They say in life that you haven’t made it until you've had a Wetherspoons named after you. Well, okay no one has ever said that before, until now. But it is certainly true of Hollywood movie icon, Gary Cooper, as you will know if you’ve ever been a real ale crawl of Dunstable.
And big Gaz was the star of tonight’s film, the third best Western ever according to my list, High Noon. The first black & white WWWSI offering, certainly the oldest, and it yet it has a quality that seems to transcend age. Despite having not watched a Western ranked higher than 20th until tonight, by the end I was won over. Best yet. I hadn’t been expecting to enjoy it quite so much.
It was filmed in ‘real time’ which helped the viewer to remain ‘in the moment’, as the clock counted down towards noon when a villain who had previous with Gaz was due to arrive on the 12 noon train for a final showdown. It was a mature film too, lots of thoughtful reflective moments, not just a constant shoot-em-up, and like last week’s McCabe & Mrs Miller, had strong women and some pathetic men probably a refreshing change for the genre.
On the flip side, Gary Cooper seemed far too old for the role at 50, a 30-40 year old would’ve worked much better. Plus his character was called Will Kane, who just sounds too much like every Hull City player from the last two years, and that is not heroic in the slightest.
Furthermore, one of the baddies was called Ben Miller. Hardly struck fear into me, as I kept wondering when Xander Armstrong was going to steam into town with Richard Osman. I get distracted like that. It gets worse, Ben Miller was played by Sheb Woolley, he’s the chap who sang ‘Purple People Eater’, hardly the stuff of scary villains waiting for a train.
Will Kane’s wife (they got married at the start) is played by Grace Kelly, a Quaker, so she’s fuming (in a gentle way) when he cancels their honeymoon to stay in town and wait for the train to turn up. And she basically says she’s off to do what Quakers do, watch Darlington or something.
The townsfolk are just as lame, as Will Kane tries to raise a posse, no one wants to know apart from a one eyed man (not George Boyd) and a 14 year old boy.
Grace Kelly checks into a hotel to chill out, it is worryingly reminiscent of the Old Coastguard in Mousehole if you’ve ever been. Meanwhile in the local bar, the Gaston Ramirez Saloon, you can’t help reminisce on York’s now defunct Brigantes.
I’d like to see the Hull Trains version of High Noon, where the train just never shows and the film just fizzles out. Anyway, it actually arrives on time, perhaps two down, and with the townsfolk hiding, Grace Kelly has to forgo her Quaker learnings and help Gaz dispatch the final villain, Ben’s brother Frank Miller.
The townsfolk surround him in congratulations, but he just glares at them like “where the eff were you when I needed you?” and he and Gracie ride off to resume the honeymoon. Fin.
With my wine Barbera D’Asti (who could well be a 50’s actress) hitting some of the right notes but not quite all of them necessarily in the right order, my Red Wine book had stereotypically twinned the Italian wine with a meaty pizza, which I left in the oven a bit too long.
And rolling a ‘6’ for Wotsits YET AGAIN on a pizza night, I sometimes think the dice are laughing at me. I didn’t drink all the wine, but still felt quite sick by midnight, having started far too late at 8:05pm.
No WWWSI next week or probably the week after as I’m on holiday, but Week 10 promises German wine and an Aussie Western so that might be a bit of an interesting change of pace.
Til then, farewell all. Si