Unforgiven (1992) WICK UNFORGIVEN - Part One

And even if it's movies that I've seen, like, Silence of the Lambs, I've loved for years, and I've seen a million times, but when I really broke it down by notes, I was like, God, I love it even more now. So, but this one? This one I was particularly excited for and after the notes I'm, I'm, I'm I'm lit up like a fucking

Christmas tree.

I know that it's a common theme, actually, when you think of a lot of movies that have ex assassins taken as another example of a, you know, a CIA operative or whatever, who's now retired and in the normal life. And something happens where he has to get back into it and kick everybody's ass that gets in front of him. So we love these movies because we, you know, we, we see themselves as these guys like, Oh, you know, with the things you'll do to, you know, to right the wrongs of the world.

So we were very much excited about the concept of once a killer.

So, I'll give you a hundred dollar budget to get a bottle of your choosing. Nice. Happy birthday. So, I go to Costco where the prices are the best. And I see that Jameson's jug for 50 bucks and I'm like, you know, I could just get two bottles of Jameson's and meet the budget. But then I was like, nah, fuck that, I'm gonna get something really nice. I ended up getting, this isn't it, or this is a different story. I ended up getting myself 85 bottles. dollar bottle of Macallan.

It was very nice scotch. Yeah. Yeah. And and I brought it home to find that my wife, while I was at Costco getting this bottle through a little surprise party for me. So I had all my neighbors over. Nice. And one of 'em e my buddy Eric, who lives down the street, him and his lady Siri, who are engaged they actually got me this Blanton's nice original single barrel bourbon whiskey. And it's the exact bottle from John Wick. They had no idea. It just happens to be, this is just serendipitous.

Yeah, that's great. It's the bottle that's, it's the bottle that, for those of you seen the movie, Keanu Reeves calls up, you know, he's, he needs to be stitched up by the doctor and they give him bourbon as a pain reliever. And this is the bottle they send up. So it's a very nice Blanton's whiskey from the movie. And I am going to open up mine now. So I normally don't use rocks. You know me, I have a thing against ice, but John wick had ice in his glass when he drank it.

Yep. So you, if Keanu can't go wrong. Then I can't go wrong. Here we go. You ready?

I kind of wanted to go with Unforgiven, like chronological.

In Son of a Woman, which was Al's first and only Oscar, which many felt was a makeup award for all the years he got dicked over in the 70s. Okay. It stars Clint Eastwood as William Money, Gene Hackman as little Bill Daggett Morgan Freeman as Ned Logan, Richard Harris as English Bob as well as co stars Francis Fisher, who was dating Clint at the time. Another little funny story there. I think I have it in the trivia. So we'll get to it later.

She plays strawberry Alice James Wolvette as the Schofield kid. That's literally his character's name. They don't ever say what his name is, right? It's just the Schofield kid Saul Ruben Eck is WWE Bo champ and Anna Thompson as Delilah Fitzgerald Yeah, the physically assaulted prostitute

Yep. Another almost kind of bizarre weird connection, if you could call it that. The character of the Schofield kid in Unforgiven is played by James Wolvet. But when I first saw the movie, I remember thinking that it was Christian Slater at first sight. Oh, cause of the eyes? Yeah. Because he looks a lot like him. Until I realized it wasn't him. But, Kristen Slater was also in True Romance. So, if it was Kristen Slater, we'd have a trifecta. Right. Okay, when did you first see this movie?

So, yeah, I've seen it several times. I know I saw it in 92. Something funny about the name, I guess this is trivia, but I'm gonna throw it in here now. So this came out what month did it come out? Do you remember?

Like, before I'd even seen the movie or anything and knew really what it was about, I didn't really know what it was about. I was like, I bet you that song's in the movie. I bet you it's in the closing credits or something. So, I couldn't have been more wrong and I'm glad that I was way off. Because that wouldn't have fit at all. Right, right. But yeah, kind of funny that like you said, the number one movie and the number one song. I saw it, again, also in the theater.

And, ah, man, I just I was floored then, but I wasn't as big into Westerns at the time. That might've been actually, dad made me watch a fistful of dollars when I was like 10 years old and and I was like, yeah, that's kind of cool. But you know, I was into star Wars and shit. So I'm like, eh, it's not really my cup of tea. I didn't get into Westerns till I get older. And I want to say this might've been the movie that did it because after this movie.

I went back and watched fuckin Outlaw Josie Wales and High Plains Drifter. I really got into Clint's older movies. Well,

I mean, all of a sudden you had sword and sandal shit all over the place and they were making HBO series, you know, about it and all of a sudden everybody was in the Spartacus again, you know, so I wouldn't doubt that tombstone, you know, although it was probably in production anyway, they rushed that shit. Once best picture was announced, they're like, we got to get tombstone in theaters like ASAP.

