Well, that’s just great, I thought. Marvellous. Terrific. Wonderful. Molto
grazie. I felt exactly like Tuco did when he peered into Arch Stanton’s
grave and saw only a pile of dusty bones. We’ve been waiting and waiting, like
Frank’s men at Cattle Corner station, for the one English-speaking Festival
participant (Alex Cox apart) who can actually talk serious Spaghetti, and he’s
laid up in Hollywood
being fussed over by a gang of quacks. Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord. “On
the QTâ€, my ass . . .
(Oh, and in case you’re wondering – as you very well might
be – who Marco Müller is, he’s the Director of the Venice Film Festival, and
the reason he hasn’t been mentioned till now is that I haven't set eyes on him
at any of the Spaghetti Western events I've attended thus far. And now that QT
isn’t coming, I doubt very much that I will.)
The preceding bit of disappointing news was sprung on us at
the start of the second Spaghetti Western Round Table, at which the speakers
were Lars Bloch, Gianfranco Pannone, Giulio Questi, Giulio Petroni, Robert
Woods, Gianni Garko, and Hunt Powers. Also present was Giancarlo Santi, who
obviously wasn’t expected as he was made to sit at the back of the podium like
a naughty schoolboy. As he had to leave fairly sharpish, he was invited to
speak first. “We must be grateful to Quentin Tarantino,†he said, “for
resuscitating us, and it tells us we have done our job well.†He had, he
claimed, “made ‘The Grand Duel’ in the Leone fashion,†and had got the idea for
the title sequence (in which the titles scroll from left to right) from the
similar method used in French dubbing theatres. “I didn’t imagine I’d made a
masterpiece; it was often by the seat of my pants.†Asked if he thought his
film had influenced Tarantino, he replied, “Quentin Tarantino copies from
everyone without any compunction.†Which I think he intended as a compliment.
Tarantino’s name has been bandied about with great frequency
throughout this retrospective, though in a way which suggests there is still a
deep-rooted defensiveness in the Italian attitude to their Westerns. It’s as if
many of the speakers feel that by invoking Tarantino’s name at every
opportunity they are somehow bestowing a legitimacy on the Spaghetti Western
which it might otherwise lack. This attitude, unsurprising to some extent,
given the historical indifference (or downright hostility) displayed by the
Italian critical establishment, is nonetheless depressing, and one with which
Tarantino himself, I suspect, would have little sympathy. The Spaghetti Western
no longer needs (if it ever did) the blessing of a leading Hollywood
director to justify its existence. And in any case, Quentin Tarantino isn’t
saying that the best Spaghetti Westerns are great because he happens to like
them; he’s saying they’re great films because they’re great films. Full stop.
Period. End of story. The fact that Tarantino speaks publicly and passionately
about these films is marvellous, but he doesn’t do so just for the pleasure of
hearing his own voice. He wants people to discover the wonderful world of
Spaghetti Cinema and recognise it for what it was – something vital, unique,
and damned entertaining. Good for him, and long may his spirit ride through the
ramblas of AlmerÃa in search of a fistful of dollars.
And good for directors like Eli Roth (may your poncho never
fade) who, as reported earlier, are prepared to say what so many of our
generation think (simply put: John Ford is boring, Sergio Leone isn’t) in a way
which would have been impossible – or at any rate, unwise – only ten or fifteen
years ago if one had any desire to be taken seriously. It’s not that the
generation born in the Sixties can’t look at Ford and find things to admire,
but he doesn’t speak to us in the way that Leone does, and we’re tired of
having him held up as the great Western director before whom we must all
genuflect. And we’re suspicious of critics who drone on about the “poetry of
John Fordâ€, a phrase we find as meaningless as Ford himself would have done
(“I’m John Ford, I make Westerns,†remember?). Movies are not about poetry,
they’re about telling stories with images and music, and at that Sergio Leone
(to name only the most obvious Italian example) was as good as anyone who ever
drew breath. Full stop. Period. End of story.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch – or the Round Table, to be
exact, Santi was followed by Giulios Questi and Petroni (whose comments will be
included in the reports on their films), and then Lars Bloch, an amiable Dane
who produced the documentary, ‘Westerns, Italian Style’ (mentioned in a previous
report), and who also had bit parts in a number of Spaghetti Westerns. Looking back, Bloch
recalled that there was, “Such an energy, such vitality in making Westerns.†Of
his own contribution, he remarked, “I couldn’t ride. It was wonderful. It
almost killed me but it was wonderful!â€
Hunt Powers spoke next, about how he was offered the title
role in Franco Giraldi’s ‘Sugar Colt’ (1966), and of his collaboration with
Demofilo Fidani, widely cherished as the worst Spaghetti Western director of
all time. “Demofilo Fidani was like a father to me. I did six films with him .
