ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) w/ Director Chris McGilvray

Make sure you listen you our VINTERVIEW with Chris which dropped last week! We cover his short films, branded content company, and how he came to direct our favorite wine documentary of the past many years, EDEN (2024) about the Mount Eden Winery and Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, considered to have the oldest lineage of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in all of North America!

WATCH CHRIS' DOCUMENTARY EDEN

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And today Chris joins us to talk about a favorite movie - the Western to End All Westerns, Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST from 1968.

PAIRIED WITH:

• Alegre Valganon Rioja Blanco 2024
• Pax Syrah, Sonoma Hillsides 2023
• Borgo Savaian "Aransat" Orange Wine, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy 

Transcript

0:05

Are you not entertained? What the He's Dave, and I'm Dallas, and this is Ventertainment. We have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes those opinions are spot on. Sometimes they go down easier with a glass of wine. This is Ventu Tangment. The wine. Welcome everyone to Vintertainment. This is the podcast where we pair wine with entertainment. It's as simple as that. And today we are joined by a very special guest, Chris McGilvre. Make sure you listen to our Vinterview with Chris to learn about the his history as a filmmaker and his recently released feature-length documentary, Eden, all about the Mount Eden Vineyard and winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the impact that owning and managing a vineyard has had on multiple generations within a single family. It's a wine documentary that starts out somewhat typical, but then cuts deeper than most. It was a great conversation, and you will definitely want to listen to it and watch Eden from 2024, currently streaming on Plex for free in the States, but also available to rent or buy on Apple TV or YouTube. And on that note, Chris, welcome to the main venturtainment segment. And are you ready to talk wine and the western to end all western? man, you have no idea. I've been waiting for this one. This is literally one of my top five favorite movies. So um this is gonna be a blast. Beautiful. But before we get to the movie, first we have to challenge you with our wine trivia question of the week. All right, let's do it man. Let's see what happens here. Let's what happens. So, uh on theme with with a Western, uh when Spanish settlers originally came to the New World and traveled up through Mexico and into Southern California, they brought with them their Listan Prieto, which is what they called it in Spain, aka País in Chile, or aka Criolla Chica in Argentina, aka the Mission Grape in America, a wine grape they used to make sacramental wine and which they planted all throughout. The West. Now, this was never considered to be a grape that produced particularly good fine wine. Uh missionaries did, however, make incredible fortified dessert wine called Angelica with it. A style of dessert wine that is still made today. The oldest mission grape vine in America is a tree-like monstrosity of a vine called the mother vine or the vina madre.