Oh a good woman came along Yeah, and straighten these guys out And gave him good lives and of course,

Inciting incident, the four point push starts pretty quickly in this movie, two minutes in as a matter of fact, on a rainy night in a small town, a fictitious small town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a couple of cowboys rough up and cut up a prostitute after she laughed at the size of his penis.

This not only introduces the prostitute girls, or I should just say prostitutes Strawberry Alice, Delilah, Kate, Faith, Silky, and Little Sue, but also saloon owner Skinny, the cowboys Quick Mike and Davey, and ultimately the town sheriff Little Bill Daggett. So there's a lot of setup in this first inciting incident. And it's just a few minutes in not just the actions, but the characters themselves. And so we're going to do a little, we're going to do a little exercise here.

One for you beginning writers. This is a good exercise for you. I call it late to the movies. Okay. For you beginning writers, if someone is going to go see your movie and they're running late and they had to stop for popcorn and a Coke and they didn't get into their seat until 10 minutes into the movie, ask yourself, did they miss any setup?

Okay. If the answer is no, they didn't miss anything, then, for a beginning writer, you're going to want to go back to that early first ten pages of your first act and tighten the shit out of it. Put some setup in there. Don't make it so boring. If the answer is yes, they would miss a lot, then you're on the right track. And if

Real intro to William Money Now. A father and hog farmer. Also intro to Pete Sotho's nephew, the Schofield kid. Eight minutes in, the kid says to Will, You don't look like no rootin tootin son of a bitch and cold blooded assassin. And this is going to be the running theme throughout the entire film. Not just with Will adjusting to his post assassin life, but with all the characters and the thematic element, and we're going to talk about this a lot, Myth versus reality, that's the theme.

The stories told versus what really happened. There are 13 different instances of this, and I'm gonna number them off as we go. That's the first one. For Will, it is his personal theme. Will he be the old killer he used to be? That's the, that's the, the emotional tug of war he's going to struggle with the whole movie. And, and, there is a terrifyingly sad reality to his spiritual goal that we're going to get to, we're going to come across at the end.

Catalyst, another myth versus reality happens in the next scene, the very next scene, when they're having coffee inside Will's place. And the kid tells the story of what happened to Delilah at the hands of the cowboys. But his version is embellished over what really happened, right? He cut off her teats, they cut her face off, like, I mean, the story just keeps Yeah,

That walked North America Another element to this myth versus reality in most cases the reality is nothing like the story that's being told However in William money's case, we're gonna find throughout the film that his reality was actually worse than the stories The stories they tell about will money Are almost tame compared to what really happened. Yeah. And we're gonna get to that too. So in any case, that's the catalyst moment.

At the 11 minute mark is the kid asking Will to join him on his job. Yeah. To take the two cowboys that cut up Delilah. Debate begins at the 13 minute mark. We see the debate. Will is, you know, His continued failures as a hog farmer. I think they show him falling down twice trying to, you know, separate these hogs. At one point he stands at the fence and he watches the school field kid right off in the distance. This is what Blake Snyder would call the stasis equals death.

You know, if he stays in this place, he's going to die just like that. An old broken down hog farmer. he doesn't seem very prosperous. The kid even says that. You don't seem very prosperous. He's not. He needs this money. You know, he could really use the money.

In fact, every time he tries to get on the horse in this movie, he falls. Like, I mean, he just, I mean, they just constantly are showing that he's an old man. Okay. So then next scene to see if he still has it. He does some practice shooting to find that he probably has gotten old. Cause he can't even hit a goddamn coffee can with his revolver. Now here's the funny thing. There's a rule of three here. We've talked about it in previous podcasts, the rule of three.

And this one is going to be Senator on whether or not he is back. Okay. This is stage one, firing a gun for the first time in a decade. The fact that he even finds his gun, he was looking for it and he finds it and he's going to go outside and practice shooting. That's the first stage of, is he back? Okay. There's going to be two more key ones later.

And the little girl, the daughter, says to the older son, Oh, he's got two kids by the way, if I didn't, if I buried that lead. He's got two little kids now, and the little girl says to the brother, Did Paw used to kill folks? Or maybe she says shoot. I don't know, maybe she says, Did Paul used to shoot folks? I don't know. Um, But he's so mad at the goddamn coffee can that he comes out with his shotgun. Alright, break into two.

The final stage of the four point push is the decision to jump into the second act.

