I was surprised by how little I enjoyed this movie. I hate to say it, but I think I have to blame Bill Hicks.
Here’s the Hicks routine:
I’m so sick of arming the world and then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We’re like the bullies of the world, you know.
We’re like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheep herder’s feet: “Pick it up.”
“I don’t wanna pick it up mister, you’ll shoot me.”
“Pick up the gun.”
“Mister, I don’t want no trouble, huh. I just came down town here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don’t even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain’t looking for no trouble, mister.”
“Pick up the gun.”
Boom, boom.
“You all saw him. He had a gun.”
None of this happens in Shane. There are only two similarities, and only one is remotely close to the bit:
- Jack Palance is in Shane
- Jack Palance does shoot a homesteader (close enough to sheepherder)
The homesteader has his own gun, though. He draws it on Jack Palance with the intention of shooting him. Jack Palance does provoke him, sure, but nothing close to an innocent man being forced to pick up a gun and fight against his will and shot because of it.
I kept waiting for it to happen throughout the movie and it never did. That line, “You all saw him, he had a gun” sounds so iconic, and the scene described is right out of a western. I wonder if it actually happened at all in some other movie or if it was just dreamt up by Hicks.
I asked Metafilter to see if they knew. Hopefully they do, and I’ll Netflix that movie and hopefully enjoy it more.
It would be ridiculous if I disliked the movie based on it not having a scene from a Bill Hicks routine in it, and there’s certainly a lot more I didn’t like about it:
- Alan Ladd does absolutely nothing to convince me that he’s a former gunfighter trying to escape his past, a character attribute that the entire movie hinges upon. He may have hid his gun but he acts in every way as he would if he was wearing it and readily takes up other arms when the need arises.
- There’s an incredibly uncomfortable undercurrent that runs throughout the entire movie: Shane should be sleeping with Joe Starrett’s wife and if he was, he’d be doing a better job of it. This fact is acknowledged by literally everyone in the movie including, but not limited to: Joe Starrett himself, Joe Starrett’s wife, Joe Starrett’s very young son Joey, Shane, and the villain (although he was too blunt when he said it). Joe Starrett actually tells his wife this to comfort her when he’s intending to go off to defend himself and probably get killed in the process. Even more disturbing is that this is played up from the moment Shane and Marian Starrett meet. The way they interact you’re sure that there’s some backstory: do they share a past? They must the way they look at each other. No, it’s just raw, animal lust with big lunkhead Joe Starrett standing in between.
- Jack Palance isn’t all that menacing.
- Neither is the Old Guy.
- Marian Starrett wasn’t a believable love interest, probably because at the time the actress, Jean Arthur, was 53 at the time, ten years older than the grizzly old guy villain.
- Little Joey annoyed me. A lot.
The world seems to have embraced the movie, though, so maybe I just watched it on the wrong day. Maybe it is Bill Hicks’ fault after all.
