IMMP 168 - A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
===

[00:00:00] 

Matthew: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Inter Millennium Media Project, the IMMP. My name is Matthew Porter.

Ian: And I'm Ian Porter. 

Matthew: I'm his dad. He's my son. And we've taken a different tack now. 

Ian: Yep. Well, we have wandered into the podcast town, , found a man off to the side to building microphones.

Lots of microphones. 

Matthew: That's [00:01:00] right. We've left behind the future dystopia of Zardoz. 

Ian: Yes. 

Matthew: And we've entered the 19th century dystopia of Sergio Leone. 

Ian: Aha. 

Matthew: And the first of Clint Eastwood's, man with no name Spaghetti Western Trilogy.

A fist full of dollars.

Ian: Oh my goodness. 

The fact that this was his first leading role. 

Matthew: Yeah. He had been on tv, he'd been on Raw Hide for, for many years. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: But his film roles had been relatively small before this. 

Ian: Right. 

Matthew: And yeah, this, it's not only set the tone for westerns for a long time, but it certainly set the tone for a big chunk of Clint Eastwood's career. 

Ian: This set the tone for some other major things.

I think in terms of just seeing this movie for the first time for this podcast, I was astounded how much the format of this film I, I could feel, how it must have affected other things I like. And that'll be an [00:02:00] interesting point to talk about. 

Matthew: And also , what influenced it? 'cause that's quite a story too.

And you know what that is? 

Ian: Oh, yes. 

Matthew: I love this hat. Shout out to, O'Farrell in, Santa Fe, New Mexico, but it doesn't really work with, studio headphones, so I'm taking off the hat. Ah,

it's also, it makes 

Ian: complete sense 

Matthew: also, the good thing about those hats are they're really, really warm, those felt hats. Uh, but the, the bad thing is they're really, really warm. 

Ian: That makes sense. I mean, it's probably better than the sun beating down on you, but it's definitely a trade off. 

Matthew: So, yeah, and that's why I wanted to, if we're ever gonna talk about Clint Eastwood, and we're really, we haven't spoken much about westerns, have we? 

Ian: Not much. 

Matthew: So it was important to talk about at least one of these and to make sure you had seen one of these, because I don't think this is a series I had shown Any, any of that to you before, is it?

Ian: No, I, I know of westerns, I know of all these, this film and these styles and [00:03:00] such. I'd seen some bits of some, but it's not something I dove into very much, which is ironic being in Colorado and here in the the West with all of the, with all of the pop culture imagery of it and it being so ubiquitous.

I never touched it much myself, which it's great though. Honestly, this was very fascinating to get to see because I came in. Able to assess, like able to see like, oh, I think I know what this is gonna be like, and where it surprised me and where it fit with what I expected was part of the adventure. 

Matthew: And I know what you mean in that.

And, and part of that is that Westerns had kind of a weird and not very highly regarded position in culture for a few decades there. And not, it's not entirely, uh, surprising too because during their mid 20th century heyday, there were a lot of things about westerns that were problematic. There was [00:04:00] celebration of, yeah, manifest destiny, their depiction of people who were not, white cowboys with guns, their depiction of white cowboys with guns.

Uh, there were a lot of issues with westerns that in the, I'd say beginning in the seventies and into the eighties. Uh, people were not that interested or receptive to westerns for a while, and that was one of the reasons. There are a lot of reasons that's one of them, and I think we have a little bit of distance, a little bit of, as we try to do on this podcast, accepts things from their context and criticize them in their context when, when appropriate, but still find what's interesting in them.

It's, it's really interesting to, to reassess these. So I had watched very, very few westerns until a film class in college where I had a professor who sort of put them into context and who selected them and presented them in a, in a, an interesting order that made me understand what they were doing and how they related to other kinds of movies.

And that kind of brought me back to [00:05:00] westerns. And Sergio Leone's man with no name, trilogy. 

Ian: I also saw it some places called the Dollars Trilogy. Which has a very, the thin man, like the first movie causes the naming structure for the rest of them.

Element to it. 

Matthew: Yes. Well, for the US release at least, the first one is a fistful of dollars. Mm-hmm. And the second one was for a few dollars more. 

Ian: Yeah. 

And then it's the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Matthew: And so the things that they've chosen to pull this trilogy together are never exactly accurate because they also described this as the, as I mentioned, the man with no name Trilogy.

Well, he does kind of have a name in the first movie he's called Joe. And I don't know, is that his real name or just the name? He goes by the name. People choose to call him. 

Ian: Or maybe everyone's, everyone's been saying it wrong. It's the Man with Joe name.

It's just a long way of saying that's what he is called.

