Yesterday’s gone and that’s a fact.” “It’s been quite a party, ain’t it?” -Gus McCrae’s final words.
Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Written by: Jeb Rosebrook
Cinematography by: Lucien Ballard
With: Steve McQueen as Junior “J.R.” Bonner, Robert Preston as Ace Bonner, his father. Ida Lupino as Elvira Bonner, his mother. Ben Johnson as Buck Roan, stock supplier. Joe Don Baker as Curly Bonner, his brother.
About a year after the release of Junior Bonner I was in Prescott Arizona where it was shot. Along were a couple of friends, 53 long years ago. That fact alone sets me back to a time when I knew enough of the West that was so as to appreciate what remained of it and what was lost. The passing of that place in time is the theme of this, and most all of Sam Peckinpah’s movies.
You can’t just set a movie in the 1800s, give the actors western duds and six guns and claim it is a Western. It needs to have a still beating Western heart. The beat the filmmaker must hear, no matter how faint it is in the past. In Sam’s films that beat is loud.
We began our exploration of Prescott’s Historic Whiskey row of saloons, beginning with a prime filming location, the Palace Bar. No sign of Sam, Steve, Ben. Not even Joe Don. “Bourbon, barkeep, water-back,” was a phrase I uttered far too many times as we made our was down Whiskey Row that night.
We ended our sour mash odyssey hours later, dirt bellied, knee walking drunk, finally awake at the monument dedicated to Prescott’s favorite son, Buckey O’Neill; sheriff, newspaper editor, miner, gambler and his honor the mayor. Not necessarily in that order. When the Spanish American War broke out Buckey answered Theodore Roosevelt’s clarion call to saddle up with his Rough Riders, sail on down to Cuba and kick some Spanish ass.
July 1st 1898, the now Captain O’Neill is facing murderous sniper fire from Spanish marksmen up on San Juan Hill. When cautioned to keep “his damn fool head down”, he answered with some defiantly reckless talk, “The Spanish bullet that can kill Buckey O’Neill has not yet been cast!” seconds later a bullet cast in Germany or New Jersey separated his brain from it’s home in his skull. Yuk.
What does this have to do with Junior Bonner? Nothing much. This is the West, sir. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” Ruthlessly. J.R. Bonner is a bull rider, what working cowboys call an arena cowboy, close to the end of a rodeo life. In order to get another shot at 8 seconds on the back of a mean ol’ bastard of a bull named Sunshine, and that big prize money, he travels back to his home town of Prescott for the July 4th rodeo.
He arrives to find the family ranch carved up into quarter acre ranchettes of a sort that now litters much of the western states. Eyesores bought by those who move to places like Arizona and Montana to live just as they did back in Orange County. Driving up real-estate prices, raising property taxes and putting a strain on water and energy systems, not to mention increased traffic, thus destroying the way of life they aspired to join.
This offense to fair dealing and common decency the work of J.R.s sleazy capitalist brother Curly, an unscrupulous real-estate developer (aren’t they all). Curley can take a punch, though. His parents separated, father Ace in the old folks home, there is little left of the home Junior once knew. There is no clichéd reunion with a sadder but wiser high school sweetheart, possibility with a surely teenage son or randy daughter in tow (you can just imagine the shopworn horror should Spielberg get his grubby paws on a similar story).
He makes a deal for the chance to ride Sunshine again. With the prize money he’ll ticket his father to the Australian gold fields. Dad being the only one keeping the spirit of the old days alive.
The rest is, as they say, the History of the West.
(Sorry Sergio, no gunfights or extreme close-ups.)
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