Like it's, it's like, it's just something that's going on in his head. We assume he's made the decision the morning that he's shaving. Right. Like that's when you get the idea that, yeah, he's decided he's going to do this. But there wasn't anything really actionable that made us know that we just sort of knew it, you know? So, and that is roughly at the 18 minute mark is when he makes that decision.

We know that because like I said, he's shaving, he's getting dressed, and he takes flowers out to his dead wife's grave.

Like, you were a man at twelve back in those days. In this case, 11, 11 years old, and you're a man of the house. And I always thought it was funny to completely unrelated, but I always liked the line in interview with the vampire, when Brad Pitt is telling his story to oddly enough, Christian Slater already mentioned, we've mentioned him twice on an episode that has nothing to do with him. Right.

He tells him he, he was telling the story of in the 1700s when he first got bit and became a vampire. He says, he goes. I was 17 or 18 years old, but I was times were different. I was a man at that age. I already had my own plantation, you know what I mean? Like So I always liked that line about how times have changed. And then you watch this movie and you're like, No, you're a man at eleven. Not seventeen. You're a man at eleven. Alright, fun and games.

Now that we're in act two, we start with Skinny finding out about the bounty, slapping around Alice and going to little Bill to tell him. Myth versus reality number three. When skinny approaches Bill's house, he says, quote, I heard you did the roof yourself to that or rather offended bill replies. I practically built the whole damn thing myself, which is another example of the theme story moves around town, but you know, it's hardly true.

And this is just another, just again, a seemingly meaningless throwaway line of dialogue actually is serving and supporting the theme of the movie. There's no fat to trim in this script. Every word counts. And that's why it's one of, it's an amazing screenplay. Um, On his journey, roughly around the 28 minute mark. Usually the B story enters around 30 minutes in.

Will stops at the ranch of his old friend, Ned Logan and his wife, Sally, two trees and recruits him to join him on the job myth versus reality. Number four, as Will relays the story of what happened to Delilah to Ned, he's embellishing even more. Now. What does he say when no, I think he says is when her eyes got cut out. So first first the kid says he they cut off her teats And now he's like cut her teats. They cut her eyes out. Like I mean, it's getting even worse now

And he's only got like four scenes.

They only know the story of English Bob because he shoots Chinamen off the railroads. But when he gets out there to shoot pheasants, he hits, what, eight? Eight out of ten? Flying birds? With a handgun? So again, they are not only corrected on their, on their thoughts about English Bob, they're more impressed. because it was a contest and the only guy what hit one, he hit one bird. So, yeah. Where did I lost my place here?

Okay starting to get the idea that when it's a cold blooded killer like English Bob and William Money, the realities are usually accurate or worse than the myths. After they arrive in Big Whiskey, he has a comical, though timely, line in a barbershop. Where he's talking about how nobody would be able to assassinate a king or queen because you would stand in awe in their presence. And then he says as he's leaving, smiling, now a president, well, I mean, why not shoot a president?

Now in and of itself, it's a funny line. I realized. It's not that funny right now. So when I first saw it I was watching that scene and that line came up I remembered the line and laughed and then I was like Oh, I don't know if we can put that in a podcast Cause it's a little negatively timely but Still, it was a funny line, just the way he delivers it, you know what I mean? Yeah, it was funny. Why not? Why not shoot a president? Myth versus reality, number six, seven, and eight!

All come in back to back scenes as the deputies are gearing up to take on English Bob and the stories about how tough little Bill is, or was, and whether or not he's afraid. of somebody like English Bob come up. When they're face to face with little Bill, Bob tells him he's heard that he died. Well, first of all, let me, I'm jumping ahead. So, the myth vs. reality number six.

The first part is Clyde comes in, one armed Clyde, which is another funny scene because he wants to reload his own gun, and the guy that loaded it for him is like, Clyde, what are you doing? I already loaded that! Then he's like, Christ, you got three guns and only one arm! So um, anyway, so in that scene, Clyde tells all these guys are like, oh, I don't know if little bill can handle it. He's never gone against guys like this before. Did he seem scared?

And Clyde's like, guys, he worked those old towns in Kansas. You know what I mean? Like he starts telling little bill's story, you know? So And then they go to face little English Bob by the way, I'm going to trip over some of my words because Bill and Bob and Will are the three main guys. Will, Bill and Bob are the three main guys. So forgive me if I fucked this up a little bit. So when they get face to face with a little Bill, Bob tells him.

English Bob tells him, I heard that you died and you can kind of tell him the way he delivers the line that he really meant to say hoped because he does seem worried when he sees little bill. He was not afraid of these deputies at all, but when he comes out of that barbershop and he sees a little bill, he says to himself, I don't know if you could tell, cause he says it under his breath. He goes shit and fried eggs.