Matthew: But they definitely hang together and form a [00:06:00] progression. So at some point, you know, we may have to watch the others in this trilogy, but I think the first is a good tone setting. And it was a departure from a lot of westerns in, its, it's a very nihilistic movie. Yeah. It's very bleak. It's very much that anti-hero that became even more popular in the seventies.

Ian: Mm-hmm.

Matthew: And yet it isn't. It is not a joyless movie the way some eventually became. 

Ian: Yeah. 

Matthew: It has a certain amount of weird wit and humor to it as, as violent and brutal as it can be. 


Ian: It has a, 

it has a brightness and almost a silliness at times. 

Matthew: Yes. We get this weird wry smile out of Clint Eastwood 

once in a while.

Ian: Yeah. He's wandering town and there's this little bit of like, I didn't think that would work. Oh, that's pretty cool. 

Kind of moment.

Matthew: And it's one of these, these plots that just starts out of nowhere. Mm-hmm. I mean, the, [00:07:00] the inciting incident, if you wanna call it that, is our protagonist showing up in the place where all the action takes place. 

Ian: Yeah. he very much wanders into town, right? Quite literally, and is immediately told what the problems are.

Matthew: This little Mexican town of San Miguel on the border near Texas, and he, he immediately gets to know an innkeeper who kind of fills him in on everything that's happening in town, becomes his sidekick. But also, his first encounters are with the bell ringer. Who explains in this town, you either get rich or you get dead.

You know, either way, either you'll do great or I as the bell ringer and my friend as the coffin maker will do fine. Yeah. He's this little kind of meta-narrative chorus, kind of a guy who shows up very much and sets the tone, sets the setting for us and for our protagonist. 

Ian: It's very Greek chorus in that sense.

I was astounded how much it felt like a [00:08:00] video game to me, and it made me realize how much video games have taken from the structure of this sort of story where he wanders into town and hears about the local quest and decides whether or not he's gonna take it.

It's like, oh, here's a couple of characters in the town giving you their information. Here's the local barkeep telling you about what's happening. And you've got, and you watch him literally decide, okay, I'll handle this situation, or I'll keep walking. So many modern open world games are structured exactly like this.

Matthew: You're right. And you know, I thought of it very, very similarly. My first thought was like a one shot solo, RPG. Where you need to set up this protagonist in his position and what the setting is as quickly as possible. You don't want to just give a, uh, an out of narrative info dump to the player right away.

So you have a one or two non-player characters deliver all of this information as quickly and succinctly [00:09:00] as possible, so you can get on with the action. And that's kind of what they do here. And it works because it's still so surreal and, very stagey at the beginning. We're not yet into the narrative where this would've been an interruption.

Ian: Yes. It is also very stagey, and sometimes that's bad for movies. Sometimes that similarity to something that you could see done on a theater stage says that this is in the wrong medium, that it's not using film enough or it's, it's not. Taking advantage of where it is, but this one has something of that.

Everyone's just that little bit heightened. 

Matthew: Mm-hmm. 

Ian: There's something a little bit more mythical about how everyone is just that bit more than they should be. And that level of exaggeration that is in order to project the plot and the premise and the conflict and the story a little bit [00:10:00] more strongly has that theatrical element in it, that stage element,

in a very well made, format here. 

Matthew: And part of that brings a weird sense of claustrophobia to this movie. 

Ian: Yeah. 

Matthew: You've got the movie, its setting is this, this entire town and its surrounding area and its surrounding areas kind of wide open, and somewhat desolate. And yet because we're just going from little location to location we have a sense of claustrophobia where everybody's kind of stuck in this town and stuck in the power struggle that's happening in this town.

And everything is closed in, there's no escape. Even though you're in a town in the middle of nowhere, you could ride off, anytime you want. No one really has that freedom and the way it's shot and the way it's structured, supports that. 

Ian: If anything, it's almost the idea that like that emptiness around it, that isolation makes a man wandering into town, something that [00:11:00] happens occasionally.

It's implied that he's not the first person to wander into town, but this is a place that takes in and it never sends out. 

Matthew: Right. And it's kind of on a trade route. Yeah. Or at least it's a trade post and, and that's part of the conflict. Apart from our little scene setting Bell Ringer Guy, Joe's first encounter is with a bunch of sheriff's deputies 

Ian: mm-hmm.

Matthew: Who essentially call him out and challenge him and threaten him and scare off his, his mule that he is been riding. And later on, after he meets the innkeeper and finds out about the power struggle Yes. Or at least the, the beginnings of the power struggle. He goes back, stands up to them and waits for them to draw their guns.

Haven't even cleared their holsters when he's shot all four of them. 

Ian: That's an [00:12:00] establishment of 

Matthew: Yeah, it's, it's as if, okay, I've got skills. I wanna know how valuable they are here before I. Let people know what they are. I mean, this is him letting people know what they are. 

