Speaker It goes back to your childhood was the first Fort Wayne film you saw and you remember about it.

Speaker Well, the film that affected me most, it wasn’t the first one I saw was The Searchers and the searchers. I had a paper route at the time and I remember that.

Speaker And of course, I love John Wayne.

Speaker Actually, I saw what affected me first I thought was a job for what I became aware that there was a guy that made these things, you know, that was these weren’t just movies that occurred, that there was someone who was behind it, which was very strange to understand that when you’re 12 years old, you know that John Ford, somebody, John Ford, you got to see this through. And the first one I thought was John Ford was Red River. And I saw Red River. And I thought, gosh, what a great film and everything else. And then I think I saw Fort Apache or probably My Darling Clementine or something like that. And I was quite impressed for some reason. But when I saw the searchers that really did it, I had a paper route and I arranged on my paper to go movies only played them, you know, for a week or two.

Speaker And I went, I don’t know, six or seven times to see it. And I never saw it again for years and years.

Speaker It never was on television. Everything else was on television as I grew up. And I kept looking for the searchers and the searchers was never there. And so I talked about the searchers all the time. I remember the searchers and I remember the song.

Speaker I remember every shot and I talked about it. And it wasn’t really until I got to USC film school I ever got to see The Searchers again. And I was convinced by then that I dreamed it. And then, you know, when I saw some of the scenes and they were exactly as I remember him, I was I was kind of relieved.

Speaker What is it about the searchers that was so mesmerizing for you of the experience?

Speaker I think that the that the searchers still to this day is closer to the West and what the West was than any other movie ever made.

Speaker And it’s a great film. It’s just it’s just a great story. It brings it does the things that Ford did so well, which is it brings family and the idea of family and community into it, into this western I mean, Western sort of, you know, usually about some guy got a team this town, you know, and got to do this or, you know, take money, you know, like, you know, you know, get a little spread after I do the bank job or something.

Speaker This is about what really you got a sense this is what it was.

Speaker These are people sort of thing in there are people out on a limb that he’ll be out on a limb till the land is tamed, you know, and then you equally get the feeling for the Indians who love ska. I mean, he’s the great villain. But you say that’s the way I want to be.

Speaker If I was an Indian, you know, if you could tell the story of the plight of the poor.

Speaker Well, the plight of the searchers is just simply, you know, a guy coming back from a civil war to his family and he comes back and my family is is murdered by the Indians who are whose business is murdering white families out there in Texas because they’re trying to get rid of them because of the way you’re trying to get rid of them.

Speaker And he and they take this little they take the two little girls to hope, you know, hopefully they’re going to raise them, but we don’t know what it’s going to be some horrible death and for what it is. And of course, he knows what these people are.

Speaker This character has been to the Civil War. He’s this hardened character that’s as bad as the Indians, just as hardened and tough and and and his and is.

Speaker And he’s a wonderful Wayne creates a character in their lives unmatched in all film, I think, because it’s so complex, because, you know, he never shows you his soft side and by never showing you a soft side, it’s always there.

Speaker It’s always there that he always says, you know, do I have to draw a picture? Do I have to do this, you know, whatever, you know, coming. And she gets that horse goes 30 miles more than he eats. You know, he loves to play around. He’s but he’s doing this all the Jeffrey Hunter or he takes along with him and he’s going to go and find this little girl and he doesn’t care how long it takes. He doesn’t care if it takes the rest of his life. He’s going to find this little girl and bring her back. And of course, the further he goes, the further you realise you can never bring her back. Oh, that that she’s become one of them and becoming one of them is anathema, so he can’t live with that even though he is one of them now, too. And so you have this wonderful kind of racism that that Ford had that where it turns on itself and the Indians are more you know, in some ways, you know, they take care of their people in some ways better than the whites and the whites, you know, become more like Indians. And it’s it’s a very, very strange kind of thing, you know? And yet there they are diametrically opposed to what’s good about it. There’s no political correctness. These people are not going to get along. This isn’t going to happen. This this is one of them is going to succeed and they’re going to succeed largely by by numbers.

Speaker And, you know, the inducers.

