Boys ranching
I’m pleased to report that “The Cowboys” still works as it did 40 years ago, for boys at least.
I was thrilled beyond measure when, after John Wayne’s character Wil Andersen is shot five times by Bruce Dern’s evil cattle rustler, my son Dietrich said, “He’s not dead.”
I hit pause on the DVR and asked him, “Why do you say that?”
“He can’t be. He’s just faking it so the boys don’t get hurt.”
This was exactly my reading of the movie 40 years ago when I was his age. Somehow, this restored my hope that somehow today’s kids are not utterly jaded. When it was over and I asked Dietrich what he thought of the movie, he told me how much he’d enjoyed it, and that his favorite part was when the boys all had their revenge on the bad guys who killed Mr. Andersen. Of course — as intended.
The movie is compelling filmmaking for 9-year-olds; for the rest of us, from the beginning scene showing what’s clearly a stunt double for a fat old John Wayne taming a breaking a wild horse, to the triumphant scene where 10 kids, mostly preteen, outwit and outshoot a gang of 11 grown men, it’s science fiction. I’m sure I never noticed any of that when I was a kid. Here’s something else that’s changed in my perception: Now it’s a movie populated by people I’ve known, which makes it harder to focus on purely as a work of fiction. I hadn’t realized that Mark Rydell was the director and producer; some years ago, I co-taught a class with Mark Rydell (although we met in person only once). Now I wish I’d told him what an impact this movie made on me as a child. Lonny Chapman, whom I knew a bit through the Group Repertory Theatre (which is now named the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre), has a small role as the father of one of the boys. And now whenever I see Bruce Dern in something, where I used to think fondly of the early environmentalist science fiction movie “Silent Running,” now I think of speaking with him a couple of times in recent years, including at his wife’s art opening. (Along similar lines: I was telling a friend last week that whenever I think of Scott Bakula, all I remember is being surprised seeing him in the audience at my tiny little theatre once when he was in the prime of his career. Whenever something like that happens, it’s like: “Audience, audience, audience, major TV star, audience, audience….”)
The other thing that I now notice about “The Cowboys,” something that is so transparent to an adult, is that it’s a movie about fathers and sons. Both of Wil Andersen’s boys died before reaching their prime; now he has a chance to serve as a father figure in what will be a life-transforming experience for these boys. There’s a scene where two of them are tempted by prostitutes — my son had no idea what this was about, and I’m sure I didn’t either at his age — and in another scene, Roscoe Lee Browne’s character tells Wes that with these boys he has another chance at fatherhood. I can see why the film resonated then, and now, with boys of a certain age.