The question is: 3:07

this vine is still. Producing fruit of about half a barrel's worth and is estimated to be how old? Is it A 100 plus years old? B 130 plus years old, C 170 plus years old, or D 250 plus years old. What do we think? I I I have my answer. What are you thinking? I I I got some ideas. So I know it's older than a hundred years because there's a lot of old vine Zinfandel that is a hundred years. There's even some old vine Zinfandel in California that is a hundred and thirty years. So I'm I'm blowing past those two. All right. Um as America, right? Are we talking about the United States of America? Are we talking about America of the continent? America the Cont Right. America we can go with America of the continent, actually. Test. Is it in Chile? Is that where where we're No, it's here. It's here in California. So it actually is in California. It's in interesting. It's been Los Angeles probably. I could be there in about fifteen minutes from where I am right now. okay. And so like we're talking Yeah, fun fact in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, LA was the center of California wine. Long before Napa was. Yeah, yeah. Like we're we're talking it's own rooted, so it's gotta be in sand or Philoxer would have killed it. So damn, is it a hundred and seventy or is it two fifty? I mean, God, if we're talking two fifty, I mean that thing I can't Yeah, This year is America's two hundred fiftieth celebration. Seventeen seventy six. So there you how nobody such a milestone by the way, but when you mention it to people everyone's like, shit, yeah I know that, but I'm sort of a good kid. like, yeah. right. Well, and everyone's trying to avoid thinking about the MMA match that's going to happen at the White House in in honor of the two hundred fiftieth anniversary We're like, you know what, let's just pretend this isn't happening right now. This is not what this happened, you know, that's right years ago. Or maybe it's gonna happen in the future. I'm not gonna Okay, so is it yeah, is it from s is it two fifty or is it a hundred and seventy? Yeah. Yeah, my final answer is I'm gonna say it's a hundred and seventy. It's a hundred and seventy plus years old. I'm going two fifty. Dallas is going 250. Yeah. Chris is going 170. All right. So there is a winery that has 170 plus year old uh Michigan grape vines. Brock Sellers, based out of Berkeley, California, makes a regular batch of Angelica every year from 170 plus year old vines. You can currently purchase half bottles for fifty-eight dollars a pop, which isn't bad. Angelica is never cheap, my friends. it's a fortified dessert wine. I have a half bottle of the Angelica from Comekula that cost me $75. like ten years ago even, uh, it cost seventy-five dollars and I still haven't opened it. But for $58, you can get 170 plus year old vines from Brock Sellers B R O C But you can watch the documentary on the oldest vine on Som TV about the 250 plus year old vine. Wow. You know the full story of this mother vine and the group of Californians that have been tending to it in recent days, so it just kind of grew wild for a long, long time, untended to. But this group recently in the LA area were absolutely blown away by its size and resilience. They knew they had to try to make wine again from this historic vine. So Patrick Kelly was tasked with assessing the vine, pruning it, and creating wine from its grapes. He jokes that as the leading expert on this age of vine, of which there are only six in all of existence in the world ah at this type of age. I said thanks to Philoxera, there is not there are not many out there anymore that go quite this long. He used his farming skills to teach the groundskeepers how to properly maintain the vine for future harvests. As it turns out, the vine was very healthy despite its relative neglect in age. From fires to earthquakes, this fine scene, all of California history for the most It was healthy because it wasn't messed with fucked with Was not messed with. I know. So they produced they produced one round uh of of wine from this vine. Um you can always find these Angelica when they produce it. They only produce it once in a while. Like I said, it's roughly half a barrel's worth. It's very hard to get. But it is Cavaletti Vineyards dot com. Cavaletti C A V A L E T T I B uh T T I Vineyards dot com. Um and their but their second round, their first round, uh there wasn't there was even less of the wine, but the second round it actually the grapes were even bigger, healthier, better color, and more. It started and now that they're tending to it, it's actually getting even healthier and producing a little bit more fruit. So 250 plus drone vines. And if you folks have never tried Angelica, go seek it out. It is a beautiful, beautiful dessert wine. fortified and oxidized like autonomy port type of a thing. So you get a lot of those like big dried fruits, maple, coffee. It's it's syrup in a glass, and it is just magnificent. So everyone, go take a look for those bad boys. And on that note, all right, Chris, on to business. Tell our listeners what movie you chose to talk about today and why. Well, I definitely chose Once Upon a Time in the West, uh, which is like the unsung hero of Sergio Leone's films. Most people, you say Sergio Leone, they instantly think of the good, the bad, and the ugly. You know, maybe they'll go to Fistful of Dollars. That was the first one. Both amazing, iconic movies that I absolutely love. But like Once Upon a Time in the West is the mother load. Because it's like literally it was the movie after he made his original trilogy. He wanted to make his gangster picture, what became once upon a time in America, that he didn't make until nineteen eighty-four. We're talking like this is sixteen years before that. He didn't even want to make a Western anymore. But the studio was like, You're the Western guy. You gotta make a Western. So he's like, All right, if we're gonna do this, we are gonna do it. And so he actually took Dario Argento. Who was like the master of Italian horror. Yeah. And Bernardo Bertolucci, who is a very, very famous Italian filmmaker, um, you know, known for like Last Tango in Paris, Last Emperor, bunch of other, you know, great stuff. the conversation, or not the conformist. Yeah. Conformous. Oh just fucking fantastic though. So beautiful. All that Vittorio Serraro cinematography. It's so good. So anyway, they all three of them got together and locked themselves in like the cinema vault and watched as many classic American westerns as they could. All the John Ford stuff they could get a hold on, and you know, Howard Hawks, all the great stuff. And this is what they came out with. And so I'm like, it's such an amazing. operatic, epic, sweeping, cinematic statement of what a Western should be. So that's why I chose a man. Good. I will say, uh interestingly, I've I've always loved this movie. This was only I think this was only my second time seeing it. But the first time I saw it, I was just like, this is I owned it on digital already because I was just like at one point I ran across it online. You I was like, that's a no-brainer. I want to own that. That is like an amazing Western. I do not like his Clint Eastwood movies. I do not I'm not a fan of any of them. I have tried So many times to get into them and I I I kind of authentically hate them. I just can cannot get into them at all. But this movie