Ian: Yeah. He's 

Matthew: tough. How tough. And he's unfazed and he's amazing with a, six shooter.

Ian: And the fact that the sheriffs were attacking him is not, he's not something about him, that's something about the sheriffs, because we learn about the two groups vying for control. This is the conflict he hears about is between the sheriff and his men and the Rojo brothers.

Right. So we've got a corrupt and all of their crew 

Matthew: sheriff and, and corrupt sheriff's office on one end of town, literally. And we've got the compound of the Rojo brothers who run all the criminal enterprises or all the openly criminal enterprises in the town from the other end of town. And like the entire town is caught in the crossfire between these two groups.

Ian: And that's kind of where that trap element comes in. This is a, [00:13:00] corridor in some ways, and on either end are these two jaws of the trap that close in and keep all the people and now our protagonist inside, despite how open it all is.

There's a lot of tension of open spaces in this film. 

Matthew: Right.

Open spaces don't offer any escape or freedom. They offer danger and exposure. 

Ian: Exactly. Even, even the music is doing that. Long periods of sound and then this, the little whistles and the little tiny bits that just make that, that open held note terrifying.

Matthew: Oh, the music. This, that is as much as anything else in this, something that's set the tone for westerns for a couple of decades. This score by Ennio Morricone? Certain structures of music, certain instrumentation. We associate those with westerns because of what he did with, uh, this trilogy.

Mm-hmm. Amazing music. 

Ian: [00:14:00] It's amazing music. I will say the little tiny trills on the, like the recorder that he adds in happens sometimes frequently enough. That I thought like a, on the video game side, it sounded like that was him getting the little alerts as to what he's done. And, and b, I need to get that audio because that is going to be my new Discord message alert if I can help it.

Matthew: Oh, that's great. 

Ian: Because I just want 

to be wandering around and there's this, 

Matthew: so that's Joe getting steam achievements for as he plays the game. Exactly. 

Ian: Well, because you'd have him like, walk into, walk into an area, shoot two guys dead, and as he's walking away, this would tri out. And I'm like, oh, there's that little delay. 

Matthew: And the innkeeper who, like I say, becomes his sidekick. Silvanito. 

Ian: Yes, 

Matthew: played by, Pepe Calvo for the US release of this movie, a lot of actors were given [00:15:00] Americanized names. I think even for a while, uh, the director Leone had an, an Americanized name associated with this just because spaghetti westerns hadn't been released much or weren't really accepted, but, but Pepe Calvo Sto is a great counterpoint to Clint Eastwood's, uh, man with no name.

And the way he describes the town to Joe emphasizes how trapped everybody is. He described this town, all the men are killers and all the women are widows. That's like the counterpart to your only options are to be rich or to be dead. You know, one of those two things is gonna happen to you here. 

Ian: That is.

So 

Matthew: And having, kind of proven himself by facing off with these sheriff's deputies and winning, um mm-hmm. Joe seems to, uh, choose to go the let's get rich route and hires himself out to the Rojo brothers. 

Ian: Yeah. 

Matthew: That's just another hired gun. 

Ian: It's like, oh, what are you here to do?

Work? Yeah. To make money. [00:16:00] It's, and that's the least make money suspicious 

Matthew: thing he could say. 

Ian: Yeah. And it's like, the first thing I did was kill three men of your rival. It's like, I think I passed the interview.

Where do you see yourself in five years? Well, according to that guy, I shouldn't. 

Matthew: Right. Well, it's gonna be one of these two. I know that. 

Ian: Yeah, exactly. 

Matthew: And, the way the Rojo brothers make their money, their primary enterprise is, smuggling and bootlegging in that, bandits will come over the border from Texas.

To this town, they will buy liquor and guns from the Rojo brothers and then bring them back over the border to wreak havoc in Texas. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. So, and to sell them at a markup over there, right?

So these definitely destabilizing this little border area, but they're making money selling contraband to people who cross the border. 

So he's now working for the Rojos but he's getting [00:17:00] information about both. He's kind of asking around town as he works and he, he immediately is working for the Rojos, but not playing by the rules. 

Ian: Yes. It's like, oh 

no, you're one of our men. You sleep here. Nah, I'm going into town.

I'll find a bed. I'm not sticking around long enough. I don't want to be a hassle. I don't, I don't want to have to move my stuff out. 

Matthew: And he immediately gets different reactions from different Rojo brothers. And that's a good way to kind of set up who these different brothers are. We've got the brother who is the, the older brother who's kind of the levelheaded planner.

We've got the one who is all about power and business. Mm-hmm. We've got the one who's very egotistical and all about his own skills and his own personal position. Yes. And he, of course, takes the least liking to Joe because anybody he sees as a potential rival, either for skill or attention, doesn't like him.