. . I miss him terribly. He brought a wonderful kind of humour to the work.†He
then added that Fidani’s favourite film stars were Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers, an unexpected piece of information which either explains everything
about the man best known as ‘Miles Deem’, or absolutely nothing at all.
Robert Woods, the Man from Colorado (to borrow a Glenn Ford Western
title), began by saying, “For me, this era of Italian films was an era of
collaboration. And everyone from the clapper boy to the director collaborated.â€
He then added to Powers’ recollections of Fidani: “I loved Demofilo, who paid
me in IOUs, and his wife, who was a costume designer.†Later on, Woods told me
how on one occasion, fed up with being paid in IOUs (cambiali in
Italian), he arrived at Fidani’s office in Rome
with a very large gentleman from the south of Italy, and demanded a cheque. After
some huffing and puffing, Fidani eventually produced one and filled it out. Woods,
however, then suggested that he would take the cheque to the bank while his
large friend remained with Fidani. On hearing this, the director turned a
strange color, and began muttering that perhaps, after all, now that he
thought about it, there mightn’t actually be quite enough money in that
particular account to cover the cheque. He then asked for it back and gave
Woods a new one, drawn on a different account, which was honored by the bank.
Actors’ stories of being paid with cambiali are one of the great legends
of this period of low-budget Italian film-making, and Marc Fiorini was only the
most recent of my acquaintance to say, “You never saw any money, but you could
paper your walls with cambiali.†Woods finished by recalling how he had
been working in theatre in Paris when he was
offered a screen test in Barcelona, a
subsequently became a Spaghetti Western star in Italy. “I think I was the only real
cowboy here. In Colorado,
people still wore guns – still do.â€
The last major speaker was Gianni Garko, Sartana himself,
who shared his memories of the Maestro: ‘I’ve told this before but – in 1964, I
was rehearsing a play by Goldoni in Milan,
and I saw posters for ‘Fistful of Dollars’ during breaks in rehearsals. I had
met Leone in Spain,
while I was making ‘Saul and David’ the year before, in AlmerÃa, in an hotel,
sitting on a chair with his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing here?†I
asked. “A sort of imitation Western . . . there’s my [lead] character,†he
said, pointing to Clint Eastwood as he walked in in costume.’ When Garko
mentioned this meeting to the producer of ‘Saul and David’, he was told that
Leone’s company had no money and had borrowed two cameras to continue filming.
Years later, in the early Eighties, Garko met Leone in Turin: “I thanked him for giving actors a
great opportunity to earn some money, and ten years’ of marvellous work.†His
last meeting with Leone was in Venice
in 1988, the year before his death, when Leone was the Jury President of the 45th.
Venice Film
Festival.
And so, after a few words from Gianfranco Pannone, a
director whose short documentary on Giulio Questi is being shown ahead of
tonight’s screening of ‘Django, Kill!’, the second and final Spaghetti Western
Round Table came to a close, with the participants being hustled away with what
we have come to recognise as the usual display of indecent haste. Questions
from the press? Hell, no! What do you think this is, an international film
festival or something?
***********
Flashback – As the Round Table 2 wasn’t starting till 5:00
p.m., there was time in the morning to visit ‘Il nostro West’ (‘Our West’),
described, rather inelegantly, as an “exhibition of costumes and props from the
most famous sets of Italian Western films.†This was housed in the inelegantly
named Telecom Italia Future Centre in Campo San Salvador, near the Rialto Bridge.
By a happy coincidence, the Campo San Salvador is linked by a short street to
the Campo San Bartolomeo, which is dominated by a statue of Carlo Goldoni, the
Venetian playwright who has a posthumous footnote of his own in the history of
the Spaghetti Western. Faced with a lawsuit from Akira Kurosawa for his
unauthorised remake of ‘Yojimbo’, Sergio Leone and his ‘Fistful of Dollars’
producers decided to claim that the original plotline of both films was in fact
derived from that of Goldoni’s 1745 comedy, ‘Arlecchino, the Servant of Two
Masters’. This audacious ploy didn’t work, however, and they were forced to
cede the Pacific rights and fifteen per cent of the global box-office receipts
to Kurosawa’s company. Nice try, though .
