Part Three: John Wayne: A Dude Who Sucked

Robert is joined by Francesca Fiorentini for the final part our three part series on John Wayne.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
What's Johnny my Wayne O? What's destroyed? Yeah? Shattering my pelvis,
my thirteen pound baby? What's irradiating? My racist movie about

(00:25):
Genghis Khan starring a white man is Genghis Kan? That
is the funniest thing in terms of like ways John
Wayne could have died nuked while playing Genghis Khan in
a movie is pretty funny. That. That's pretty good? How
are you doing? Francesca Fiarentini, our guest returning for part

(00:49):
three of three. I have to find out how this ends,
you know? Well? I mean it's I feel like he
becomes even more bad, aastardly towards the end of his life.
But I'm excited. Yes, actually he becomes Chris Catan. Um, real,
real curveball for the story. That makes as much sense

(01:12):
as anything else. Um, Chris Catan, great career not over?
Is it not? Are we still doing christ? I don't
have anything against Chris Catan in particular, but are we?
I mean there could be a Night at the Roxbury reboots,
So there could be or we could even do like
a like a like an Avengers in game where a
Night at the Roxbury meets the Blues Brothers and uh,

(01:35):
it's another one of those Lord Michael's movies. Uh the Superstar,
I don't know Superstar. Throw that in there, you know,
throwing the David Cross one where he plays plays a hillbilly. Um,
make it all happen, but everyone's jacked. It's it's basically
everybody exactly get everybody like on it, pumped with H

(01:57):
G H destroy their hearts. Get him just like David
Cross has like sixteen inch biceps. Yeah, and then nume
on set and then we knew them, and then we
knew them on set. That's right. Finally, that's how we
that's how we end Lauren Michaels' career with that film.
Uh shouldn't have brought that Night at the Roxbury so um. Yeah,

(02:22):
he's like the center of this idea of like white
conservative masculinity um and and has has been for decades
at this point. By the time we hit like the
mid Night to late nineteen sixties. Uh, all of these
people who are like eighteen nineteen twenty uh and old
enough to start going over to Vietnam have never known

(02:43):
a world in which John Wayne wasn't like the biggest
action star in there. Like he's you know, there's not
really anyone to compare him to. Now, I guess your
closest would be someone like The Rock. Um. But even then,
like we we don't really have. The media is so
much bigger now, so like you have like a million
different kinds of action stars for everyone in this period

(03:03):
of time, John Wayne is like uh it yeah, um. So,
though not publicly a man of particular religious vigor, he
embodied what muscular Christianity enthusiasts respected, while also speaking to
the more secular, arch capitalist right wingers who sought a
more muscular US willing to throw down for the free market.

(03:24):
All of this sworld together to make him an irresistible
frontman for Republican politicians. Christine Cobbs Dumez writes in Night,
he gave a rousing patriotic address at the Republican National Convention.
When Nixon wanted to explain his own views on law
and order, he pointed to Wayne's Chisholm, which is one
of his movies, as a model, a bloody tale of
frontier justice in which Wayne achieved order and revenge through

(03:47):
violence some sixty eight like at the RNC, Nixon is
specifically pointing to John Wayne movies is like this is
this is how law and order is supposed to be.
This this cowboy movie by a draft dodger. You know,
who could take care of these dirty hippies who want
to stop seeing their friends slaughtered? The Duke John Wayne,

(04:08):
these we can't it be more like that? Remember when
the good guys were good guys and the bad guys
were the brown people. Let's do that. Let's do that again.
It is also very funny he spent so much time
shifting on anti war protesters, a lot of whom are
veterans who didn't dodge the draft like he did. But whatever, so,
Wayne himself was flabbergasted at the resistance among many Americans

(04:31):
towards continuing to escalate the war in Vietnam. I'man's biography
tells a particularly lurid story about Wayne seeing a one
armed veteran walking across the campus during a protest, and
this group of protesters like approaches this veteran. They're heckling
this brave man who lost his arm in combat, and
John Wayne has to like walk up and say, now,
don't you like you can speak your piece, but you're

(04:53):
not gonna yell at this man, and you don't get
to say this to a hero and YadA YadA YadA
together becau actly and then everyone clapped. Yeah. Um, there's
no evidence this ever happened. Uh, it's there's a lot
of fake stories about stuff like soldiers getting spit on
from this period and John Wayne being a liar. I

(05:14):
don't have any trouble believing made this up. Um, he
needed one for himself. The spit the spit soldier story
was getting way too much play. Let me invent one.
He needed a John Wayne version one. Now I don't
think that particular story is true, Francesco, but we do
have audio of John Wayne addressing a group of students.

(05:34):
I think they're like r OTC kids, cadets at like
a military academy or something. What matters most is that
he's obviously fucking hammered. It's so funny. He is, he
is housed. He is just completely fucking still after all
these years. It's so funny. Um, here's how he says,
hello to these kids. My name is what? All right?

(06:07):
First of all, it's Marryan is married. Suddenly you will
John is short for William. What am I saying? It's
so funny? This is unimportant? Oh my God, it does
not get wildly more coherent from there, but the audience

(06:30):
is very much on board. And honestly, if I had
been a college student and a drunk movie star had
come to give my commits like that would have been
super funny. I would have been all I think most
kids would write. Um, the audience, I mean this is
also a more right wing, militant audience. So they're they're
on board here. Um. Now I'm gonna play another clip
and for context. Here he's talking about how different things

(06:52):
were when He's talking about like protests in college and
how different things were when he were in he was
in college. Remember, this is a period where students are
taking over faculty buildings and whatnot. They're trashing the offices
of certain professors. Like there's all these protests against the
war by students. We talked about some of this in
the Kissinger episodes. So John Wayne is talking about how
different things were when he was in college. Let me

(07:16):
explain something to you. And I went there. I went there.
One that was a fella in troll Over College, I mean,
I mean, boss many buddy had walked in there, A

(07:38):
good one got the office and did excrement and his
power through buddy, you got it. The waste paper basket,
that's what it is. Had written lewd words on his uh,
the pictures of his family. We as members of the college,

(08:06):
would have kicked the god damn hell out of this argiza.
It's very funny. He's so drunk, does he nod off?
Because that's where it feels like I feel like he
might have, like he was sort of he was sort

(08:27):
of graying out there for a little while. What's the
having a little brown out, drifting off into the land
of vodka and fantasies. Classroom, right, the class class I
never stopped classroom. Just a drunk old man heckling teens.

(08:47):
So from this point he continues to his main argument,
which is that he thinks these kids he's talking to
should beat the hell out of left wing protesters who
dissent from the view that war is good in the
US can do no wrong. Well, a lot of the
speech is very funny. It's mostly very funny. The last
bit does kind of get a little terrifying because in

(09:07):
it John Wayne calls for the establishment of the sort
of violent right wing street organizations that we are currently
swimming in as a nation. For you guys, you better
start thinking. It's it's getting to be re god damndiculous.
If you guys don't start thinking is men, we're gonna

(09:31):
have a lousy country. Jesus, I'm I have had the
chance to be you as guys who are with things
and against things. Christ try as because I try as

(09:52):
a human being to listen to both sides of everything.
But there's no both sides anymore. They're just trying to
wreck our goddamn country. It's time for you younger guys
to take over. I don't know what they do. Awesome.

(10:14):
That was brilliant, and you know what, it very much
is a speech that fits into the year. It does
it does. That's that's a Giuliani speech right there. That's
a right down to the drunkenness, right down to the
fairly being able to stand yes exactly. He was so

(10:35):
ahead of his time. But it's so he's also it's
funny because he is also while the hero of every
single film just kind of like interpersonally and incredibly like
he's lazy and drunk half the time, like like and
his only work ethic, Like the hardest thing he did
was I think, well, I don't know, did he learn

(10:56):
to lasso or that was the hardest thing, just like
bringing seven from Mexico. I mean, like he's most people
will note, and I think this alters a little bit
at the end of his career. But he's like he's
generally most people will agree, pretty good on set. He's
good at like what he does. He's got this kind
of background in props, so he's he's he knows how
things should look. He's an active member of like the

(11:20):
of the crew beyond just sort of like standing and
hitting his lines. That's generally agreed upon. But you do hear,
you hear really different stories. So you hear all these
stories about you know, John Wayne seeing something a directors
doing and realizing that one look good on camera and
like fixing the scene and being like very much a
team player. And then you hear these stories about like, well,
they couldn't shoot the film before noon because that's when

(11:43):
he woke up and they had to wait for him
to take a giant ship first, so they couldn't start
until he tend like that. I respect that, I definitely respect.
So I I don't know, like you do hear like
a lot of rumors on both sides. It's probably fair
to say he would not have gotten as far as
he did if he was not really good at certain
aspects of being a movie star. So I'll give him
credit for that. Um. But it's also like, John Wayne,

