Episode 60 - The Man who shot Liberty Valance (Not a John Wayne Western) - Middle Age Movie Reviews Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Electronic Media Collective podcast network. Yeah,
it's a mouthful. For more great shows like the one
you're about to enjoy, visit Electronicmedia Collective dot com and
now our feature presentation.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, Welcome to the Middle Aged Movies Podcast. Two guys
saying the bar is closed during voting? Why that's Karen
Democracy much too far? My name is Tim and my podcasting.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Partner is Matt.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
All Right, Matt, why don't you tell us what movie
we're watching at the movie house this evening?

Speaker 4 (00:43):
Tonight? We're watching the nineteen sixty two movie The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance number four hundred and two from
the Book of one thousand and one Movies You Should
Watch Before You Die, written by James Warner, Bella Willis Goldbeck,
and Dorothy M. Johnson, directed by the Miss john Ford,
and starring John Wayne, James Stewart, and Vera Miles. All Right, Tim, Well,

(01:08):
normally this is where I would tell Joey, Hey, when
was the first time you watched this movie?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
But he's not here tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
It's just you and I.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Man, we're gonna be talking about cowboys tonight. So, Tim,
when was the first time you saw Liberty Valance.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Actually, this is the first time I've ever watched The
Man Who Shot Liberty Balance. I watched a ton of
John Wayne movies. I'm not gonna say I've watched everyone,
because there's a lot of early early stuff that I
probably will never bother watching because it's really bad. But
I thought i'd seen all the prominent ones, but this
one somehow has eluded me up until now. So I
was pretty excited to, you know, have an actual new

(01:42):
John Wayne movie experience. So this was, like I said,
the first time, and yeah, it's gonna be fun to
talk about sweet.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
Well, you know what, I actually heard about The Man
Who Shot Liberty Balance back in high school. I read
it as part of a high school curriculum. But I've
never seen this movie before. I mean I've seen like
highlights and snippets of it, but I've never sat down
and watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance. So this
was kind of a new one for me. I'm actually
looking forward to this because a lot of Westerns is

(02:10):
a huge white space for me. I really didn't follow
a whole lot of Westerns growing up. It wasn't something
that was part of my normal doing. So I'm really
looking forward to talking about this with you and getting
your insights on John Wayne and James Stewart. And I
got to say, I definitely heard a lot of John
wayneism's like, hey, Pilgrim, how's it going there, partner?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Actually, the best interesting part is this is the first
movie where he uses the pilgrim really, yeah, yeah, this
is where it stems from. And he uses it again thereafter,
but yeah, this is the Pinnacle movie. This is where
the Pilgrim began.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
All right, all right? Cool?

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Yeah, because he uses it quite frequently in here.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
And I've actually not surprised that you're not a big
Western guy. That's kind of a white space for you,
because again, as we talked about in our last episode
of The Empire strikes Back, I think it's when were
you born thing. I've often referenced the whole toy store
thing with Andy. You know, he's all about Woody and
everything until he seemed to buzz light Year and then
it was all over and he became all about space.

(03:07):
That's the generation where you grew up at. I was
there just long enough that cowboys and Indians were still
the thing, you know what I mean? So I think
I was far more entrenched into that because I remember
having the big twelve inch before they had the little
three and a quarter inch figures that you could buy
like that, you know, when it had the twelve and
sit I Joe, they had a lot of the twelve
inch marked cowboy and Indian action figures that you would

(03:28):
play with. It was basically like the boys version of
the Barbie. I hate to say it that way, but yeah,
you have cowboys and Indians and all that kind of stuff.
Plus Marx also made a lot of the really cool
you know how he had the little plastic army men.
There used to be a lot of plastic cowboys and
Indians and they actually had sets for those back then,
so you buy Ford Apache or Robbery at Red River

(03:48):
Run and things like that. So there was a lot
of these little placets you could buy, and the plastic
figures were much more intricate back then, a lot more
poses and stuff, and there was actual real cavalry and cowboys,
and yeah, it was it was pretty cool. So again,
I think it's a generational thing, so be interesting to
get your take on it since you know kind of
grow up in that era.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Right, Yeah, I mean, I will admit that I've had
a few of the plastic cowwait action figures and a
few of the tomahawk wielden Indians and bucking Bronco here there,
but Westerns weren't part of my background growing up. All right, well,
since you're our john Ford this evening, why don't you
lay it on our listeners as to what you want
to hear for our synopsis tonight?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Okay, Well, I spent a lot of time being this character,
myself or this actor, most prominently probably during our rights.
It was a wonderful life. So I would like you
for the first time to read this synopsis as Jimmy
Stewart in the Senator Ransom Strid role.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
All right, well, you know this is our third Jimmy
Stewart movie. I guess it's about time that uh, I
gave you my my, my, my best James James Stewart.
So well, well, now now let's let's see uh nerrors
as I I can, I can remember. Uh.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
The start was was when I when I obeyed Horace
Greeley's advice to go watch young Man and and fresh
from college with my ideals and law degree, I chose
to find my place out west in the little town
called Shinbone. But before I could arrive, my stagecoach was
held up by Liberty Balance in his gang, threatening legal retribution.

(05:24):
Bolenced mercilessly beat me and left me for dead. A
cattle rancher named Tom Donovan rescued me and brought me
to his girl, Hallie's home to be mended. I planned
to take legal action against Balance, but the local sheriff
refused to help due to his cowardice, and Tom informs

(05:45):
me that the original justice is in shin Bone is
from the barrel of a loaded gun. But uh uh, undeterred,
I settled down in town life and started my practice
with waiting tables and stablishing a school and and secretly
practicing with my gun. Balance continues to terrorized Shinbone and

(06:07):
is hired by some local cattle men to stop the
locals from sending delegates to the territorial capital to vote
for statehood. And and with that law in order, I'm
elected to represent Shinbone instead of Balance, and furiated, he
calls me out for a gunfight. You know, somehow I
managed to shoot and kill Liberty Balance, which kicks off

(06:30):
my political career. But the truth of the matter lies
with my friend Tom and the ugly truth that I've
had to live with my entire life.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
After Matthew, after the Welcome to the Jimmy Stewart Club,
We're happy.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Happened to welcome you to the club. We thank you.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
Oh yeah, that's what I've got. So well, let's let's
take this moment to dive into the man who shot
Liberty Bounce.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
All right, So, right off.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
The bat, we're introduced in this movie to Senator Ransom
and his wife Hallie. Were kind of told this movie
in a very Quentin Tarantino esque flashback sequence, but it's
actually done literally and not haphazardly. So I gotta say,
using the story troll, the idea that we're gonna look

(07:29):
back with the flashback to the whole movie kind of
bookends the whole thing to start it off.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
And I noticed that this is probably something that hadn't really.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Been done all that much just yet in Hollywood in
the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I don't know if this is the first time they've
used a flashback or anything like that. I'm not a
connosseaner that era of film to know. I'd be surprised
if it was but I don't know if it was
widely used, but I did the math. I think if
you start to put together all his credentials to tours
as a US senator, he was governor, appointed as the
Court of Saint James, and a senator against stuff like that,

(08:02):
I think it's probably about thirty years from when he
shows up to when the story actually happens.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
I was clocking in about twenty five, so yeah, i'd
say somewhere on there. And I gotta say I liked
how they managed to add the makeup.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
And maybe because.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
It's shot in black and white, you know, and you
don't have the whole four k look to everything where
you can kind of see the subtleness of the makeup.
But because of the film grain, because of how it looks,
you get the impression that he looks older in the
beginning of the movie.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
See. I think it's the reverse of that, though, because
if you look at when this was actually made, your
first question out of the gate is why is this
in black and white? So there's two trains of thought
on that. One was the studio was just cheap and
they were trying to save money, and they said, look,
if you want to film this one, you have to
do it black and white, and two it has to
be in a production studio. The other theory is that

(08:50):
since John Wayne and Stuart were so old, and they're
supposed to be playing men at least twenty year younger
than they were, not even younger than that, right, they
were able to hide it better in black and white.
So I think when you see Jimmy's Stuart at the beginning,
that's really how he I mean, they did his hair
up a little bit more. I think, you know, they
gave him some streaks and things like that. But yeah,
and I think they probably make up them the rest

(09:10):
of the time to try and make them look younger.
In fact, Ford wanted to have somebody other than Stuart
play that role, but he was afraid that would make
John Wayne look too old. So that's why he's stuck
with Stuart to do that. So yeah, I think you're right,
but I think it's the opposite direction.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Well, however they did it.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
I think it really works. And I think what really
tells it is looking at his wife Haley. You know,
when she's writing in the wagon when they first arrived
in town. They made her look older. Because she's definitely
a younger woman in this movie.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, they do a lot of that trickery throughout this
because a lot of these actors are all overplace. In fact,
one of them and I'm going to jump ahead just
because we're on the topic of it right now and
it probably really won't come up again. Is that. Do
you remember when he's teaching everybody to read in his
little classroom and they bring into one kid with the
fishing pole?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yes, no, no, it's not And.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
That's the same one John Wayne picks up later on.
It is like, you're too young to be here. Leave right. Yeah,
take a guess how that guy is.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
He looked like he was in his forties.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
He's in his fifties. Oh geez, playing a teenager. Yeah yeah,
I was like, why would you just find yourself a teenager?
It's just it's the craziest thing. I think it goes
back again to the whole casting thing, like who do
you got? You know, we've talked about that in Vertigo,
where the studios got these people and retainers right. And
Ford was also angry. Even though he's done a ton
of movies with John Wayne and he'll do more, He's