Speaker There’s been a lot of good stuff written about that since. But the searchers are still the best piece on it.

Speaker Are some people I know that still think it’s a race so they can’t stand the watch the searchers because they were just characters races, the way they treat the young woman that you had to marry.

Speaker You know, many kids are now going over the river there.

Speaker Let’s see. I love that because what I love about the racism and it is it’s real. It’s the real stuff is the way they felt because these two groups who had very little control over what was going on and he was what’s great about the searchers, you see the vastness of the country, of nature and the power of nature in their lives are rather insignificant.

Speaker And and so racism becomes even more insignificant. But it becomes very significant to them because it’s really tribal.

Speaker It’s not racial. It’s tribal. It’s like two Indian tribes. It’s like two clans, two Irish clans with all the stuff that you always dealt with. And he doesn’t mince it. He doesn’t say he doesn’t have anybody sitting there saying, well, these are noble savages.

Speaker They have a right for out here to know, you know, you kill, you shoot the compassion, you know, you know, kill them and, you know, kill these buffalo so they won’t feel Comanche bellies.

Speaker You know, that kind of thing is just, you know, absolutely unremitting, which is the way people were. And so there’s a sense that you’re in touch with the West because remember that Ford and Hawks were much closer to the West than we are than anybody than Peckinpah. Many of you know, we can imagine what it is. We can go out there and live. You know, when I was in high school, I tried to be Jim Bridger. You know, I went out and I was a mountain man out of, you know, muzzle loading rifle and, you know, and I pooched game and everything.

Speaker And I used to go out and, you know, blizzard and, you know, put Bachs and I, you know, burned and, you know, under the bark cause underneath me and wrapped up in a blanket everything.

Speaker And I was waiting for the deer and all that stuff that’s in Jeremiah Johnson, that old stuff that I did, you know.

Speaker Well, because I read it in a book I wasn’t attached to the West.

Speaker I mean, I could go into town, to the mountain in and get some stew, you know, and I could, you know, I wouldn’t do for that. I couldn’t walk. No matter even if something happened to my horse while I was hunting, I could walk out of those mountains to some nice lighted house. You know, I didn’t I didn’t understand the real nature of the frontier. I tried to, but Ford did because he came from the frontier. He he invented a whole industry. He you know, he went out west when nothing was there.

Speaker What was also fascinating about the about the searches is that some people had some issues with the FBI, the fact that this is a man who’s who’s basically you think killed there at the end of the film, but then by the very end, when he’s chasing them down, you know, after the raid.

Speaker Oh, yeah. And he picks the idea and he brings it back home.

Speaker That’s the greatest moment in film when he when he picks up Stereogum sensibility and stuff in your life.

Speaker That’s the greatest moment in film when he picks her up at the end and he says, let’s go home. I mean, you know, the secret is nothing’s ever been done better than that. Nothing moves you more. And he brings her home and he won’t let go over and may finally have to take her out of his hands at the doorway, and then he can’t come in the house because he doesn’t belong in the house anymore. You know, he’s a wild animal. He’s he’s no human, no more belongs in our house and scarred us.

Speaker And he’s going to go off and become, you know, a piece of land.

Speaker And you find where you find such a complement of ideas, it just appeals to the mythic vision that, you know, I was brought up with with the West, you know.

Speaker And I think that we all you know, the idea that if you subscribe to the the idea of rugged individualism, of American rugged individualism, that you’re going to stick to your your way and do this, you know, and and you’re not going to give and you’re not going to, you know, eat out something like that. You know, that’s how you’re going to end up outside the door in the wind. And you know that.

Speaker Would you would you deal with that?

Speaker Yeah, you make that, you make that decision and I must have made that decision when I was 14 years old.

Speaker The other thing that’s wonderful about this film is the imagery. I mean, for years, year, and that’s still probably better than any of his other films where he’s is gorgeous and for the fact is it’s you know, he uses the stage but searches. What is it about his use of mind that makes it such a beautiful tableau?

Speaker Well, he had done it before. He knew the color well. He knew and he was dealing.