rings every bell for me. Um but it was kind of a bit of an antithesis to what he wa he had been doing before, not entirely, but you know, it was a bit of an evolution. But yeah. Definitely an evolution. And I mean, like, seriously, this film goes down amongst filmmakers as being potentially the greatest opening sequence of all time. It's I mean it's kinda it's hard to beat. It is like the greatest sound design. It's like it's such an unbelievably awesome, epic, slow build, open. Yeah. Every frame, every look, every bit of lighting cutting across a person eye person's eyes beneath the brim of their hat. you can smell this film. That's what's also so interesting. You can fucking smell this film because all the other sensory input is so you know, so acute. Well, and it takes this time to make sure you're noticing all the sensory input, right? Which is part of that slow pace. And you know, when we talked about Chris's documentary, we talked about how early on he sets the entire tone and pacing, like what to expect from this documentary with a couple of choices. Go listen to that, you venture view to to hear all the details. But this similarly, like this opening sequence, it's one of the best opening sequences of all time, but it also the movie doesn't change. After that. This is what the movie is. It's set it you know exactly what you're getting once this opening sequence is done. They're like, and this is what the next two and a half hours are going to be, buckle up. Yeah. It totally is the most consistent thing that Sergio Leone ever did. I'm a you know, as a filmmaker I always look at films for inspiration. That's what I you know, get excited about. And so a lot of times I actually love movies because of particular sequences or scenes that stick with me. Certain uses of cinematic technique that really jumps out at me more than even loving it as a whole. And you know, so I'm always very forgiving about the whole. And I will totally admit Sergio Leone is notorious for like having a bunch of great scenes and sequences. And then following it with a bunch of crappy ones, which is probably why you don't like the Quit Eastwood ones. Because the good, the bad, and the ugly is super sloppy, man. It's messy, but like the stuff that hits is so good. And this one is the much more toned down, streamlined, you know, purposeful intent film. Right. Yeah, nothing is sloppy here. No. And it's you know, one of the things about that is one of the big parts of obviously Sergio Leone is Ennio Morricone's score. You know, scored every single one of his, you know, films. And it's always you always remember that music to the point where good, the bad, and the ugly, it's just like, you know, you put that in any kind of film and everybody knows that it's like a Western show. Yep. It's just like the comedy beat. So this one he actually had Ennio Morcone write the score before they actually filmed it. So they had the score on the set, and so they were able to time every single one of those sequences to it. So when you watch it from that perspective, you can see why it's such a perfect marriage of music and imagery, the timing, like the the reveal of You know, Henry Fonda's character as the villain is the most epically, perfectly timed imagery and musical composition that you are going to encounter. It's so amazing. That like wide shot where they come out of the bushes and they start walking towards camera, and you still don't know what's Henry Fonda, and then the music is like building and building, and the swell hits on the actual dolly shot, like, you know, orbital that swings around. To reveal Henry Fonda's face. It is like the most impeccably cinematic thing. You see it's so cool. Yeah. If you wanted if you wanted to uh this film does what I love about it is if someone asked me to show them a singular film of the capacity for filmmaking of filmmaking, it would be this one. Because everything about it, like the immersive sound, which uh to correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't a a major thing back in the day when this was no, yeah. It wasn't at all. And so the immersive sound, the idea of the birds and you can hear him when he's out in the dark smoking a cigarette. You can hear the ash of the cigarette. It's just it's fuck fucking fantastic. Yeah fantastic. And it was a bit of a dream of Morricone to have the score written before he shot the movie. That was something he had always wanted to do, but never it was never a reality, except for apparently the final scenes of Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He was able to get that done. And so he shot those final scenes to already made music. But this was the first movie where he was able to he had the time, he had the budget, he had the luxury of going to Morricone and like They just worked it all out in advance. And then they were able to shoot all those sequences. So on that note, guys, let's get to it. A brief history of Once Upon in the West for context for our listeners. So this is the fourth and almost final Western directed by Sergio Leone, the man who reinvigorated the genre with his Man with No Name trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood. Those films, of course, being 1964's A Fistful of Dollars, which was based on the Nikira Kurosawa Samurai film Yojimbo. Nineteen sixty five's for a few dollars more, and nineteen sixty-sixes the good, the bad, and the ugly, each film proving more financially successful and more technically accomplished than the last. These films launched the subgenre cheekily called Spaghetti Western, of which over six hundred films were made in Europe between nineteen sixty four and nineteen seventy eight, and almost five hundred of those made in Italy alone. The films We're traditionally made on low budgets. That's why there's so many of them. And in Italy Stop hold hold here there for a second. One of my dreams, because my my my pr producing partner Austin here, he has a similar sort of idea where he's just like, if we could just rent a place out in Joshua Tree for like two months and just invite a whole bunch of like self-contained film crews and just try and make as many sort of western themed And regurgitate the cast, like in different roles kind of a thing. Okay. Roger Corman style. Yes. Roger Corman. They made a book. Like that's that's totally where Jack Nicholson got his first start. He was like writing and part of that acting crew. That has been that has been my idea. Yeah. That has been my idea for at least a decade. And I'm just like, you know, now's the time to kind of pull some shit like that off. Like now is the time where that could actually work. Anyway. All right, go on. All right. Well back. Back to this point in time in cinema history. But after three such spaghetti westerns, Leone had little interest in doing another, especially as Star Clen Yeastwood equally wanted to switch gears before he became trapped in a single genre, Alajon Wayne. For his part, Leone was hoping to move on to other material. As Chris already pointed out, his passion project would eventually become the movie Once Upon a Time in America. A four hour epic thought this movie was long. A four hour epic starring Robert De Niro, James Wood And Joe Heshi. However, it would be decades before this vision materialized. The movie wouldn't be made and ultimately released until 1984, because American studios had a lot of convincing to do.