(10:32):
mad because the studio said you have to have John
Wayne in this one, and Ford does not want to
be told anything at this point. He's a crotchety old man. Yeah,
and he's like, how I'd be damned people are going
to tell me how to make a film, and you
know who I have to have in it, and this that,
and you know there's so uh yeah, it's kind of interesting.
But he was very aggregated that they put John Wayne
because he was on studio retainer, like, this is his

(10:53):
next movie, so figure it out.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Speaking of John Ford, you know, I really like the
fact that this is the first John Ford film I
get to watch because he has like one hundred and
seventy four total film credits. I mean, he's been directing
movies since like nineteen thirteen.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
I want to say, oh, yeah, no, nineteen.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Thirty two, that's not about right, Yeah, no, no, nineteen seventeen.
His first film is The Tornado in nineteen seventeen.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
So I mean at this time, he's got forty fifty
years somewhere around there of all these directing credits. So
he's basically Hollywood royalty right now. He's got a plethora
of films underneath his belt, and this.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Is the first one you've seen. Yeah, so you've never
seen the Quiet Man?

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Never saw the Quiet Man?

Speaker 2 (11:31):
How about Rio Grande? Nope, you're really not a Western guy. Huh.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Okay, I am not a Western guy. Okay.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
The equivalent of the Quiet Man I've seen was in
the movie et.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Okay, it's about the extent I've seen of the Quiet Man.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
So yeah, going into this, I mean, I can count
on my hand how many Westerns I've seen. A majority
of them are Clint Eastwood films.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Okay, how about the Battle of Midway? No, oh, Matthew.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Ok That's why I'm looking forward to this podcast, just
so we can cover a lot of John Wayne because, okay,
I will take that back. There is one John Wayne
movie that I saw. It's probably my favorite John Wayne movie.
It's the only one I've ever seen, and that's the shootest.
It was his last one. Okay, and even then it
had Jimmy Stewart in it too.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, they did several movies together, So Okay, that's interesting. Yeah,
I can't believe you've never seen a John Ford movie
and only one other John Wayne movie. Yeah, Like, wow,
I didn't think that was possible, but I guess I'm
showing my age a little now.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Ah well, you know, well, when you're ready, I have
a lot of them.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
We could probably start on a Friday night and go
all the way through to Sunday evening. Watch Not Stop
John Wayne.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Maybe we should do an entire year of John Wayne movies.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
We probably could do six months of solid, good John
Wayne movies, let's put it that way. Yeah, and then
after that we're going to start getting to the sketchy,
you know, spaghetti westerns that it were a little horror
questionable his early career stuff.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Well, since we're kind of talking about the characters.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
I just want to point out this movie has a
huge amount of star power. Oh yeah, got Lee Marvin.
We've got Levan Cleef. I remember him from the spaghetti
Westerns with Clint Eastwood, and.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
He's just gonna start those like right after this one.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yeah, I'm like, wow, you know, to me, he's kind
of a big figurehead in westerns and in a certain
TV series of ninjas I used to watch when I
was a kid.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Oh, I forgot he was in that. Yeah, yeah, what
was the name of that?

Speaker 4 (13:21):
It's not American Ninja. I can't remember what it is, Okay,
all right, but yeah, so you know, and then we
got Lee Marvin starring as the main bad guy.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
We've got got Andy Devine. Yeah, not a huge star,
but you still know him.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
He's in a lot of Westerns and stuff, and he's
got that voice. And if you don't know him in Westerns,
you know you've heard his voice in Disney. Yes, he's
been the voice of a lot of characters in Disney.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
Right, and since you mentioned it, okay, he was the
Friar Tuck in Robin Hood.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Now I'm gonna asks to go back a little bit.
When we covered the Jungle Book, you had mentioned how
the voice of Blue was supposed to be originally John Wayne,
but instead they had another actor do it. Actor does
the voice of Little John. And so here we have
Adam Devine doing the voice of Friar Tuck and the
gentleman who did the voice of Blue, who was supposed

(14:09):
to originally John Wayne, both in this cartoon. It's like,
how crazy sliding doors kind of thing. How crazy would
have been to have John Wayne doing the voice of
Little John as well as Adam Divide it would be
the man who shot Liberty Valance Part two, you know,
right right?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah? Who else do we have? Edmond O'Brien. I think
we see him in quite a few things too. He
shows up. I'm not as familiar, but enough that I
seen him, Like, oh yeah, I know who that is.
You know, I've seen him in other things.

Speaker 5 (14:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
And the gentleman who plays Pompey, Oh yeah, wood he Strode.
He shows up in a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
He's originally a football player, yeah, and turns actor. I
think he was in like was it Spartacus.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
And then of course we can't forget the father of
the great Carrodine clan, John Carodine, who's you know, his
sons go off and to have their fantastic career, especially
uh David Carradine with you know, Kill Bill and Kung
Fu and John you know, he's basically right up the
with John Wayne.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
A lot of star power in this movie, I mean huge.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
I don't consider it to be one of the bigger westerns.
I'll say that straight out right now. When I watched
this and got all way through, I really thought, why
is this John Wayne movie in here and not so
many of the others, Because there's so many better John
Wayne movies. Okay, not that this is a bad movie,
but it's not the better John Wayne movie and John Ford.

(15:25):
I mean, tell there's better John Wayne john Ford movies together.
I would put The Searchers up here first, or The
Quiet Man. Those are two of my absolute favorite John
Wayne movies. I would put both of those up here before.
I would probably put this one. Gotch and I feel
like they encompass the Old West much more significantly. Since
they shot this on a studio, I felt it took

(15:46):
away that big Western feel like so many of Ford's
earlier and even later films will have, didn't.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Have the scope I think is what you're looking for.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yes, scope scope, Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
I think the reason why this is in the book,
and this is purely speculation on my part, but it's
because it's got the classic archetype of good versus evil,
standing up for yourself, standing up for law and goodness.
And I'm gonna give a wink and a nod to
Stan Lee over at Marvel Comics.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
But it also taps into.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
That classic Daredevil Matt Murdoch kind of justice. You know,
he can't sell it using the laws so he's gonna
step out and fight the bad guys with a costume
on or in this case, you know, an apron.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
I know where you're going with it, but I'd have
to disagree a little bit. When I think about this movie,
it kind of analyze. I mean, first of all, for
a movie that has John Wayne in it, this is
really a lesser role for John Wayne, even though he
kind of gets top billing in this. It's really a
Jimmy Stewart movie.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, and it's more of.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
A turn a century. What year did they say what
year this movie was supposed to be in?

Speaker 4 (16:51):
It doesn't say what state it's set in, because it's
still considered the open range. It's the territorial area. So
I'm thinking this is like the late eighteen hundreds, like
definitely before the turn of the century. We're probably looking
at when Texas hadn't quite been established as a state yet, right,
definitely that period, because when he arrives on the train,
we're much later in the timeline. We're probably closer to

(17:13):
the nineteen twenties than we are to the eighteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I think it's somewhere around nineteen ten the state that
I think that they're in is Colorado. And the reason
that I think that they're in Colorado is because he
talks about being the toughest man south of the Pickwire,
and the Pickwire refers to the Purgatoire River, which flows
into Arkansas, so that would make this the Colorado Territory.

(17:39):
And they're voting for Colorado statehood. So I think it's
not really a true Western. It is a transitional where
cowboys are getting phased out and civilization is starting to
come in. Okay, because we clearly see that when Jimmy
Stuart returns, he doesn't come by stage coach. He comes
by the train because the train's in there now in
the town's much more developed than everything. And so I

(18:02):
think what we're seeing is kind of the phase out
of the cowboy at this point, the great stories and
escapades of the Old West art becoming a thing of
the past. And so John Wade really kind of plays
a back role. And even he said that he was
kind of lost, he didn't know what to do with
this character because he felt like he was just there
to help move the story along, and the story is
really about Jimmy Stewart and Jimmy Stewart's not interested in

(18:23):
wearing a six shooter on his hip, you know, and
being a rough, tough guy, even though we'll kind of
see that later on. He's kind of forced his hand
into it a little bit, but he wants to bring
law and order to this town and he wants to
get back at the person who will do him wrong
through courts.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
So, when I look at this, I don't look at
it as much of a Western, as kind of a
transitional So I'm thinking maybe that's why it's in the book,
because you don't get a lot of those. I feel
like the way the movies go most of the time,
it's either we're in the Old West or we're in
the Roaring twenties. There's that blank space that from probably
about the eighteen nineties to the nineteen tens where a