Speaker First of all, it’s in color. So and as opposed to like you say it, it is prettier, much greater to look at than she wore a yellow ribbon, which is a beautiful film, too. But there’s something about he knew every where to go and he probably knew that day where he knew that, you know, this is a good day to go, where he got to the sand dune and the sand. It’ll be very yellow and white, you know, and the clouds will be dark behind it. And he developed I mean, there’s nobody in the history of film that had a better eye.

Speaker There’s there’s guys who come close, lean, you know, and Leon will tell you that he learned it all from John Ford or he would have told you and was around.

Speaker Karasawa always talked about Ford and they’re in they’re very similar. And the of a lot of the sort of the visual splendor, so to speak, of films is very boring. Ford did it with just with light, with shadow and and contrast of colors and things like that, and he just had you know, he was just better at it.

Speaker Sort of switch around here. One of the films I was just recently was one of the other things that you find that you really like a lot is they were expendable.

Speaker Oh yeah? Why? Well, I love they were expendable because they were external was about a defeat, you know, and once again, it tells it like it was at the you know, these people have everything they do. It doesn’t work. You know, they they blow up a jack cruiser, you know, that’s usually in post war movies. You know, it blew up the Jap cruiser. It doesn’t matter. There’s another Jap cruiser there. You know, their boats are going to get blown up. He loses his girl. The Japs have the girl at the end of the movie. You know, she’s a prisoner of war with the Japs, so they don’t know what happened to her.

Speaker And yet there’s a sense of duty through the whole thing, a sense that there’s something larger than you know. And that’s what it’s about, that there’s got to be something in life that’s larger than, you know, that wonderful moment at the end of the film where John Wayne says to the guy, he says, you get on the plane, you know, you got a wife to go. I got nothing. You got a wife to go back to. And then George Montgomery says Robert McNamara and Robert McNamara, he says, you can’t do that. You have your orders.

Speaker You know, there’s there’s this is not about you. This is not about your decisions. Somebody wants you for some reason back there or whatever it is. So, you know, yeah, this guy does have a ways to go, but maybe there’s something you have to do. This more important than that, you don’t know. But you’re not you’re not in a position to question him. And we all hope we will be that way.

Speaker If the time comes. We all hope will have the clarity of our codes will allow us to to live that way, you know.

Speaker What was it about for this notion of a code and tradition of duty, even though sometimes it could be a mistake like went on Thursday, takes his men into that training and for the party and those men know they’re going to die, but they do it anyway.

Speaker Yeah, that that’s the only one of his movies where where I question it. Yeah, I don’t like that movie I question. I think that John Wayne should have shot him, so fragged him. I think on Thursday he deserved to be fragged. I’ll put that on the record there.

Speaker You know, if you had a grenade, he deserves to go to the bathroom with it.

Speaker Well, we know at the end of the film that he’s this great man, he was, you know, his customer, but see that that was the whole point. I don’t think that the rating when it was a great writer, it was was it was a James Warner, Bella.

Speaker And he was trying to create the Custer.

Speaker The whole Custer story, and it didn’t work, it’s it’s just that’s the case of those three films, that film has wonderful things in it. But that part of the story to me just doesn’t play. I don’t know the situation. First of all, the Apaches, it’s the most inaccurate film as far as Apaches are concerned, though they say some great things. But the idea of trying to make the Apaches like the Sioux and all this kind of thing, it just doesn’t in the end, the unreasoning nature of Henry Fonda, though, that kind of thing happens all the time.

Speaker You read about that stuff in military history constantly.

Speaker I mean, it happens all the time in Hollywood.

Speaker People, you’re dragged along to disaster. You know, it’s going to be a disaster. You can’t do anything about it. You tell a person it’s going to be a disaster and you’re told stop being uncooperative. You know, or you’re difficult to deal with because you’re you’re predicting a disaster. Then there’s the disaster.

Speaker It happens all the time, every day. It’s in our lives, you know. But in that I thought he went too far, too far.

Speaker I think he should have given them he should have made it somewhat reasonable. He should have made that Thursby had was not a prig, was not carried away.

