Tagged: Cowboy Boots
Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt’s Tan Leather Car Coat
Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall (1994)
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Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow, tough bootlegger and World War I veteran
Montana, Fall 1925
Film: Legends of the Fall
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Legends of the Fall may be a biblical title, but the style is autumnal, set amidst the network of the fictional Ludlow ranch in Montana across the first quarter of the 20th century.
Family patriarch William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) had been a decorated Army colonel before leaving the service in protest of the government’s treatment of Native Americans, raising his sons Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas) on their remote ranch, where they learn to be the self-sufficient types that can survive bear confrontations… and if they don’t survive them, at least put up enough of a fight to earn “a good death.”
Portraying the tough but troubled Tristan Ludlow provided a breakthrough opportunity for Pitt, continuing the momentum he’d built in a similar role two years earlier in A River Runs Through It, though Tristan is arguably a more rugged character than Paul Maclean. By the mid-1920s, Tristan had seen and done it all, as a cowboy, soldier, big-game hunter, and now a bootlegger whose rumrunning runs him afoul of his own Volstead-voting brother Alfred and his nemeses, the crooked O’Banion brothers. As blood spills on both sides of the conflict, Tristan fears that those he love most are damned to die before him, only to be saved by the bonds of his family. Continue reading
Rolling Thunder: William Devane’s USAF Lightweight Blue Jacket
William Devane in Rolling Thunder (1977)
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William Devane as Major Charles Rane, twice-traumatized Vietnam War veteran and “one macho motherfucker”
Texas and Mexico, Summer 1973
Film: Rolling Thunder
Release Date: October 7, 1977
Director: John Flynn
Wardrobe Credit: Nancy McArdle
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
You learn to love the rope. That’s how you beat ’em. That’s how you beat people who torture you. You learn to love ’em. Then they don’t know you’re beatin’ ’em.
Today is the 85th birthday of William Devane, the talented Albany-born actor who appeared in the rare starring role in the 1977 revenge-centered action thriller Rolling Thunder.
Written by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould as an intended expansion of the Travis Bickle Cinematic Universe that began in Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder centers around Major Charles Rane, a United States Air Force pilot returning home to San Antonio after seven years of imprisonment and torture in a Hanoi hellhole.
“He’s unemotional, unresponsive, and stoic to the point of not being among the living,” writes Quentin Tarantino in Cinema Speculation, the volume that introduced me to Rolling Thunder. Continue reading
Breathless: Richard Gere’s Rockabilly Shirt and Plaid Trousers
Richard Gere in Breathless (1983)
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Richard Gere as Jesse Lujack, swaggering drifter
Los Angeles, Summer 1982
Film: Breathless
Release Date: May 13, 1983
Director: Jim McBride
Costume Designer: J. Allen Highfill
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy 75th birthday to Richard Gere! To celebrate this prolific actor’s August 31, 1949, today’s post looks at one of my unexpectedly favorite performances from the prolific actor.
Jim McBride’s 1983 remake of Breathless flips the nationalities of the French crook and his American girlfriend in the 1960 French New Wave classic, starring Gere as the cocky ne’er-do-well Jesse Lujack who shacks up with Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky), a French UCLA student he had met once during a weekend trip to Las Vegas. Continue reading
Cockfighter: Warren Oates’ Black Shirt and Lee Jeans
Warren Oates in Cockfighter (1974)
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Warren Oates as Frank Mansfield, voluntarily mute cockfighter
Georgia, Spring 1973
Film: Cockfighter
Release Date: July 30, 1974
Director: Monte Hellman
Wardrobe Credit: Carol Hammond & Patty Shaw
Background
Fifty years ago today on July 30, 1974, the locally filmed B-movie Cockfighter premiered in Roswell, Georgia.
“King of Cult” producer and director Roger Corman had spied Charles Willeford’s novel of the same name in an airport bookstore and had read no more than the title and the back cover before buying the adaptation rights, explaining to his editor that “with a title like this, if we can’t sell it, we’re in big trouble.” Unfortunately… they couldn’t sell it.
Perhaps dismayed that Hellman took a more philosophical than exploitative approach, Corman tried every trick at his disposal to grow an audience. After hiring Joe Dante to recut the film, he rotated through alternate titles like Born to Kill, Gamblin’ Man, and Wild Drifter, until eventually accepting a rare defeat, citing Cockfighter as the only New World Pictures release to lose money, despite its already meager $400,000 budget.