(12:09):
you were never willing to go do anything for your
country overseas. Where are you now saying that groups of
teenagers should beat the ship out of people protesting a
war that you can't even like you have. No, He's
there's no elucidation there in that speech and the other
ones he gives about like why they should be willing
to do violence on behalf of this war, right, because

(12:30):
that's not what's important. What's important is something vague about America.
And that's the thing that seems most familiar where it's like, well,
you're not really elucidating anything that they should be fighting
for other than the vague idea of America, and that's
that's really enough to rile people up for violence. I
mean again, it's just super fitting. It's like, America isn't
a country that protests the bludgeoning and killing of civilians

(12:53):
and the death of like young men uh coming home
in bodybags their parents. America is the country that does
those things not a sound without why would you why
would you make a sound that's just gonna be loud.
You know you're gonna wake up John Wayne, and he's
going to be hungover absolutely before noon. Yeah, without the

(13:14):
yeah kids these days, it's very much just the kids
these days speech. And then at the end it's fun
because instead of him being like and that's why I'm
going to start up blah blah blah or whatever, or
I'm going to start a militia, which glad he didn't,
but instead of that, it's just like anyway you figure
I don't know how to do drunk asked John Wayne.

(13:39):
Very funny, except great. You know the fact that he
holds this position in our cultural memory that makes the
fact that he was a drunken warmonger much more influential.
But let's continue, So we should talk again about these
kind of rumors about the Duke that you'll hear because
you get this like I'm in very much presents this
picture of him as this incredibly diligent um with quotes

(14:01):
from people who worked with him, including guys like Ford,
that he was this he had really, he was really sharp.
He was always willing to put in the extra effort,
he'd do multiple jobs, even though he was supposed to
be the star, just to make sure the film got made.
And then you'll hear these stories about like his scenes
needed to be finished shooting before noon every day because
he was gonna be too drunk after that. Um, but
he couldn't film in the morning until he'd taken his

(14:22):
first hungover ship and like, so he's got like half
an hour, he's got like a good hour in there.
That's why I those can't be true comprehensively, like they
may have been true on certain films or in certain times. Right.
I'm sure there were times and people like, well, you
can't shoot, you can't you got if you shoot too
late in the day, he's gonna be drunk, because we
know he got drunk at and impacted shooting at times.

(14:43):
But he made way too many movies for them to
have been for things to have been that ridiculous. You
can't shoot a movie with an hour a day from
the star, right, But who knows how the radiation impacted
his gas row? Intestinal can be and I'm sure the
older he got to the more it was, like you
his lifestyle took a toll on him, and that took
altered the way he was on set. But um, like drinking,

(15:06):
I mean obviously that's like the sign of an alcoholic,
but like being like a young kid like on set
and like drinking and then waking up the next day
in hell. Yeah, Like obviously we all remember what it
was like to be nineteen, blessed that moment, but like
great hangovers in your fifties, hangovers in your fifties as
a guy who has been just basically inhaling cigarettes and

(15:29):
nothing else since he was like twelve, Like, um, that's
I mean, I do want to note, like I'm sure
aspects of this were true, and I'm also sure aspects
of what I'm in reports in terms of his like
diligence on set were really true. Um, it's worth noting
that two of his very best performances in his career
were filmed really late in it when he's an old guy,

(15:49):
the shootest and true grit, true grit being maybe the
most the one that's most famous today probably that he
was in you know Rooster Cockburn, great film, really good performance.
He was not a bad actor. Um, there were some
moments I forget which film it was, but like because
most of his early roles he had not had to act.
He's in a movie that John Ford sees and Ford
is like a hell. If I had known he could act,

(16:11):
I would have Tooked done some stuff differently. Um, but
he isn't some better performance as The Shootest, which is
his very last film, is a really good movie in
a lot of ways. That's that's interesting too, because it's
we'll talk about The shoot is a little at the end,
it's kind of it's kind of a strange one for him. Um,
but I don't think honestly, it's very like it's a

(16:33):
little bit of his character, like true grit, A drunken
hard nos Us Marshall and Texas ranger helps a stubborn
teenager track down her father's murderer. There you go, like
hard nosed and hard nosed, never served his country. So
that's allow one. You gotta take it a little bit.

(16:55):
So it's interesting, um, because it's one of those things.
I don't think he's as these anti John Wayne anecdotes
about how drunk he was. I don't think he was
as unfunctional as those anecdotes imply. But we might have
been better off if he had been because another movie
John Wayne cared a lot about making and put a
lot of work into later in his career was The
Green Berets. And this is a film that would go

(17:17):
on to have pretty disastrous consequences for a number of
members of a generation. So you're not necessarily a bassard
as an action movie star if your films like reinforce
attitudes about violence and masculinity that lead young men to
make some like dumb decisions such as joining the army. Um.
But John Wayne knew that his films could do that

(17:39):
and actively sought to use them to convince people to
go and fight in Vietnam. Right. He understood that he
had influenced a generation's idea of manhood, and he decided
to use that influence to try to get more young
men to volunteer to go fight in Southeast Asia. Um. Now,
before we get into that a little more, I want
to read a quote from this right up I found
in Salon dot com that gives a good overview on

(18:00):
the broad strokes of kind of what it meant in
nineteen sixty eight to be what some people called a
John Wayne man. John Wayne, Yeah, John Wayne stands simply
is the most persuasive and overwhelming embodiment of our ambivalence
about American manhood. His persona gathers in one place, the
allure of violence, the call away from the frontier, the
tortured ambivalence toward women and the home, the dark pleasure

(18:21):
of said romanticism, all those things that reside unspoken at
the center of our sense of what it means to
be a man in America, dark ambivalent towards the home.
Just just say, do women like, Yeah, the man who
strikes his wife, Well, it's this thing that you have

(18:42):
because you know early in his career. They're like, we
want him to look like a guy who doesn't have
a lot of experience with women because he spends all
of his time in the frontier, so he kind of
is uncomfortable around women. And that's kind of part of
I think why that expands to even more of a
thing in a Hollywood is you have this mix of
the male lead. Number one has to be very clearly

(19:02):
not gay. So you've got to show a woman as
being interested in him, right, Um, which not necessarily a
sign that they're not gay for sure. Um, but you
know we're talking nineteen sixties Hollywood logic. You gotta you
gotta show him with a woman, but also like sex
and stuff, that's that's going to get you in trouble.
So you don't you don't ever want him to get
too close to him necessarily, and so you you wind

(19:25):
up with a lot of these heroes who are like
magnetic to women but also kind of pushing them away. Um,
these these sort of like yeah, it's all and also
just like these ideas about masculinity. You don't want to
have a guy who's like vulnerable with a woman. It's
the kind of James Bond thing right where he's gonna
you know, he'll sleep with a woman, but he doesn't
have relationships or whatever. I think that's up in the

(19:47):
shower unannounced and they'll just start having sex and you're like,
I guess that was consent, But like John Wyn won't
even do that, right because because Jim Bond is more
advanced in his attitudes towards female liberation than John Wayne,
characters tend to be you know, um, she can carry
a gun that yeah yeah, um, yeah, yeah, I know that.

(20:10):
That is really um, it's it explains so much. And
also to recruit use your film to recruit young American
men into a war which is already going to give
him PTSD and then come home and like the the
manly thing to do. Don't talk about it, don't address it,
bottle it up. Stoicism. Like, I think there's a stoicism

(20:33):
that John Wayne really instilled in about American masculinity. Yes, um,
And and it's like it's also kind of, I think,
an impotent stoicism. It's not the kind of there's a
good stoicism where you're not, you know, letting yourself getting
beaten down by the world. You're not like showing you know,
your weakness and situations where that's bad. But John Wayne

(20:55):
stoicism is like, don't show vulnerability and situations where that
might make you st younger. Uh. But anyway, that's we're
getting into a little bit of a deeper topic. But so,
you know, Vietnam nineteen has become like a thing. You know,
it's clear that it's a real problem, and Americans really
don't seem to be liking this, this thing that we're doing.