Speaker Was that. You mean you disliked him so much when he said the man who brings back who chiefs, you know, you should have really thought that he was doing if if I believe that he was doing something he thought was genuinely good, not just for his own self aggrandizement, you know, not a political opportunist or something, then I would have said it would I could understand the code, you know, if he was if he was just making a mistake, if he’d been fooled by coaches, which would have been better because the Apaches did fool people.

Speaker He was selfish. And he was he was a cheap political opportunist.

Speaker He was a cheap you know, it was you know, it was just a megalomaniacal idiot. You know, those kind of people usually get fragged. You know, Napoleon didn’t do stuff like that. He was just a bad man. Yeah, just a terrible commander. Now, I think that Ford said to himself, I saw this happen. You know, I saw this happen innumerable times in World War Two, and it did happen.

Speaker But, you know, it still is unclear, you know, to to glorify him at the end, of course, you had to glorify because, you know, all these men died and he ends up with his what’s his name ends up with his daughter.

Speaker So they go back to sort of create the life like and they’re doing their job is to go back to this whole notion of the creation of the importance and the importance of.

Speaker Well, I mean, I love the idea that, you know, when the truth becomes legend, print the legend. You know, I think I agree with that. But in creation myth. But the myth of it has to have a basis in reality.

Speaker You know, it has to have I mean, it has to serve. I mean, the 300 Spartans of Thermopylae did stay and did say, you know, we’ll fight in the shade. So that’s something you can take, you know, that’s not created out of whole cloth, you know.

Speaker Of the CEO of the four trilogy, he made these three of these three military movies for the U.S. Oil Live Rio Friday. Why do you think it was important for him to make those three films about the military tradition of the past to come out of World War Two because he needed to be he needed something?

Speaker It’s really obvious. I saw it just the other night. I really saw how obvious it was after World War Two.

Speaker You just saw.

Speaker So you saw I saw Fort Apache just the other night.

Speaker It was really obvious that asked why he made that, why he made the other three and why he spent so much time on the you know, the the ritual, I mean, the code and the ethics, because he’d watched for four years, men die for this and he didn’t want them to be forgotten. And he knew what you invariably knew at the end of a war, which is this will all be passed on, this will be swept under, you know, whatever happened, our struggles, our lives, you know, most of the time it’s forgotten. And he didn’t want it to be forgotten. He felt this shouldn’t be forgotten. And at the end of a war, there’s a tremendous desire to forget, there’s a tremendous desire to change things. There’s tremendous desire. So we’re never going to have to do this again. And he said these these were great things that were done. These were, you know, these little rituals, these, you know, dining in rituals. These these, you know, my compliments. You know, I will take the flank, that kind of thing. You know, these are these were great things. Great things were done, great gestures that are just gigantic, larger than life, things that people will never experience in peacetime. And he didn’t want them to be forgotten. That’s why he put them there. And what was really good about it was that putting him there was sort of there was something grand about that, too, you know, because they’re out there and some horrible fort, you know, no one else is in there forgotten. They have, you know, very low pay. They’re not going to be promoted. They’re not in Washington. And it’s very important.

Speaker Each one of these stories has the dance in it, you know, and how everybody, you know, has to get dressed up for the dance and then they have the grand procession. It’s really, really beautifully done in Fort Apache because the camera moves with them as they’re doing the grand procession. And you realize that this this means so much to these people. This means that it means a lot to us because we see these really are heroes. This is something that this this is the building of America, you know, and the dance allows them that moment where they can sit there and they can say we are part of the rest of the world.

Speaker They’re very nice and that use of be a lot.

Speaker My Darling Clementine two rode together, one on one of the least appreciated Ford films.

Speaker So you always had this sort of sense of community.

Speaker Also, just about Ford with much of the community is so important and the community, what it what it does to people, how people are bound to the community in one way or another. John Wayne is so interesting because John Wayne is goes from a character who is totally bound to the community, so much a part of the community, and they were expendable or Fort Apache, you know, and this kind of thing. And then you can see him start to become unraveled. And Fort Apache when he comes in and he’s dirty and he says, I made a deal with Cochise and he says, we’ll take you know. And then Henry Fonda says, we’re going to you know, we’re going to catch him, we’re going to betray him. And John Wayne says, no, this this isn’t my deal. I did this for this community. You’re interfering. I will go against the community. I you know, I won’t have any part of this. You know, it was just wonderful, a wonderful moment when John Wayne rides out in front of them, throws his gauntlet down.

