Home is the Range

It’s been 50 years since they first pronounced the Western dead, but it just refuses to stop sucking air. Filmmaker Ridley Scott most recently took heat for pronouncing the demise of what used to be America’s favorite genre (though it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed had he not brought it up as a comparison to what he called the equally lifeless genre of science fiction).

But the truth is that while Hollywood and the TV networks may not grind out oaters at the rate they did in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Westerns are such an integral part of the American identity that they could never entirely vanish. They’re the perfect vehicle to comment on our national character from a historical remove. And they’ve invaluable for providing roles with an uncontemporary gravitas to actors of a certain age.

The latest star to realize this is Ed Harris, an actor who hit his (ongoing) peak in middle age. Not counting a 1990s TV adaptation of Riders of the Purple Sage, Harris makes his big screen Western debut in Appaloosa, which he also produced, co-scripted, and directed. (Stick around for the end credits and you’ll even hear him singing on the soundtrack.)

Adapted from a Robert B. Parker novel, Appaloosa is set in the territory of New Mexico circa 1882, a time when buildings and businesses were rising faster than the social structures of civilization. Outside the town limits is a ranch owned by the nefarious Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who simply shoots anyone who doesn’t like the way he does things. When he murders the city marshal in cold blood, the town elders take drastic measures: They hire freelance peacekeepers Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) to restore order.

Partners since the end of the Civil War, Cole and Hitch are good at their job, given that they can outshoot anyone else. That’s not to say that the job is going to be all that easy, given that the ambitious Bragg is not only cunning but has friends in high places. Further complication arrives in the corseted person of Ally French (Renee Zellweger). Mrs. French, as she calls herself, may or may not actually be a widow. But she is in need of a living, and before he knows what hit him Cole is sharing her bed and building the two of them a house to live in—all to the silent consternation of his partner, who is used to watching out for Cole’s back.

Although it does some sly subversion of the genre in its third act, Appaloosa is more traditional than revisionist Westerns like The Assassination of Jesse James. Nor does it have the rat-a-tat action of 3:10 to Yuma or the alarming frankness of HBO’s Deadwood. (You might want to read some comparisons to Brokeback Mountain into it, but I’ll leave that for the English majors in the audience.) Appaloosa is simply a well-crafted Western drama: It may disappoint some viewers looking for more, but you can take your dad to see it and you’ll both enjoy it.

Ed Harris met with reporters recently in a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival. Here’s some of what he had to say about his second film (after 2000’s Pollock) as a director:

AV: In preparing for this, did you draw either as an actor or a director on any particular classic Westerns?

Ed Harris: Not performance wise, but I watched a bunch of films. A lot of them I had seen before but sort of looked at in a different way. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Noon, The Oxbow Incident, My Darling Clementine, all kinds of stuff. Some of Clint [Eastwood]’s stuff, The Wild Bunch, some John Ford and Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann. One-Eyed Jacks is a really good film. I just immersed myself in watching films, because one of my intentions as a director was not only to try and be authentic to the period but to be authentic to the genre in terms of its classicism.

I wasn’t trying to modernize anything. I wasn’t trying to film it in a way that would make it more exciting for anybody. I just was kind of, shoot it, let it happen. Plus, I’ve only directed a couple of movies, so technically I’m not some guy who’s going to go whizzing the camera all over the place. I didn’t want to do a bunch of close-ups and bam, bam, bam and not know where I was. So we really wanted to shoot kind of wide, let the things take place but still get to know these characters as intimately as possible. That’s the way we wrote it, and how I always envisioned it, and hopefully the way it turned out.

AV: What other kind of research did you do?

EH: Well, you look at a lot of photos from that era. One of the things I do like about the film is it’s very detailed. There’s a lot to see in there. The more you watch it, the more you’ll see how much attention was paid to detail actually in all aspects of the production.

AV: Somebody wise once said all good Westerns are really love stories between men. Why do you think women in the Western genre are considered a threat to the male relationships in these films?

EH: I guess because in terms of the day-to-day life of—especially the main characters in a Western are usually lawmen or else criminals, outlaws of some kind. You know, there’s really no room for a woman. In other words there’s no real place for her. Where does she fit in, in terms of this kind of rugged country, lawless land? So I guess that’s maybe what he meant. In other words these are not domesticated men, necessarily. These are men who are traveling, who are traveling horseback, in this case, itinerant lawmen, really. They don’t really have a home. Their home is wherever they are. They’ve been traveling together for years. A certain bond has developed between the men in terms of trusting one another, relying on one another for their very survival. And so, where does a woman fit into that? Does that make sense?

AV: What was it about the character of Virgil Cole in Parker’s novel that made you want to play him?

EH: Virgil’s a pretty interesting fellow to me. I think he really means it when he says that near the end he and Hitch are walking and…Hitch talks about the fact that he never really believed in the law so much as being a lawman was the best way of being a gunman. You get paid, you’re doing work that you enjoy and you’re not digging in mines or wearing a soldier’s uniform.

And Virgil says, “Well, it means a hell of a lot to me. What am I if I don’t believe it?” And I think Cole really sees himself as a lawman, as a man who upholds the law. Yes, he makes some of his own laws but there’s still a moral code that he’s driven by, that he tries to live by. I think that’s the thing that gives him purpose in life

The book and for the most part the film are pretty much told from Hitch’s point of view. The only time you see Cole and Ally alone is one night when he’s on the porch, you know, at night for about twenty seconds. Otherwise everything’s taking place from where Hitch is witnessing.

Which leaves this relationship between Ally and Cole up to the imagination. What do they do together? What do they like? You don’t see them naked humping in bed together, and you don’t see the fact that Cole’s never been with a woman like this in his life. Bottom line is there’s a lot of reasons he doesn’t want to let her go, and one of them is nobody’s business.

AV: Why did you choose Viggo Mortenson for the role of your right-hand man?

EH: We worked together on The History of Violence and I really enjoyed working with him. He’s a really decent guy. He’s great on the set, treats everybody really respectfully. I just thought he’d be perfect. These are two guys who had to communicate a lot about being who they were and the knowledge of each other without really talking about it. They talk about stuff, but they don’t really talk about their inner feelings. I figured he’d be the guy who I could ride next to on a horse for 10 hours and never say a word and feel totally comfortable. If Viggo couldn’t have done it, I don’t know if I would have made the movie. You know he’s got a publishing company, he’s doing other films. We had to push back the filming so we could try to accommodate and squeeze the time in. And it would have been a lot easier for him in his life not to have done this film.