The exhibition was set under three porticos of an interior
courtyard, saddles and a buggy to the left, costumes and three display cases of
props to the right. The porticos were decorated with banners featuring Clint
Eastwood, Claudia Cardinale, and Marianne Koch, and were clearly chosen by
someone whose notions of accuracy could most fairly be described as
non-existent. Thus, while there was one image of Eastwood in ‘Fistful of
Dollars’, it was flanked by others from those well-known Italian Westerns,
‘Rawhide’, ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’, ‘Pale Rider’, and ‘Unforgiven’. Well,
what the hell, they’re all Westerns, aren’t they? La Bella Claudia fared rather
better, being represented in one banner from ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’,
and two from ‘The Legend of Frenchie King’, which, while at least an Italian
co-production, would be regarded by most as being a Euro Western rather than a
Spaghetti proper. Marianne Koch, though represented only once, was at least
shown in ‘Fistful of Dollars’.
The livery display comprised a buggy used in ‘Once Upon a
Time in the West’ (presumably the one in which Paolo Stoppa’s Sam conveys Jill
McBain to Sweetwater), Duccio Tessari’s ‘Alive or Preferably Dead’ (1969), and
Santi’s ‘The Grand Duel’, along with two saddles, one belonging to Django and
the other to Angel Eyes. The three display cases showed props provided by
Rancati, and included a Winchester,
sheriffs’ stars, spurs, a hat, and gun-belts with Peacemakers.
The costumes were displayed on red tailor’s dummies (a
subtle allusion to the oppression of the Red Man, no doubt) and comprised two
generic cowboy outfits (with dusters), Jill McBain’s dress (last seen in the
Autry Museum in 2005), Sean Mallory’s ‘dynamite’ coat (ditto), Mr. Morton’s
suit, and Angel Eyes’ black suit from ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. This
last item was particularly intriguing, given that Lee Van Cleef didn’t wear a
black suit in ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, and as I peered back and forth
from it to the name plate beside it (wrongly spelt, wrongly dated), I found
myself echoing John Vernon’s great line from ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ – “Don’t
piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.†Although, like Harmonica, I’ve no
interest in fashion, the longer I stared at that suit, with its short lapels,
four buttons, and heavy texture, the more I became convinced that, not only was
it never worn by Angel Eyes, but that it
bore no resemblance whatsoever to any of the black costumes worn by Van Cleef
in any of his Spaghetti Westerns, all of which tended to be longer in length,
with longer lapels, and made of a quite different material, accompanied by
something rather snazzy in the waistcoat department. Needless to say, it’s
impossible to know if the inclusion of this costume was a deliberate attempt to
pull the wool over the public’s eyes or just another example of the
couldn’t-care-less attitude evinced by the banners. Not for the first time in
the last week, I found myself walking away, muttering, “Quien sabe?â€
************
The phrase ‘Quien sabe?’ remained in my mind as I
watched the first film of the day, Giulio Petroni’s ‘Tepepa’ (1968), starring
the Italian Western’s one-man revolution, Tomás Milian, and co-scripted by her
resident Red, Franco Solinas. In ‘A Bullet for the General’ (1966, a.k.a.
‘Quien sabe?’), also co-written by Solinas, Antonio Ruiz plays a Mexican boy who,
on two occasions, asks the gringo, Bill Tate, whether he likes Mexico. The
answer on both occasions is “Noâ€. In ‘Tepepa’, Solinas took this character,
played on this occasion by Luciano Casamonica, and weaved him into the story of
a revolutionary known as Tepepa (Milian, of course) and an English doctor,
Henry Price, played by John Steiner.
The film opens with Price arriving at the prison where, very
soon, Tepepa is due to be executed on the orders of the fearsome Colonel
Cascorro (Orson Welles). Price engineers Tepepa’s escape from in front of a
firing squad in a scene filmed in the same dogleg street in Guadix where, in
Leone’s ‘Giù la testa’, Juan Miranda watches a more successful execution
through a torn political poster (the escape itself is also reminiscent of
Sean’s rescue of Juan from a firing squad later in that film). Price has his
own reason for saving Tepepa’s life – he wants to take it himself in revenge
for the rape and subsequent suicide of his fiancée at the hands of the
revolutionary. But a pursuing cavalry patrol interrupts his plan, and soon it
is Price who finds himself in prison, from which he is eventually released by
Tepepa. The pair are soon caught up in events as Tepepa joins the rebellion
against Francisco Madera, his former leader who stands accused of betraying the
Revolution . . .