Luckily, they had just the thing: 19:30

another western! The one that starred beloved American actor Henry Fonda. Fonda had long established himself as an American icon, appearing in dozens of films and earning himself two Oscar nominations. For the Grapes of Wrath, best actor, and twelve Angry Men, Best Picture, having co-produced the film with Reginald Rhodes. Sergio Leone was a huge fan of Fonda. Fonda was in fact his favorite actor of of all time. And Leone had wanted to work with him for his entire career. He apparently could never get past his agent before this point in time. But Paramount Yeah, you're right, doesn't that sound right? Some things have changed. Some things have not changed. But Paramount offered Fonda on a silver platter, along with a hefty budget, a package Leone could not say no to another Western. Be damned. But Leone still needed an actual script. What was this Western starring Henry Fonda going to be? Jump two, just before Christmas 1966, Bernardo Bertolucci went to see the good, the bad, and the ugly in Rome at three o'clock in the afternoon on the first day of its run. Watching films, he later recalled, was a way of finding some comfort from the ones I was not then able to make myself amen. He had directed two feature films, The Grim Reaper, nineteen sixty-two, and Before the Revolution, nineteen sixty-four, which had been screened at the Cannes and New York film festivals, but which, quote, was almost determined not to find an audience, unquote. Since then, Bertolucci's career had ground to a halt. He felt like a foreigner in his own country. But a happy surprise awaited Bertolucci at the screening he had chosen. Sergio Leone himself was actually in the projection booth to oversee the projection of his film. It was a different time back then, people. Dario Argento was in the booth with him. Leone recognized Bertolucci and Dario made all the introductions. The following day, Leone telephoned Bertolucci at home and asked, had he enjoyed the film? I said that I did, but that was not enough. Sergio wanted to know why, so I replied with a phrase which I think he liked very much, which almost seduced him. I said I liked the way he filmed horses asses. In general. In both Italian and German westerns, the horses were filmed from the front and sides, in profile. But when you film them, I said, you always show their backsides. A chorus of backsides. Very few directors shoot the back, which is less rhetorical and romantic. One is John Ford and the other is you. And Bertolucci might as well have given Leone a handjob because the result was the same. He was completely knocked sideways by this, went quiet for a few seconds, and said, We must make a film together sometime. And he started to tell me the beginning of a story. That's what you're talking about. That's what I'm talking about. yeah, it should be done. And next thing you know, a big a a big budget, like three hour art house western is born. Wouldn't that be nice? Yes. I know, right? It was done, gentlemen. Yeah. Leone signed Bertolucci and Argento to write the treatment for his new film. Thus the three men began a series of meetings at Leone's home in the Via Vicipo. The process went on for two months, though Argento claimed six, with the discussions focused on the mini meanings of the phrase Serauna Vorta Il Vest, which means once upon a time there was the West. And this is the Italian title of the final film, by the way. The idea being to juxtapose the fairy tale nature of the golden age, the Western mythos of the gunslingers, hence once upon a time, with the reality of industrialization and quote unquote progress, with modern business and the railroad laying down tracks over the past. The final result of the mini script conferences involving Leone Bertolucci and Argento was a treatment or story consisting mainly of descriptions, suggestions for visual images, and stage directions. Bertolucci remembers it as quote. Huge, about 300 pages long, unquote. With the treatment, yeah. When the treatment was complete, both Bertolucci and Argento had to move on to other projects, and Leone took it to Sergio Donati, the script writer who had worked uncredited on the good, the bad, and the ugly. So Donati stated, it wasn't so big, about eighty pages. Mm-hmm. Who knows? I wrote the whole script in twenty five days, I think, working like hell, scarcely getting up from my seat, that's how it's done, and I had to rewrite just two things. If you read the shooting script, everything was shot exactly as in my script, including the fly at the station, which we will get to again in just a little bit. Because that's a very cool moment. yet despite Leone's enthusiasm, Fondo was hesitant to take the role. The version Fonda received was written in stilted English, a direct translation of Donati's words. Quote, I didn't dig it and I turned it down. I told the fellas I was lunching with that some Italian producer was flying in to try to talk me into doing it. Who, they asked? Sergio