(21:15):
And so John Wayne decides, I gotta do whatever I
can to confence more young boys to throw themselves into
this meat grinder. And he decides the best way to
do this is by making a movie about the special forces.
Now at this point, that's a pretty new concept. The
very first kind of modern special forces teams were in
World War Two. Some people will say that like the
German um uh Falstrom Yeager, some of which were like

(21:39):
their their their paratroopers. They had some units that were
kind of the first modern spec ops units. UM, and
you have you know, some some British and some American
units that are kind of experimenting with some of this ship.
Vietnam is really where the modern special forces kind of
comes together as a distinct thing for the first time
in a modern way. Um, where we get the first

(22:01):
Green Beret teams. Right, that's kind of the first popular
concept of special forces comes from these these teams, which
are initially called A teams, which is why the A
Team was called the A team that President Kennedy sends
into Vietnam in nineteen sixty one, and they gradually like,
that's what becomes the idea of Green Berets, is these
these A teams become the Green Berets. When's the Mr

(22:21):
T episode? Huh. Mr T has never done anything wrong,
so we're not going to be doing that episode. Look,
he gave up his chains after Hurricane Katrina. Okay what Yeah.
Mr T gave up because he went to help in
the relief efforts and he was he was horrified by
the privation and poverty he saw on the side. It
would be obscene for him to continue wearing gold. Damn.

(22:43):
This is a story where we yeah, I got nothing
to say bad about Mr T. Yeah, and the serial
was good one. He's also super vocal about like vaccinations.
He thinks it's good to be vaccinated. Yes, damn it.
We need strong men likeness. I pity the fool who
cannot appreciate Mr T. Like legitimately pity the fool. Um.

(23:08):
So this idea of like specially trained super soldiers that
you drop behind enemy lines and they fight under incredible odds,
this is like Hollywood fodder. Like as soon as we
start having these Special Forces guys in Vietnam, Hollywood's like, oh, ship,
this is all We're gonna make movies about for forever, right,
Like this is this is the only thing we want
to turn into a movie now. Inter Robin Moore Robin

(23:32):
Moore is a World War Two veteran and a journalist who,
because of his connections to I think it was Ted
Kennedy got to go through Special Forces school as a civilian.
He's I don't know if he's the only, but he's
the first civilian to ever do this. And he embeds
with the Green Berets in Vietnam, and he's technically a journalist,
but he's also like fighting alongside them, which is ethically

(23:53):
kind of blurring the lines of journalism. He's a real
interesting character to study, Robin Moore. Being embedded is like
a little sauce. You're always like, yeah, it compromises objectivity
anytime you're embedded, but shooting people is a real violation
of any kind of burned huts. He may have burned

(24:15):
some huts, a little bit of hut burning um. And
he's fun because he'll get conned by a dude named
Jack Adiema during the war in Afghanistan. But that's a
lot later when he's an old man, so he writes
he's in the he spends a bunch of time with
these Green Berets. He writes this book, The Green Berets,
which is like, it's like on the best seller list
for more than a year. It's a huge hit. People
fucking and he has to he has to be in

(24:36):
during the height of the war, like sixty it's like
sixty five or six. I think that it published. Yeah,
it's like, um sometimes I think it must have been
like sixty five. Um, so pretty early on. Uh. And
he publishes this book as a fiction book because he
has to do that in order to pretend he's not
giving away operational secrets. The government considers prosecuting him because

(24:57):
he's writing about a bunch of ship he shouldn't be
writing about. Um, it's a weird call to just let
this guy hang out with your special forces. But then
he writes a book that pisses them off a lot.
And the reason, one of the reasons apparently that they
don't go through prosecuting him, is that John Wayne buys
the film rights from Robin Moore, um, in order to
make a movie. Um. And so yeah he well, now

(25:21):
that Wayne is attached, Well, what happens is he sends
a letter to President Lyndon Baynes Johnson to try to
get his cooperation, because he basically says, I want to
make the first pro war movie about the Vietnam War.
To try and build public support for this thing. He writes, quote,
we want to show such scenes as the little village
that has erected its own statue of liberty to the

(25:41):
American people. We want to bring out that if we
abandon these people, there will be a blood bath of
over two million souls. We want to show the professional
soldier carrying out his duty of death, but also his
extracurricular activities helping small communities, giving them medical supplies, toys
for their children's and little things like soap. Um. So
that's the movie. Like John Wayne sends this letter, soap A. K. Hayden, Napalm.

(26:04):
Napalm cleans things. You know, eventually there's no bacteria in
the wake of a napalm strike. Absolutely, so you want
to get rid of napalm knocks it right out, um,
right up from history Net continues quote. John Wayne took
his first step towards production of the picture in nineteen

(26:24):
sixty five, buying the film rights from the author more
the path was cleared in nearly nineteen sixty six when
President Johnson's advisor Jack Valinti convinced lb J to give
Wayne permission to make the film. Valinti observed, Wayne's politics
are wrong, but insofar as Vietnam is concerned, his views
are right. If he made the picture, he would be
saying the things we once said. So I mean he's

(26:46):
doing he's offering it for free. I mean this is
before the U. S. Military would bankroll things like black
Hogdown or like fucking even transformers. They put money behind
transformers and ship It's fun. You say that, because this
is how that starts. Oh cute, qute, que cute, Oh
my god, origin story. But you know what else is
starting right now, Francesca, what the products and services that

(27:08):
support this podcast? Their ads are starting right now. Oh
we're back. Well. I don't know about you, Francesca, but
those ads convinced me to become a Green Beret. I'm
gonna go fight in Vietnam. Was it a ZIP recruiter

(27:29):
at it was? It was, it was, and it has
convinced me to take up the fight. I keep calling
the recruiters and they keep saying there's no war in Vietnam.
You can't just travel to Vietnam and start fighting people
like you. You'll go to prison forever. But I'm gonna
do it. I'm gonna give it a shot. Like we
need a social media manager. You're like green beret, green
beret that's what I'm gonna do. Um oh my god.

(27:52):
So really foreshadowing of the the US military funding this.
Uh huh, well, not funding it. It's not quite there yet,
but this is this we'll get into it. So Wayne
John Wayne makes his son Michael the film's producer because nepotism,
and in February of nineteen sixty six, he hires James
Lee Barrett, who's a former marine and a screenwriter, to

(28:13):
draft a screen play. And the screenplay has very little
to do with Robin Moore's book. That's again some people
will allege part of the agreement he made with the
government where like, I'll adapt this into a movie, but
I won't include anything from the book really because the
book is full of a bunch of secrets you didn't
want getting out. And that's part of why the LBJ
administration is like, well this, this can help us kind

(28:35):
of launder away some of the ship we didn't want
people to know that's in that book. Um. So, the
two Waynes and Barrett visit the Defense Department in Fort Bragg,
uh in order to like so they get like approval
from the government to see where special forces trained and
to do research and whatnot and the production receives. And
this is one of the first times this has happened.

(28:57):
A substantial amount of help from the armed forces. Um.
They did pay fees to use d o D property
and for some of the equipment least to them, um,
but a lot of stuff was made free for them
as props, which did substantially defray costs. Some biographers like
Jensen dispute this UH and John Wayne would go on
to claim that they paid for everything. This does not

(29:18):
seem to have been entirely accurate. It does seem like
they got a good amount of stuff, at least subsidized,
that would have cost more or just not been available
if the d D hadn't played ball. And evidence for
this can be seen in the fact that the studio
allowed the Pentagon to retain script control. Right. Wow, So
you had like forty eight, you had you had something

(29:39):
kind of like partnerships with Hollywood or not in forty
In the forties, for like World War Two, you had
some partnerships with Hollywood and the d O D. This
is the first time that you have like an independent
movie that a studio is making on its own that
they kind of make a deal with the government in
exchange for stuff to give the Pentagon script control, right,
and the d D does request extensive rewrites and detailed

(30:03):
changes to the plot and dialogue, and those changes are made. Uh.
This is the first modern movie co written by the
Pentagon in exchange for access to gear in military infrastructure.
It is not to the same extent that it will
later be. Right, they're not getting nearly as much ship free.
They are paying for more ship. But this is the
start of that process. Yeah. I just think it's incredible

(30:23):
that at this time you could turn on the television
and just watch Yeah, kids coming home in body bags. Uh,
children with napalm burns on them, Like the Meli massacre
was very much publicized. Don't worry, but just and and
you're like, well, but this one movie, this is gonna do.

(30:44):
It's silver bullet like turning around baby. I mean arguably right.
That was the lesson of Vietnam was like, oh, just
do the propaganda movies don't show what's actually happening around Well,
and it is this. You can never do it for everybody,
but with the right movies at the right time, you
can change what happens in a war for a select population.