And WWE boat champ just sort of looks at him like, what, like, what's the big deal? Yeah. So anyway, to which Bill replies, I heard that one myself. So another example, again, these are just meaningless throwaway lines, but they're supporting that theme about how stories travel. Yeah. Right. Then biographer WW Bo champ, here's the name, little Bill Daggett, and he's obviously impressed. Even he has heard of him and likely his reputation.

Again, the script is literally With these, these stories, these reputations, these fables, this is about 39 minutes in, and we've already talked about eight instances where stories traveled to areas, you know what I mean? And people built up their own myths in their mind based on those stories. Another funny setup of dialogue is when Little Bill hears that W. W. is a writer. The first thing he says is, letters and such?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha No, wait, the reason I'm laughing is this is gonna pay off at the end. Because this is a setup and it gets paid off at the end, but The funny thing about it is, why would that be the first thing you ask? When somebody's a writer, you say, letters and such? That would be like today if I told somebody I was a writer and they're like, Oh, like emails? Like, no! You know what I mean?

Alright, so anyway, it doesn't end well for English Bob in this scene, as Bill beats the shit out of him, and then they arrest him at the end of it. Back to Ned and Will. They meet up with the Schofield kid and discover he can't see for shit. There's a lot of comedic moments there as well. Rejoin. Now we go back to Bill. He's now in the jail house with WW and Bob. He's reading the book.

The biographer wrote called the Duke of death which is another, yeah, which is another funny moment where he keeps fucking up the name, calling it the duck of death myth versus reality. Example number nine, since the book is mostly BS uh, perhaps you know, Kind of shit is how these stories got started, is because of books like this, right? Immediately followed by Myth vs. Reality number 10, where he tells the story of Two Gun Corky Corcoran. And why he was really named Two Gun Corky.

And, you know, the stories, it was because he carried two guns. Well, it wasn't. He carried one gun, but had a huge dick. That's why he was called Two Gun Corker. Two Two Gun Corky. Again, myth versus reality. Back to will Ned and the kid at the campfire myth versus reality. Number 11, where the kid lies his ass off about how many people he killed, just to sound impressive the next day while riding.

Okay. So the kid does ask him I heard you killed those two, you killed two County deputies or something. The next day here's myth versus reality. Number 12, they're riding along. And Ned says to to will. Hey, you know that story the kid told last night? It wasn't two. Didn't you kill three deputies or something like that? And he's like, I don't remember. I was drunk. But again, this is a perfect example of how even the story

Okay, so we've hit 12 examples of myth versus reality before we even hit the damn midpoint. Okay? There's only gonna be one more. Remember I said there's 13. There's gonna be one more, but it

comes later. Alright, back at the jailhouse now. Bill gives W. W. the chance to shoot him and take off with Bob. It doesn't go the way English Bob hoped. But why this is important is he basically explains the whole ending of the film. It's pure foreshadowing. It's clever because the fear I'm sure the filmmakers might have had and the writer himself was that the audience isn't going to buy the ending for the whole movie.

We've set up this broken down old man and he's going to walk into a room filled with, you know, people with guns and take everybody out. The reason it works is because of this scene, because a little bill takes the time to explain if you're cool headed. It doesn't matter how fast you are. Everybody else that is rushing and they're nervous and they're scared are gonna take their guns out and fire wildly and they're gonna miss most of the time.

If you keep your head and you calmly fire your weapon, you'll hit your target every time. He basically gives foreshadowing to how the movie ends. Because everybody else will be panicking and he won't.

Okay, second sign Will is coming back. Remember the first sign was that he was doing target practice. Second sign of him coming back to his old self, when sick and tired, he curses at the horse. Remember, he said earlier that his wife cured him of cursing and drinking and wickedness. Well, at this point, when he's, yeah, he's starting to slip back. Again, three points here. So, you know. What was the part? Oh, yeah. So it's raining and he's sick and he's tired and he falls off the horse again.

And he says, he calls the horse something like a no good pig fucker or something. Like, it's like, So, and I'm, well, I'm watching it and I had to write it down. I was like, oh my God, that's the first time he's cursed. It's the first time he's cursed yet because he said his wife cured him of that. So that's the second point. He does immediately apologize, though. Like, right after he gets on the horse, he's all, I'm sorry.

But the words flew out of his mouth, probably like they did in the old days. Alright, so that was part two of the Rule of Three. Alright, Bob is sent out of town as Will is arriving. There's a moment where they're at the train, you know, where they're waiting for the train to pass. And you can see English Bob on the train. As they're arriving in Big Whiskey. W. W. Beauchamp decides to stay with Little Bill. His stories are better.