Speaker That’s just a terrific scene.

Speaker I mean, you know, his career is over as far as he’s concerned, and, you know, he’s he’s made the decision. He says, you know, we live by these codes. I’m not going to be any different in my code, the code chiefs, than I would be to you, because the code is real. It isn’t just for us, you know, it’s for everybody. It doesn’t you know, and then you really get that, I’m sure, a yellow ribbon. When he goes to see the old chief and stop, the thing is.

Speaker What was the importance of that dialogue? We have to go, Chief, and you are here with again, the reinforcement of the code is larger than than us.

Speaker You know, Nathan, we we we are old men. You know, we must stop this war because it is a foolish war. See, that’s that’s the other side of of Thursby, isn’t it?

Speaker For Thursday was the Thursday, Thursday, and what does that mean, that on the other side is that, you know, if this guy is being unwrite, irrational and unreasonable, this is, you know, I mean, there’s a reason to fight. It better be a good one, you know, and when it is a good one, then you do it.

Speaker Give me your glasses again. Just bring them up in the back. How’s that? Maybe lower the National Front.

Speaker There you go.

Speaker Now, this trilogy of these four films, we see Wayne in all three films.

Speaker This victim of Lovgren is in the films, this Georgia Bryant and two of the films, Francis Ford and the films, Ford has a reputation for having a star company, you know, not only in front of the camera, but behind the camera.

Speaker Yeah, well, that’s a smart way to make movies, you know, because, you know, the people you have people around your life and you depend on and you get and you build a camaraderie that all comes from from military leadership.

Speaker You know, the idea that you build your esprit de corps, if you’re hiring replacements all the time, when you’re trying to get people in, you know, might be primadonnas or something like that.

Speaker You know, you’re destroying the esprit de corps. When I learned all this, you know, I from watching Ford movies, really, I learned how to run a set, you know, and I, you know, took on a military demeanor when I ran a set and people loved it. The actors, the first thing I did was I had a tent.

Speaker I didn’t have a trailer at a tent, and all the actors ended up in my tent. So why can’t we have a tent? Because you’re an actor, you have a trailer, you’re soft, you know.

Speaker And so I read the actor wanted a tent. You know, they wanted to be there, whether it was cold or rainy or whatever. They want to be in my tent and hang out and talk and smoke cigars and stuff like that in my tent. Now, Arnold has a tent, you know, as governor of California. You know, he goes and he sits in his tent and smoke cigars and only the best friends are invited into the tent.

Speaker And it’s not a comfortable tent. It’s got a cot, you know, and some some chairs. And he got that for me. And it’s good it’s good to take people and say, you know, we’re out here doing this and and we don’t we don’t tolerate, you know, people who are complaining about their trailers.

Speaker You know, that’s bad form. And people who come here and they want something special, we don’t tolerate that.

Speaker It’s bad for everybody’s here together. Nobody gets it any better than the others, you know, and and then the actors respond to that. And the actresses, too. Everybody likes that. They love that. They like being part of a community. They love having a code. They love living up to the code.

Speaker And so you and of course, you want to pick those people that you’ve used before so that you can depend on them and then everybody else wants to be one of those people. I mean, and my movies, the greatest one of the greatest symbolic people. It’s where I was.

Speaker Terry Leonard, who’s the great the greatest stuntman and doing second unit director and all that. And Terry Leonard is John Wayne. John Wayne once said you’re the real John Wayne and which is another story.

Speaker But people look at them and they want to be like Terry letter. Terry Leonard never complains, never brags, just does his job. He’s a professional. You know, there are other people like that. If you have those people around, you want those people around because it inspires.

Speaker It makes the whole group start to work together. And, you know, I don’t mean to sound like a communist, but people do feel they’re best when they’re working together.

Speaker Many people consider the weather the less memorable Fort Wayne collaboration with the man who shot Liberty Valance with the idea of the print, the legend is first put across by the newspaper editor. Why is that such a valuable and important film before went collaborate?