(31:05):
Like the movie American Sniper for a certain chunk of
Americans has changed the thing they private like because of
how big that movie was in certain chunks of the population.
A lot of people when they think of the Iraq
War don't think about that we of the government light
a shipload to get us in there. That are primary.
Many of our goals were not achieved if there were

(31:26):
not weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi people suffered tremendously,
that the rebuilding process was corrupted and efficient. They think, big,
strong guy sniper, he shoot people good, look at him,
he's American Sniper. I got him on a hat. I'm
gonna wear it. That's Bradley Cooper, right, Yeah, it's Bradley
Cooper exactly. That's why when the hurt Locker, I'm like,

(31:48):
man like, I support women directors, but why does it
got to be Cavin Bigelow doing the hurt Locker, Like, really,
that's the story. And then she gets on stage and
thanks the firefighters. I'm sorry, I'm showing my prejudice against you.
Can't you you can't actually have a movie about the
Iraq War, um, because it would be I mean, there's
issues with the movie Vice but that's an actual movie

(32:08):
about the Iraq War to an extent, where it's about
like the the people and kind of the venal and
corrupt attitudes that lead us in there. You can't have
a movie about what the Iraq War is actually about,
but you can make a bunch of movies about likable
dudes in the Iraq War that will make people feel
more fondly towards the military and the military industrial complex

(32:29):
as opposed to just be like, all of these wars
are disasters and clearly the people running our defense department
are incompetent because look at how these get handled every time.
Look at how badly these wars were prosecuted. That's not
like you're not gonna forbid perspective of an Iraqi either.
I mean, every now and then, I will say this.
The movie Mosle, which was um directed by it was Carnahan,

(32:52):
but it was produced by the Russo brothers. That is
a really good movie that does it. There's not like
an American in that movie. Really, it's all like iraqis.
All of the characters, Uh, they think they're pretty much
a good a buddy of mine. Sangar was actually like
the local consultant on the cultural consultant on the film. Um,
and it does. As someone who was there in Mosle,
it was a really good job. I know some of

(33:14):
the dudes it was based on here, so you do
actually get some really good like it. It doesn't not
happen right like stuff like this, But most people probably
haven't seen Mosele. And everybody knows about the movie American Sniper,
you know, and this doesn't have Bradley. This doesn't have Bradley.
Um and again like just this is happening in Vietnam too. Um,

(33:35):
the Green Berets becomes the only I think definitely the
first and I think the only pro Vietnam movie about
Vietnam that comes out during the war. Um what's his name?
Makes Platoon specifically because he hates the Green Berets so
much like the movie Platoon is a reaction to how
what a piece of propaganda that Green Berets is? Is

(33:56):
that Oliver Stone? Or am I I think it's Stone?
I think it's Stone? Um? And he he gets like
piste off by what a piece of bullshit this film becomes.
I've never I need to see Green Berets because I've
never like I've never seen a positive spin on the
Vietnam It's pretty fun. I watched it as a kid.
My parents wanted me to see if they thought it

(34:16):
was a great movie. One of my uncle's was a
Green Beret, so like, yeah, and it's think, um, I
mean he abandoned anyway, we don't need to get into
my uncle. Um, we don't need to talk about that
uncle in particular. I never I never knew him super well,
but like his service was a regular topic of discussion.

(34:39):
I think that's part of why my mom wanted me
to see To the Green Berets, is to know that
what my uncle Jim had done in the Green Berets. Um.
But this, I don't think this is a particularly accurate
movie about what the Green Berets did. And it's certainly
like it's filmed in Fort Bragg. It's very obviously not Vietnam.
It's like pine tree form. It could not look like Vietnam. Um. So,

(35:04):
this film, though, would start to prove to be kind
of the start of what is to date a decades
long collaboration between Hollywood and the d O d Um.
You know, it's a it's a proof of concept. The
film is utterly panned by reviewers, and it actually sparked
anti war protests in New York, Los Angeles and other
cities that because they protest, it makes conservatives loves that

(35:25):
love the film even more, right, Like, sure, do you
hear there's this there's this movie about our brave soldiers,
and they're protesting it in l a Like that's not
going to do anything but make you love it more.
Absolutely Suddenly it's it's it's become a martyr of the right. Yeah,
they love that stuff. Roger Ebert called it cowboy and
Indian idiotic. Renata Adler of The New York Times called

(35:47):
it vile and insane. Uh, none of this stopped it
from being a huge commercial success, earning twelve million dollars,
which is all of the money in the world in
nine dollars, and giving John un Wayne an excuse to
call the bad reviews quote ridiculously one sided, blind, stupid
criticism of our picture that made real people more conscious

(36:08):
of just how honest we were anti American. They tried
to cancel us, but can't cancel America. This is like
what the Daily Wire is going to try to remake.
They're gonna like remake the Green Berets and Shapiro is
going to fund it. Now here's the thing. John Wayne
was talented, so we are I am a little less

(36:29):
worried about Ben Shapiro because John Wayne had things he
was good at. There was there's the other Quigly sister,
it's like Margaret Quickly, and then there's the You've got
James Woods, James Woods, there's one other washed up right
wing celebrity, and you've got like Kirk Cameron. Get them

(36:51):
all together and get your A Team together, do a
new A Team reboot with just like disgraced conservative actors.
Oh my god, Oh man, I need to see that.
Have have the have the have your like Bosley be Uh,
Kelsey Grammar. Yeah, introducing Kyle Rittenhouse. Turns out that cry

(37:15):
was fake. Kyle Rittenhouse and James Woods in a fucking
action shoot him up. Ah yeah, do it? Do it?
We dare you? We want to see this. But yeah,
so it's interesting. I do legitimately want to see that movie.
It'll happen, It will have something like that, will have
written the House will get cast in an action movie

(37:37):
within the next couple of years, for sure. It is
just interesting that, like, even though he was a good actor,
like this sucked and it was like like sixty nine
it came out. Well, it's I think it sucked. I
think you would probably think it sucked. Most reviewers think
it sucked. A lot of people don't. A lot of
people like and they're not like when I say it's successful.

(37:59):
They're not like just blindly buying it to own the libs.
They enjoy it. It's a movie that's got some cool
action sequences and ship like it's not a good movie
about the Vietnam War, but as a movie, it succeeds
in making the audience happy. So you know, like so
it it like mission accomplished. Yeah, absolutely accomplished. Um And

(38:24):
and Wayne makes a big deal in like the the
ads for this or in the pr campaign for this movie,
the fact that he visited Vietnam and like spent time
with soldiers on his own, without handlers. He was like
adjacent to combat. He's on like chunks of the line
where there is shooting. Um And he gets really popular
with a lot of soldiers he meets there because they're like, oh, hey,

(38:44):
this guy who I saw in movies as a kid,
who like influenced my conception of manhood is like here
standing on the line. Uh, that's great. UM. So you know,
some of them think this is cool. There's obviously a
lot of Vietnam veterans, perhaps even significantly more of Vietnam
veterans who have been in combat and see this movie
and are like, well, this is just rank gross propaganda.

(39:06):
But it's not like one sided. There are a lot
of Vietnam veterans who like the fact that he does this. UM.
But it also must have been like the death of
a hero for a lot of the kids when they realize, well, yeah,
who were actually there and saw their friends die and
got injured and maimed and for what, Like it's kind

(39:27):
of that moment where you're you're like your hero, you
realize it's like a vicious right winger. It's this moment
a lot of people have in UM, A lot of
British kids have in World War One, when they realized
that all of these poems they had been told read about,
like the glory of war and all of these lutrid
paintings of colonial victories, that like, now here's what it's
really like to get shot at by a machine gun.

(39:49):
There's nothing glorious or manly about it. UM, And that
that there are a bunch of people who have it
and a bunch of kids who like had joined and
volunteered for Vietnam in part because of the things that
John Wayne had led him to believe about masculinity. Um
in Jesus and John Wayne, Dumez rights as one working
class Vietnam veteran later recalled he went to Vietnam to

(40:11):
kill a comie for Jesus Christ and John Wayne. It
was Sands of Iwajima that inspired ron Kovic to volunteer
for the Marines during the Vietnam War, a war that
would cost him the use of his legs and lead
to a disenchantment with war that he chronicled in his
memoir Born on the Fourth of July. Off screen, to
Wayne worked to recruit young men to the war effort,
ridiculing as soft those who didn't enlist. One critic labeled

(40:33):
Wayne the most important man in America given the role
his films played in driving American engagement in Vietnam. Covics
would later say on his previously John and Wayne inspired
ideas about war and manhood. I gave my dead dick
for John Wayne. Oh my God, and he made a
necklace out of them. Just a bunch of dead American

(40:57):
John Wayne just a bunch of kids, dicks on his
neck and kid Dick's adorning him like a head dress
like this is. He does get a bracelet from the Montignards,
but yeah, this is still his unfulfilled World War Two.
Um like whatever fantasy or or shame really that he's like, well,

(41:17):
I'm going to send other people to die now. That
is what a lot of people who knew him suggest
is that he never got over his shame for failing
to serve in World War Two. So he decided like,
this is how I'm going to overcome it is by
getting all these kids to serve in my place in
this other war. You know, I I didn't come through then,
but I'm gonna come through now for America by getting
all these kids to die in a jungle for nothing.