Ian: Joe's kind of a threat to all of them in different ways, and he is very careful to not trigger anyone [00:18:00] to react to him yet. Right. He's kind of walking through carefully

Matthew: and he's not that interested in just following orders and getting paid, although he makes sure he gets paid a fair amount upfront to sign on with the Rojos.

Ian: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. 

Matthew: He, he's curious. He wants to know more about what the rojos are doing Yeah. And what's really happening in this town. And, uh, they, this comes up a few times in the movie, but first it comes from a conversation he has with, the senior Rojo brother about how, , oh, you seem extremely well informed.

And the Rojo says that, uh, well, sometimes a man survival depends on a mere scrap of information. 

Speaker 11: Yes. And 

Matthew: that becomes kind of a theme running through this. But he learns that they don't want trouble because there is supposed to be a, Mexican army detachment, , coming through this way.

And Joe and his sidekick sto ride out to see what's going on with that. Because it, it seems like it isn't just a detachment coming through. They come through with a [00:19:00] coach that's heavily guarded and they figure out that yeah, that contains gold. Yeah. I think the way Sonito suggests he find out what's in it.

Well go try to have a look inside if they, if they shoot you, you know, it was gold. 

Ian: Exactly. I love that. Um, but they, they realize that this is a, an exchange for weapons. This is a weapons purchase. 

Matthew: And it seems to be between the US Army detachment and, , the Mexican army. So yeah, that could be just an above board, you know, cooperative, uh, arrangement between the two armies.

And they meet at the river, at the border, just over on the Mexican side. And Joe and Silvanito are watching this from a distance as the Mexican group says, well, we've got this gold here. I hope it serves you as well as I'm sure your guns will serve us. And then, the US Army detachment opens fire on the Mexican army.[00:20:00] 

Yeah. And, and slaughters all of them. Yep. Which is just shocking. It seems to come out of nowhere. It's a, it's, it's, to me, it's a shocking scene. 

Ian: Oh. And, and the, but the Rojo brothers were kind of part of that whole thing. They, they set some of this upright. 

Matthew: They were, this was the Rojo brothers. They had already taken out this US army detachment, taken their equipment, taken their clothes, and set this up as a way mm-hmm.

To keep the American guns and also get all of this Mexican gold. So shortly after this beginning, yes, we, oh, those are Rojos guys who are in the, US uniforms,

Ian: But that, that switcheroo and that, you know, we're going to rob both parties by killing one pretending to be them and then killing the other. Right. 

Matthew: And making sure they kill all of the Mexican, uh, soldiers. Because if any of them get away to explain what happened, the gig is up.

Ian: It's very risky, but it's a very profitable and a [00:21:00] major power swing in this already tentative town. 

Matthew: Yep.

Ian: And 

That's where Joe has a brilliant plan. Yeah. He really starts 

Matthew: to show his initiative. But he, he is not here to come along. He does. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. This is where the idea that he is, he goes into towns and does this kind of thing. On the regular comes a more of an idea. Yes. Because he is so quick, he's so quick to just be like, okay, grab two of the dead guys.

What? And I grab two of the dead guys. 

Matthew: Yeah. He , borrows the wagon from the, uh, the, the coffin maker and goes out and takes a couple of Mexican soldier corpses and positions them in the cemetery outside of town 

Speaker 7: and

Matthew: I forget who he sells the information to first.

He sells this information to the sheriff, the Baxter. Yeah. Here's what the Rojos did, and there are witnesses who managed to survive and make their way to the cemetery. And they're hold up there now [00:22:00] and he makes sure that information gets to the rojos, uh, again, uh, uh, as well.

So he sets up this conflict at the cemetery between these two groups, each trying to get to the, the soldiers, the rojos, to kill them so they can't be witnesses and the Baxter to get their testimony as a way to take down the Rojo brothers. 

Ian: He uses two dead guys to pit the, the two groups against each other.


Matthew: And he's immediately, he's being given hundreds of dollars at a time for all this information. He's, uh, trading back and forth as the guy in 

Ian: the middle. Exactly. He's making money doing this because he's created the information he's selling in that sense. Right.

Matthew: And this kind of goes on mm-hmm. In this back and forth

as he gathers information, he sells it to one side, sells it to another. The, the Rojo brothers who are successful in this so far, he's still kind of part of their camp. And even though at least one of the [00:23:00] brothers doesn't quite trust him, he's seen as being useful. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: But he absolutely has his own agenda.

Ian: definitely, that usefulness is a part of this. he's carefully balancing how much he gets information, how much he, he riles up each side, and how much each side thinks they're his friend and he's theirs. He'll knock someone out and bring them over as, uh, a hostage to the other side, but he'll make sure to report to , the group whose member he knocked out and brought over that, oh, the other guy has captured him.