The protagonist makes it to Greeley's to meet with Strawberry Alice. Will is sick, but he refuses to drink. And I tell people this all the time. Back in the 1800s, they didn't have NyQuil. So you drank whiskey if you had the fever, right? If you had a fever, you drank whiskey because it warmed your esophagus and made you sweat. It made you sweat out the fever. He refuses to drink because his wife, dead wife Claudia, cured him of drinking. So he refuses. That only makes him sicker.

He's just sitting there, soaking wet from the rain, getting sick.

Alright, midpoint scene. About an hour and twelve minutes into a two hour ten minute film, Bill meets Will for the first time, and he beats the shit out of him just like he did English Bob. His two friends escape and collect him outside and they begin his recovery. This is a tangible goal. They somewhat achieved the tangible goal. They at least found the place and met with Alice. I want you to realize why this is important.

No, they didn't kill the cowboys, but with all the stories set up about these BS stories going around, it's very likely they could have gotten there to find out there was no cut prostitute. There wasn't even a bounty. You know what I mean? Like, that could have just been a story they heard. They don't have the internet. They can't fact check this shit. So they just rode for a week and a half, or however long it took to get there.

They could have got there and then found out, oh, it was another embellished story. Right. But they don't. They get there, they find Greeley's, they find Strawberry Alice, they find that it's true. This is Delilah and we're gonna offer money like they realize. So in a sense, that is achieving part of your tangible goal. They get there and they know what they got to do, right? We talked about how the midpoint is usually the false victory, right? It's a false victory.

And then the second half of the movie, everything goes to shit. That all is lost is usually the opposite of the false victory, right? It's a false defeat. Sometimes they're swapped. Whichever one your midpoint scene is, the all is lost is the opposite. So if your midpoint is a false victory, then your all is lost is a false defeat. They swap in this one. And we talked about it before. It doesn't happen often, right? But we talked about it in the Fablemans.

We felt that that was a swap to the midpoint here, I believe is not a false victory. It's a false defeat. And the defeat is that little bill seemingly thwarts their plans by beating the shit out of them, beating bill within an inch of his life. And if that didn't do it, the fever might kill him, right? He might have died from the fever. He's in a bad state, right? He's close to death. He's bleeding. He's got to get stitched up. But things are about to turn around. So I call that a false defeat.

Bad guys closing in sometime passes about three days actually, where Ned and the kid are scouting the Cowboys. They're nursing will back to health. They're boning the prostitutes. You know, like I said, it's been three

days. The final myth versus reality moment. Number 13 happens when Will's fever breaks and he wakes up and he sees Delilah. He sees that she only has a few scars on her face. The stories were horrendous. But when he sees her, he's like, you just only have a few scars. You know? It kind of reminded me, watching it again, again I've seen this movie hundreds of times, but when I watched it this time, as a little side note, it reminded me of there's this scene, you're Thrones guy, are you?

And he goes, and then when we got there, we looked at you. And. There was no tail. There was no claws. No red eye. He goes, your head was a tad large and your arms and legs were tad small. But he says, he's talking to, he's talking to him. He's telling this and he said, I told your sister, that's not a monster. That's just a baby. You know what I mean? So it's like, it reminded me of that when he wakes up and he sees the Lila and all of a sudden he's like, she's just a girl. She's just a girl.

She's got some scars on her face. That's it. So. That is the final myth versus reality moment number 13. When they find the cowboys, the young Davey is the first to go. Unfortunately, Ned, I say, unfortunately, cause Davey really seems like a nice kid. He seems very like, like he really didn't do any of the cutting. And he seems really remorseful the whole movie about what happened. And so unfortunately he's the first to go.

But Ned falters when it matters the most and Will has to step in to do the killing. Will, Little Bill finds out about this. Ned quits and heads south. He couldn't take it anymore. The Barty boys catch up with him and take him prisoner. Will and the kid don't know about any of this and they continue scouting for the second cowboy, Quick Mike. They kill him. You realize I'm rushing through the whole second act here because these are just like points. These are just points that happen.

They kill him, specifically the kid kills him while he's sitting in the shitter, and they make their escape. And they're waiting at their rendezvous point as little little Sue approaches by horseback with their money.

So this is an hour and 45 minutes in, and the kid is breaking down. This is the, he admits this is the first time he's ever killed anybody and he can't handle it. Right. And again, this is happening mere. after Ned couldn't handle killing somebody. Right. Right? Like, these two guys, one at the end of his career, one at the beginning of his career as supposed killers, and they both buckle under the pressure. That's gonna be important when it comes to Will, right?