(19:01):
lot a lot of movies are made in there. Once
you get to that point, maybe we're getting more towards
like gangs in New York, where it's like people coming
into New York and they're building the cities and things
like that up a little bit, but damn quite hit
the al capone stage yet. Yeah, again, I feel very
much a transitional post Western early modernization movie.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
I think we've seen some of that with The Wild
Bunch too, because that was kind of set in the
same period.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, exactly. In fact that the guns and that I
think a point out gave away because they're using cult
nineteen elevens, which were created in nineteen eleven, right, and
it's right at the World War One, So yeah, that
would be in that era as well.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Well.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Now that we've kind of led into some of it,
let's go ahead and just I'll kind of run through
a little bit of the opening there. So near the
twentieth century, US Senator Ransom Rant Stoddard and his wife
Haley arrived in Shinbone, frontier town in an unnamed western
state which Tim clearly thinks it's Colorado, to attend the
funeral of Tom Donathan. When asked by the local news

(19:57):
reporter why a senator would attend the funeral for Rancher,
Stutter answers with a story that flashes back from twenty
five years ago.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
It is neat that when.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
He first came out, he was in a stage coach,
so they use the exact same stage coach they used
later on, and he's sitting there and he's wiping the
dust off the old stage coat and goes, well, well,
now this could be well, I do think it is
the exact same stage coach I showed up Ben, And
it's just interesting that he just happens to be in
the spot. He starts talking about the story to kind

(20:29):
of launch us into this flashback sequence for the movie.
And I gotta say, I really like the whole trope
of the flashback because it definitely helps establish the characters
of the story, because I mean, we get our main
characters right off the bat, and now here we're getting
into the full bale part of the story.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I mean, it's interesting the way they set it up
where it's still big news. You know. Oh, a cender
comes to down. Something must be afoot with the scoop
and he's like, I'm just here for the funeral of
a friend, and they're all kind of sitting there. He's like,
that's not good enough. My readers have a right to
know if you're here, it's big news. Yeah, we hear
about senators today were like, eh, who cares. But I
mean it was such a huge deal that he shows

(21:05):
up in this little nowhere town to attend the funeral
of this poor candleman that it's a major scoop and
like I must have my readers must know. Instead of
May being really bad about it, instead of him being angry,
he's like, well, I guess duty calls. Let me sit
down and I'll tell you this story. I don't know
why you would do that. As a person, you'd be like, look,
I'm here for the funeral of a friend, Like, why

(21:27):
would you be bothering me? I don't know if it's
the times, but it's an interesting way to start the story,
but it doesn't make any sense. I just don't see
anybody in their right mind like putting up with that.
You'd be like, get out of my face. I'm here
to pay my respects. You need to be respectful of that.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
I think part of it too, though, is it kind
of explains the character of Rants. I think he likes
being a senator to make change for the common man.
I think he's kind of is the ideal that most
senators were at that time, or what senators should be like.
And it is kind of neat showing what a journals
was like back then.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
I wonder if it wasn't merely the fact that he's
been holding the secret all these years, and he finally
wants to a get off his chest and to have
them understand the true significance of this man and what
his role has played, not only getting Straw to where
he's at today, but what he did for this town

(22:22):
on Colorado as a whole.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah, you know, you might be right through because there's
several instances throughout the movie where I feel like there's
some subtle ulterior motives going on to how Stoddard makes
his choices in this and I think you might hit
something there with that. So anyway, going back into the
story a little bit, so, entering the unincorporated territory as
a young lawyer, Rants is beaten and robbed by the
infamous outlaw Liberty Balance and his gang. Now what I

(22:45):
thought was interesting about this is just the way they
held up the stage coach. I thought it was interesting
character wise. The gang manages to get the throwing box off,
they get all the people out of the stage coach,
and they start robbing them, taking their wallets and everything.
And I find it funny that at that point Liberty
Balance steps back and then his partner played by Lee
lan Cleef, is the one stripping all of the Walts

(23:06):
and stuff, and Jimmy Stewart immediately becomes a hero when
Lee Van Cleef is harassing an old lady, and Liberty
balance to such a step back because I figured he
would have been more than got to rough everybody up.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
I think this is interesting because this is where Lee
Marvin and where Jimmy Stewart kind of finally get a
grasp with their character because both of them, as well
as Wayne, which I find it strange because their characters
are so much more solid, couldn't get a grasp on
it first. Lee Marvin was really struggling to try to
get into the head of Liberty Valance, and he just

(23:39):
kind of was flubbing it, wasn't really doing it well.
And john Ford, he doesn't like to do a lot
of takes. He's a very no nonsense kind of director.
He likes people to get in to know what their
part is, to know what their lines is. He does
minimal takes because he says if you do them over
and over again, the actors get antsy, they lose interest,
and you get waning performances on there. I guess he

(24:00):
kind of had a little trope of actors that he
liked to use because they knew exactly what to expect
when they worked with him, So he liked to have
kind of the same people over and over, which Jimmy
Stewart was one of them. John Wayne was another one.
So to get Lee Marvin into it, he finally got
agitated and he went up and told the stagecoach driver,
when he starts asking for that, don't give it to him.

(24:22):
You know, the actor was literally intagginggnizing Leeve Marvin the
whole time, and Lee Marvin's finally like, give me the
box and now, you know, like the extreams of that
or whatever, And that's finally when he got the character.
And then James Stewart was having a hard time getting
his head wrapped around his character. And then finally, I
guess Ford just walks over in between takes it says
you're not afraid, You're not afraid, You're not afraid, and

(24:43):
then Jimmy Steart's like, you're right, you're right, I'm not afraid.
Once he realized that, he realized his job was to
not fear liberty, balance to you know, use the rule
of law as his shield and to try to stand
up against his bully and that's what finally put him
into the proper headspace for his character as well. Right,
I thought it was entertaining that they go to all
the trouble, you know, the Liberty Valance Gang, to cover

(25:05):
their faces and everything, and then they robber and they
take your stuff, and then he takes his mask off
and he starts taunting them. It's like, I guess he
just doesn't care, you know, because he lets everybody else go.
They take two of the horses, put him on there,
send them on their way, except for Ransom Straw, who
he's agitated now because he's threatened legal action against him,
so he's going to teach him. And I guess that
whip must be a hull of a whip, because supposedly

(25:27):
he just kills people with that thing all the time.
He just whips the crap out him. And I don't
know if he's supposed to be supposed to kill him
per se with the whip as much as just beat
him and leave him for dead out in the desert,
which would happen because no water, you're beat up, your
bloody things like that, you're probably not going to make
it back to town.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
I also thought it was.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Kind of neat they cut the lead horses and they
take off, and I was wondering, you know, why do
they do that? And then later as I was researching it,
so the lead horses were always the ones that were
just a little bit faster. They were the ones that
set the pace for the stagecoach. So by cutting the
lead horle horses, that actually slows the stage coach down
because they don't have the extra ones in front that
create the pace that gives you that higher speed or whatever.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
So I thought it was clever.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
By cutting the lead horses. It caused the stage coach
to have to show much later, which allowed them to
get plenty of time to get to their hideout, because
then they wouldn't have been able to get to the marshal.
The marshall would then have had to gather up a
posse and go get them, had it been a real marshal.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
But the funny part is that they don't even care,
Like they show their faces. Everybody knows it's them exactly.
And then when they get in town, you know what
does the marshall do. It's like, well, I'm just the
marshal of the town. Anything they do outside of town,
none of that's my responsibility. I can't helpe it. That's
just no man's land. You're on your home.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
So I don't even know why he would cut those off.
I mean, I agree with you. They definitely took it
down from a four cylinder to two cylinder, you know,
you are, so it go much slower. But it makes
no sense when you think about it. I thought maybe
they did it so they could steal two of the
four horses.

Speaker 4 (26:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
But he even doesn't care about killing people. He doesn't
care about getting caught. And you hear people later on
or always like, oh, another one of those accidents, Liberty,
So he's already got that reputation. It's kind of a
big issue with the storyline and the plot to me.
But again, I think we're thinking a little too deep
for what it is, right, or at least I'm thinking
a little too deep for what it is.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Maybe not you right.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
Well, in the next scene, we're introduced to John Wayne,
which you would think that when we were into John
Wayne would be like this huge, big scene, you know,
But no, he comes right into town on a buck
back with Pompey and they say, hey, we came across
this poor man who saving an old woman on the
stage coach, and that's when we're used to Hollie. We're
introduced to Ericson, the owner of the steakhouse, We're introduced

(27:39):
to his wife. We get a lot of characters just
like crammed into this little house while Haley's taking care
of rants. And I just thought it was neat that
this part here felt to me like a classic two
act play or three act play where you have all
the characters coming in and giving us all the exposition
while doing the action. It felt like a performance.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
You're right, it is very stage play now that I
think about it. Yeah, it's introduced a bunch of these characters.
Everybody's kind of got their place set up the stage
for the rest of the film. Yeah, you know, bring
in the dock, bring in the sheriff, they're all. You know,
all the characters are gonna show up. Now we're gonna
get introduced to everybody. Yeah, it's you're right, is it's
really stage play and we're well past that, I think
as far as Hollywood movies go, I mean, we kind

(28:23):
of talked about this in the past and some of
the other ones where some of the movies still fill
a little cross between stage play and movie movie. But
I think we're in solid movie territory now. I mean
we're you know, we're well into the sixties with this one,
so it's kind of strange that they're kind of going
back to that. But maybe again he felt the need
to do that because he's on a sound stage with

(28:43):
probably limited buildings to use, because really, you think about it,
there's the hold up area, there's the mortician slash cabinet
maker slash funny repair guy. Right, We've got pizza restaurant
or whatever it's called, the bar, then the shimbone star
of the paper, and then we've got uh, basically wherever
they're sitting to talk about. Oh, I guess that's back

(29:03):
at the again the cabinet maker's place or whatever. So yeah, yeah,
so we've really got like five stages they're work there,
five you know sets that they're working off of. The
that's it. I mean, we're not getting a whole lot,
and then the open street. That's it.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
The fact that this felt like a play performance, I
think it definitely shows the acting chops of our actors.
Because John Wayne fills the screen, fills the space with
his character. He's got his swagger that's iconic with him,
and it's like he's acting, but he's also John Wayne.
It's an interesting performance coming out of him and I kind.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Of like it.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
But in the same sense if somebody else, like today,
would do that, like Tom Cruise. You know, you watch
Tom Cruise movie. Tom Cruise only has one character, Tom Cruise,
right right.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
The thing about John Wayne is he's the duke. John
Wayne is bigger than life. I mean, even to this day.
The guy hasn't made movies how many years, Although I
understand the Western is a waning thing, but everybody still
knows who John Wayne is. Everybody knows the swagger, everybody
knows the cadence, you know, the whole deal. Like when
that guy enters a room, he enters like a hurricane.