So he's always a good informant, but he's also the one doing 

half the stuff.


You could 

almost like watch this entire movie with three little pans in front of you, 

Matthew: Uhhuh. 

Ian: And write the various pieces of information and power on them and move them across the pans as you go because it is a very careful like balancing act of these two sides back and forth [00:24:00] with Joe in the middle, shifting them as he needs.

Matthew: How interesting. We were comparing this to a game before, before and now I'm starting to think of it as one of those sort of kind of social role playing games where Yeah, each person at the party knows a little bit and it's how are you trading information back and forth to either win or figure something out by the end?

Ian: Oh, absolutely. Joe would wander into a game convention and be really good at two rooms in a boom. Oh my goodness.

Matthew: And as often happens in this kind of story, our man with no name, our stranger, Joe, has a. All this going on. He's making so much money and keeping everything uneasy. And then he's sort of undone by his own conscience and his own sense of justice because there's a woman involved in all of this named Marisol.

Yep. Who is married to Julio, who has a little [00:25:00] son and she is essentially a captive of the Rojo brothers 'cause one of the Rojos is in love with her. He arranged and we learn all this as they kind of, you know, play this out as Joe investigates and finds out some of it from Silvanito The Rojo brother who coveted Marisol arranged for Julio to be accused of cheating in a card game and, took Marisol as collateral for the debt essentially.

So she is, you know, literally this pawn, this prize being claimed by the rojos. 

And as Joe, as the stranger is investigating other things about the rojos finding out where they hid the gold that they stole from the Mexican army, for example, looking around to see what else they've got going on in their operation.

He encounters Marisol, I think he winds up knocking her out so she doesn't give away where they are. 

Ian: Yeah, she's, she's the traded person I was referencing earlier. It's like Yeah. 

Matthew: Brings her to the Baxter 

Ian: mm-hmm.[00:26:00] 

Matthew: And get some more money from the Baxter for, for explaining all of this and, 

trading on that as well.

And eventually there's a prisoner exchange and Marisol winds up going back to the Rojos.

And. Julio, Marisol's husband is still in town, even though he was told to get out, he, he's still in town. The son is still in town. He sort of interrupts this prisoner exchange and the rojos just want to kill him now. And Joe prevents that.

Ian: Yeah, he kind of shifts, priorities there a little. 

Matthew: Right. And he's getting less and less trusted by the Rojos as all of this goes on. Mm-hmm. Until eventually he finds out that Marisol is being held prisoner now in what's called the small house, a little place outside of the Rojo compound. So he goes there and frees her and does so by killing all the 10 or so men who are there guarding her.

Ian: [00:27:00] Yep. 

Matthew: He reunites her , with Julio and with their son and gives them a bunch of money and tells them to leave town. But now he's caught the rojos know what he did, to their men know that , he helped Marisol escape. So he's taken captive by the rojos and tortured and is obviously his life is now forfeit.

Ian: Yeah. He can't do the back and forth anymore. This is, this is it.

Matthew: But he, uh, he shows himself to be tough in that he can be tortured, beaten up terribly and still have his wits about him. So he manages to escape? Yes. So he like sets up booby traps in the store room where they've locked him up. manages to crawl away.

Eventually he hides out in one of the coffins and gets smuggled out of town in a coffin. But but while this is happening, things between the Baxter and the Rojos are coming to a head. Right. The rojos literally destroy [00:28:00] Baxter's home in the sheriff's station with kegs of gunpowder and, dozens of men with guns and none of the Baxter survive.

Ian: Even once he's caught the amount of tension he's built between them. I mean, he's, he's amplified it all the way so that it isn't, it's now boiling over. 

Matthew: And anyone, the rojos distrust is now something to be destroyed, not something to, something to be guarded against. 


Ian: He's changed their policy in that sense. 

Matthew: And this leads to kind of the classic hideout and regroup scene or sequence. Yeah. Yeah. Where the stranger Joe is, is hiding out in an old mine. People who know him in the town are, are bringing him supplies and keeping his location secret.

Apparently Silvanito has been doing that and we see the coffin maker come and bring him things. And when Joe asks about Silvanito he finds out that, Silvanito has now been taken by the Rojo brothers and is being tortured for information about where you [00:29:00] are. 

Ian: And we see the stranger is very tortured and beaten up.

Mm-hmm. This is a hero who shows being. Beaten down. Yes. That's an important part to this. He's not purely the, the dashing hero wandering into town and his hair is always good. He is messy. He is bleeding, he is tired. You see the strain and that makes it all more real. And when he's then told the same thing is happening to someone else, that that concern has an extra weight to it because it's not a, oh, I could handle it 'cause I'm the hero, but my friend can't.

It's a, oh no, another person is going through what I went through. I barely made it out of that. 