somebody. Sergio Leone? I said yes, and they all fell down. Steam Sergio Leone had made the three biggest box office pictures to come out of Italy. Well, I went home and called an old valued friend, Eli Wallach. I told him I wasn't wild about the script. Eli said, pay no attention to the script. Just go. You'll fall in love with Sergio. You'll have a marvelous time. Believe me. Believe it. Fonda thought he needed to change his appearance to appear, quote unquote, villainous, however. He thought his baby blues and clean-shaven face wouldn't cut it. He grew a beard and put in brown contact lenses to make himself, quote unquote, darker, but when he showed up to set, Leone immediately yelled off and made Fonda take out the contacts and shave. He wanted Fonda as the Fonda playing against type. And those piercing blue eyes are entirely retranslated to audiences as the cold, Calculating soulless eyes of Frank, who Fonda plays to pitch perfection. Now Clint Eastwood was primarily offered, uh originally offered the role of quote unquote Harmonica, but he was persuaded he was not persuaded to return the way Leone was. James Covern and Terrence Stamp were additionally considered, but the role ultimately went to forty-six year old Charles Bronson in his breakout performance, breakout performance at forty six. Gives hope for us all, doesn't it? Absolutely guys. And go look at this guy for forty six. Yeah, go look at this guy at forty six because he has a whole career after this. This is just the beginning, man. This is the begin before Death Wish and all that. Yes, Leone was captivated by Bronson's face, saying that, quote, as Jean Luc Godard once wrote of Gary Cooper's face, it belongs to the mineral kingdom. The third major male character, Cheyenne, was originally meant to go to Eli Wallach, but Leone feared audiences would associate him too readily with his Tuco character from the good, the bad, and the ugly, and opted to find another forty seven year old Jason Robards. And Claudia Cardinal. Who was once declared as, quote, after Spaghetti, Italy's happiest invention, unquote. She was the first major female character Leone had ever had. According to her, she had been friends with Leone for a decade, yet it wasn't until now that he had ever had anything for her. And it was only at the prodding of Bertolucci that Leone agreed that a female protagonist would be intriguing. Lastly, Leone had always wanted to have the score to the film made first, as we've mentioned before, then shoot. Match the music. Before now it had only been those final scenes, the good, the bad, and the ugly, that he'd never been able to make that happen with. But this time he worked with Morcone to create four musical themes for the four major characters, which would play whenever they would feature. The music was created before filming, and Leon would often play the music out loud while filming each character scene so that each actor could get into the feel and vibe of their character while the music was playing. This would be pretty much the only primary music of the entire music were these four themes. It's built like a theat theatrical production. Yes. Once Upon a Time in the West was released in December nineteen sixty eight in Italy and May nineteen sixty nine in America with twenty minutes trimmed from the runtime in America. The film and you know, suckers, this this should prove something to them. The film was a hit in Europe, taking in forty million worldwide, but only five point three in America. The film was shot on a five million dollar budget, or roughly fifty six million in twenty twenty six dollars. Just to put that in perspective, a three hour movie on fifty-six million dollars today. Damn. that's great. And app it. Let's get to it. Yes. Now let's talk about this movie proper. Now here's the part of the podcast where we break this film down act by act, then discuss our thoughts about the movie and what we were thinking in terms of a wine pairing as well, in between each act and how both our thoughts on the movie and our thoughts on the wine evolved as we go. Let's get to it, Dallas. Take it away. That's right. This is Act One, people. So follow along if you have not seen the film or if you have, because you have no choice if you're listening to this podcast, because that's what's coming up. Act one. A train arrives at the old west town of Flagstone, where a man with a harmonica played by Charles Bronson kills three men attempting to ambush him. Although he was expecting an outlaw named Frank to be present at the ambush, he concludes that the men belong to the outlaw Cheyenne's gang due to their wearing that gang's signature duster. Fun fact number one the three men trying to kill Harmonica were originally meant to be played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallace. Representing the death of Leone's previous characters and style of Western. But Eastwood refused even this small part in the film, and Van Cleef was unavailable, squashing the idea.