(30:05):
He doesn't have to say anything. He's just gotta kind
of give that look, make that stance that he makes.
It's a huge performance. He brings a lot of weight
to any character that he plays because he's just a
cult of personality and that's what makes him so great.
Everything he does is just so much bigger than life
because he's just so much bigger than life.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
And it's interesting because you take that performance, and then
you look at the character of Applegate our Marshall, and
he's like the complete opposite of John Wayne. First thing
he does after he finds out about Ransom, he's like, oh, well,
you know, it's outside of my territory.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's not my jurisdiction. You can tell it.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
He's a yellow belly. He's afraid to stand up for
anybody in the town because he doesn't want to killed
or shot.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
He's like the world's biggest scared field mouse. I don't
know how is riting. Yeah, if you drew as a
Disney character as the sheriff, he would be like a
rat or a mouse. Yeah, just scared, scared to death
all the time.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
Which is funny because if I remember right in the
Disney Robin Hood, Friar Tuck was a rat or a
shrew or something. He had like elongated nose.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah, that kind of fits.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Maybe that's where my association comes from, or maybe that's
just natural people look at and go rodent.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Either that's just universally recognized when you look at that man,
or I just remembered it. I don't know which.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Lastly, I like how in this sequence James Stewart is
sitting there and not nearly as grandiose as John Wayne.
He kind of downplays it. He's portrayed himself as younger,
kind of a little inexperienced, and I think that really
plays in this whole scene. With everything that's going on
in this room, we're seeing all the different characters, they're
all interacting, they're all kind of putting their stamp on

(31:45):
the character. They've kind of fit into these spots like
a well worn shoe.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
I think, if you're gonna break it down, the biggest
difference is you've got Ransom, who's this idealist. He's come
out here with all these thoughts on the way that
the world works and how it should work in a
civilized society. And you've got John Wayne, who's this bigger
than like cowboy, who's very much a pessimist. He's like,
you can do whatever you want, but you want justice.
It's at the end of a loaded gun. Yeah, that's

(32:12):
how this works. So they contrast each other. Jamester he's
the boy scout. He's absolutely the boy scouted this, you know,
and John is just like, you're just gonna get yourself
killed if you want to make a difference. You were
either pick up a gun and learn how to use it,
or you get out of town before we have to
build you a pine box. You know, those are your
only choices out here. There's no gray area, there's no law.

(32:33):
You want to stop this guy, you're gonna have to
do it yourself. He owns this town, and he does.
And then he got Liberty Balance himself. He's a scoundrel.
He's mean, angry, he has no regard for anybody or anything,
does whatever the hell he wants. He's playing the protagonist
through and through. And he's got his loyal henchman, Lee
van Cleefan there as he's just as mean and honree
as Liberty Balance is. There's that other guy that goes

(32:55):
around and he just likes watching people in pain. At
one point, Liberty Balance is tooling up in somebody. He's
just like, yeah, it's like watching like beaves and my head, like,
you know, just they're all into it, Floyd. And then
you got the typical conflicted girlfriend. Now, yeah, because John
Wayne inadvertently has introduced her to another man who she
finds intriguing.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
I wouldn't say she has Florence Nightingale syndrome.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
If she finds him a bright, shiny new object that
she becomes infatuated with. But you know, they start to
develop a relationship, and to kind of go back to
Tom's relationship with Halle, kind of giving that that idea
that hey, you know, I kind of like you. But
you know, he hasn't flat out told her, and I
think that's what brings tension between the three of them,
you know, because he just hadn't come out flat out

(33:40):
and told her, Hey, I like you.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
I'd actually agree with that because it's one of those
everybody in town knows that Halle is Tom Donovan's girl, right,
but Tom Donovan's gonna court her on Tom Donovan's terms.
It's kind of not doing himself any favors.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
I think he's got that whole idea that he's the
greatest catch in the town. Obviously he's the toughest guy,
so he knows that Halley will eventually be his.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah, I don't know quite what he's waiting for, because
he's obviously got plans. Yeah, he's made this master plan
in his head. He's got a timeline, but he's failed
to engage and include her in the thought process.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Right, Yeah, it would almost be borderline stalker ish the
way that he hasn't set up in his head.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, maybe little.

Speaker 4 (34:24):
I mean, he's building this whole o the room on
his ranch for her, and it kind of like goes
back to the hole when the couple was arranged to
be married, the man would go off seek his fortune
and he would prepare a place for his bride. And
I think that's kind of the mentality that Tom Donothan has,
is that he's going to prepare a house for her
before she knows that he wants to be with her.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
I think maybe you're right. I think he's trying to
get himself established so that he can offer her the home.
I think you hit it totally right there.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
So, And of course, you know, with Tom Donathan kind
of being the hero of the town, he's basically acting
almost like a mayor of the town or even what
the marshals should be doing at this point. And I
think that you would have had the marshal at some
point in his career say look, Tom, clearly you're better
at this than I am. Why don't you take the star?
You be the marshal because I'm worthless. I barely tell

(35:14):
people what to do around the town. I'm hiding behind
signs whenever Liberty Balance Go shows up.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
I don't think so, because I think Tom's not gonna
be a guy that's gonna do anything that he doesn't
want to do, and everybody knows that about him. And
as we discovered later, the Marshall's got a couple awards. Yeah,
he seems I have some serious dependence on it. But
he doesn't carry a gun. So I don't think anybody
else in that town is really a problem. He doesn't
really have to do anything real. The only time he

(35:41):
has to worry is when Valance and his guys show up,
and when they show up, he just disappears. But otherwise
it's a pretty easy gig. Everybody's pretty civil in the town,
and he gets to collect the paycheck, ed tries to
get free food whatever else it can from everybody.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
So, yeah, hey, can I get two of them steaks
and some potatoes.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Because as we'll see later, they keep track of that.
They got a whole board of things that he keeps asking.
They just keep checking off.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah, So Tom's definitely you know, throwing his weight around,
kind of told everybody what they should do. He's already
offered the Ericson's place for Rance. France, he helps out
the Ericson's first room and board, washing dishes. He discovers
that Haley is illiterate, and he decides that he's going
to teach her how to read. It causes at tension
between the two and I don't really think it's a

(36:26):
good idea for you to teach her. I don't see
how it's gonna benefit her, and you know, he's kind
of taken.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Aback by it.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
It's interesting that we kind of start to see this
whole relationship between the three of them. You know, Haley's
starting to like Rants more, but he's kind of button
heads a little bit with Tom. He really hasn't been
able to, I don't know, connect with Tom on any
level in.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
The story so far.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
And I think it's interesting that at this point, when
there's still a bit of a contention, that's when Tom
kind of really steps up and saves Rance's life. When
Liberty Balance shows up to the steakhouse. I got the
impression that this was probably the turning point in their relationship,
because Liberty Balance comes in and pretty much picks a

(37:10):
fight with Rants, trips them, causes him to drop Tom's meal.
So Tom stands up and defends Rants. And I think
at this point this is where we kind of see
Rance's character and how he really doesn't want Tom defending him.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Am I wrong in that?