Matthew: And we've seen that this has taken a while because while he is hiding out of the mine, he has been recovering from his wounds. Yes. He's also been practicing with his firearm. 


And he's also been with this, I figured you'd might like this.

This is the crafting [00:30:00] segment. Yes, it is. He levels up by crafting new equipment. 

Ian: He does. He's grabbing things from the old mine and working on them. He's modifying his stuff. He's doing a great job. It's a really fun bit. 

Matthew: Yeah. He's testing some of the, iron from , a boiler there in the mine.

Yeah. And confirming. Yeah. It can, it'll stop one of these, bullets. Mm-hmm. And he cuts a piece out of it. And next thing we know, he's , going back into town with his iconic poncho. And calling out the Rojo brothers.

Ian: The funny thing is, I saw this coming because of a reference, not 'cause of the film. Right. 

Matthew: Thank you. This is referenced in a much later movie, 

Ian: a much later movie, and one of my favorite movies and movie series of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Back to the future, Marty pulling the exact [00:31:00] same thing almost to the dot, but still this is so perfect.

Seeing the original is so good '

Matthew: cause he's got this bo boiler plate armor and they set this up very well because they show the, the hotheaded Rojo brother doing target practice on old suits of armor that are around the Rojo compound. Mm-hmm. And he always aims for the heart.

He said, man, aim for his heart. 

Ian: He actually traces out a heart in the, the metal one. I'm with it a little valentine heart made 

Matthew: out of a Oh yeah. Of, of bullet holes. 

Ian: I have seen so many people in the lobbies of things like Team Fortress two, do that outta boredom. Just I'm like, oh, hey, that's just a human action, I guess.

Yeah. Like, oh, but this, can I draw, can I draw with it? Yes. 

Matthew: And it was great having seen this, he knew that the, the most dangerous gunfighter among the rojos, we know where he's going to aim. So that's the only place we need to [00:32:00] be sure to armor. And it works. 

Ian: Exactly. It works because, , they try to shoot down the stranger and all their weapon shots are deflected and we've seen how fast the stranger is.

So now all of them are reloading and he's able to shoot the rest of them and free his 

friend.


Matthew: Once, Ramon Rojo has used up all of his ammunition and he always preferred a Winchester rifle Yes. To a, uh, a, a pistol. And he was even bragging earlier because, uh, you know, Joe prefers his pistol. You know, if a man with a pistol versus a man with a Winchester rifle, the man with a pistol is dead.

Ian: Yeah. No, no, no, he's not. No, no, he's not. But that whole thing,, he's defeated both groups. He's let one group destroy the other, and now he's destroyed the victor and he's freed his friend. He bids them farewell and. Wanders outta town. The concept of the [00:33:00] wanderer who comes into town and deals with everything and wanders away is iconic at this point.

But the way this is done here is, so it really does imply that this is something he does on the regular. The way he just kind of handles this, it's like, yeah, that's his purpose. That's what he does. He wanders into a town, he gets rid of the problems and he leaves. That is, it's not just a trope that is a calling almost because the moment it's done, his I am leaving feels a little sharp.

It's like he can't stay around. 'cause the next one's already calling him. 

Matthew: I've, I've got a take on that I wanna suggest here and see what you think of it. It relates to this. Okay. So what we've got here is somebody who comes into town, it's a border town, a place that has been destabilized by criminal activity on the border.

Ian: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: [00:34:00] He is somebody who obviously has great skill in killing people and not a lot of compunction to do so. Yeah. When situation seems to call for it, he comes in, he assesses what's happening in this area. He sort of adopts a local sidekick who is loyal and competent and a great source of information.

And then he starts investigating and finding out what is happening in, in these two in. Sides of this power struggle and how is what they are doing contributing to what is happening here on the border. And he takes steps to interrupt their immediate operations, to take down their power structures and prevent future.

The activity here, and granted he does leave a power vacuum, but the rest of the town, apart from the two sides of this [00:35:00] criminal power structure struggle are the rest of the town is as unscathed as it could be. And then he leaves, and his investigation is through cleverness and wit and guile and physical ability to climb around and get into places where he's not supposed to be and really understand what people's motivations might be.

Okay. I, I think the stranger is James Bond. Yeah, I mean the structure, especially not a, not a later James Bond movie, but you compare it to something like Dr. No that we saw a few episodes ago. It's that same kind of structure and he's that same kind of character. And of course any, all the women who encounter him are attracted to him and everything else.

He even has a super competent and mysterious, 

Ian: he even has a clever gadget that is greater than the, the equipment of the bad guys that defeats one of their best weapons. 

Matthew: That's right. He doesn't have Q Branch, but he's got his, his his gadget [00:36:00] and you know, we do not, oh yeah, 

Ian: he has, he has Q shaft, not Q branch.