As can be seen, the basic premise of ‘Tepepa’ follows much
the same template as most of the so-called “political†Spaghetti Westerns,
hardly surprising as Solinas provided either the story or the script for most
of them, including Sollima’s ‘The Big Gundown’, and Corbucci’s ‘A Professional
Gun’ (from which Corbucci then developed ‘Compañeros’), as well as writing the
non-Western, but Western-themed, ‘Salvatore Giuliano’ (1961) and ‘Quiemada’
(1969). A charismatic but politically naïve peón becomes radicalised
through contact with a cynical gringo (or European, if played by Franco Nero),
with whom he shares many adventures before he either kills the gringo (‘A
Bullet for the General’) or comes to some form of mutual understanding which
may or may not involve them joining forces once more (the Corbucci films).
According to Sergio Donati, Solinas was a remarkably unsubtle polemicist, so
the fact that all the Solinas-based Westerns are both highly entertaining, as
well as intelligent, must be put down to the involvement of his co-writers and
the directors, none of whom, with the exception of Damiani (who still causes
much merriment to this day by insisting, “I was not making a Western, I was
making a political film.â€), were remotely interested in doing anything other
than telling a good story well.
Giulio Petroni, whose best-known film remains ‘Death Rides a
Horse’ (1967, with Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law), confirmed this by
saying, “Some people wanted to think of political inferences in the Western,
but I didn’t agree with this.†In fact, the combination of radicalism and
hard-nosed professionalism (or even outright cynicism in Leone’s case) in the
“political†Spaghettis seems to have had the happy result of pleasing just
about everyone: the films were tremendously popular in Latin America and
other Third World territories, where Tomás Milian became a genuine symbol of
revolution, while at the same time proving big box-office in countries with a
less politicised audience, where they could simply be enjoyed as outstanding
Western adventure stories.
Following on from Giulio Questi’s recollections of working
his own wartime experiences into the story of ‘Django, Kill!’, Petroni remarked
wryly, “I did go to war too, but it’s a lot funnier to make Westerns. Less
danger as well,†adding that while he had no particular ambition to make
Westerns, he was asked to do it and was happy to do so – “It’s a lot of fun . .
. a lot of dust, a lot of horses.†He was then asked about working with Orson
Welles (who gives an excellent performance as Cascorro), and recalled a series
of “melancholic meals with Orson. He talked with pain about Rita Hayworth. He
had an Italian wife in London,
but there was a lot of sadness there.†The relationship between Welles and
Milian was apparently prickly. ‘I was in the hotel restaurant, and the day
Orson arrived, Milian called me and said “I’m no longer the most beautiful in
the kingdom.†“Obviously not,†I said . . . Orson used to ask [in a disparaging
way], “Where’s that Cuban guy?†There was no love lost between them.’
‘Tepepa’ remains the least-well known of the “politicalâ€
Spaghettis, which is a pity because it certainly loses nothing by comparison
with the other films mentioned above. Milian is in top form once more (even if
one suspects he could play this role in his sleep), and there’s a nicely-drawn
portrayal of the well-meaning but naïve Madero by Paco Sanz. The film also
marks the Italian début of the hatchet-faced English actor, John Steiner, who
would go on to have a distinguished career in Spaghetti Cinema, usually playing
thin-lipped sadists or complete nutters. His Henry Price is a very cold fish,
closer in spirit to Lou Castel’s Bill Tate than Franco Nero’s charmimg
interlopers, and despite having a perfectly acceptable reason for wanting to
kill Tepepa, he remains only marginally more sympathetic than the mercenary
Tate. As the boy, Paquito, Luciano Casamonica acquits himself well enough,
though he lacks the natural charm of Antonio Ruiz, and there’s a good
performance by the pock-marked José Torres as his father. The film looks
wonderful too (as in fact do all the “political†Westerns, which stand as a
rebuke to the charge of “cheapness†often aimed at the Italian Western), and
though it seems somehow redundant to say so, there is a yet another magnificent
score by Ennio Morricone. ‘Tepepa’ is available on DVD on the Italian label,
Alan Young Pictures, with a slightly ropey but perfectly serviceable English
mono soundtrack, and a CD of the score.