(41:40):
I mean, what's crazy? Is it? Like today you would
see John Wayne and this career path and be like, oh,
he's an OP, like he was created by the c
I A Like he's been a d O D like
OP from the beginning. And he's not like he just
know he did this. They've been sure, but he's he's

(42:02):
he's motivated by his own shame because he realizes that
being the guy he is, he should have fucking done
something in World War two, Um, and he did not.
What I mean is he just seems like he was
created in the lab of like all of America's lies,
just like sewn together in some you know, evil scarecrow.
He's all of our lies sewn together in a package

(42:25):
that unfortunately is really good at a specific kind of acting.
And it allows him to, yeah, just like stand in
front of me and get them to sign up to
go fight in Vietnam and ridicule people as soft for
refusing to do it. If John Wayne slapped someone at
the Oscars, well we're building that, Francesca. So the Ballot

(42:46):
or the Green Berets, launched six months after the Tet Offensive,
put a lie to the idea that the US was
particularly close to a victory in Vietnam. Within months of
its release, the first rumors of the Malai massacre had
begun to percolate out into the culture. So right after
this movie we find out that American soldiers have killed
hundreds of civilians brutally um in the sacking of this village.

(43:08):
So the Green Berets had shown US soldiers spending most
of their time helping adorable kids and like building up
villages and infrastructure projects. The reality was that very often
US troops killed those same kids and blew those villages
to bits. John Wayne portrayed war crimes as purely the
purview of the viet Cong, while reality proved him wrong
over and over again. Large numbers of Conservatives tucked their

(43:30):
heads into the comforting lie he had offered them. John
Wayne referred to the Milai massacre as the so called
Milai Massacre and redirected any questions about it to lurid
claims about atrocities committed against our people by the viet Cong.
It's again, it's like what about is um where It's like, yeah,
it's a war. You can always find bad things that
every side has done in a war. But he's pretending

(43:52):
that like, oh, Americans are just they're handing out clean
water and these meanal viet Cong or killing them for
some reason, for no reason at all. Um, Yeah, so
much so called me lie. There's not even a village.
He would be like, look, there's so much going on
in Vietnam that there's no good reason. Quote one little

(44:13):
incident in the United States Army should make a fuss.
The reality, the sad reality, I mean a sad reality
is I feel like there are way more mealies that
we just don't know about. There's a number we do
know about. There were quite a few times like that happens. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We remember this one, but there were many, many, many others.
We don't have a the tipre tongue, the images of

(44:35):
which were not particularly even you know, they weren't captured.
The journalist wasn't there on the ground at the right
moment of the right time, or I mean, the reason
mel becomes what it is is because one of the
officers who sees it like threatens to machine gun everybody
if they don't stop, and then reports it landed his
helicopter in between civilians and was like, fucking stop. A

(44:56):
cool dude, way a way cooler dude than John Wayne. Yeah,
so other far right figures rushed into assure John Wayne
that he was right on the money. Um, and he
is to you know, still to this day, popular with
a segment of Vietnam veterans who want to believe that
they were there for a reason, or that their kids
were there for a reason fighting a fight that needed

(45:16):
to be fought. No less a fascist luminary than Douglas
MacArthur told John Wayne that he represented quote the American
serviceman better than the American serviceman himself. There. Here's what's
funny about that is General Douglas MacArthur fired from his
job prosecuting the Korean War for number one not being
great at it and number two wanting asking for permission

(45:39):
to nuke China and Russia. Repeatedly, Um, douglasman, please, please please.
Douglas MacArthur, famous for his you know, command of US
forces in the Philippines. Uh. Also the Duke like he's
saying that John Wayne represents the American service better than
the American serviceman. During the Bonus Army Marches, which is
when a bunch of US World or one veterans were

(46:00):
like marching during the Great Depression to get the money
that they were promised by the government, Douglas MacArthur led
the forces that gunned them down with tanks and the
machine guts DC. So I really want to hear who
Douglas McCarthy thinks represents the American serviceman best. He seems
like a good source on that Douglas MacArthur would never
do the American servicemen wrong by, say, killing many of

(46:22):
them for protesting because they're not getting paid. I love you,
fucking Douglas MacArthur. The amount of times I was told
that piece of ship was a hero as a kid
makes me want to light some things on fucking fire.
And by the way, Patton was there with him, so
fuck them all. Damn well that is I mean, sadly,
this is this is the American military, and it always

(46:45):
has been. Right. We like the myth better than the
actual soldier. Fucked the soldier. Fuck the soldier. We want them,
we want the John Wayne. I mean, it's the same
thing soldier getting convenient as hell. A lot of them
have experiences that are really hard to monetize. I know,
they're never posing, they don't know what to do with
the props. Ever. Some of them are sad. They're always

(47:08):
just attached to home life anyway. But it is this
sounds like the crassness, and I hate to bring it
to to now because I'm just like Funk, We've always
been this way. But you hear that crassness, you know
I'm not going to defend John McCain but saying that
like he was like a loser because he was captured.
You hear that you have and then you've got like

(47:28):
fucking Trump leaning over you know, World War One and
two soldiers being like what was this? Why did they die? Losers?
That is within the context of this episode. At least
McCain as like a rich kid who didn't have to
went and got fucked up. Um. I have a lot
more respect for John Kerry because he wasn't bombing people, um,

(47:51):
and also got sucked up. But you know, at least
they both of them, unlike John Wayne put skin in
the game. You know. Um, John Wayne didn't even have
like that. Uh. I guess it's one of those things.
I guess it's morally better to advocate for an unjust
war and serving it than it is to advocate for
an unjust war and refused to serving it. I think

(48:13):
I feel like that that does sound weird, but at
least at least it's evident. It's like with fucking um
what's his name the star who like testified, who like
win against his studio to go like talk at the
fucking um to name names and ship. At least he
was putting his skin in the game. I guess it's

(48:33):
not I don't know better and worse or useless terms
for this, but at least like it points to the
fact that, well, this person did believe in the shitty
thing that we're doing. You're not just a total fucking
empty hypocrite, right, Yeah, I don't know. It's weird. I
I don't want to be like trying to mark any
of this down as moral lessons because it's it's bad
to bomb people, John don't mark down just at least like,

(48:58):
I don't know. I'm more there's something more unsettling about
a person who like is so empty that all of
these things are just posturing for them. And I don't
know how much that is true for because some of
it maybe that John Wayne really did believe he should
have served in World War Two and kind of hated
himself and that's what's driving him to do this. I
don't know. There's a lot of complicated ship going on,

(49:20):
and that has a lot to say about masculinity. This
podcast isn't going to say all of it, but it's
definitely stuff I think about a bunch. Yeah, I don't
I don't like emotionally unavailable man. That's like your first boyfriend,
you know what I mean. But then you move on
and you're like, I mean, I've been that boyfriend for
a lot of people. But yeah, I wasn't gonna say anything, Robert,

(49:46):
but you know you just learned, I'll learn to open up. Um.
So you know, he's he's pretty happy after the Green Berets.
This really cements him in the right wing as this
kind of like littant ur con of masculinity. It wipes
away this sort of shame of his failure to serve
in World War Two. Um, it gets him. You know,

(50:08):
he's he's he. It kind of helps him settle into
his new role as an elder conservative icon. Ronald Reagan
actually reaches out to him and it's like, hey, bro,
you know what you ought to do is become governor
of California. Like we could put your ass in the
White House one day. And thank god, he says, no,
he's not in great health. Thank god he because he

(50:29):
would have won for sure, would have definitely would have won.
I can't imagine a few I can't imagine a series
of invention which John Wayne runs for governor of California
and loses I can't conceive of it. No, we we
are trash here in this state. We we've I mean,
look at how many times one And he's a way

(50:50):
better person than John Wayne. Yeah, No, it's very true.
Not a good person, but better. Yeah, dude, what does
Arnold do for American masculinity? I honestly, I think he
was probably a better I think as I think as
the fucking Terminator, he was a healthier symbol of American
masculinity than John Wayne. Because a big thing the Terminator

(51:13):
stands for is like putting yourself before or putting your
child before, a kid before yourself, and like making the
success and happiness of that child the entire like motive
force of your life. Right, Like, there's actually some nice
things in that movie, nice dad's stuff in that movie. Back,
he actually will be back. It's not like John Wayne