Matthew: We do not know for absolute certain in this movie that he is not a treasury agent. Some, some government operative from the United States come over to see what's happening, what's happening with our guns, what's happening with all this contraband coming over from Mexico mm-hmm. In this one particular border region.

Agent Joe, you go figure this out.

Ian: The name's Joe intentionally left blank Joe.

Matthew: So, you know, I don't know that the director and the screenwriter here were intentionally going for anything like that. This came out right around the same time that, uh, that Dr. No came out. But it's interesting how that same super competent man investigating and dealing with strange situation [00:37:00] is a, a structure that works in so many different settings in so many different 

Ian: ways.

It's, it is a structure that works in a lot of settings. And there's something to be said for that about the history on this movie as well, from what I was looking up. 

Matthew: Oh yes. 

Ian: Yeah.

Matthew: Do we want to talk about that during our final questions or, or? I think we will. Yeah. That's usually when we put things into context like that.

Ian: Yeah, exactly. 

Matthew: So stay tuned listeners. We will be talking about our final questions soon when we talk about, do we recommend this movie and, what do we want to see happen with the future of this property? But in the meantime, if you are enjoying the Inter Millennium Media Project and you want more of it, go to our website improject.com where you'll see all of our back episodes and some bonuses.

And if you wanna support the IMMP, there are several ways to do that. Most important, tell your friends about it. Wherever you get your podcasts, give us five star ratings and nice reviews that helps people find it. But also, if you [00:38:00] wanna support us more directly, you can go to our shop and buy fun things like t-shirts and coffee mugs and notebooks.

And you can go to our Patreon, which is also linked at immproject.com, where starting at $3 a month, you can get additional bonus audio content, uh, for a little more each month. You can, join the movie club, which means that periodically, every few months, you will get mystery DVDs of something that's going to be on the podcast or, and if you just wanna follow us on Patreon, keep track of what we're doing, you can do that at no charge.

And of course you can contact us. You can contact us on Discord, by email, by actual physical US mail at our post office box. And all of that is on the contact page at IMMProject.com. 

Ian: We'd love to hear from you. 

Matthew: Wouldn't that be great? What we'd like to hear, hear what you thought of movies that we've talked about.

We'd also like to hear suggestions of other movies from back in the 20th century you think we might, wanna talk about. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:39:00] 

Matthew: And Ian, where can people find you? 

Ian: I can be found most places as item crafting. Be that item crafting.com or item crafting live on Twitch. Come join every Thursday for games, crafting and some community.

Matthew: Those are so much fun. 

Ian: I thank you. 

Matthew: And you can find me at bymatthewporter.com, where you'll find links to my blog, my, YouTube channel where I review movies and movie theaters. And, anything else I'm doing online, we'll show up there at bymatthewporter.com.

So well, our, our first of our final questions is always, it's a movie, so screen or no screen.

Ian: Ooh, 

this 

one's a screen for me. 

Okay. I'll tell you, some of this has long pacing, and it is, it is a movie that is less punchy than, some modern action films, but [00:40:00] it scenes are so well done. I'm thinking of the shootout in the barrel storage and things like that. It is well done, and if you enjoy modern action films and such, I'd say this is a great one to watch because you're going to see a lot of techniques that are now so, so used.

In this original source. And they're not less, they are brilliantly done. And a lot of what you might like nowadays is actually a callback to things like this in terms of styling. 

Matthew: I would agree. For me, it's a screen as well and not just for its own sake, although it, it stands up well and I, I wasn't sure it was going to, it's a long time since I had seen this movie.

Mm-hmm. And going into it, I was wondering, is this really going to hold up? Is this going to seem so dated or, or is it going to have too much in it? That's horrible. But it, it holds up better than I expected it to. And you're right, it does influence so much. And without this [00:41:00] movie and some other movies like it in the early sixties, this came out in, in 64, uh, in the US I think.

And no, I think it came out later in the US and it was made in 64 for Italy. 

Ian: It was, yeah, it came out three years. Yeah. Uh, three years later in the United States. So, ah, okay. 

Matthew: Uh, and those are, are imp are an important three years. If, if this had not come out in the US in 1967, um, I don't think we would've had the, the whole wave of gritty realism that we get in the 1970s in American movies.

This was not the sole influence. But this is one of those kinds of influences, seeing that you could do this with a Western. 

Speaker 11: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: Uh, and that that then became part of all kinds of action and crime movies following this. So I, I would say screen both for itself and for its context. 

Ian: I'm all for that. So, absolutely.

Matthew: But that brings us to the next question, which [00:42:00] is, revive, reboot, or rest in peace. Well, I mean, 

Ian: I. This is, I does this movie set, like say exactly when it's set, it's kind of vague, right? 