Speaker 4 (37:29):
No?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
I don't think so. I think this is where the
movie and the book really differ from each other, because
I think in the book, Tom Donavan has more of
a mentoring role a little bit with Ransom in there,
and I think in this one he's not quite an
antagonist Ransom, but again he's the counter tool. He's very

(37:49):
idealistic and Tom is very much a realist. I think
he almost pities Ransom a little bit, and he doesn't
seem as a threat.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
He's a dude.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
They use that term a lot on this, you know.
I think Liberty Valance calls him dude several times. And
a dude is a city selector. Back then, that's what
that means. It changes, you know, later on the sixties
it becomes like, you know, friend or whatever. But back then,
when you refer to somebody, it was like a fancy
city dwelling male.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
So he's a more civilized, city dwelling male, and you know,
so Tom's likely this guy, he's just not going to
make it, so he kind of has to look out
for him a little bit. Ransom thinks that he's going
to finally get liberty, he's gonna find some legal way
of putting him away. And John Wayne's like, if I
don't kind of watch over this guy because he's too

(38:37):
stupid to realize the danger that he's in, he's going
to get himself killed. So he kind of steps in
and Ransom, yeah, you're right. Ransom does not like that.
He does that. He's like, why has everybody got to
be gun crazy? You know, look, it's just a stake,
I'll pick it up. You know. He's very much pacifist
to a lot of extent. He's like, you know, kind
of the qu a modern day liberal that would live
in the city today. He doesn't understand people who live

(39:00):
out in the country or on ranches or farms, and
it's a whole different lifestyle, whole different mentality that still
transcends today in a lot of respects. And he's just like,
I don't know why all you guys have to be
so gunkries out there, Like we should be able to
solve this, like civilized men. This is not how this
should be done in a civilized society. So this is
the moment where Tom definitely has to intervene. But this

(39:22):
is where Ransom it's like, look, you just need to
back off and let me handle this. So there ad odds,
even though Donophant's trying to help him. And I think
this is the point where Ransom also becomes a little
bit more endeared in Halle's eyes because he's offered a
teacher to read, and nobody's ever done that for her.
So he's offering her a life that Tom Donophan's not.

(39:42):
If she goes to Tom Donophan, she's going to become
a cataman's life. But Ransom Strawd is an educated man
and is offering her the ability to educate herself, which
is something women don't normally always get, you know, even
males don't always get that. You know, you only go
to school for a few years and you got to
work out in the ranch. You gotta work in the
fields way whatever it is. So it's it's a different life,

(40:03):
and I think she's a little bit more drawn to
that civilized demeanor that has rather than the tough guy
persona that Donovan has like she's lived that her whole life,
and it's refreshing to see somebody not be like that. Right,
And Donovan's taken note of that a little bit too,
but he's like, ah, he's not really a threat.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, And I think that comes back and bites them
in the butt later on for sure. So they say
that three weeks has passed by in the dialogue later on,
but it felt much longer because we now see that
Ransom he's got his office in Peabody's shin Bone Star.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
He's established a.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
School because not only did he take Holly On, but
he's also teaching Ericson's wife, And all of a sudden,
there's all these children that he's.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Teaching him to.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Ready, you've got Poppy in there, Yeah, Pompy's in there,
and the Marshall's in there with I think that was
supposed to be his wife and like his as you said,
many dependents, which I think were his kid Yeah. Yeah,
I didn't want to say it because we never know
one hundred percent that they're all his kids. But yeah,
he's a busy man. Yeah, he's a super busy guy.

(41:08):
I don't know how he was time to be Marshall now,
did you notice while they were in the school that
this is, to me, the most glaring air in the
entire film. Did you pick up on it at all,
specifically when he's quizzing Pompy.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Oh yeah, he talks about the Constitution and Pompy talks
about the Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah. Well, he asked him, what is the document where
you can change things from time to time with amendments,
and Poppy says the Constitution's like, no, it's a Declaration Independence.
I'm like, no, that's completely wrong. Yeah, you're teaching these
people wrong. It's just it was such a glaring air.
I don't know how they didn't fix that. The only
thing I can think of it goes back to Ford's

(41:49):
thing where he's like, I take one or two takes
and then I move on as long as I'm happy.
And I don't think anybody realized it, and they were
past that, so they weren't going to go back and
film anymore, and they just love it. I'm like, wow,
what a glaring air. I'm usually not the person that
always picks up on stuff like that. It's usually you
were joy, but man, I just couldn't help him be like,
that's so wrong, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yeah, it totally slipped by me.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
So yeah, and then Tom Donovan comes in and you
find out that, yeah, he's been gone for three weeks.
So that's the other thing that kind of stood out
to me is that he says he's been gone for
three weeks and when he left, it was around the
same time that he was in the steakhouse after he
saved ranks. He said he was gonna go away because
he had to takes care of some business with horses
or cattle. And he shows back up and it's supposed

(42:33):
to be three weeks later, but it doesn't feel like
three weeks has passed by. I feel like a much
longer time, or maybe just the way they presented it,
it just it seemed a little out of place for me,
like the time didn't quite sink up for me.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, it's a bit odd to have it there. I
think they wedged that in there because he offers the
teacher to read, so they had to show a segment
where he's teaching people to read. I don't know why
they just didn't do him kind of sitting in that
weird leather couch bed psychiatrist chair thing that's in this kitchen,
the steakhouse that he's sleeping on right now. I mean
it serves the purpose, but it felt forced and wedged

(43:05):
in there.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
Yeah, it definitely felt forced to me. And then we
get Tom not only breaking up the school but also
talking about how Liberty Balance is hiring guns to support
the cattle ranchers. This is where Peabody wrote that wonderful
story that Rants liked about the cattleman not wanting the statehood.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
The cattlemen they don't want to become a state, right
because if they become a state, then they lose their
ability to make up the rule of law as they
go along. What do they not want to have to
deal with the sabbusters? You know, if you're in my
way of my cattle, we're coming in. But if it
becomes a state, then they're going to have to start
adhering to state in federal law. And they don't want
that because they lose control and now they're not going

(43:45):
to be able to just do whatever they want. And
so that's why they're hiring Liberty Balance to basically force
these people to capitulate to their will and to send
him to the capital of the territory to affirm that
they do not want to be.

Speaker 4 (43:59):
A state, right, Yeah, and everybody in town, all the
farm hands, everybody wants to be a state.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
They want the rule of law so that they could
live peacefully. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
So after Tom breaks up the classroom and they send
everybody home, that's when we learned that Rants he's been
going out practice shooting with Peabody's old gun. Hallie learns this,
and she sends Tom out to basically stop and Rants
from getting himself killed by Liberty bolence.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
I thought it was weird. You see Rance in his
wagon ride along going to where he's going to go practice,
which apparently he must have to go way out in
the desert to do it, and John Way comes right along.
I was like, I want to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
You think they would just.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Stop talk right there. But he grabs the reins of
the horse and he starts dragging it back to his place.
I'm like, to what end right when you just stop
and they have the conversation right there? So he asked
the drag him all the way back to his ranch
to then have the conversation.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Yeah, I think it's kind of a way for Tom
to teach him how to shoot a gun. He's like, well,
let me see this gun that you got, all right,
we'll try to hit that can do this. He's trying
to show him, you don't have any knowledge in shooting guns.
You're not a fighter. He really takes it home when
he has Rance put paint cans up on his fence
and he shoots the paint cans right on top of
Rants and one of them busts open and covers him

(45:12):
in paint and stains his suit. Now did you see
this point where his suit has been stained. It stays
stayed throughout the entire rest of the movie.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
No, I miss that. I wasn't looking for the continuity
of it.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
You can really see it later on when he goes
to the Capitol, because he's sitting there in one of
the seats and you see his suit and it's still
got like faded white spots on it. I just thought
it was a neat little continuity a way that john
Ford was able to continue that through the rest of
the scenes, that hey, Rantce only has one good suit
and that's what he takes with him.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah. I don't even think him bringing him out there
was really so much to teach him how to shoot.
It was to teach him, as you said, you can't shoot.
And it's a parent that I don't even think Ransom
been even practicing that much. Keeps forgetting to pull back
the hammer, because of course these are single action you
have to pull the hammer back every time, and he
just even keeps forgetting to do that. So anybody's been

(46:05):
shooting for a while, I was gonna remember to pull
that hammer back every time. But the other thing that
John Wayne shows him is, look, you can't hit that.
And John Wayne grabs that gun and he hip shots.
And again we've talked about this with other movies. Hip
shot shooting is a whole other level of shooting a gun.
I mean, it's one thing to have a gun, stick
it out to a range, put up a target, you know,
aim and shoot and you know, get it on paper

(46:26):
or hit a tin can, things like that. But to
grab that thing, pull it out on a holster, hip
shot something without even really aim and just putting it
in that general direction and being successful. That is years
of practice.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
Man.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I mean that takes a lot of effort, and I
think that's what he's trying to show him. Look, you
don't even handle the gun well. And then he asked
him put those paint cans up. He's like, oh no,
put one there, I'll go put one over there. And
he waits for him put that third one up, and
he grabs that gun and he just starts whacking. And
one is to embarrass him by getting him covered in paint,
but two it's to show him this is no joke.
If you go up against the Liberty bounce, he's going

(46:59):
to be this good and he is not going to
be fair. You know, he ain't gonna mess around. You're
gonna be dead and it's gonna be that fast and
that accurate. Yeah, and then you're right too. The other
thing he does is now it's established like, look, I'm
the alpha male. You're messing in things you shouldn't be,
and I'm going to tell you right now, Hallie is mine.
You know he does that. Why he's out there too.

(47:20):
You need to understand that I know it, she knows it,
the town knows it, and now you know it. So
whatever this is it's going on between you guys. You
need to knock it off or you're gonna be one
of the paint cans.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
That was the other.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
It was like, there may be two people gunning for
you if you keep going down this path, you know.
I think it was got a little bit of intimidation
factor on that front too well.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
I think it also allows the friendship between Rants and
Tom because Rance smacks him, you know, he basically cole
cox him. He's like, I don't like tricks either, and
then he just takes off. So I think that in
a way kind of endears Rance to Tom because it
shows it, Okay, Rance is willing to stand up.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
For something, and he's got a little steal, he's got
a little backbone. Yeah, he may happy is as he
first thought he was.