*************
At midnight, I reined in for Giulio Questi’s ‘Django, Kill!
(If You Live, Shoot!)’(1967), the Italian Western’s cult cult movie, and
was pleased (though not surprised) to run into Alex Cox in the lobby. After
apparently lying low for a few days, Alex had resurfaced for the film which (as
mentioned before) he had showcased on his ‘Moviedrome’ series of cult movies
for the BBC. A few moments later, Questi himself turned up, a rather
professorial old bird with a vaguely puzzled demeanour, and it was but the work
of a moment for Alex to whip out his digital camera, thrust it into my hands,
and insert himself beside Questi for a photo opportunity. “Take a picture,†he said,
then covered his bets by adding, “Take two, take three!†I duly obliged, then
watched as Alex told Questi how wonderful it was to meet him and how much he
loved his film. As he spoke in English, quickly and with great enthusiasm,
Questi looked more puzzled than ever, though I’m sure he got the idea.
The film was preceded by ‘Una QUESTIone poco privata’ (which
I think translates as ‘A Slightly Private Matter’), a fifteen-minute
documentary by Gianfranco Pannone which shows Questi at home, talking about his
career in cinema, reading from a collection of war memoirs, and tinkering with
some digital shorts which have recently been released on DVD here in Italy.
Having just been exposed to the experimentalism of ‘El Puro’
and ‘Yankee’, I was mildly concerned that this might in some way lessen the
impact of ‘Django, Kill!’, make it seem, somehow, less “out thereâ€. I needn’t
have worried. Nothing can make ‘Django, Kill!’ seem less “out thereâ€.
This is a film so far “out there†that, while it may now have company, it still
leads the field by several bloody and perverse lengths. Of course, one could
argue that ‘El Topo’ has an equal, if not stronger, claim to be the Weirdest
Western Ever Made. But Jodorowsky’s film is essentially a religious and
spiritual allegorical odyssey which appropriates the trappings of the Western;
take away the weirdness and what would be left would have very little to do
with the Western in any real sense of the term. With Questi’s film, however
(as, indeed, with ‘El Puro’ and ‘Yankee’), one could describe the story, minus
all the madness, in a few sentences and still be left with something which is
recognisably a Western plot – of the Spaghetti variety, of course.
Earlier in the day, Questi had described the genesis and
shooting of ‘Django, Kill!’, but as his accounts of these are remarkably
consistent and can be found on both the Blue Underground (Region 1) and Argent
(Region 2) DVDs (the latter a more detailed interview, by the way), as well as
in the foreword to Bruschini and De Zigno’s Western all’italiana: The Wild,
the Sadist and the Outsiders, I’m not going to repeat them here – though I
do think that Questi’s response to the film’s producer, who arrived
unexpectedly on his doorstep and asked him what he was working on, deserves a place
among the great movie quotes: “An erotic film, with chickens.†(Later made as
‘Death Laid an Egg’.)
Questi did offer the opinion that, “There’s no law which
says this is the way a Western should be; everybody brings their own ideas to
the Western.†He also described his puzzlement at the outrage which greeted
‘Django, Kill!’ on its release and which led to its confiscation: “[It was
considered] a kind of scandalous violence, but I didn’t understand why it was
seized. [There was perhaps] too much violence – not realistic, but which made
people look askance.†Asked about his relationship with the notoriously
difficult Milian, he replied, “On the set he was mine and I loved him;
afterwards I didn’t much care,†though he made clear that this was not specific
to Milian by adding that he “didn’t tend to get close to actors outside work.â€
Questi also claimed that he “did not feel he had any special
Western knowledge,†and this is a remark I’ve heard, with slight variations,
from a number of the directors attending this retrospective, some of whom have
either said that they had no particular interest in Westerns or no particular
ambitions to make them. These comments surprised me at first, given that many
of the films made by these directors seem to exhibit both a knowledge of, and
fondness for, the Western form (if only as something to be subverted!), to say
nothing of the vigour and enthusiasm inherent in the movies themselves. Were
they really saying that they viewed their Westerns as just a job of work? Presumably,
to some extent, that must have been the case. Many directors who entered the
film business in the 1940s and 1950s and worked their way up by the usual
assistant director-route must have found themselves making Westerns in the
mid-1960s for no other reason than that was what was on offer at the time. If
you want to make movies, you make Westerns. OK, va bene, I’ll make
Westerns.
