webb
It's very on the nose comedy that they know isn't even that funny. It's all just done, like straight to camera and it's almost all stunt casting. There's people from other movies playing versions of themselves. There's famous singers and dancers and stuff like that coming in. James Brown even shows up in one of the beach party movies. They're in a they're in the Alps.

00:54:12:17 - 00:54:32:03
Will Webb
It's actually a snowy like Alpine Lodge type thing. They're up in the Rockies, I think, doing skiing. And then James Brown comes in from the snow and it's like whoa I've lost other of my band. Does it so and leaves and yeah it's absurd but it is an interesting thing because in that world that feels perfectly right for that, for that type of movie.

00:54:32:03 - 00:54:54:21
Will Webb
And weirdly enough, I think the music in this feels perfect that works as a it helps that there's a really important role that music plays in the plot of the film, where there's this kind of mournful mariachi tune that's played by the baddie, who only appears in one scene as well, which is a real wild thing. And and so he pays these mariachis to play this song that they know has this connotation of like, we're going to kill you all, basically.

00:54:55:15 - 00:55:10:23
Will Webb
And so them having this kind of joyful moment of coming together over their own music almost feels like a retort to it. And Stumpy actually plays his own version of the song as well, so that I felt like a nice touch that was a lot more justified than those beach party movies, which, to be clear, very fun films.

00:55:10:24 - 00:55:12:06
Will Webb
Nowhere near as good as very bright.

00:55:12:18 - 00:55:36:18
Will di Gravio
Yes. And a lot has been written about the music in Rio Bravo. And it's offensive. And I love it. And I think also to your point, music is absolutely essential to the film. The The Gigolo is the song that the mariachi tune and, you know, obviously, films are this is a film with stars and Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson are stars.

00:55:36:18 - 00:56:03:12
Will di Gravio
So naturally they have to sing. But also, I think what this film does is if we think about it in relationship to High Noon, which I think is useful, but I if anything, I think sometimes when we think of it as a response to High Noon, that is what somehow diminishes its status in a way. Like, I'd like to move it beyond it, but of course you can't talk about everybody without at some point talking about I knew.

00:56:03:28 - 00:56:26:04
Will di Gravio
Yeah, but high noon is all about I mean, the high noon is there are shots back 2:00 without that because Gary Cooper is waiting, waiting for these bad guys to come. What's interesting about Rio Bravo is they already have the bad guy at the beginning of the film. So what they're waiting for is they they're trying to hold off someone coming to take the bad guy.

00:56:26:04 - 00:56:59:08
Will di Gravio
In this case, his brother is trying to get him out of jail. They're waiting for the further marshal, which is in place, a marshal all the way up to a federal marshal. And Robert, they're waiting for him to come and so it's kind of the inverse in that respect because they already have the bad guy. And both of those are about and they're kind of waiting like they are and so they have to kind of pass the time they have to, you know, and, you know, this film is kind of about what happens in those in-between moments, what happens as you're waiting around, as you're waiting for the time to pass.

00:56:59:08 - 00:57:21:14
Will di Gravio
And so it makes perfect sense that some sheriff's deputies might play some music and use that to pass the time and hang out with each other. And I think it in a way, it challenges the the the masculinity either. But maybe audiences at that time wouldn't have questioned it as much.

00:57:22:02 - 00:57:26:21
Will Webb
I think singing cowboys were kind of a thing anyway. Yeah, a lot of western stars that had that iconography.

00:57:26:25 - 00:57:32:21
Will di Gravio
Yeah. So I think it might maybe look a little weirder today to some people when they think about John Paul.

00:57:32:22 - 00:57:49:12
Will Webb
That is the sound mixing as well. I think where it has their very clearly hasn't really even changed the recording character or the music, whereas nowadays if you had a seeing section of film, they would have done a live version for in that kind of room and then dub that. And so I think that's kind of just a sensibility difference as well.

00:57:49:21 - 00:58:20:08
Will di Gravio
Yeah. And the film ends with Dean Martin presumably singing in the lyrics to the song Rio Bravo, which he put out on albums. And, you know, there's a great lyric. It's by the memory of a song while the Roland in Rio Bravo rolls along. And so that's kind of the bow on which the the film ends. And it's all about, you know, our memories, our shared history, how that informs the present.

00:58:21:03 - 00:58:41:21
Will di Gravio
And and that is ultimately what is blocking, dude, is this this this memory of a girl and his past and how people have perceived him in the past. And so music runs throughout the film and the singing sequence and talking about sequences that you would recommend to people, I don't know if that would make people interested in watching the film, but it's one of my favorite sequences.

00:58:41:21 - 00:58:43:15
Will Webb
Yeah, it has a magic to it for sure.

00:58:43:15 - 00:58:43:24
Will di Gravio
Yeah.

00:58:44:17 - 00:59:01:01
Will Webb
I think that's actually I thought about the role of memory in the film, but you're right because of course the whole plotlines of feathers revolves around like an accidental attribution of identity. Right. She's kind of coping with as well. And so in relation to Dude's storyline, where it's like an absolutely accurate portrayal of his identity up until that point, but he's trying to change it.

00:59:01:02 - 00:59:26:06
Will Webb
It's kind of interesting thing. And of course, John Wayne just doing John Wayne is stuck in the middle. Right. And there is that whole aspect of waiting for the film as well. There's almost like the shaggy dog side, the story where I love that in the first act right at the end of the film, they realize that they can't just have Joe go after the marshals because they'll get killed because other witnesses to the crime and then so therefore the whole action of the film previous, that's moot and they have to go and do something about it.

