Vitals

Sam Shepard as Eddie, rodeo stunt rider

Mojave Desert, Spring 1985

Film: Fool for Love
Release Date: December 6, 1985
Director: Robert Altman
Wardrobe Credit: Kristine Flones

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today marks eight years since the death of 10-time Obie Award-winning actor, director, and writer Sam Shepard, who died July 17, 2017 at the age of 73.

As someone who loves movies set in motels and thinks that Shepard and Harry Dean Stanton were two of the coolest guys to have walked on this planet, I had long been intrigued by Robert Altman’s 1985 adaptation of Shepard’s own play Fool for Love, starring Shepard and Stanton opposite Kim Basinger. (As something of a triple-whammy, it needle-drops Waylon’s killer recording of “Honky Tonk Heroes” from his 1973 album of the same name—one of my favorite albums and tracks of all time.)

Shepard stars as Eddie, a swaggering rodeo stunt rider who travels 2,482 miles before finding his old girlfriend May holed up at the rundown El Royale Motel, somewhere in the Mojave Desert. She refuses his demands to rekindle their fifteen-year relationship, primarily citing his infidelity with a mysterious woman known only as “the Countess” (Deborah McNaughton) and the fact that May has romantically moved on to the soon-to-arrive Martin (Randy Quaid). Eddie and May’s complex dynamic is additionally complicated by their respective connections to the old man who runs the motel and holds some secrets to their past, adding context to Eddie’s drunken declaration that he and May would “always be connected… that was decided a long time ago.”

Ed Harris and Jessica Lange were originally intended to perform the lead roles, as Harris had portrayed Eddie in the stage version with great success. Lange was too tired to take the role, as she was pregnant at the time with her and Shepard’s first child, so Basinger was cast as May. Shepard himself was eager for Harris—with whom he’d also co-starred two years earlier in The Right Stuff—to bring Eddie to the screen, but Altman insisted that Shepard himself play the role, a decision that Shepard later described as a fatal mistake. (Arguably not a mistake: Harry Dean Stanton reprising his talent for playing a quiet desert-dweller wearing a derelict suit and goofy hat, as he had done the previous year in Paris, Texas—also written by Shepard.)

Filmed in New Mexico through the spring of 1985, Fool for Love was released by the Cannon Group forty years ago this December to lukewarm reviews and a middling box office return, failing to recoup even half of its $2 million budget. I’m inclined to agree with Vincent Canby’s contemporary review for The New York Times, which cited Altman’s constantly roving camera as the primary source of fault. However, the film had some initial champions like Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, and Los Angeles Times critic Sheila Benson, and it has benefited from some reevaluation in the decades since its premiere.

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What’d He Wear?

A true cowboy, Eddie almost never appears without his well-worn cowboy hat, tightly woven from light natural straw and styled with a pinch-front crown, wide brim, and narrow brown two-ply corded band knotted along the left side of the crown. The red logo glimpsed on the inside informs that it was made by Resistol, the Texas-based company founded in 1927 that named itself after their hats’ ability to “resist all” kinds of weather—whether that was exclusive beaver felt headgear or more run-of-the-mill straw work hats like Sam Shepard’s screen-worn topper.

“I can do laundry, you know, I been doin’ my own laundry for months now,” Eddie insists to May, with the distressed nature of his clothing reinforcing his statement that he surely believes it takes no more than to “just plunk the old quarters in and let ‘er rip!”

Eddie wears a classic Levi’s 557xx trucker jacket, an iteration known as “Type III” among collectors as it was the brand’s third significant evolution of its denim jackets when it was introduced in the 1960s. Though still in production at the time Fool for Love was made (and, indeed, today), Eddie’s jacket could be an older model based on the level of aging and distress that indicate its been to hell and back with him.

The most unique detail is the addition of an aftermarket beige rawhide collar, crudely but firmly sewn over the stock collar with the same russet-toned contrasting stitching down the front right edge of the jacket. In addition to extending the life of the collar by absorbing the sweat and body oils of Eddie wearing it hard, it also provides a softer cushion for his neck during rough days in the saddle.

Crafted with a mid-blue denim shell, the jacket has an integrated gray striped wool blanket lining that adds an extra layer of warmth, patterned in Levi’s typical arrangement of navy bar stripes alternating with triple sets of navy, red, and navy stripes against the slubby gray ground.

Eddie’s jacket features the signature details of a Levi’s Type III trucker jacket, including the six copper rivet buttons up the front—plus single-button cuffs and short button-fastened waist tabs, a pair of chest pockets that each close with a single button through a pointed flap, and V-shaped seams tapering from the horizontal chest yokes (along the top of each pocket) down to the waistband. Levi’s had just introduced additional hand pockets on their Type III the previous year, but—if not already evident by the level of distress—Eddie’s jacket clearly predates this update.

Eddie wears a Levi’s jacket, but his shirt and jeans are both from its Kansas-based competitor Lee—identified by yellow-lettered black tags sewn onto the shirt’s left pocket flap and onto the jeans’ back-right pocket.