But then it occurred to me that, in fact, it would have been
very odd if any of them had claimed to have “any special Western knowledgeâ€
beyond what any other young Italian film fan watching the Duke, or Randolph
Scott or Joel McCrea would have possessed. Did George Archainbaud or Lesley
Selander know their Hunkpapa Sioux from their Miniconjou?, their Henrys from
their Winchesters? I haven’t the faintest idea, nor do I imagine for one moment
that it actually matters. As Sergio Donati has remarked, “I’d say we [Italian
Western film-makers] elaborated on American cinema, American Westerns, more
than the history of the American West.†Let’s not fool ourselves that the
majority of Hollywood Western film-makers didn’t do exactly the same thing.
And as for harbouring actual ambitions to make Westerns –
well, what young assistant director, living in Italy and learning his craft during
the Neo-Realist period, could have seriously envisioned himself making a
Western at any time in his career? Even a certain Sergio Leone, working as an
assistant on Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’ in 1948, wouldn’t have
considered that a realistic possibility, even if the thought had occurred to
him. So, once placed within an historical context, what could be construed as a
less-than-enthusiastic attitude to making Westerns becomes rather more
understandable. For many Italian directors, as with their Hollywood
counterparts, making Westerns was surely nothing more than a job, but to those
with vision and imagination, the Western became something more, a prism through
which to comment on Hollywood, on contemporary events, to push and expand the
boundaries of what had become, by the mid-1960s, a moribund genre,
little more than a source of endless television fodder.
Giulio Questi certainly possessed vision and imagination
when he made ‘Django, Kill!’, and most definitely pushed the boundaries of the
form about as far as they could possibly go. It’s a small measure of his
success in the latter regard that the two most conspicuously bogus Indians ever
committed to celluloid actually start to appear perfectly normal when viewed
within the context of all the other craziness. Any attempt to provide a plot
synopsis, never mind an analysis, strikes me as completely pointless, and in
any case, anyone who’s seen the film isn’t likely to need reminding, while
anyone who hasn’t deserves the chance to let it hit them in the head like a
gold bullet (“they go in deeperâ€). Bang!
However, I would like to mention Paco Sanz’s great
performance as Hagerman (or ‘Alderman’ as I think he was called in the Italian
print). Looking like a pocket-sized, bourgeois version of John Ireland, he
really makes the most of his role as a weaselly, vindictive, religious
hypocrite. Another difference between the English-language prints and the
Italian occurs when Roberto Camardiel’s Zorro delivers his oft-quoted line to
his parrot: “It’s a pity you don’t understand what my muchachos mean to
me. They make me so happy in their black uniforms, heh-heh-heh.†In the Italian
print, the lines appear to translate as something like, “You cannot understand,
it’s not just the uniforms that make the boys beautiful. Beautiful and
perverse, with death always near them.â€
I’m not sure what this proves, other than to make Zorro sound even
creepier, and I realise the second sentence is something of a non sequitur
– but, hey, let’s not expect too much in the way of coherent thought from a man
who gets drunk with his parrot.
Lastly, a word about the English-language title. We all know
that Questi’s film isn’t a Django film, and that it was only called ‘Django,
Kill!’ to cash in on the original ‘Django’. We know that Giulio Questi hates
it. We know that Tomás Milian hates it. And I’ve yet to meet any Spaghetti
specialists who don’t hate it too, on the grounds that it’s an insult to both
the originality of Questi’s work and to Sergio Corbucci. So I hereby propose that,
in Spaghetti circles, the name is allowed to slide into oblivion, replaced
instead by ‘If You Live, Shoot!’ (which, for those unfamiliar with all this, is
the English translation of the Italian title, and also appears as a kind of
subtitle on the English-language prints). I was going to suggest a sort of
swear-box penalty system for people who inadvertently use the “DK†title, but
somehow that doesn’t seem quite in keeping with the film itself. So maybe it
could be mutually agreed (among consenting adults) that future offenders are
punished in one of the many inventive ways depicted in the film itself . I feel
quite sure that when enough people have been stripped to their underwear,
lashed to a cruciform and tormented with bats, that the offending title will
soon become a thing of the past. Wouldn’t you agree?
*************
After ‘If You Live, Shoot!’ (there, you see, it isn’t that
difficult), I had the pleasure of meeting Antonio Bruschini, who is not only
the co-author of the beautifully illustrated trilogy of books, Western
all’italiana (published by Glittering Images), but also one of the first of
the young generation of Italian authors to start writing seriously about their
popular cinema’s glorious past. Working in tandem with Antonio Tentori, he’s
written wonderful studies of the giallo, fantasy, erotic, and poliziesco
genres, as well as Operazione paura, a study of the leading
Italian horror directors.