(51:35):
is going to go start another fucking family. No, He's
gonna be back in some increasingly hard to follow sequels
that we don't need to talk about, um whatever. Broadly speaking,
the cyborg Killer Bought from the Future is a better
symbol of of emotionally available manhood than any John Wayne character.
Yes that, um so, Yeah, John Wayne chose not to

(52:04):
get into politics in an electoral capacity, but he did
spend the rest of his life bloviating about politics readily,
as this passage from the book Jesus and John Wayne
makes clear. In the nineteen seventy one interview in Playboy,
Wayne was particularly harsh in his assessment of the blacks
or colored or whatever they might want to call themselves.
They certainly aren't Caucasian. With a lot of blacks, there's

(52:25):
quite a lot of resentment along with their descent, and
possibly rightly so, possibly rightly so, but we can't all
of a sudden get down on our knees and turn
everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe
in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a
point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and
positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people. As far

(52:46):
as African American representation in his own films, Wayne asserted
that he'd given the blacks their proper position. He had
a black slave in the Alamo, and he had a
correct number of blacks in the Green Berets. His views
on Native America Rikans were no more enlightened. I don't
feel we did wrong in taking this great country away
from the Native Americans are so called stealing of this

(53:06):
country from them was just a matter of survival. People
needed land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep
it for themselves. Outstanding ship, John Wayne, incredibly boom bloody.
Keep telling yourself that and finish the bottle. That is.
I just it's it's um Sometimes kind of I feel

(53:28):
like I'm looking at racism in a terrarium, like it's
so crystallized and perfect. It like it's I don't hate them,
They're just you know, second class citizens, and they're not responsible,
and they're idiots, and it's it's a very specific kind
of racist, and that I don't think today John Wayne

(53:49):
would have if he was around to day, he would
never call himself a white supremacist in an interview. He
would not to say he wouldn't have believed the same things.
Admit back then. If you admit said you were, you
believed in white supremacy. You know, when till they're educator
or whatever. That's not controversial, that's not a fringe right
wing thing. That does not identify you as part of
a dangerous political sect in nineteen one. And part of

(54:11):
the evidence for that is that, like the only people
who get angry when he says this are like black publication.
There's there's there's like no impact on the mainstream because
John Wayne. Liberals are like, no, he's got a point, Yeah,
the leaders are crazy, or they're more just like, oh, well,
you know, that's just that's just John Wayne. You know,
that's just how certain people think and like it's it's

(54:35):
not it's not the same as calling yourself a white
supremacist in two thousand and twenty two would be like,
he's not, he's not identifying himself with a fringe of
the political spectrum here. It sort of reminds me of
oh god, I hate I hate doing the show and
bringing up like like uh like a present day examples.

(54:58):
But it reminds me of Joe R. Hio going in
front of that like fringe spa group. Yes it was,
and like some people say I'm a racist and everyone's
like cheering, and he was like, well wait, I was
supposed to the point was that I'm not Why are
you cheering? It's not a good thing, and they're like, no,

(55:19):
we've changed. Yeah. I could see John Wayne getting like
tricked by something like that, and he probably would have
liked backpedaled again, not because he's not racist, but because
he would not be the kind of guy who would
want to like look bad like he doesn't. John Wayne
would not have wanted to completely alienate himself from like

(55:39):
his liberal friends, or from like the academy and ship.
He was not, it was not He was not that
kind of political figure, you know, sure Hollywood number one. Yeah, yeah,
so he would have I think he would have. He
would have choosed he would have said the same thing
in different words. If he was interviewed today, you know, um,
slightly more careful words and less he was really drunk,

(56:00):
then he would have said the same thing, and it
would have been a problem for him. Um, but not
that big a problem. He would have been okay. But
still even without white supremacy in there, which is yeah, jarring,
It is a perfect distillation of a lot of white
American thinking. Yes at the time and sometimes currently. Again,
he's not like fringe in anyway. This is all very

(56:21):
mainstream stuff. Um, you know what else is mainstream? What
the products and services that support this podcast, like racism,
They're all deeply woven into the fabric of American society.
How's that, Sophie? Is that good? I think you you
crushed it? My friend? Is that good? That going to
make him happy? All right? Beautiful? Uh, we're doing great,

(56:54):
folks were back. We're happy. Everybody's smiling, everybody laughing. Ending, right,
it does have an ending, and that ending occurs probably
in Hollywood. Um so uh John Wayne, well, I think
he probably would have been more careful today than he

(57:18):
was in nineteen seventy one. I should note that he
also blew his cover as a giant racist on several occasions,
and one of those would have been the nineteen seventy
three Oscars. This is the most recent reason John Wayne
went viral in the wake of Will Smith lightly slapping
a dude and then, let's say moderately slapping a dude.
I was waiting for the Evans take on this, like

(57:40):
it's I think it was a really good film slap right,
like it read on camera really well. Um but yeah,
so people brought up when I'm frustrated. It's weeks later
and they still think pieces coming out about this, the
things people said, I've got a forthcoming one, oh good,

(58:00):
oh good. There was this, there was this fucking stuff
about like, uh, you know, Will Smith getting canceled and like,
but nothing happened to John Wayne when and then they
would talk about this story that we're about to talk about,
and you're like, yeah, okay, this is a good one.
So Marlon Brando right famously not a problematic dude. Uh,
star of the Isle of Dr Moreau and probably a

(58:23):
couple of other movies, got nominated for Best Actor for
his role in the Godfather, which is not nearly as
good a movie as The Isle of Dr Moreau, but whatever.
So Brando had struck up what seems to be a
really legitimate and honest friendship with an Indigenous American activist
named Sashin Little Feather. She was of Apache and Yaki

(58:43):
descent and was angry at Hollywood for a white variety
of understandable reasons. Uh. And Brando agreed with her about
the things she was angry about. So he decides he's
going to turn down the Oscar if he wins it. Um.
So she's hanging out with him the night that he's
supposed to like go to the Oscars, and he's typing
out this eight page speech in case he wins. And
this speech he wanted to use his podium to protest

(59:05):
the wrongs being that had been done to Native Americans
by Hollywood. Right, So, the unjust and racist portrayal of
Indigenous people in decades of cowboy movies, including a bunch
of John Wayne movies. And he's also specifically, he and
Little Feather specifically angry about Wounded Knee. So this is
a battle which is a bunch of just a horrible,
horrible battle, and at this moment in seventy three, it's

(59:27):
the site of a standoff between Native activists and the
Feds over the murder of a Lakoda man. Right, So
that's going on while the oscars are about to happen. Um.
And so Brando decides he's gonna turn if he wins
the best Actor, he's going to turn that into a
place to talk about them. Um. So Little Feather helps
him put together this speech, and then kind of at

(59:47):
the last moment, he's like, well, what if you deliver it? Right,
I shouldn't deliver it, Like why don't you go don't
touch don't even touch the oscar, don't take it. Just
deliver this speech in my stead, right, Um, if you
want to, And she wants to, so he gives her
the speech she's written. But when she arrives, the presenters
number one seed that like, oh ship Brando's sent this
person here. She wants to give a speech. Um, you

(01:00:09):
can't have more than sixty seconds. You can't read that
eight page thing that Marlon Brando gave you. Um. So
she has to come up with something kind of on
the fly, and here's what she comes up with. Hello.
My name is Sashi Little Feather. I'm APACHE and I'm
president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I'm

(01:00:31):
representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked me
to tell you in a very long speech which I
cannot share with you presently because of time, but I
will be glad to share with the press afterwards, that
he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And

(01:00:52):
the reasons for this being are the treatment of American
Indians today by the film industry excuse me, and on
television and movie reruns, and also with recent happenings that

(01:01:17):
wounded me. I beg at this time that I have
not intruded upon this evening and that we will in
the future our hearts and our understandings will meet with
love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of morm and Brando.

(01:01:39):
So that's lovely. Yeah, it's like so much more cordial
than any account. Extremely polite, yes that any account you
will read of what happened and how it happened. She
is like insanely soft spoken, but but firm and like apologetic.

(01:02:00):
I don't I hope I didn't ruin your night, and
like were so appreciative of the award, but we just
can't take it because of like, Yeah, she's very very mild,
and it's incredible that Hollywood stopped with any kind of
racist portrayals of Native Americans from that point. Never again happened.
Never again happened. I'm gonna google Johnny Depp real quick.

