BRAPA* is broken** at the moment so this is an opportune moment to catch up on my latest edition of Wine, Westerns & Wotsits.
If you’ve not read this blog before, and let’s face it, not many people have, I drink a red wine made from a different grape listed in a book I bought, whilst watching a Western from a list of the 100 top Westerns I found online. I roll a 30 sided dice to randomise the film choice. I roll a normal six sided dice to determine how many bags of Wotsits I’ll eat at the same time. And because Wotsits alone are not enough sustenance to soak up a bottle of red (I learned that the hard way in week one), I use the same book to try and ‘pair’ them with a food, to varying degrees of success.
This week saw a slight change of tack. With the pubs now reopen and ale back on the agenda (WWWSI was originally a concept borne out of ‘lockdown’ boredom) , I don’t want to be drinking as much wine in one go. Also, I’d bought enough food for two sittings. So I decided to split this week into two nights, two films but one bottle wine, one food type and as I’d rolled a ‘6’ on the Wotsit front, I could ‘cheat’ and split these into two (3 bags each, much more manageable).
Night one, a Sunday night in mid August took us to Film #60 on our list, The Shootist. This film is notable as being John Wayne’s final film before he died. Otherwise, it’d probably get even littler attention, not that I didn’t enjoy it, it just wasn’t particularly remarkable.
He plays a man dying of cancer, and in real life, he’d had a lung removed and was in remission from lung cancer at this time, which would eventually kill him three years later, so I imagine it was quite a confronting roll for him.
A bit like Gary Cooper is High Noon which I reviewed a few weeks back, his ill, lumbering, ageing real-life self seems to add a sort of gravitas to his character – we’ve not had many John Wayne films in #WWWSI yet, but I get the impression his acting style wasn’t universally loved!
The whole cast is a bit of an old crocks gallery, Wayne actually using his influence to get many of the them onboard plus his horse! James Stewart for example, plays his doctor, and one scene had to be re-shot so many times cos Stewart was too deaf to hear his cues. “If you want the scene doing better, you’d better get yourself a couple of better actors” Wayne told the director. Like an overrated street in York, the whole thing sounds like a bit of a shambles.
Anyway, the plot basically is that John Wayne’s character rides into town on the day Queen Victoria has died, his doctor tells him he’s dying, his old rivals are out to get him, he ends up lodging with Lauren Bacall and her son, Richie from Happy Days, who irritates poor John throughout til the final few minutes. Eventually John Wayne gets this tram to the Metropole Saloon (a bit like a Brunning & Price with a bit more class) where he’s arranged to meet all his rivals. He manages to kill the three baddies but as so often the way in a B&P, the barman has had enough and shoots him in the back. Richie comes in, shoots the barman, but John Wayne’s character has died anyway. Hey ho.
I never quite mastered my food portions all night, constantly on edge about bread to cheese ratios and such. The wine, a Bogazkere (pronounced Boaz keh reh a bit like a Hull City goalkeeper) from Turkey translates as ‘Throat Burner’ and I never got on with it. It’s an ‘old world’ wine so perhaps I’m not used to them. The only place I could find it in the UK was from a lady knocking about in Ledbury.
I’d be back the following night, could I get my portions right? Would the wine taste any better? And how would the film compare to this one?
Find out in an hour or two cos it's not like I got anything else to do is it?!
Si
*This thing I do where I visit pubs in the Good Beer Guide
** My laptop with the master spreadsheet on is broken, stopping me from blogging or planning future trips or recording my figures!
Comments