Are Westerns real ?

[UndertheOcean]

I guess another way to put it is : did the "Wild West" ever exist as depicted in Film at any point in history ?

[taterguy]

1. Depends on the Film

[UndertheOcean]

2. Let's say "Unforgiven"

[taterguy]

3. Haven't seen it

[UndertheOcean]

4. Why not ?

go to Netflix right now and get it.

It is worth it.

[blogslut]

12. All films are fantasy

But you know that.

What I liked most about "Unforgiven" was how it dealt with common movie myths like how men die instantly from gunshots or that killing is cool as long as it's done by the hero. The scene where it took ages for that one fellow to succumb to his wound and the scene where Hackman's character describes how English Bob dispatches a man in a gunfight were, to me, very important moments in film history. Clint Eastwood once stated that he made "Unforgiven" as an apology for propagating the concept of righteous violent vengeance. The big slaughter at the end of the film isn't meant to be satisfying or to make the audience feel like a wrong has been righted.

Unfortunately, while critics praised the film, Eastwood's most bloodthirtsy, diehard fans just didn't get it.

[Kaleva]

5. Blazing Saddles is pretty accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6dm9rN6oTs

It depends on the movie I guess. Some are a fairly accurate presentation of life in the Old West while others are not.

[petronius]

6. I suspect that most things seen in westerns did exist, but never all at once in the same town,

or too the same degree.

I imagine the western landscape in most films is about as real as the typical rom-com Manhattan landscape...

[Xithras]

14. Actually, some towns were exactly as Hollywood depicts, but they were rare.

Towns like Bodie and Tombstone were very real and very violent (Bodie legitimately had a murder every day for more than a year at one point...signifigant for a town of only 7000 people). They were the exception though, and most towns only rarely had those sorts of problems.

As for the landscape, "westerns" tend to get filmed in the deserts or the plains because those environments still exist, but many "western" events of that time happened in places like the San Francisco Bay or in the tree filled Willamette Valley in the Oregon Territory amid the snow and pines.

What you have to remember about "the old west" is that most of the events Hollywood depicts are actually fairly predictable in that situation. Wide open landscapes with no real transportation system, no law enforcement to speak of, and uneducated and poor "government" officials who were easily bribed or threatened. It was an environment that would naturally attract societies worst elements, and cause conflicts between them and those who had moved there to "civilize" the region. Luckily, crime tends to congregate, so the worst elements of the west were largely confined to a few smaller areas (though those areas changed over time). Most people lived in relative peace, and were more worried about their kids catching a virus than a bullet from a vigilante, or from starvation from crop failure.

[petronius]

15. You're right, I should have said rarely rather than never. By "landscape", however,

I really meant the cultural landscape - the people superimposed on the physical environment. The imagined Wild West that the OP refers to contains a lot of mythological elements (the school-marm, the kindly doctor, the gruff rancher, the sleepy dog in the street, etc) that probably didn't show up all together in too many places. So what I was getting at is that, while all the elements of the "Wild West" are real, the complete ensemble isn't all that realistic. (Like the rom-com Manhattan of my analogy - everything in there is real, but nobody actually experiences it all together.)

That said, many westerns do a very good job of depicting realistic slices of what the American west was really like - I'm just drawing a distinction between the historic west and the Wild West^TM...

[dimbear]

7. The first westerns were filmed in New Jersey. They were a

little fanciful. It wasn't until Sergio Leone started rolling in Calabria that the westerns became realistic.

[nolabear]

8. Ever read "Blood Meridian"?

I am just reading it, after a thousand people told me I must. It's a strange, but maybe not, depiction of the Old Southwest. Since I recently read the history of Quanah Parker and it sounded much the same, I wondered it myself.

[MilesColtrane]

17. Cormac McCarthy did tons of research before writing "Blood Meridian".

The Clanton gang was real, and they really were that nasty.

on edit: If you're interested in McCarthy's sources, this is a great book:

http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Meridian-Southwestern-Writers-Collection/dp/0292718217/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293922141&sr=1-1

[MicaelS]

9. Generally, but remember,

The "Wild West" portrayed on film only lasted from the beginning of the Civil War in 1860, and of the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1863 until the end of the 19th century. So we're talking about a 40 year period. There was rapid change during this time. As an example, the famous Pony Express only lasted April 1860 to October 1861. So the impression that film gives that the Wild West lasted for a hundred years or so is inaccurate.

[tinymontgomery]

10. I understand it kind of was like that

for a little while at the mid 19th century. Law and Order started to kickin when the territories wanted to become states. I have nothing to back this up but a little reading several years ago. The pony express only lasted like 18 months.

[provis99]

11. Heaven's Gate was really accurate. Really.

it was entirely based on the Johnson County range war, and based on the actual people involved.

[Old Troop]

13. Only "The Wild, Wild West"

[MilesColtrane]

16. self delete

[pokerfan]

18. One historian looked at Tombstone (1993)

and posted a long list of inaccuracies here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108358/faq#.2.1.17