(01:02:20):
Nobody absolutely no reason why I am doing this, just
typing it into Google. So, um, yeah, she gets a
lot of support that night. You hear a lot of clapping,
a lot of cheers. Um, you do hear some booze,
though not an insignificant amount. Now I think we both
are in agreement. You would have to be a crazy
asshole to take any offense at that whatsoever. Um, it's

(01:02:43):
a pretty uh polite and very very mild statement of conviction. Um,
that is not how John Wayne takes it. And I'm
going to read another quote from the Guardian here and
this is Um, this is starts with a Little Feather
talking she's interviewed for this piece. During my presentation, he
was coming towards me to forcibly take me off the

(01:03:05):
stage and he had to be restrained by six security
men to prevent him from doing so. Presenting Best Pictures
soon after, also for The Godfather, Clint Eastwood quipped, I
don't know if I should present this award on behalf
of all the cowboys shot and all the john Ford
westerns over the years. When Little Feather got backstage, she says,
there were people making stereotypical Native American war cries at

(01:03:25):
her and miming chopping with a tomahawk. After talking to
the press, she went straight back to Brando's house, where
they sat together and watched the reactions to the event
on television. Was John Wayne just there, like, get my
movies out, you fucking mouth? Yeah? He was. He He
would have hit her probably if he could have. He
was ready to six men. He's a big guy, six men,

(01:03:49):
and she's like tiny doesn't look like a big person.
No um of course sandwich by Oh god, just John
Wayne and Clint there's still like Clinty's would still mad
about that. I would have What would have been amazing
is if Brando had done it and the security guards
hadn't been there, and we've gotten to see a fist

(01:04:11):
fight between fat aging Marlon Brando and fat aging, drunken
John Wayne at the Oscar. That would have been amazing.
That would have been incredible. Oh my god, what a
moment that would have been. I do feel like dad.
I mean, look, the ratings were good this last Oscars,
and I do think that we should have old drunk,

(01:04:33):
washed up actors like wrestling each other on stage. I
want to see Brando bottle John Wayne with some fucking wine,
just like nail him in the skull. Yeah, I mean,
you know. Orson Wells also has like one of the
most memorable on screen drunk moments where he's trying to
do the ad for that wine. Yeah. The French there,

(01:04:59):
yeah them all fuck it? So uh Sashen is the
primary source we have on this um, but I don't
have any particular trouble believing it. John Wayne had a
history of hitting women, sometimes in public. Um, and to
reinforce that we should talk a bit here about how
his marriage to his second wife, Chata ended. Yeah, well

(01:05:21):
this is actually happens back in ninety six. I'm sorry
for jumping around. This just seemed like the natural place
to put this so soon. Here's but yeah, it's right,
they are not together long. Um. Here's BuzzFeed summing up
the details. The problem was that the current Latin American
wife wasn't fulfilling her domestic duties, which is why they
were divorcing and why Chata, infuriated and bitter, was alleging
horrible things about the duke in court that he'd blackened

(01:05:43):
her eye, pulled her from bed, and beat her, given
her multiple bruises, called her obscene names, and was man
handling her in front of guests. He went someplace where
there were strip teasers, called girls, prostitutes, or whatever you
want to call them, she testified. He came home the
next morning, very drunken, with a big black bite on
his neck. This was a human being bite. Wayne's lawyer
countered that Chatta was a drunk who stayed out all

(01:06:04):
night and returned with grass stains. On her clothes and
during their estrangement, entertained a male guest at their residence
while Wayne was on set. The divorce drama threatened to
become a huge scandal, but Wayne forked over a substantial
amount of alimony, The two settled, and his image remained unscathed,
in part because allegations of domestic abuse weren't yet taken seriously,
but also because Wayne's alleged actions were not out of

(01:06:24):
line with his on screen image, which had him regularly
verbally abusing women and if not giving them black eyes,
then man handling, throwing them over shoulders, and generally putting
them in their place when necessary. So you know, Johnny, Wayne,
I really I just was so invested in this one.
I felt like, you know, it was going to be
the one. I like him. That quote was allegend horrible

(01:06:48):
things about the Duke, all right, Marian The Duke married
his third wife in nineteen fifty four. The two did
originally did eventually divorce. Worse um, they stayed in each
other's lives to some extent. She's interviewed after his death
and still speaks very highly of him. So again, these

(01:07:08):
are not to the extent that he was abusive. Everyone
he was with in the past doesn't speak negatively of him.
His kids all seem to speak positively of him. They
claim publicly he was a good father. Um. He was
in general a charming man and a good friend to
a number of people. More than that, he seems to
have just been kind of a magnetically charismatic person. And

(01:07:30):
it's easy to forgive certain things of people like that.
We do it as a society pretty much constantly. Also,
tall can we privilege does not hurt Um. In nineteen
seventy seven, when he turned seventy, an article in the
right wing journal Human Events tried to explain Wayne's a
lure as the fact that he represented a basic American breed,

(01:07:51):
the tall celt of pioneer Scott's Irish and English descent.
The book Jesus and John Wayne continues all of Wayne's
greatest hits and of valiant white men battling and usually
subduing non white populations, the Japanese, Native Americans or Mexicans
Like Teddy Roosevelt. Wayne's rugged masculinity was realized through violence,
and it was a distinctly white male ideal. Yeah, yep,

(01:08:15):
I feel like like groups today like those sort of yeah,
just like neo Nazi groups full of you know, sort
of virgins, Like they probably all get together and watch
old John Wayne movies and he was like a ha,
like on ironically some of the love that stuff. It's

(01:08:35):
more than just put his face on things, because modern
action movies are a lot better at keeping your attention.
And if you were to watch his latest movie, like
What's Funny the last movie he does, the Shootest, Like
the basic plot of The Shootest is there's this old
gunfighter who's dying of cancer like Wayne was kind of
at the time, uh, and he wants to engineer a
last gunfight to kill himself. Um. So he wants to

(01:08:56):
set up a situation whereby he can have a last
gunfight and die um because he otherwise cancer is going
to get him. And instead he gets shot in the
back and killed. Um. Which is like a weirdly show
like suggests a weird amount of self knowledge for John Wayne.
That like that's how that's the movie. He goes out
in this movie about uh uh this like manly ARCon

(01:09:17):
of like badass nous in his aging years, who's trying
to get in Like who's trying to set up one
last fight so he can die with dignity and get
shot in the back instead. It's interesting that he the
last thing he does. Yeah, right, because cancer, you know
it just like it's not a great way to go out. No,
it's it's a pretty shitty way to go out. Um

(01:09:40):
so Yeah. In his declining years, when he filmed again
some of his best movies, Wayne upped the anti on
his conservative rhetoric, screeching at cowards who spit in the
faces of the police and judicial sob sisters. Human Events
wrote that as a man, he has loathed and demeaned
by sanctimonious liberals and a whole mess of bug out
on America hip crits. But Wayne was top shelf with

(01:10:02):
freedom fans who thrilled to the big guy's charge. John Wayne.
Judicial system, What's what is that? A reference to people
who are angry that the criminal justice system in prisons
and murders innocent people. Oh, it's just like those pumpkin lilies. Yeah,
pumkin lilies. That's right, exactly, judicial pumpkin lily. So John

(01:10:25):
Wayne dies on June eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, of ask cancer.
He never lived to see the entirety of the world
he built come to fruition, But by nineteen seventy nine
the electoral power of the left had been solidly broken.
Not long after his death, Ronald Reagan, his old buddy,
would be elected president. He would be followed by George H. W. Bush,
and then the next Liberal president to follow would be

(01:10:47):
considerably further right than most Democrats had been in John
Wayne's day. There are numerous reasons for these shifts, which
we've discussed in many podcasts, but the seductive, intoxicating vision
of manhood which stuck in the heads of millions of
men who are still alive and voting today, played a
strong role. As Kristin Cobbs Dumez writes, John Wayne become

(01:11:07):
an icon, became an icon of rugged American manhood for
generations of Conservatives. Pat Buchanan perrotive Wayne in his presidential bid.
Newt Gingridge called Wayne's Sands of Iwajima the formative movie
of my life, and Oliver North echoed slogans from that
film in his nineteen Senate campaign. In time, Wayne would
also emerge as an icon of Christian masculinity. Evangelicals admired

(01:11:29):
and still admire him for his toughness and his swagger.
He protected the week, and he wouldn't let anything get
in the way of his pursuit of justice and order.
Wayne was not an evangelical Christian, despite rumors to this
effect regularly circulated by evangelicals themselves. He did not live
a moral life by the standards of traditional Christian virtue.
Yet for many evangelicals, Wayne would come to symbolize a

(01:11:49):
different set of virtues, a nostalgic yearning for a mythical
Christian America, a return to traditional gender roles, and the
reassertion of white patriarchal authority. Yes, so just back on
the ranch. None of these just sissy jobs, jobs, punkin lily,

(01:12:12):
content creators, TikTok dancers, casting pods and their basements can
weak ship? Where when can we conquer some ship? Let's
deconquer so we can reconquer the West. That's what I say,
decolonized to recolonize. Who's with me? America? Recolonized England? I

(01:12:39):
just we need Like this is why, um the show
that I don't watch Westworld, But that's why I like
that made sense because you're like, you need a simulation
for men who feel inferior to get their rocks off
in a safe place. Obviously, then the robots are sent ship.

