Chico: Villages like this they make up a song about every big thing that happens. Sing them for years.
Chris Adams: You think it's worth it?
Chico: Don't you?
Chris Adams: It's only a matter of knowing how to shoot a gun. Nothing big about that.
Chico: Hey. How can you talk like this? Your gun has got you everything you have. Isn't that true? Hmm? Well, isn't that true?
Vin: Yeah, sure. Everything. After awhile you can call bartenders and faro dealers by their first name - maybe two hundred of 'em! Rented rooms you live in - five hundred! Meals you eat in hash houses - a thousand! Home - none! Wife - none! Kids... none! Prospects - zero. Suppose I left anything out?
Chris Adams: Yeah. Places you're tied down to - none. People with a hold on you - none. Men you step aside for - none.
Lee: Insults swallowed - none. Enemies - none.
Chris Adams: No enemies?
Lee: Alive.
Chico: Well. This is the kind of arithmetic I like.
Chris Adams: Yeah. So did I at your age.
(The Manificent Seven, 1960)
3 comments:
Does anyone watch "Longmire" on Netflix? I'm addicted. I watched the first 3 seasons in a couple weeks of binge watching, and I can't stop. I really like the lead character - a man's man in the old western style. It's set in modern Montana, but still manages to be a kind of old style western show. Lot's of plot twists and surprises, pretty to look at, and at times even inspiring.
That one from Lee had a wonderful reading by Robert Vaughn.
But that little byplay between the gunfighters is what makes it the best gunfighter Western.
And, of course, this:
O'Reilly: Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That's why I never even started anything like that... that's why I never will.
And this:
Hilario: The feeling I felt in my chest this morning, when I saw Calvera run away from us, that's a feeling worth dying for. Have you ever felt something like that?
Vin: Not for a long, long time. I envy you.
Now, tell me, how many of the so-called Westerns they make today have that kind of heart?
And sand in its craw?
Britt: Nobody throws me my own guns and says run. Nobody
Bagoh - I watch Longmire, too. I think it's a great show, I only found it a month or so ago and I'm into season 4, the apparently new one. Solid entertainment for me. Nice western feel, no over the top violence. They've got one pretty gruesome thing I've seen in all four seasons, in the fourth season. A particular dead body, but even for TV these days it was pretty tame.
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