I then joined up with Robert Woods, whom I’d met going into
the Questi film and had arranged to speak with afterwards. It says everything
that needs to be said about the total lack of communication between the
organisers and the press at this event that I found myself making an
appointment to speak to a guest at two o’clock in the morning. Woods himself
then told me that if he hadn’t happened to run into Gianni Garko at Marco Polo
Airport, he wouldn’t have had any idea how to get to the actual festival. A big
bravo all round, then . . . Nonethless,
one of the co-curators (and I think I reveal nothing in saying that his
initials are M.G.) now invited us to join him for a joint, which involved a not
inconsiderable walk along a deserted Lido to
his hotel. This, at any rate, gave me the chance to talk to Woods, who proved
to be both great company as well as an unreconstructed child of the Sixties.
Why, I enquired, was he usually billed as ‘Robert Wood’,
instead of ‘Woods’? No idea, he replied, “I came to Italy and I lost an ‘s’.†I then
asked him to confirm that Lina Wertmüller had, in fact, directed Woods and Elsa
Martinelli in ‘The Belle Starr Story’ (1968), under the pseudonym “Nathan Wichâ€
– becoming, in the process, the only woman to direct a Spaghetti Western.
Robert did so, before recalling the acrimonious circumstances in which
Wertmüller was promoted from scriptwriter to director: “Elsa became
increasingly unhappy with the rushes, in which she felt the original director
was favouring me, and started to talk about having him replaced. I said, come
on, the guy – whom I won’t name [Piero Cristofani, an eminently obscure former
assistant director] – is just doing his job, he’s probably got a family to
support, give him a break . . . But she kept on complaining about him, together
with Wertmüller, with whom she was friends, and the guy got fired.â€
Earlier, I’d heard Robert mention his surprise at being
recognised, while on a trip to Senegal,
for his role as a Mexican hero in ‘My Name Is Pecos’ (1967). While we often
read, in general terms, of the impact of Spaghetti Westerns in Third World countries, it struck me as unusual to have an
opportunity to hear some actual anecdotal evidence. Robert recalled, ‘I just
finished making a couple of ‘White Fang’ movies in the Torino Alps with dogs
the size of Chihuahuas,
and I needed to go somewhere warm. So I got on a flight to Senegal and when I landed at Dakar,
the first thing the guy in Customs says to me is, “Are you Pecos?â€.
Turns out the film was a huge hit there – there was a tailor’s shop called
‘Pecos’, we even had a guide called Pecos. . . . But the strangest thing was being stopped by
an African student in Boulder, Colorado,
of all places, and asked if I was Pecos.’ Why
did he think the film had hit a nerve in Senegal? “Well, it had a kind of
political slant . . . I was once invited to speak about it to their diplomatic
corps . . .â€
I then asked him about the handful of films he’d made with
the legendary Jess Franco, but unfortunately didn’t learn anything beyond the
fact that Robert had tried to keep the movies off his résumé for years, in case
his parents found out that he’d been making dodgy films with the undisputed
king of the European sex-horror film. “Now,†he said, somewhat ruefully, “it’s
all over the internet.†He remained unconvinced by my contention that, far from
being something to be ashamed of, working with Jess Franco should be one of the
highlights of an actor’s career. Oh, well . . .
By now, having arrived at the hotel, M.G. emerged with the
makings, which Robert, with the combined skill of a genuine cowboy and a
genuine hippy, deftly constructed into what he explained to our Italian friend
was called in California,
“a spliff.†The conversation then proceeded in more general terms, with Robert
mentioning that marijuana was now legal in California, “for medical use.†(Memo to
self: get sick note from doctor before next trip to L.A.) He then lamented what he quite rightly
sees as the appalling assault on civil liberties being waged in the name of the
“Wur on Terrurâ€. Was this something he was happy to have mentioned in my
report, I enquired. “Hell, yes! I hate Bush – you can put that in!†he said,
passing over the spliff. “And I speak to Jesus every night and he don’t like
him either!â€
Eventually, spliff consumed, we continued on our way to our
respective hostelries, reflecting on the fact that while the joint had proved
totally useless, we’d at least had a damned good talk . . .