The long-sleeved shirt is made from a lightweight mid-indigo blue denim, with Western details including pointed front and back yokes and scalloped pocket flaps. The front placket, pocket flaps, and cuffs all close with pearl-toned snaps, though Eddie often wears the triple-snap cuffs undone and semi-rolled up his forearms after taking off his jacket.

Eddie’s Lee Boot Cut Rider jeans are a lighter blue wash with the classic details: belt loops, curved front pockets with a coin pocket at the right, and two rear patch pockets stitched with Lee’s signature “lazy S”. The zip-fly was introduced in the 1920s and long-differentiated Lee’s jeans from the button-fly Levi’s 501. Like his jacket, the jeans show their age and experience—most notably in the fraying hems and a self-mended patch over the left thigh.

He holds them up with a brown leather diamond-stitched belt fastened by a large sterling silver oval buckle, its center embossed with a gilt horse head in left profile—just the kind of hardware expected from a rodeo rider.

Eddie’s light-brown leather cowboy boots are as weathered as you’d expect—if not more so, given the duct tape wrapped around the vamp of the right boot. The stacked leather heels and bug-and-wrinkle stitching suggest a classic make, though clearly well-worn. When Martin arrives, Eddie reattaches his spurs on their light-brown buckle-straps, telling May, “I’m gonna put my hooks on! I wanna look good for this man, give him the right impression,” a revealing line that underscores how consciously he wields his wardrobe to project rugged, masculine intimidation.

After he stormed away from his fight with May, Eddie makes his dramatic return to the motel on horseback, now sporting a long, dark duster in the spirit of the wild west gunmen and cowboys he undoubtedly admires.

Much of Fool for Love‘s promotional imagery features Eddie wearing his aviator-style sunglasses, which only briefly appear on screen when he’s driving his Ford pickup to the motel in the opening sequence.

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The Truck

Eddie drives into the parking lot at the wheel of his dirty white 1972 Ford F-Series pickup, a horse trailer hitched to the back. The 1972 model marked the final year of the F-Series’ fifth generation, which had debuted in 1967 with a stronger frame and a slightly wider cab than its predecessor.

Ford offered the ’72 F-Series in several weight classes: the ½-ton F-100 in short- and long-bed configurations; the heavier-duty ¾- F-250 typically suited for towing or work use; and the one-ton F-350 for serious hauling. Body styles ranged from the streamlined Styleside and classic Flareside beds to four-door Crew Cab and bare Chassis Cab configurations. Eddie’s truck appears to be a standard two-door Styleside model with an eight-foot bed—likely a base F-100.

Engine options ranged from small inline-six varieties to heftier V8s in 302, 360, and 390 cubic-inch displacements, mated to a standard column-shifted three-speed manual or optional four-on-the-floor manual and three-speed SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmissions.

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The Gun

Eddie pulls an over/under (O/U) double-barreled shotgun from his pickup cab and begins cleaning it to intimidate Martin. When recalling the events of his mother’s suicide, Eddie describes to his father that she used “your shotgun… same one we used to duck hunt with. Browning,” though the O/U shotgun stock seen in the flashback differs from Eddie’s truck gun, so it’s likely not meant to be the same firearm.

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What to Imbibe

Though Eddie admonishes the old man for having drank all of his tequila, he eventually digs out a fifth of Herradura añejo when he parks himself in the cab of his truck and downing it straight from the bottle, listening to Waylon sing about “lovable losers and no-account boozers,” an apt description for the characters at the heart of Fool for Love. The bottle is easily recognizable for its squared shape and the horseshoe branding on the label, which also makes it an apt choice for a cowboy like Eddie.

Eddie later brings the same bottle into the motel lounge, where May—pushed off the wagon by her experiences that evening—is alone drinking Gordon’s gin. “So that’s how it is, gonna get real mean and sloppy, just like old times!” May observes. He leaves it on the bar, where the old man takes several swigs before sliding it back when he hears Eddie dragging Martin back in for a drink.

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How to Get the Look

Eddie’s clothes don’t just look like they’d be worn by a true cowboy, they’ve got the scars to prove their authenticity—from his customized rawhide collar on his Levi’s trucker jacket to the self-mended patch over his distressed Lee jeans and even duct-taped cowboy boots with jangling spurs—accompanied by a Resistol hat that has clearly lived up to its name, a rodeo-approved belt buckle, and a snap-front shirt to complete the triple-denim threat.

• Blue denim blanket-lined trucker jacket with custom beige rawhide-covered collar, two chest pockets with single-button pointed flaps, single-button cuffs, and waistband tabs
  • Levi’s 557XX “Type III”
• Blue denim western-styled long-sleeved shirt with pearl-snap front placket, two chest pockets with single-snap scalloped flaps, and triple-snap cuffs
  • Lee
• Light-blue denim boot-cut jeans with belt loops, slanted front pockets, inset watch/coin pocket, and “lazy S”-stitched back pockets
  • Lee Riders
• Brown diamond-stitched leather belt
• Sterling silver oval belt buckle with gilt horse-head profile
• Light-brown leather cowboy boots with bug-and-wrinkle stitching and stacked leather heels
• Spurs with light-brown buckle-straps
• Light natural straw pinched-front cowboy hat with double-layered brown leather band

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

If you ain’t a cowboy, you ain’t shit.