Like many other Corman films, Cockfighter found a cult following in the decades after its release, certainly in part to the talent involved. Working from a screenplay that Willeford adapted from his own novel, Monte Hellman was hired to direct as his first feature since Two-Lane Blacktop. Hellman assembled a cast that included Two-Lane Blacktop alumna Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, and Oates’ friend and frequent co-star Harry Dean Stanton (the subject of my first Cockfighter post), as well as ’50s screen idol Troy Donahue, character actors Robert Earl Jones and Richard B. Shull, and a young Ed Begley Jr. in one of his first prominent roles.
Three years after Hellman directed him to magnificence as “GTO” in Two-Lane Blacktop, Oates delivered one of his arguably career-best performances as Frank Mansfield, a determined gambler who vows to remain mute until he can be awarded Southern Conference Cockfighter of the Year. As Frank increases the stakes by betting everything he owns along the way, we see the lengths to which he goes to build up the odds against his gamecock Sandspur, such as disfiguring the beak to appear cracked. Continue reading
The Italian Connection: Woody Strode’s Plaid Sports Coat
Woody Strode in The Italian Connection (1972)
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Woody Strode as Frank Webster, taciturn Mafia hitman
Milan, Italy, Spring 1972
Film: The Italian Connection
(Italian title: La mala ordina)
Release Date: September 2, 1972
Director: Fernando Di Leo
Costume Designer: Francesco Cuppini
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Trailblazing actor and athlete Woody Strode was born 110 years ago today on July 25, 1914 in Los Angeles. Following his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Strode was one of four Black players to break the NFL’s postwar color barrier when he signed with the Rams in 1946. In the years to follow, Strode continued both wrestling and acting, though he became significantly better known for the latter and was also one of the first Black performers to be nominated for a Golden Globe, recognizing his performance in Spartacus (1960).
With a filmography that also includes The Ten Commandments (1956), Pork Chop Hill (1959), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962), Genghis Khan (1965), The Professionals (1966), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), it was difficult to find one of Strode’s prominent roles that wasn’t in a western, war film, or historical drama so that I could highlight the actor dressed in a contemporary wardrobe. (He did have a significant role in the 1960 disaster drama The Last Voyage, but his costume as the sinking ship’s crewman Hank Lawson consisted only of a neckerchief and dark jeans.)
Following his appearance Once Upon a Time in the West, Strode joined fellow other American actors—think the fictional Rick Dalton—by appearing in Italian films through the ’70s, including the 1972 “poliziottesco” The Italian Connection, starring alongside Henry Silva as New York mob hitmen Frank Webster and Dave Catania. Continue reading
Vic Morrow’s Cowboy Cop Style in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Vic Morrow in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)
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Vic Morrow as Everett Franklin, maverick police captain
San Joaquin County, California, Fall 1973
Film: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Release Date: May 17, 1974
Director: John Hough
Wardrobe Master: Phyllis Garr
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The talented actor Vic Morrow died 42 years ago today during a helicopter accident on the set of John Landis’ movie The Twilight Zone that also claimed the lives of child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen. Born on Valentine’s Day 1929 in the Bronx, Morrow’s acting career dates to the ’50s when he starred as Stanley Kowalski in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire and made his screen debut in the 1955 drama Blackboard Jungle. He later brought his real-life experience as a Navy veteran to his star-making role in the 1960s World War II series Combat!
One of my favorite of Vic Morrow’s performances is as Everett Franklin, a renegade police captain tasked with chasing Peter Fonda, Susan George, and Adam Roarke making their high-octane getaway through the walnut groves and highways of central California in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, released 50 years ago in May 1974. Continue reading
Bill Paxton in Twister
Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in Twister (1996)
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Bill Paxton as Bill Harding, experienced storm chaser-turned-weatherman
Oklahoma, Summer 1996
Film: Twister
Release Date: May 10, 1996
Director: Jan de Bont
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
With its standalone sequel Twisters starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell now arriving in theaters, let’s revisit the original Twister, Jan de Bont’s 1996 blockbuster centered around a group of storm-chasers pursuing and researching tornadoes across Oklahoma.
