Unforgiven

 “Just Thinking"

As you know I am a big fan of westerns, I grew up watching westerns, my dad was a huge fan my grandfather was a big fan of westerns. As a young guy we spent many Sunday nights at my grandparents’ house watching Bonanza in color, getting shushing when the commercials were over. Wagon Train, The Big Valley, Paladin, The Wild West and The Rifleman were all favorites, although dad would get impatient with all the gadgets Robert Conrad would use in The Wild West.

John Wayne was an iconic figure at our home with so many of his great movies being watched over and again; McLintock, Big Jake, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, True Grit, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Cowboys and The Shootist. When The Duke passed away in 1979 it was a sad day in the Barberini house.

Clint Eastwood stepped into the breach in the mid 1960’s with his Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and the classic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. 

I saw a Youtube video the other day called; Unforgiven: 20 Things You Didn’t Know by Just Westerns. The guy puts together videos just about western movies, I’m a fan and he was right, there were at least 20 things that I did not know about the movie. 

Here are a few that I bet you didn’t know.

The original screen play was called The William Munny Killings and was written by a young screen writer named David Webb Peoples. He was inspired by the 1975 novel called The Shootist which was adapted into the 1976 movie by the same name, John Wayne’s last movie. His script was picked up by Francis Ford Coppola, who was negotiating with John Malkovich to play William Munny. Much to Malkovich’s relief, Coppola was unable to get the backing to shoot the film, Malkovich is known to have said, I would have been a total failure. Who would want to see that? I wouldn’t.

The script was eventually sent to Eastwood, it landed on his assistant’s desk, who read it and hated it, she said that it was an insult to our company and the only good thing that I can say about it is get rid of it fast. Eastwood ignored her advice and read the script, he loved it. He acquired the rights to it in the early 1980’s but held on to it because he felt that he could better portrait the lead character if he was a bit older.

He started production in the early 1990’s and felt that he had something special and decided that he needed a cast that would reflect how special it was, so instead of using the character actors as he had done in the past, he reach out to big-named stars. Richard Harris (English Bob), Jeromy Irons turned him down, Morgan Freeman (Ned Logan), Gene Hackman (Little Bill Dagget) and his then girlfriend Frances Fisher (Strawberry Alice).

The film was shot in Alberta Canada, the town of Big Whiskey was built, inside and out just for the movie. Alberta is known for its inclement weather, but the production lucked out with mostly dry sky’s, the rain scenes were staged and the snowstorm that hit was incorporated into the movie.

The movie hit theaters in August of 1992 with very little fanfare, Eastwood wanted to create a word-of-mouth buzz around the film, his instincts were right with a huge opening weekend. With a budget of $14.4 million the film ultimately grossed $159.2 million.

Up until that point and despite his fame and box office success, Clint Eastwood had never been nominated for an Academy Award, that all changed with Unforgiven, which was nominated for 9 Academy Awards. The film won in 4 categories, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman) and Best Film Editing. This was only the 3rd western to win the award for best picture alongside Cimarron (1931) and Dances with Wolves (1991).

Just Westerns claims that Unforgiven is one of the best westerns of all time.

Let me know what you think.

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