But anyway, there's a line of dialogue here. This is probably one of the most famous scenes of the movie. While they're waiting for little Sue to approach them on horseback. I'm just going to read the dialogue. The kid, it don't seem real how he ain't never going to breathe again. Never how he's dead. And the other one too, all on account of pulling a trigger will, it's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever going to have the kid.

Yeah. Well, I guess they had it coming. Will we all have it coming kid. That was the clip they showed at the Oscars when this movie was presented as one of the nominees for best picture. Okay, all is lost. One hour, 50 minutes in. Little Sue delivers the money and the bad news about Ned, who was beaten to death by Little Bill. Now, again, I, I actually, before, before we hear about Ned, it's a false it's a false It's not a false defeat, as all is lost normally is.

It's opposite of the midpoint, so it's a false victory. The reason why it's a false victory is, they got their money. They killed the cowboys. They got their money. They're getting ready to get on their horses and head south. They're gonna go home. They won. But it's a false victory because, they find out, Ned was killed.

When Will finds out that Ned was killed by Little Bill, Switch is flipped. Yeah, he's back now, right? Remember I said the rule of three, the three points. The first one was target practice. The second one was he cursed. Guess what? The third one is He grabs the bottle of whiskey from the Schofield kit and starts, At that moment you know, you're in the theater like, Oh fuck, shit's about to go down now! Dude's drinking again! Like at that moment you're like, Yeah cause they hyped it up

You could argue him reaching for the bottle of whiskey and starting to drink is his dark night of the soul. Like, that could have been that moment of debate. Because right then he's thinking, what am I gonna do? And you know that like, once he starts drinking, that decision is made. He knows what he's gonna do. Alright, break into three.

As previously mentioned in the break into two, there doesn't seem to be a big sort of plot point here you know, that catapults them into act three, like you would see a big scene or anything. It's again, it's a more of a mental decision. It's a, it's a mental and emotional decision that, that that William money makes to jump into act three. So Well, the catalyst

The five point finale. Here we go. Gathering the team. Will gives instructions to the kid. Take the money, head back. If I don't come back, give my share and Ned's share to Sally Two Trees so that she can give it to my kids. And you can keep the rest. But if I do come back, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. So that's him loading up the team. And there's a scene where he throws the empty bottle of whiskey onto the ground. You know, now the bottle of whiskey is gone. You know what that means?

Shit's about to go down, right? He's, he rides himself to Greeley's with zero fucks left to give at this point. Execution of the plan. He establishes. He goes in, he walks right in. While everybody else in there is armed, it's a posse that are going to look for him. Right. That's what they're, that's what they're there for, is to posse up and to go look for him. And he walks in there and says, who owns this shit hole, which is again one of my favorite lines where you hear him cock his gun.

Yeah. And the prostitutes are watching. And all the gunmen are watching, and the deputies, they all turn, and they see him stand with a gun, and the first line he says is, Who owns this shithole? I love it. So he sees Skinny, Skinny says, I own this establishment. Actually, first, nobody wants to answer, and he points the gun at the one deputy, Fatty. That's, I'm not being mean, that's literally his name. His name is Fatty, if you look at the credits.

He looks at him and he goes, You fat man, speak up. And that's when Skinny says, I own this establishment. And then he shoots him. It just shoots an unarmed man. I have thoughts on this too, but we're going to get to that in a second. I don't want to rush this five point plan here. So he kills Skinny. And again, he, the next, the plan next is to kill Little Bill, right?

Which, at this point, the room is, again, it's filled with armed deputies and mercenaries, and they're all shell shocked about what just happened. And they're all just standing there, right?

Because Bill was going to reach for his handgun, but now he's got a gun flying at him. He's got to kind of get out of the way of it. It allows Will to pull out his gun. And while everybody in the place is panicking and firing all over God's green earth, he's calmly picking people off one at a time. Right. So, and that's a funny scene, too, where they show, like Deputy Fatty and Deputy Andy are standing next to each other.

They're firing and they're hitting, like, the bar and the bottles that are on the bar. They're like, they're not even coming close to the will. Right? And he's just one at a time. He gets, he gets little Bill first in the gut. Boom. And then he takes out, boom, boom, boom. Boom, he starts taking dudes out. After the initial killing is done, execution of the new plan was that, by the way, but after, the plan's not done yet because Bill's still alive.

Not that he knows it yet, but he suggests everyone else flee out the back if they don't want to get killed. And they all listen! A room filled with armed dudes and they're all like Alright, you got it, sir. And they all go out the back door. Get the fuck out of there. Nobody wants anything to do with him at this point. Then Will meets W. W. Beauchamp, the biography, the biographer, by the way. And that's when he realizes Bill is still alive.