Speaker I guess because of, I guess in Liberty Valance, because of those those lines and stuff, I was wondering if there’s this wonderful Ford moments.

Speaker If you look at that film, it’s very cheap shot on soundstages. It’s not particularly good looking. It’s not about a particularly big historical event or anything, but it has these wonderful moments. You know, it has that wonderful moment when they when they’re arguing over the stage, you know, and it’s just a terrific thing about that moment, you know, where so everybody in it is so great. And you got Lee Marvin, you know, what a wonderful villain.

Speaker You know, he’s just just you really wonder why Ford didn’t use them a lot more, probably was drunk or both of them were drug sleeping because everybody was drunk on those films.

Speaker You know, it’s amazing. They are they’re such good films.

Speaker In the scene, the scene with that, when we finally confront Stewart and tell Stewart, you didn’t really shoot down the most powerful scenes in movies ever. Memorable to you and why, yeah, what did he say?

Speaker What were the exact number that you didn’t think that, you know, big back then?

Speaker Yeah, the fog and then the way. Right. He’s just popping pills of the rifle.

Speaker Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And he says you really shouldn’t. But he said, but it’s important that people believe you shot him because that’s bigger than what we are.

Speaker The important thing is that by shooting him, you brought the rule of law and you know, that’s that. And that’s more important than who shot it. That’s more important than any of us. More important than than than the girl.

Speaker That’s more important than our lives is the rule of law, which is sort of kind of tragic and complicated because by bringing the firearms and started bringing the rule of law is basically talking about the demise of down.

Speaker Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But he saw that it was necessary. And there’s a great incident in Teddy Roosevelt’s life where when he was up in the Badlands and these these escaped killers stole his boat in the middle of winter and he pursued the boat thieves because he couldn’t let it go. They were trying to kill him anyway. And they were, you know, and they were bad people. And this guy, Finnegan and Teddy, and he was just his buddy Bill. So track these guys.

Speaker And they captured them and they took one of them back and they took there are three of them. They took one of them back on. He only had horses enough to want them back. And he goes on with them or they took some of the boat. But he goes across country in a blizzard and they keep saying to him, you’re going to fall asleep, but we’re going to kill you. And of course, Teddy Roosevelt says, I have a good book. And he was on a Cananea. I mean, and he reads and he keeps his gun on him and finally brings them back through all this incredible blizzard indians’, all this arduous stuff.

Speaker And and they bring them to somewhere in North Dakota, Bismarck or something like that. And he says and they said, why didn’t you just shoot them?

Speaker Why didn’t you just shoot them? They deserve being shot and we’re going to hang them anyway. And he says, because I brought them back here to establish the rule of law. And he said that’s more important. I knew that and I knew that when I caught up that I would have to bring him back to establish the rule of law, because this place is never going to be any place. If there is no rule of law, it’s never going to be any better than it is now, Bill. And so.

Speaker You know, that’s a wonderful moment, and I think Liberty Valance of Wayne’s character, Tom Donaldson, knows that even though the rule of law is important, this is the end of a certain way of life.

Speaker So, yeah, so where is the end of his way of life? But it also means that there won’t be Liberty Valance anymore. You know, that there maybe, you know, he’ll he’ll miss him, probably, you know, remember that there was a great line in Larry McMurtry and Lonesome Dove, right. Where the two guys say we’ve killed off all the interesting people around here. So that’s probably the way he feels. But but, you know, in order for anything to change anything to for people to live their lives, there has to be the rule of law. And we we we we made the rule of law, we complain about it and they complain and I’m on the news every night, we don’t have the rule of law.

Speaker If we don’t have a justice system that works, we don’t have a civilization. We don’t have a country.

Speaker This period of fall and women’s history, I mean, Wayne was a major superstar now. I mean, he could get any movie made that he wanted for his career was basically going. And for a generation today, many people, when they see the name John Wayne, they think that John Wayne that I grew up with Red River and out of the family living with John Wayne, who was right wing Republican, you know. It was a very important patriarch for this country. Why, Wayne, what was we all about?