00:59:26:06 - 00:59:33:10
Will Webb
They can't just wait. Great. Really interesting. And that's it for me. But do you have anything we haven't touched on that you'd like to talk about?

00:59:33:27 - 00:59:57:12
Will di Gravio
I think I think I'll just say one last thing is or two, one of the things this idea of waiting and memory in feathers, also in Dickinson is, you know, she has has this ex lover who was a gambler and in trouble with the law and feathers herself. We understand, as has been in trouble with the law. And she's kind of she was kind of passing through on the stage, waiting for the stage to come.

00:59:57:12 - 01:00:17:16
Will di Gravio
But she decides to stay. And so we we to have this this this idea of waiting and also trying to become something new and overcome a past version of ourselves and grow. And the other thing is that, you know, the other thing that's often associated with some of this notion of professionalism, of being good enough, and that's something that runs throughout.

01:00:17:16 - 01:00:48:29
Will di Gravio
And, you know, Pat Wheeler is a character who was killed, played by Ward Bond, who's another famous figure in Westerns from the period. And he offers to help Chance and Chance says, no, you're not good enough. Sorry. And the whole question is, dude, is he going to be good enough? And so there's that. If there is a more toxically masculine side to the film, that that kind of boils up at certain points, this refusal to take out this challenging this Are you tough enough, good enough, blah, blah, blah.

01:00:48:29 - 01:00:52:02
Will di Gravio
And I think that that gets in Chance's way a lot. Yeah.

01:00:52:12 - 01:01:09:26
Will Webb
I'm almost not sure about how much of that we're supposed to take seriously as well, because ultimately, end of the story. He only survives because he takes help from a whole bunch. Exactly. Yeah, he takes help from Carl also takes off with Stumpy. And I was waiting for favors to show up. If I think you do. If you made this film even ten years later, it would have ended with Seth is joining the fight as well.

01:01:10:12 - 01:01:31:28
Will Webb
Yeah. In some way or another. And so yeah, I think if anything, the film always proves high point to some extent where it's like, well, yeah, you should absolutely accept help in certain context. Yeah, fascinating movie. And so Rich was like that is so like on the surface of it has such a simple genre thing these crew to stunt castings, but actually underneath is such a dense and rich film and yeah.

01:01:31:28 - 01:01:34:22
Will Webb
Really one of the great writing. Great recommendation. Thank you. Yes.

01:01:34:22 - 01:01:55:04
Will di Gravio
And I think just I think yeah, I think it's not just that you should I think it's not that you should you should accept help if it's offered, but you shouldn't go around groveling for it I think is the right. Yeah. Is the yeah. So and as you say, I don't I don't think we are so taken seriously chances and infuriating figure just to say the least.

01:01:56:11 - 01:02:10:08
Will Webb
And it helps I think that because it goes it kind of ties into what we're saying about his performance as chance. But Chance is like self-consciously this very strong masculine dude. And yet in a lot of places, we see him being one upped by women and, you know, by his mates in these kind of quips and stuff like that.

01:02:10:17 - 01:02:14:26
Will Webb
So again, I don't think he's he's not as straightforward as the portrayal might appear at first.

01:02:15:07 - 01:02:17:13
Will di Gravio
Yes. Yes.

01:02:17:13 - 01:02:20:28
Will Webb
Well, we could talk about this all day. All day. So thank you very much. Well.

01:02:22:00 - 01:02:42:19
Will di Gravio
Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I would just encourage everyone to not only watch Rio Bravo, but to go and Google and the work of others, because there's been some truly wonderful things that have been written and said about this film that have informed my view of it and much of what I've said here today. So there's a there's a rich history that surrounds this film that, you know, you'll be rewarded.

01:02:42:19 - 01:02:53:12
Will di Gravio
You'll be rewarded by watching the film itself, but then engaging with what's out there currently will only continue to offer future rewards. So but thank you so much for having me and for giving me the platform to talk about it.

01:02:54:01 - 01:03:04:05
Will Webb
No worries. It's a pleasure and you have anything you want a plug while you're here as well. I know the Rio Bravo Diary project is an ongoing. That's Rio Bravo Diary, Tor.com. And you can follow it at Rio Bravo Diary on Twitter.

01:03:04:13 - 01:03:31:20
Will di Gravio
Yes, that's correct. And my personal handle is just at will to grab you. And you can also check out the video essay podcast and a recent podcast series that I have started in partnership with the video essay podcast, which it's all just me. So it's really a partnership. I guess I'm just doing something else is called on your screen and it's highlighting notable film screenings and a lot of free stuff and just things that you might encounter on your screen on the web.

01:03:31:20 - 01:03:44:17
Will di Gravio
So we've had episodes on the essay Film US Film Festival, which in the UK monographs, which is a a series on video essay, series on Asian cinema and an episode on Tik-Tok.

01:03:45:15 - 01:03:47:21
Will Webb
So yes, we can yes.

01:03:47:21 - 01:03:51:07
Will di Gravio
At the video essay dotcom.

01:03:51:07 - 01:04:18:21
Will Webb
Thanks for listening to the Indy Tricks Podcast. You can find more film content reviews, video essays and more on the Indie Trix YouTube channel w WW dot youtube.com slash in D Trix that's I and d t are i x? Yes, we spell it with an ax. If you enjoyed listening then please do be so kind as to leave a review and write us on iTunes as well as subscribing on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on.

01:04:19:05 - 01:04:25:19
Will Webb
I'm Will, Web and you've been listening to indie tracks. Have a good one and bye for now.