Speaker 4 (48:08):
Yeah, And I think that kind of shines a light
for Tom onto how Rance's character is, and I think
that kind of helps develop their friendship.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Showed a little backbone was not a bad thing for
Stotter to do.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
There, Yeah, And that then leads us into the meeting,
and that's where Rance really shines because the whole statehood
is on the table for the territory and all the
local towns have to send two delegates to Capital City
so that they can determine whether or not they want
to go for a statehood. And the town has a

(48:41):
meeting and only the men are allowed because only the
men can vote at this time, so obviously this is
before women's suffrage, before women are allowed to vote. And
everybody shows up, and I noticed Erickson shows up and
he's all proud and honor. He's like, I'm an American
citizen and he shows his documentation. He's got the big
old seal right there, saying that I am officially a

(49:02):
member of the United States. I can now vote. And
I just thought that was really cool.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Oh, and his wife's excited, because you know, Noris. She's like,
I'm so proud. She was so happy that he was
an American citizen and had that so we could vote.
She was excited as well for him.

Speaker 4 (49:16):
Yes, And then they're all sitting around in the bar.
That's when John Wayne, you know, muscles up and grabs
uh what they call it a bung beater.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's a bunkhole hammer. Yeah, yeah, okay, so we finally
know where the famous book.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Hole comes from.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
The butt head. Yeah, it's you know, basically in the
barrels where you got the hole and they put that
cork in that's a bunk and they use a hammer
to pound it back out with that thing, gotcha.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
He uses it as a gavel and he asks Stoddard
to lead the meeting, and of course, in his classic
Jimmy Stewart delivery, he's like, wow, Wow, Wow, I can,
I can. I can tell you how the rules are,
and I guess I can run this parliamentary meeting. And
we get the first nomination. And this is where I
think there's some subtext going on here, because right off

(50:04):
the bat, Stoddard's like, well, there's only one man that
I think could really stand up for everybody in town.
I'm going to nominate Tom Donovan. Now I can understand
why he did it logically, but part of me is thinking,
did he also do it because he's also in love
with Hallie? It was some way for him to get
Tom out of town long enough that he can continue

(50:26):
to court Holley.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Now, I don't think he's that devious. I think he
truly looked at it. As you know, Tom Donovant, the
whole town knows him, the whole town respects him. He's
the big man on campus. He's the most logical person
to go do this, although it kind of goes against
his interest because he's trying to be a cattleman himself. Again,
I don't think every cattleman was against the rule of law, right,

(50:52):
But this is where I go back to our earlier
conversation where Tom's like, oh, well, hell no, I got
my own trajectory, I got my own plans, and this
is not in it. I got no time to fight
other people's battles. I got my own irons in the fire,
and I'm not gonna take away from that by having
to play champion for the rest of this town. Like
you guys, go nominate somebody else.

Speaker 4 (51:13):
Yeah, yeah, because he immediately declines the nomination and he
says for personal reasons. That's when Liberty Balance shows up
and one of the bankers stands up and nominates Stodder
to be the delegate, and of course Tom immediate jumps
on an I second back, and then Balance gets himself nominated,
and a lot of people will say, no, no, you're
you know, you don't live south of the picket line.

(51:33):
But you know, he manages to get on the ballot,
and then Peabody gets nominated, and I think it's hilarious that,
you know, we get some more of that uh comedy,
that that eccentricities. Yes, yeah, so here we got Peabody
Stoddard and we have Liberty Balance. We've been nominated, and
nobody votes for Balance except for his two little henchmen.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Which I thought was ballsy by the townspeople. I really
would have thought they would have full but I think
they were more interested in just getting the bar open.
It didn't figure, you know, he can't kill us, all right, Yeah,
you know.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
I thought it was great that.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
You know, after they do all the e louction and everything,
there's uh, Tom going, well, is there any other business?

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Nope? All right, boys, bars open.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
And the town rejoices. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:21):
That's when Liberty Balance makes his final stand. He's like, hey, look, dude,
you're in my way to meet me in the town square.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Tonight. We're gonna shoot it out.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
There'll be a gun fight.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
That's when Tom's like, man, I can't see you die. Look,
here's what I'm gonna do for you. I'm gonna have
Palmmy come by and he's gonna bring a buck back
and you know, get out of town. That night, Valance
shows up and he's all drunk. The first thing he
does is he picks on the weakest link in the
town and he beats that crap out of Peabody.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
I didn't think it's a taking on the weakest link.
And Peabody is the other nomination, right, and he's right
and crap. Yeah, and apparently liberty violence maybe a lot
of things, but illiterate is not one of them. You
can fully read about what he's writing about him. So yeah,
he's kind of being ballsy about taking the time to
write these things about him and putting them out, even
if it's only going to all the local residents already

(53:16):
know this stuff anyway.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
Right, and again, liberty Vallence beats up Peabody shoots the
place up, but it's Reese that kind of stops valance
before delivering like that final death blow with the whip
of death. Yeah, I'm like, okay, well, you know, maybe
Reese is kind of a level headed henchman.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
You know, maybe it's just simply, look, you're in town.
You can beat him to it with an inch of
his life and probably be okay. But if you kill him,
now there's real law in the town, even though it's
that weak sheriff. But if you kill him, they'll just
put somebody else, and they'll keep hiring somebody till somebody
actually competent comes in and then they're gonna rest you
for this because now you've committed a crime in a
town that actually has the rule of law established it.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Yeah, that's my guess.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Well, yeah, and if you know, if he beats somebody
and enough townspeople gets behind it, might elect Tom Donathan
come marshall or even just a deputy.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah, maybe give him enough reason to go after him. Yeah,
or just have a bounty on his set. True town
puts the bounty on your head, then you've got bounty
hunters coming for you.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:18):
Like I said, Valance beats the heck out of Peabody,
and that's when Stoddard hears about it, and he goes
across the street and he finds Peabody's body and thankfully
Peabody's not dead.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
But that's it.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
That's the last straw. And he asks the marshal, Hey,
go tell Balance meet me out in the street. Balance
comes out of the bar and in a silhouette Stoddard
slowly walking up and you kind of get this hero moment,
I'd almost say, because he's walking through the darkness and
he comes out of the darkness to reveal himself and

(54:50):
he's not wearing a typical white hat. He's standing there
in in his apron. They have that little exchange and
then Vilence just starts showing that hey, I can shoot
you all day long. And he shoots a couple of times,
and I was sitting there and I'm thinking, Okay, he's
got a six shooter.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Were you counting the bullets, because I know I was.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
I'm counting the bullets.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
I'm expecting to get that up last one and then
he go to do the kill shot. There's not a
round left in the gun.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Yeah, that's what I was expecting as well.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
But I'm like one plus one plus one plus one.
I think he only.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Shot him four times.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, because he shot him in the arm YEP. And
then he did shoot one time before he shot him
in the arm He shot like a pot or something there,
didn't it.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
It was a pot like above his head.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, and then he shot him in the arm I know.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
He shoots at the gun on the ground when Stoddard
goes to reach for it.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
He shoots Stoddard sign twice, doesn't he Yeah. See I
was counting Stoddard sign and I was like, maybe he
didn't reload the gun. Yeah, So I think that was it,
So I think he had one round left in the
chamber after that.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
I wasn't only person that he might have reloaded when
he was in the bar, right.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
But I was counting the other two that he baby
didn't reload. Didn't think about it, and I was like, Oh,
keeps messing with him. He's going to run out of
rounds because he forgot he shot those other two.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Right.

Speaker 4 (56:03):
Rance manages to get his gun and he's holding it
up and his livery violence actually take times all right,
this time right in between the eyes and then boom,
Rance fires the gun the same time Liberty Balance does.
Livery Balance falls down, and then Rance is convinced that
he's dead and he walks back to the steakhouse, where
Hollie starts taking care of his arm.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
That's where then Tom Donovan comes in and sees her
doting on Stoddard, So then he goes back to the
bar to get drunk.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
That's when Livery Valance slackies show up and you see it.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
He shot him. He was he was self defense.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
And then that's where Tom Deck's one of the guys
and really manages to inspire Applegate to become a marshal again,
and he's like, get.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
These guys out of town.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
That whole sequence was just really need to watch, you know.
You kind of see that, hey, there's something going on
with Tom.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Let's face it. Donovan's pissed.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
Now.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, he's kind of taken everything from me. He's the
big man. He's gonna be the guy that's known as
the guy who shot Liberty Balance. He's stole my girl.
I don't even have to hear these guys talk about
how they're going to like go exact justice on him. Like,
I'm just I'm dumb with this. I'm pissed off about it.
And he, uh, you know, throws those guys out, like
you say, and he's just he's just shif face drunk

(57:18):
at this point, and he's like, I'm going back home.
You know, that's it. He's just done. He's that screw
this day, I'm so dumb with it. I'm just going home.
And he gets on his worst and carriage and heads
back home.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Yep. And of course he does the typical masculine thing
and he sees that, oh great, you know, I'm not
gonna be able to use this room that I prepared,
and he just burns his house down.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
He really loses his che get center. He's like, yeah,
screw this, you know, Like I all this effort to
flush down the toilet, that's it. I got nothing left.
Just set the place of fires, sit down and watch
it burn down around me.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
Yeah, Pompy's there and he manages to save John. But
this is where I didn't realize that he was a cattleman,
because you know, this is all shot outside. The first
thing that Tom says to the Pompy is the horses.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Save the horses. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Well, if you're a cattle man, wouldn't you have had
cattle somewhere?