At this point, he kills him at point blank range with a Spencer rifle. There is a funny moment there. I, when I thought was going to happen in theater, didn't happen. And this could have been Clint Eastwood's little dig on the myth versus reality. What you think is going to happen versus what does happen. He sees biographer is all, I'm not armed. I'm not armed. The first thing he says is pick up that rifle.

And I'm like, Oh man, he's going to pick up that rifle and he's going to shoot him just so he can say he didn't shoot another unarmed guy, but he doesn't, he doesn't, he picks up the rifle and he just tells him, you know, give it to me so I can reload it. Yeah. And then, you know, more of the myth versus reality. But this is all reality. Yeah. W. W. Bochamp is impressed. He's like, you killed five people. Who'd you kill first? You know what I mean? Did you kill it? Did you kill bill first?

So anyway, and he gets another good line too. He goes, all I know is who's going to be last. The biographer basically shits his pants and runs out of there. All right, so resolution as he's leaving he he drops the threats to all the town and the onlookers and the and the Prostitutes that are watching.

Yeah, he's basically like treat your women better give Ned a proper burial You know do this do that or I'm gonna come back and kill all you sons of bitches Actually, before that, he says, Alright, I'm coming out. Anyone takes a shot at me, I'm gonna kill him. And not just that, I'm gonna kill his wife. Burn his damn house down.

That was just the

beats. Now notes on character. Okay. So I mentioned this already, several moments were shown that depict Will's age. I didn't think I put it in the notes, but I guess I did. He falls not once but twice while trying to wrangle the feverish hogs, and there's countless times where he stumbles trying to get on the damn horse. As mentioned, when Will is still in the debate stage in the first act, he does the target practice where he tries to hit the coffee can, right?

He misses every shot, he gets mad, grabs the shotgun, we already talked about that. However, in the climactic scene, the only other time he uses a revolver, he uses a revolver. He's dead on and spot on in every shot. This I believe signifies is not just cause he was drunk and he was his old self again, but it is, it signifies to me the killer instinct in him. If he's aiming at a coffee can, his brain is not invested in hitting the target. You know what I mean?

But if it's a person, particularly an assailant who's shooting back at you, his instinct takes over and his brain targets the shot perfectly. He's dead on, on every shot. What's he say? Oh, even after the killings, even after the shooting, when he's at the bar, he says, I've always been lucky. No, no. He says, I was lucky in the order. I've always been lucky when it comes to killing folks. Right?

So that kind of explains how, even when he was drunk out of his mind, He was the deadliest guy around because his brain would kick in on that killer instinct. Grillie's owner, Skinny, is another interesting dissect, because at first he comes off kind of like a good guy at the very beginning. He has his own little save the cat moment when he saves Delilah, right?

The guy's cutting her up and he puts a gun to his head and says, get off of her cowboy, you know, like, So you're thinking, oh Skinny is really protective of these girls. But as the movie goes on, we kind of find out that Skinny is a piece of shit, right? Like, he calls them whores, he calls them bitches, he smacks them around, he treats them like they're property. And he, he's otherwise kind of a shitty dude.

And the reason they do this is because is so that you can forgive Will for killing him when he was unarmed, right? Especially they show, they, like I said, they throw that part in, like you said, they throw that part at the end where he put Ned out front.

Like, this is what we see. He's a good dad. He's a, he's a, he's a widower. I guess I would say he's a good widower because he wants to stay true to his wife. He doesn't go get a girl of his own or anything like that. He doesn't cuss anymore. He doesn't drink anymore. These are all the things that we like about him. And he defends Ned, right? When Ned first meets the kid and the kid's like, I'm not splitting my money with him. I don't want to go along with him.

He says, all right, well then we're going back. You know what I mean? Like he needs this money, but he's not gonna, you know, refuse Ned. He's going to stick up for him.

He mentions several times that he barely remembers any of the killings or any of his stories of the past because he, you know, whatever, he was too drunk or he doesn't remember them. If his wife Claudia cured him of drinking in wickedness, as he put it, and gave him two loving children, then he was never really punished for any of his past sins. Claudia eventually dying of smallpox? Eh, that's not a punishment to him, because it wasn't at his hands. Right. Right?

The opening crawl suggests it was not at his hands, she died a smallpox. He didn't do anything that he would feel guilty about when it comes to Claudia. That is why this journey had to happen. Will has to suffer. He has to pay for his sins. This time, he recruits his best friend Ned to go along. Ned never makes it back alive. Yeah. That's because of will will is going to fill that guilt for the rest of his life. That he got Ned into this and Ned was, and he didn't just die.