Speaker Well, Wayne, to me was just a wonderful figure because Wayne and John Ford taught us how to live, taught us how to grow up and become adults, you know, and to say it in a politically incorrect way. They taught us how to be men. They taught us what was expected. You know, that that you had that physical courage was important. Moral courage was even more important that you you know, you you did certain things. You didn’t violate certain things you did. And you kept your word. You didn’t betray your friends. You know, you opened the door for a lady. You treated a lady. Well, you know, there was a I remember I grew up there was the code of the cowboy, which was Gene Autry’s Code of the Cowboys, said things. I always hold the strip for a lady because, you know, things like this always handed the reins, you know, never, never, never cuss things, you know, real interesting stuff like that.

Speaker But if you think about it, it was a different era.

Speaker It was a different time.

Speaker It was, you know, what was expected, certain courtly behavior, you know, certain things that that that if those things really have tremendous tribal impact, because they actually are things that that people have always needed throughout history, you know, that, you know, today the idea of, you know, and people say they talk about heroes, they use the word hero like, yeah, the guy is going to go off to Iraq and become a hero or he’s a hero or something like that.

Speaker Or like it’s nothing like this is just something you decide to do and become a hero. Like you decided to become a biker or you decided to become, you know, a Wall Street guy or something like that. You just become a hero. But heroes, you know, require heroism and heroism is rare and it can be squandered and and and wasted.

Speaker And it’s something that the idea was that in that generation, we were told that there was something we were going to have to measure up to and we were going to be tested somewhere along the line. And we better prepare ourselves and build our character so that we could pass the test. And we weren’t going to like ourselves if we didn’t, you know, whether whatever John Wayne was in personal life doesn’t doesn’t matter what John Wayne was to two people who saw him and grew up with it mattered enormously. You know, and it gave me something to believe in. He was almost a religious figure.

Speaker Why? Because he represented a certain thing that everybody secretly wanted to be.

Speaker You know, and if you look at him, if you watch him in the quiet man, he is what everybody wants to be. You know that, and there is no better actor. I mean, you can sit there and people can scoff at John Wayne all they want because, you know, they can look at his some of his later movies that weren’t that good or something like that when he walks through them and things like that. But when John Wayne was on, nobody is more effective. And that’s what it is. That’s what it takes on the screen. I don’t care how good an actor is, if people don’t want to watch him, he’s not a good actor.

Speaker You know, but I always thought the greatest actors were John Wayne and Marlon Brando.

Speaker You know, doesn’t get any better than that, you know, John Wayne said that when he was making inquiries, he probably didn’t have anything to do. You know, that the whole movie was people who had really things to do or, you know, how to go on with his job, even though he was just like a totem pole in that movie.

Speaker Well, that’s because he’s quiet and make a movie called The Quiet Man.

Speaker You’re not supposed to have a lot to do about the quiet man John Wayne shot for. Many people, it was a difficult film for Ford to give me.

Speaker You know, you want to do it for many, many years. Why was it so important for Ford to do film?

Speaker I think that the the quiet man was really important for him because he had to return to. He had to deal with his past, you know, he had to deal with I mean, he’d been such an Irishman all his life.

Speaker You know, he had to finally go back there and do a movie in Ireland and he had to deal with all of that stuff.

Speaker And, you know, I don’t know.

Speaker There’s something of and then there’s there’s there’s a you know, that’s a movie truly about community. You know, everything is about that community. Everything is about the people and the characters and all this stuff. And he can really enjoy that, you know, that he you know, and he probably wanted to do that after World War Two because he wanted to do after doing these military things, he wanted to get away from that.

Speaker Would it be easy for such an Irishman, whether it be before Irish brings all the Irish stuff constantly to every movie?

Speaker I mean, you know, every you know, there’s there’s always a wonderful Irish music.