Matthew: Yeah. I don't know that it's very specific. My guess would be, 1880s,

but I don't think they, they make that clear.


Ian: I'm trying to think of like, when it's set and what, because there's so much, so much about that time, kind of in the, the 1860s to the, the 1868 kind of era that there was so much going on in history at that time. There's so much specific positioning. It's almost like this is a different story.

Matthew: Oh, you think maybe, huh? 

Ian: Yeah, we've gotta talk about it. 

Matthew: Yes, we do. 

Ian: There's, there's some controversy around this film because it's already an adaptation. Yes. 

Matthew: It [00:43:00] is an, an unofficial and unauthorized remake

Ian: of Yojimbo 

Matthew: the Akira Kurosawa movie. 

Yes. 

Ian: And the reason I said those eras is that's the, that's the period of time between the start of the Cowboy era and the end of the samurai era.

That's the, that's the eight years of time in which both Cowboys and Samurai existed at the same time on Earth in that, in the way they're being depicted here. So it could be set anywhere in between these, for both of them. 

Matthew: And that kind of spiritual overlap, that similarity between the, the action orientation and the ethos and the.

The cultural importance of those two era for their respective cultures. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: That really energized, I think both Samurai movies and westerns and there's so much overlap. Yeah. And there's so much back and forth. Like it's one of these, I I, I'm the one who, uh, [00:44:00] I see animation as this dialogue that's been going on for generations now between mostly the US and Japan.

As Japan adapts Disney and the US animators adapt things from anime. I think the same is true with movies when you look at Samurai movies and, and Westerns and why we get explicit remakes. Why like the Seven Samurai becoming the magnificent Seven. 

Ian: Yeah. 

Matthew: But yeah, Kurosawaad to go and uh, talk to Leone and say, Hey.

Nice movie. I thought so when I made it too. Yeah.

Ian: It's like, so you gonna pay me for that? 

Matthew: Yep. And they did, they won, won their, uh, their lawsuit. 

Ian: They won their lawsuit. 

Matthew: And I don't know if this is documented or confirmed, but I read that, Kurosawa made more money from the percentage that he got off this movie after the lawsuit than he made on the release of Yojimbo.

Ian: Yeah. 

It's so [00:45:00] fascinating. It makes me want to go watch Yojimbo. 

Matthew: Oh, definitely. 

Ian: Having just seen this to be able to compare them. But it also makes me wonder like, okay, this tells us that that structure worked across these two eras. Is there any other like group or place or time that would work this way?

Yeah, 

Matthew: I'm sorry, just making a note. Patreon. Yo 

Ian: Jimbo. 

Matthew: All right. 

Ian: Oh yeah. 

Matthew: I think we'll be watching that sometime soon. 

Ian: I think so. 

Matthew: Um, yeah, I, I wonder how to what extent we've got other different yet synergistic settings like this, or, or styles. 

Ian: Yeah, I, I'm not really coming up with one right now, but it also makes me wonder like, if you're going to do another version of this, would you do it as a Western?

Would you do yojimbo instead? Which one would be better? And I think if there's a third, if there's [00:46:00] a, another place to take it, that would be fascinating. 'cause it would give a reason to exist for the film in that sense. 'cause this one's already good enough. So I'm kind of saying a rest in peace. ' Cause I don't know if we need another adaptation that means, but there's a question in there.

Matthew: Yeah. I, I also 

Ian: will say it's like we already did get a, a revive because there's two more films that vaguely say they're part of this. Right. 

Matthew: I, I am inclined to say rest in peace when it comes to this specific movie, this specific story. 

Ian: Mm-hmm. 

Matthew: We don't need another remake of, a fistful of dollars or for that matter of yojimbo the influence that we talked about earlier.

That is always going to be part of this. And it goes far beyond Samurai movies and westerns. We see a lot of these things being brought into later adaptations of Western tropes, be they explicit like Firefly or less explicit, where it's kind of just about the [00:47:00] lone stranger versus a corrupt power structure.

Ian: Yeah. 

Matthew: So I think I would say rest in peace when it comes to a fistful of dollars itself.

But there's no denying, you know, what this meant for movies and, and how this felt, uh, for movies and also for Clint Eastwood's career. 

Ian: Oh, yeah. 

Matthew: His presence influenced movies for a long time and, and both as an actor and later when he started directing. So there's definitely gonna be more Clint Eastwood material for us to talk about.

Ian: And I'm excited for that. This was interesting and having said before, I didn't, I didn't dive into the westerns too much earlier, so getting a chance now to, to take a look at some of them. Sounds really good. 

Matthew: Cool.

Well, just as movies went back into the 19th century, we are going to be back in a couple of weeks with more tales of media from the 20th century. And in the meantime, thank you very much for joining [00:48:00] us. 

Ian: And in the meantime, go find something new to watch.