He was whipped to death. It was a bad death, right? That's his punishment that he now has to endure. Because of him, Ned is dead. This is supported throughout the film. Specifically when he's dying, he says that he sees visions and ghosts. These spirits of his victims are the angel of death coming to collect for his past. Killing him! Particularly at that moment, like from the fever, that would have been too humane for Will. He needs to suffer.

The guilt of being responsible for Ned's death is going to cut deeper than any death. The angel of death was certainly there, but it wasn't coming for him. It was coming for Ned. Eventually, Ned suffers again, like I said, the most brutal of deaths, and that's his payment for his sins. That's Ned's payment for the sins that he did in the past. Within the killing of the young Davy scene, Ned fails to do the killing this losing his nerve and falters. This is emasculating for him.

He was a once hardened killer himself. Now he feels that he's forced to quit, you know, almost out of embarrassment, right? And like, in a way, he at that point, quitting and leaving should have saved him, but it didn't. The boys caught up to him and killed him. So, that's on Will. Another side point, the rain serves as a driving factor throughout the film. First, it's dark and mysterious. You know, most of the film, the brutal scenes happen when it rains.

English Bob's beatdown is the only exception. That happened in the broad daylight. But everything else the cowboy's cutting Delilah. In the beginning, it's raining. When Will gets sick and gets the shit kicked out of him by little Bill, it's raining. And of course the ending scene where he kills five people, it's raining.

Also almost comically, the rain serves as a metaphor when the biographer is back at little Bill's house and Bill's filling these pages that he's writing down with this load of BS that little Bill's giving him about how great he is and what a bad ass he is. Right. The rain's coming through the roof. So that's a metaphor that there's holes in this story, right? That as much as he's telling about how great he is, it's bullshit. And that's why the roof is leaking all the water.

And he has that funny moment where he's like, Oh, maybe you should just hang the carpenter. Little Bill gets pissed because he was the carpenter. Yeah. All right. Few more points of trivia before we move on. A thousand dollar bounty in 1880 is worth nearly 31 grand today. Shot in Alberta, Canada. The town of Big Whiskey is fictional. Clint has directed 16 feature films before Unforgiven, and another 23 films after.

Unforgiven, his 17th film, was the first of his to garner any acting nominations ever. Wow. And a Best Picture nomination. For the 24 films since Unforgiven, Eleven acting roles had Oscar nominations and four of them won. Here are the supporting roles in Clint directed movies. Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, that was the first one, and he won. Tim Robbins, Mystic River, he won as well. That's two in a row. Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River, also was nominated. She didn't win.

Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby, 2004, he won. So that's three Oscars in the Best Supporting Category in Clint directed films. Matt Damon, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Invictus 20 2009 and Kathy Bates for Rich in Richard Jewell, 2019. Also, here's the leading roles. Clint was the first. He directed himself to a Best Actor nomination in 92. That was the first one. Meryl Streep, nominated for Best Actress in 1995, didn't win. Sean Penn, Mystic River, 2003, he does win.

Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby, 2004, she wins. So that's back to back years. Where the lead role in a Clint directed movie won the Oscar. Clint Eastwood was also nominated for Million Dollar Baby in 2004, but he didn't win. Angelina Jolie, nominated for Best Actress in Changeling, 2008, didn't win. Morgan Freeman, nominated Best Actor in Invictus, 2009, didn't win. And finally, Bradley Cooper, nominated for American Sniper, 2014, didn't win. But, isn't that crazy?

Yeah. That he had directed, it's almost like he took those 16 films to really figure out how to work with actors.

Uh, As stated earlier, the film was released on August 7th, 1992, my 17th birthday, Frances Fisher, who plays strawberry Alice and just dating Clint at the time, she was four months pregnant at the Academy Awards when the movie won best picture her and Clint's daughter, Francesca was later born on. August 7th, 1993 when I turned 8.

Hmm. The get it wrong on the film, like whoever was doing the credits got it wrong. Wow. That's crazy. And again, IMDB follows what's on screen. They also have it wrong, but if you look at both of those actresses individual pages on the trivia part, it mentions that, that they are incorrectly credited.

And here's why, not only because it's played by the same guy, but they have a similar savvy with a gun, with a handgun, they're ruthless to criminals, but most importantly, the end crawl of Unforgiven states that he moved to San Francisco, where he prospered in dry goods. Dirty Harry movies all take place in San Francisco, where Harry can't land. Is an inspector for the San Francisco Police Department. That's great. I love it. Well I, well I finished my whiskey, give me your final thoughts here.