Speaker You know, there’s the the Irish mother, there’s the Irish sergeant, there’s the drinking. There’s all of the stuff that goes with being an Irishman, his every one of his movies, that he’s just completely an Irishman, you know, and it’s a personal thing to him. He was raised with it. It was very important for him to be an Irishman. And I was taught when I was, you know, a young aspiring filmmaker that bringing these personal things was very good because it made the movies human, because Ford made it so human. I mean, I was Irish. I knew nothing about, you know, Irish Catholicism or Irish music or anything. I you know, I loved Irish rebellion because I was a kid that like any kind of rebellion, you know, and but he he liked that. He like that whole service. He brought me in. And the great filmmakers that we admired when we were growing up did bring a certain personal quality. And I made the films very human. Fellini, you know, David Lean Karasawa, you know, certainly Ford of course.

Speaker And there were other, you know, so many filmmakers that you didn’t really know who they were, where they lived or something. But there was something that was very important. It brought a, I don’t know, a certain of a regional human touch to it.

Speaker The other thing that was important for you also seem to have this you laugh is that notion at points of history. Ford seems to love history, you can see it in his films.

Speaker You know, he was a he was a first generation Irish American.

Speaker His parents were Irish immigrants, said history that he thought to himself. I mean, Lincoln is an important character.

Speaker Yeah, well, history is always important because history is all we have. History is, you know, where our lives go by. I mean, if they if we had no history, our lives would totally be meaningless.

Speaker And anybody that doesn’t appreciate history, that doesn’t pay attention to history, that’s always looking at other concepts or looking like people who are interested in science fiction or science fiction doesn’t exist.

Speaker You know, it’s just history does you know, people live their lives and you through to understand that their lives were there and their lives had some meaning or some focus or some, you know, was to give your own life meaning and focus their you mentioned before was on the fact that people like Fort Knox, they were closer to that American path today.

Speaker So it was it was more like, yeah, they absolutely were closer to it. Everything all the historical stuff they did, they’d heard stories, you know, and you see to this day when you see drums along the Mohawk, there’s a sense of of what it was to be a settler in New England, you know, that that you don’t get in, you know, a later movie, you know, like The Last of the Mohicans or something. You don’t you don’t get that same sense of isolation. You know, sense of of terror being out there. Because there’s a distance I mean, you know, last the Mohicans is very accurately done and everything else, you know, Michael Mann makes it look pretty, but it doesn’t have the same visceral power that drums along the Mohawk does, you know, because Ford was closer to it.

Speaker And also, I mean, you sort of have this willpower, and that’s what were his strengths as a director at Ford, brought all his movies, you know, made them for me, you and Ken things that, you know, we’ve absorbed in the mountains.

Speaker Well, I think that there’s something it’s just as simple as this.

Speaker It’s just first of all, the guy had the greatest eye that anybody’s ever had and a great, great sense of drama. And that coupled with a sense of trying to bring you to a reality. That there’s nothing there’s there’s no.

Speaker In Ford, it’s there, it’s real stuff. You know what I mean, it’s not it’s not made up, it’s not a guy going through the motions.

Speaker There’s a sense that it’s not Play-acting. I look at movies all the time today and I look at kids in these movies playing Western characters, World War Two characters or knights or something like that. And I don’t believe it for a split second. These people and I don’t know whether it’s the actors or the directors, and I suspect it’s both, but I blame a lot to the directors because as a director, I feel that I should be able to take any actor and make him fit into some period or something that I should give him a reality that he can really have. Now, there are wonderful actors who keep Bobby DeNiro. He’s going to be wherever you put Bobby DeNiro, you can’t believe he’s a real person because he is you know you know, there are plenty actors like that, but there’s a lot of them you don’t believe. Now, the directors must be saying, OK, well, if I have if I have it look right, if I have the right costumes, if I have all of that kind of stuff, that’s all I have to do know it’s a situation and that somehow Ford always got the reality of the situation and maybe it’s because he brought real life into it.

Speaker Maybe it’s because of his concern with, you know, being Irish, the community, the family, the codes, all of these things, that these were real things so quiet that for you was the one real memorable scene that stays with you. Every time you want to watch that film, you think about, oh, I guess the scene that you can’t ever forget is when he goes in and he sees the bed collapse and he says Homeric. You know, the other thing that’s great in the quiet man is the underlying sexuality, and there’s this tremendous underlying sexuality in that movie that’s not another necessarily in other Ford movies, you know, even the end of it where she sees him and she sort of leaps across the little stream and he goes running after her.