(01:12:59):
That's bad. They don't want them to say, I only
watched the first season of that, which I did like,
but I'm not I understand it goes some places apparently,
you know, it's fine, but yeah, like you need Disneyland
for adults, yeah, yeah, and that John Wayne is a big,
a big help. He does a lot of work to

(01:13:20):
create this cultural Disneyland that's like mental vacation space we
have for white men. To imagine that there was a
time in which if I only been born, then I
would have been a real big man on the range.
You know, I would have been carving out a new America,
and I would have had a woman who loved me
and didn't have a career of her own, and everything
would have been perfect. Absolutely, And then but it was

(01:13:43):
just a few more years before, like you know, grunge
came around. It's thank god, Yeah, that did wonders for
angsty white men. Hell yeah. And then you know, suddenly,
well that's not cool anymore now. Masculinity's just it's so
willie Nilly, and we've got you know, Disney groomers or

(01:14:06):
whatever we're doing. Yeah, everything's gotten dumber since um um,
I yeah, it's I'm fascinating by that because I don't like,
I don't respond. I'm trying to think of like action
heroes that like I respond to, like where I get
like ting, where like spidy, like hell, I want to
be that. I don't have that, Like, was that Jean

(01:14:29):
claud for you? Was it so Stallone? Is it Schwartzenegger?
Who's the For me? It was? It was Bruce Willis
and die Hard? Right, that was the movie I saw
as a kid that was like, well and and actually
I'm honestly like much more than that. It was Indiana Jones, right,
I think for a lot of men in mind, like
that was the Harrison Ford of his peak that it's
a leading man right there, totally And he's but he's

(01:14:51):
kind of funny, right, He's got a little he's Yeah,
he's he's incredibly charming, cheeky. That's what he keeps getting
jail every time he crashed a plane into a golf course.
Nobody can get angry. Nobody can stay angry at Harrison Ford.
No exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Ford makes sense. Um,

(01:15:13):
also old, also kind of older. Yeah, for a lot
of his movies, he's got I mean, you know, he's pretty,
he's pretty young and swollen them Indiana Jones movies, but
not the most recent one. He was for the It's
very funny because if you watch the behind the scenes
for the second Indiana Jones movie, there's a ton about
like how intense his workout schedule was to get him

(01:15:34):
that jacked. And he's like he's like, he's like, he's
like the guy you would cast as like a skinny
office worker in a modern movie. But yeah, we didn't
know how to get people jacked back then. We weren't
as good at it. Modern Jack's technology just didn't exist. No,
that h g H just wasn't for We didn't know.
We didn't have as much h H we were gonna have.

(01:15:55):
I wonder what what what were we talking about? John Wayne?
And John Wayne would think about that, Bruce Wayne, Oh lord,
I mean, but you also did have this period because
like Indiana Jones is kind of like right before you
start to have this like all of these super jacked
action stars, that's when like Arnold and Stallone and and

(01:16:16):
damn uh and then they all give way to Bruce
Willis and Die Hard where it's like, now we're going
to have like the everyman badass, and then nine eleven happens. Uh,
and right now we have the Soldier bad and now
and now they're super jacked again. Yeah. Who got people
through the eighties that was like the Stallone's and the shorts. Yeah,

(01:16:39):
but well later okay, okay, yeah, alright, alright, late seventies,
late seventies, late seventies. You've got your Indiana Jones, and
you've got Dirty Harry. Right, you've got Clint Eastwood is
Dirty Harry where he's kind of like a skinny, wiry
due right, Clint count out. Can't clan out Clint Eastwood. Yeah, No,
there's plenty of chairs that a stern talking to look.

(01:17:02):
Masculinity is complex, is it? No? Not not really, not honestly,
not not very much at all. That's why it's so
easy for Hollywood to market too. Now, Robert, when you
watch like John Wayne movies, or is there part of
you that's like I get it, you know, You're like
I could see how this would be appealing. I think

(01:17:23):
some of his movies are really good, Um, like fucking
True Grits. A solid, solid film in a lot of ways.
I do. I do really like actually Um the remake
with Um the dude in it. But you know, yeah,
like as a kid, I watched a bunch of John
Wayne movies, like they're they're really well shot. I I've
always preferred more about the old Westerns. The way they're shot,

(01:17:46):
the way the music is directed, kind of like the
sense of rather than any of the specific dialogue or characters,
is like the kind of tone that they have. Yeah,
there's there's vibes that are very appealing in those movies,
in part because just a lot of really talented people
were making some very beautifully shot Western's beautifully shot propaganda.

(01:18:07):
But hey, but still share all artists propagandas or we
would would tell us, did he have fifty pounds of
meat in his intestine upon death? I don't know, Probably
I don't. I don't think there's any evidence of that.
But god damn, maybe you know maybe that let the

(01:18:30):
meat and zoom the body, but let the meat stuck
in John Wayne's corpse be the Santa clause of your
beliefs about karma. I don't really know what the message
would be if there is a lot of me. Be
the Gerbil in Richard Gear's asshole. Yeah, be the Gerbil
and Richard Gear's asshole. That's all. I think that's a
good line to end on. Everyone. Go out there, be

(01:18:53):
the Gerbil you want to see in Richard Gear's asshole.
You know. God, that's an that's an that's an old
Hollywood rumor, like a four people are going to remember
that such an old rumor. I think the lesson is
what is the You don't need um to subjugate people

(01:19:14):
of color or Japanese or Native Americans. Um. In order
to feel masculine and strong and powerful. Um, you might
need to serve your country. That might help. I don't
know if it's the one war where that's a good idea,
if it's the one war where it's good yeah, and

(01:19:36):
uh and and yeah. And also like I feel like
this all ended in Brokeback Mountain, Like Brokeback Mountain really
just that was it. It was like, oh, yeah, we
can't be stoic anymore because because Ennis, I don't know,
I think that's very stoic. That's a stoic gas movie.
It is a stoic aas movie. But I'm saying like,
like the the sort of the idea that you're like

(01:19:57):
that bottled up emotionally, you're like, man, I think maybe
you know, maybe maybe there's more going on here, Maybe
you're not fishing by the rivernity can be. This is
why I'm so excited about Pedro Pascal as a as
a male lead. A lot of exciting new visions of
manhood that Pedro Pascal is it is neat. I think
actually there is something to be said about the fact

(01:20:18):
that and you can say this probably maybe does start
with some of James Cameron's early stuff where you're you're
kind of idolizing a slightly more nurturing attitude towards a
male action star. I think that's one of the things
that's interesting about The Mandalorian, which has been a big hit,
is there is like that is a big emphasis. You've
got this like badass gun slinger, but who's also defined
in large part due to his like desire to nurture

(01:20:40):
a child um which is not a negative not a
negative change. And and yeah, there's an emotional journey and
that is a space Western. So right, that's pretty fun space.
I enjoy that series quite a lot. I guess when
I when I really think John Wayne's legacy died is
probably Little nos X, old town Road, m assless chaps,

(01:21:03):
openly gay, proud as hell, and crushing it. Hell yeah,
well yeah, so until next time, dig up the corpse
of John Wayne and mail his bones to Little nos X.
That's I love this. This is a good project. And
I again Little nos X loves a trigger the right,

(01:21:24):
so I bet he will remake one of these films
dressed in the bones of John Wayne, wearing his rib
cage like a corset fante. So you have any plugs
for us at the end here after that, it's amazing. Um,
oh my god. Everyone check out the Bituation Room podcast.
It's a weekly podcast with comedians and myself and activist experts.

(01:21:47):
It's a good time. And yeah listen, yeah, all right again,
go defile the grave of John Wayne. Where is that grave? Oh,
that's a great question. Where is John Wayne's I want
the address Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach. Ah,

(01:22:13):
that's on brand? Are you about to say? Of course
it's Newport. It's definitely Newport Beach. Well, yeah, a little
slice of red over in this southern California blue I guess.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I'm sure we are not the
only ones to have located where he is buried us

(01:22:37):
in order to steal his bones and give them to
little Nozax so he can turn them into a corset. Yes,
I like that he's dead. Yeah, um, good riddens. May
we never have someone who plagues the American consciousness so
horribly um, to the point where we're still we're just

(01:22:58):
waiting for the John Wayne generations to die off. Thank God, well,
thank you. This is great. H m hmm.