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Nowhere in the scene? Did I see any cattle?

Speaker 2 (58:13):
All I could say of that one that is that
horses run when you work them up and get them moving, right.
I don't know the cattle you've been around. They're not
a super ambitious animal. It us requires you five or
six guys with pistols and an angry dog get things
moving the way you want. True, you've got one cowboy
that's asphyxiated from smoke intake and his assistant that's got,

(58:37):
you know, the effort to round up all these animals
and save them. So I think for you know, ease
of visual they went with horses. Yeah, you would have
a lot of horses at the ranch though, because if
you had a lot of hands, you'd have to have
the horses to help you round up the cattle. But
I don't think he has a bunch of hands. He
just has a bunch of horses. So I don't know, man,

(58:58):
I mean, honestly, you think.

Speaker 4 (59:00):
I think, like at one point when they're out at
the ranch, we see a total of like three hands,
do we Pompy and.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
Two other guys?

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Was there two other guys as they were painting?

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, right, there was two of the guys
paint So maybe he has hands. Maybe those are just
the horses that he keeps for the hired hands to
help him round up the cattle out on the planes. Yeah,
let's go with that, Matt. We've saved the movie. We've
fixed the plat hole.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
There we go.

Speaker 4 (59:28):
We're now in Capital City and we see that Rants
and Peabody have showed up with several different members of
the town and they're there at the territorial convention, and
we get this wonderful speech by Major Cassius Starbuckle. He
nominates a cattle rancher who's known to be shady, and

(59:49):
they had this whole big parade. A guy on horseback
comes right and into the middle of the convention, right
in the middle of this building, and he's got lasts
and he's spin it around guys holding the sign. It's
all very hump and circumstance. Really highlight this guy that
they want to nominate.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Cool rope tricks. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was funny.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
It's like, yeah, after everybody settles down and they get
the horse out of there, that's when we get the
speech by Peabody to nominate Ransom Stoddard as a Senate
candidate for statehood.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
And we get then a rebuttal by Major Cassius.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
How dare you nominate a man who claims to be
upholding law and justice when he's known as the man
who shot liberty balance.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
He's just a dirty, cold blooded killer.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
Yes, that makes RAN's second guess himself realize that, Yeah,
you know, he's right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
You know, I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
Have a political career because I started off as a killer.
And he walks out, and sure enough, after he walks out,
there's Tom Donothan right behind him and he says, all right,
look here, Pilgrim, Let's think back to when Valance had
you dead to Rice, and that's when we get the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
We just don't get the truth. This is where we
probably do get a first we get a flashback within
a flashback.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
Yes, yeah, it's interesting because you find out that Donathan
was there and so was Tompy. He asked Tompy for
the gun. Now, this is a scene that I've seen
so many times in different like clip shows when they
talk about John Wayne and this movie, and I just
thought it was really neat that, you know, you see
John Wayne being John Wayne doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Shoot the guy in the back.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
It's him in front, just slightly off camera.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
It was really cool to see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
I figured that's what had to have happened. Again, in
order for Rants to be able to kill Liberty Balance,
he would have had to have excellently shot all his rounds.
That's the only explanation in my mind that would have
made that happen. Otherwise he should have been dead as
a door new So I'm like, Tom Donovan had to
have killed them. Yeah, And of course that's what happens,
And I find that interesting. Daddy'd managed to time that

(01:01:55):
shot just perfectly too, so that nobody realized two guns
were fired at the same time. Interesting coincidence in that regard,
but it was kind of funny. He's like, look, I
got to clean this guy's mess up one more time.
I got to say this poor bastard's lives because he's
gonna die to night otherwise. But in doing so, he
seals his own fate and causes him to lose everything

(01:02:15):
he works so hard for. He loses his prominent position
within the town. He's going to be outshined by the
man who shot Liberty balance.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Yeah, he's going to lose.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
His girl to him, and then he's going to get
a drunken stupor and burned down his house. So it's
just like he just he had one hell of a
bad night, and for him to go all the way
to the territorial capital and give Rand's that pep talk like, look,
you didn't kill him, You're not a killer. I killed
him and I can live with that. You can't. I can't,

(01:02:46):
you know. But my other favorite line, he goes, look,
you taught Haley to read and to write, now go
give her something to read, right about yes, And that's
when you know, Rand's like, hell, yeah, he gets up,
just marches back in there.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Yeah, as we say, is history.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
And of course the newspaperman says that he's not going
to write the story. This is where you get a
great line of the legend becomes fact print the legend. Yeah,
and it's just it's really cool that he keeps everything
that Rance has done up to this point, becoming a senator,
becoming an ambassador, basically fighting for the little man, you know,

(01:03:22):
being what a senator is supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
He keeps that in place.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
He doesn't spoil it, put doubt upon anything that Rance
has done. He's a legend and the average man, and
I just think that's a great way to wrap the
whole movie up.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Yeah, but I think there's a little caveat to that though,
because yeah, I enjoy that. The Paperman's like, look, you
don't kill the legend. So I'm gonna tear this up,
and nobody's ever going to discuss this again. But then
he gets on the train to ride back home. He
had kind of been talking to Haley like, you know, hey,
maybe when I get there and I get this last
bill through, what would you think if I just quit

(01:03:55):
and we just spent some time together and said, oh,
that'd be great, and the conductor comes up, Oh, look,
we're going to get to train there much faster anything
for the man who shot Liberty Valance. And I think
there's a tinge of regret because he thought he was
going to finally get this off his chest and the
truth was going to come out and he wasn't going
to have to live with this lie anymore. And then
he realized that that's not going to happen, and he

(01:04:16):
questions her too. He's like, hey, who put the cactus
on Tom's coffin? And she's like, oh, I did that,
And I think he realizes that she's still, at some
level truly loves Tom, and he kind of won her
out because he's the man who killed Liberty Valance. He's
the hero, He's the guy that did what nobody else

(01:04:37):
would do. And I think he's like, is she with
me because of that? And not with Tom, who I
feel like maybe she really wanted to be with, And
not on top of that, I have to continue to
live this lie, like I just I can't get anybody
to tell the truth the story, Like I can't prove
that I'm not the one that did it. Like, I
can't get this black mark off of my soul. I

(01:04:57):
have to live with this, and I don't want to anymore,
but I don't have no choice, and I can't elevate
Tom to the level that he should be. He's just
going to die this poor cattleman that really didn't amount
to anything, and nobody's going to know that he really
is the man who killed Liberty Bounce. He's the one
that saved the territory, saved the town, and helped him
become a state, and he took his true level away

(01:05:18):
from him. So I think he's got a heavy heart
at the very end. That's kind of how I felt
about it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
Yeah, I can see that. There's definitely that moment of
silence just after he says that last thing, and you
can kind of see it on their faces. It's kind
of written there, and you know, and you did mention
that Tom had died not really a poor cattleman, but
just a regular cattleman. And if you remember when they
were at the beginning the movie, when they were talking about, Hey,
where's his boots, where's his gun, where's all this stuff?

(01:05:43):
Because they had stripped his body clean.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
All right, But I think he is a poor cattleman
because he mentioned all his boots were almost and he's
like put it back on and put his gun back
on it. So he hasn't carried a gun in years.
Maybe he stopped carrying a gun after the livery balance thing.
But nobody shows up either.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
Yeah, he kind of got forgotten.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
He was this upcoming, upstanding citizen and he got overshadowed
by Ransom and that was it. Like he you know,
burned his place down, probably start from scratch, never really
recovered and you know, died and nobody And I think
that that really bothers Ransom because it's his fault for
the lackluster years that Tom had to live till he died.

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
And like you said, Tom was the guy who basically
created Senator Ransom. He was the power behind the power.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, like he did so much and got so little
credit and then the guy that he helped kind of
inadvertently took his life away from him, you know what
I mean, because he apparently died with no wife, no children,
know nothing, no friends. Apparently other than Poppy, that's the
only person who showed up. That's it. It's kind of
a sad ending when you really think about it, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
All in all, I think it's a really good character piece.
And yeah, it's like you said, it is a sad ending,
but it definitely makes you think.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Do you think the story is that monumental? I mean
really in the grand scheme of things, is this something
that you're gonna be like? This is such a great movie.
I want people to see it. I want to go back.
It just had such a powerful impact or was it
just a pretty alright written movie that just happened to
have a huge cast of massive talent.

Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
Well, in order for me to answer that question, I
would have to dive into the end segment here, So
I'm gonna go ahead and do that, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
I think I've segmented you nicely into it, so lay
it on me, all right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
So is this worth taking two hours and three minutes
off your death clock? I'm gonna say yes, mainly because
it's mostly due to the character development, the classic story
of good versus evil. I mean, you could take these characters,
you can move the time period, you can move anywhere
else any other setting, and the story I think is
still going to be solid because you have your typical

(01:07:41):
love triangle between the major characters. You have the main
bad guy, you have the main good guy, you have
this wonderful supporting actor. And I think the fact that
that one whole scene is like a stage play. You
get the acting ability of everyone in that room, moving
the story along, giving you the feeling of the character
in this place. That that's why this movie is definitely

(01:08:03):
we're taking time off your den clock. That's why this
movie is in the book. It's just because of the
way the story is.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
How about you tell me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
I mean, for me, it's worth the time to watch it.
I mean, I won't deny that at all. It's not
a bad movie by Eddie means. But if you're coming
to this like, oh, this is gonna be good because
it's a John Wayne Western, man, I'm gonna recommend so
many other John Wayne Westerns to you. Go watch The Searchers,
Go watch The Sons of Kate Elder, Go watch Rio Bravo,

(01:08:32):
Real Grande. I mean, there's just there's so many. Go
watch The Quiet Man, which is kind of a weird
pseudo Western too, but I liked that one too, And
there's just yeah, I mean, there's a lot of John
Wayne movies out there. That you could really, you know,
sink your teeth into Western wise that I think are
so much better. Big Jake, The Cowboys, k hill, Us Marshall,

(01:08:52):
I just the list goes on and on. James Stewart
to me is not a cowboy. He's just not. I know,
he does a lot of Westerns, but in my mind,
John Wayne's a cowboy. He's with a cowboy movie should
be James Stewart's. He's more It's a wonderful life. That's
who James Stewart is to me. John Ford, I mean,
this is kind of on the cusp of the end

(01:09:13):
of his career. I guess, if you want to look
at it, just a movie that caps off his career
because after this what comes really isn't all that fantastic.
I think he does like four or five movies after this,
not that they're bad, but I mean he did so
many better ones with Jimmy Stewart and with John Wayne,
so there's better ones from the watch again. You know,
he did The Searchers, he did The Quiet Man, he

(01:09:35):
did Rio Grande, he did Ford Apache. I mean, he
just he did so many good ones, you know, and
then he did good war movies like we were expendable.
So there's a lot out there in that Ford catalog.
And again, I don't think this is the first one
I'm going to recommend that you watch. It's good to
see Lee Marvin very early on, but he's going to
go on to do a lot better things than this too.
I mean, he plays a great character in this though.

(01:09:55):
Don't get me wrong, even Lean Vanief, we're going to
see him. It's the next two movies that are going
to make his career. We're going to see him and
The Man with No Name trilogy. Again, not a horrible one.
Put it on your list, watch it one time. But
if you're going to go back to any of these characters,
you're gonna probably pick some of the other movies to
watch over and over again.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Well, I think that brings us to our feedback. Our
Fly episode got some feedback from a Dave Smith seven
four three to two says that he felt that The
Fly was a really good remake. Well done on the podcast, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Thank you so much. We appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:29):
He has also left some feedback on the American Werewolf
in London definitely directed a comment directly towards U Tim.
He says I bet you guys noticed the similarity the
werewolf transformation between The Howling and an American werewolf in London. Well,
Rick Baker was initially hired to create the werewolf effects
of The Howling, and then he also points out that

(01:10:50):
the reason why they didn't use werewolf in London is
because all the songs in the movie were about the moon.
And he completely disagrees with with you guys because I
wasn't there to cover it, but you guys did, and
this is the best werewolf movie ever made. He'll take
practical effects over cheap cgi any day.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
I did catch his comments. I did catch a little
bit of days, I replied to one of them, I
didn't really see ID actually done two, So I have
to go back at Dave. I'll hit you up on
the second one here, but i'll do a little verbal
hopefully he's still listening. But yeah, I seen some of
the stuff he put up there, and I didn't catch
the cameo, So I definitely gave him kudos for bringing
that up and pointing it out. I thought that was

(01:11:33):
a really good one. I don't think we totally disagreed
that it was a horrible film. I think it was
down the middle two we're way for it, and two
of us were kind of, you know, we are on
the fence about it, but there are points of that
film that's awesome. So I agreed with him on that,
especially the transformation. As far as him pointing out that
the person who did these special effects was actually on

(01:11:55):
the Howling at first, yes, he absolutely was, and because
he was supposed to actually do the movie originally, and
they had talked about it for a long time, but
it took so long for him to get fund and
he's finally like, look, I gotta kind of go get
a gig. I gotta get paid. So he started on
the Howling and then he got her asked. After the
funding came in for it, he quit the Howl and
gave it to his protege, came back and decided to,

(01:12:17):
you know, do the effects in America, Wearwolf in London.
So and the rest, as we say, is history. It
worked out real well.

Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
I gotta say I kind of regret not being able
to review that episode with you guys, but I think
you guys did a great job.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
Well thanks, I appreciate it. We missed you for sure,
but it's glad. I'm glad I could fill in the
hot seat.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
There.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
It's a I don't have your job. I appreciate what
you do a time I have to do that, So
I'm glad you're back and I don't have to moderate.
I don't better be in a talking head, I think.
But thank you so much. I appreciate the kudos nonetheless.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
All right, well that's been our feedback segment.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Folks.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
If you want to leave some feedback to us, check
out YouTube, leave us a comment or a review there.
We love to hear from you, so please leave us
some feedback. You can email our show at Manreview podcasttgmail
dot com and we'll read your email right here and
we'll reply to it. And with that, I think that
pretty much wraps up everything.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
So let's go ahead and take a quick what are
you watching segment here?

Speaker 4 (01:13:18):
So Tim, outside of the man who shot Liberty Balance,
is there anything that you're watching that you want to
tell our listeners about.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Yeah, I took a little break from the Blacklist. I
edited to a hack a couple of rough weeks, so
I needed to have some funny in my life. So
I pulled up the old two Guys A girl at
a pizza hut Ryan Reynolds old TV series. I had
never seen it. It's definitely not the best comedy TV

(01:13:47):
series I've ever seen, but you can see the spark
of early Ryan Reynolds in it. I mean, it's all there.
I mean, the guy he's definitely does a fantastic job
in that series, for sure. I think I'm on season
three now, so I'm enjoying watching his early performance. And
the other character is pretty decent. I've seen the captain

(01:14:08):
from Firefly.

Speaker 4 (01:14:09):
I can't remember his name, Yes, Nathan Fillion.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
He does a pretty good job, but now that I've
seen him in Firefly and stuff, it's hard to see
him in a comedic role as far as I'm concerned.
But enjoyed his acting in there as well. But yeah,
it's it's it's been entertaining. He's been a fun watch
for sure. How about you, Matt, what do you watch? Well?

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):
I decided to dive into the Amazon Prime app and
I started watching the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
It's interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
I've never read the books because every time I see
the books in the bookstore, they're like, you know, six
hundred pages, and all the paperback books look like they're
they would stop a bullet from a forty five.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
And there's like twenty five of them or something.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
So but I've been I've been watching the series. It's
it's entertaining. I see a lot of parallels with another
classic fantasy series that has a trilogy out there, Okay,
Lord of the Rings, and yeah, I'm kind of entertained.
It's an interesting TV series. So I just finished season one.

(01:15:14):
I'm heading into season two, and there's a lot of
a lot of intrigue, a lot of political stuff, a
lot of political machinations in it. And it's kind of
weird because it's supposedly set like three thousand years after
this big cataclysmic event and everything that happened three thousand
years ago. It's more of like a space opera scenario

(01:15:38):
where they have like spaceships in that flying around, but
now in the current time everything Sword and Sorceries or
Sword and Sandal's kind of situation. So I'm curious to
see how the series develops.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
I think I started that. I think I didn't make
it through the first episode and I just ever went
back to Doroun. I don't even remember why. I just
was kind of like I don't think it took Yeah,
I don't know. I don't think that first episode wowed
me that much. So I was kind of like, I'm
just gonna go it, move on from this.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
I first started watching it about a year or so ago.
I watched the first episode. Yeah, I didn't take right away,
and I said, well, I'm flipping through this, I'll go
to spend And it wasn't until like maybe the third
episode that it really kind of got its hooksend to me.
And now I'm watching it with the wife and the kids.
So there's some things in there that I don't think

(01:16:31):
are really all that much kid appropriate, so we kind
of kind of fast forward through that bit.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
But yeah, yeah, it's the unfortunate thing. Nobody makes family
friendly TV series as anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
Yeah. All right, Well that's that's all I got for tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
Tim all right, Well, thank you everyone for listening to
the Middle Aged Movieviewes Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed our
review of The Man Who Shot the Liberty Valance. Thanks
for coming around and you know, looking for trouble. We
hope you found some. And if you did, please subscrace,
you know, give us some love, give us some thumbs up,
tell your friends. You know, let's let's try to build

(01:17:07):
this podcast family and hopefully we can keep on bringing
you our witty banter and our insightful looks into these
movies from one thousand and one movies you should watch
for you.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
Follow us on Facebook, next USKA, and Instagram. Have a commentary,
suggestion and email to Show It Man Review podcast at
gmail dot com. Uh yeah, yeah, have a great night, guys.

Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
And I don't don't don't, don't, don't, don't.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
Don't forget talk hope for our solid centermer like Stoddard H.

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Episode 60 - The Man who shot Liberty Valance (Not a John Wayne Western)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 60 - The Man who shot Liberty Valance (Not a John Wayne Western)