Our lead storm-chasers are the star-crossed Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill Harding (Bill Paxton), in the midst of a divorce as Bill seeks to leave his dangerous storm-chasing days as “The Extreme” and settle into a more comfortable life as a TV weatherman with his new fiancée Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). “New job, new truck, new wife, it’s like a whole new you!” Jo observes as Bill arrives in his new Dodge Ram truck to request that she sign the papers to finalize their divorce.
In the meantime, Jo and her team are preparing to deploy their innovative tornado-measuring device—the realized execution of Bill’s original concept, nicknamed “Dorothy”—into the record-breaking storms wreaking havoc through Oklahoma. Continue reading
Glen Powell in Hit Man: Gary’s Western-Inspired Wardrobe as “Ron”
Glen Powell as Gary Johnson in Hit Man (2023)
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Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, mild-mannered psychology professor moonlighting as an undercover police contractor
New Orleans, Fall 2022
Film: Hit Man
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Director: Richard Linklater
Costume Designer: Juliana Hoffpauir
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
After a limited two-week run in theaters, Hit Man debuted on Netflix at the beginning of this month and quickly became the service’s #1 most-watched movie in the U.S. The screenplay by director Richard Linklater and star Glen Powell fictionalizes the life of Gary Johnson, a college professor and successful “fake hitman” whose undercover police work led to more than 70 arrests of people seeking the services of a contract killer.
Hit Man is Linklater’s second cinematic depiction of stranger-than-fiction true crime based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth (the first was Bernie in 2011), though the production and setting were moved from Houston to New Orleans to take advantage of Louisiana tax credits.
Described in the epilogue as the “chillest dude imaginable,” the real Gary Johnson—whom the same epilogue is sure to insist was never actually involved in any murders—died in 2022 at the age of 75 before getting to see this dark comedy that riffed on his life story.
Though sensationalizing his life for dramatic purposes, Hit Man includes many details from Johnson’s life, like his cats Id and Ego, his unassuming politeness, and the random opportunity that elevated him to the city’s most in-demand assassin who signals his identity to prospective clients with a single response phrase:
All pie is good pie.
Barry Newman in Fear Is the Key
Barry Newman in Fear is the Key (1972)
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Barry Newman as John Talbot, “truculent, insolent, and a man of violence”
Louisiana, Spring 1972
Film: Fear Is the Key
Release Date: December 26, 1972
Director: Michael Tuchner
Wardrobe Credit: Mike Jarvis
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
I had never heard of Fear Is the Key before I had the pleasure of catching it streaming on the Criterion Channel last November, so I feel comfortable describing it as underrated—the kind of raw ’70s-style adventure intended for pure entertainment with a thrilling momentum, great score, and a fine cast led by Barry Newman that also included Suzy Kendall, John Vernon, Dolph Sweet, and a “young”—well… middle-aged—Ben Kingsley. Perhaps best known for his performances in Vanishing Point and the TV series Petrocelli, the Boston-born Newman died one year ago today on May 11, 2023 at the age of 92.
Based on Alistair MacLean’s 1961 novel centered around one man’s mission for revenge against a criminal organization that killed his family, the movie blends classic adventure, ’70s grit, and international intrigue into a package adjacent to contemporary “hick flicks”. Maybe you’d describe it as Smokey and the Bandit meets Crank—or James Bond meets The Dukes of Hazzard—all with a twist of Three Days of the Condor. Continue reading
Taxi Driver: Travis Bickle’s Tanker Jacket
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)
Vitals
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, disturbed taxi driver and Vietnam War veteran
New York City, Spring to Summer 1976
Film: Taxi Driver
Release Date: February 9, 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Ruth Morley
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy International Taxi Driver Day to all cabbies whose alienation doesn’t drive them to a violent murder spree shooting up a brothel! This observance commemorates when the first gas-powered taxi cabs reportedly arrived on the streets of London on March 22, 1907.
The profession was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader and filmed on location in New York City during the scorching summer of 1975. Two years after his first Academy Award win (for The Godfather, Part II), Robert De Niro received his second Oscar nomination for his performance as Travis Bickle, the lonely Marine-turned-cabbie whose PTSD, insomnia, and paranoid psychosis becomes a dangerous powder keg in the squalid decay of 1970s New York. Continue reading
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