Fun fact: number two: 30:08

the scene where Fly irritates one of the ambushers for an obscenely long time, one of the first moments where the audience realizes this is a very different kind of Western than the pulpy thrillers they were accustomed to. Was done by attaching the fly to the actor by a very thin thread so that it buzzed around his face and never left. Those are two fun facts. By the way, that fly scene, fantastic. We'll get back to it, I'm sure. Meanwhile, Frank and his gang murder Brent McBain and his three children as they prepare for a welcome for their new wife and mother at their ranch dubbed Sweetwater. Frank leaves evidence at the murder scene implicating Cheyenne. Shortly after, a former prostitute arrives at the local town and reveals she is Jill McBain, who married McBain a month earlier in New Orleans. As she travels to Sweetwater, she stops at a wayside inn tavern trading post, where her beauty draws the unwelcomed attention of the barman Lionel Stander. They are suddenly interrupted by a noisy off scheme off-screen gun battle, the outlaw Cheyenne, played by Jason Robards. Enters wearing shackles on his wrist. The sound of a harmonica again reveals the presence of the nameless stranger, who has been watching from a dark corner of the tavern. Cheyenne dubs him Harmonica, and he uses Harmonica's gun to force another patron to shoot apart the chains at his wrist. Cheyenne's men soon arrive, too late to help him escape the prison guards, who now lie dead outside. Harmonica notes that the three men he killed earlier were wearing the same duster overcoats as Cheyenne's men, and Cheyenne is annoyed that rivals may be copying his trademark duster. Gay. Jill and Sam arrive at Sweetwater to find a crowd of somber wedding guests standing around the outdoor tables, now put to use as funeral buyers. As the Buer, as the burial comes to an end, the crowd discovers that the torn-off collar of a duster overcoat was found on a nail by the door. This marks the massacre at Cheyenne's work. The men form a posse and ride off to track down the outlaw and hang him. Sam offers to drive Jill back to the flagstone, but she says she will stay at Sweetwater. That evening, she ransacks the McBain household looking for anything of value that might have been hidden away. At the town laundry and flagstone that night, Harmonica puts the laundry man, Wobbles, through a violent interrogation, wanting to know why Frank didn't show up at the train. Wobbles doesn't know. He only arranged the meeting. Harmonica suspects Frank was occupied at McBain's farm just then, but Wobbles insists otherwise. Cheyenne did that job. Everyone knows it. We got proof, quote unquote. Harmonica doesn't believe it. Quote That was always one of Frank's tricks. Faking evidence. End quote. Back at Sweetwater, Jill finds a group of miniature buildings stored away in a trunk, including a model train station with a fancy swinging sign that says station. She hears the sound of a harmonica outside and fires a shotgun into the darkness. The sound of the harmonica moves further away. In the morning, she, as she is about to leave for Good, she finds Cheyenne on her doorstep, while his men wait outside. He barges in and asks for coffee. He tells of being chased by the posse all night as he helps make the fire for the coffee. He says he would never kill a kid. I ain't the mean bastard people make me out. He decided to come take a look at the scene of his supposed crime. Not only is he annoyed that someone is trying to blame him, but neither he nor Jill can understand why the killings happened at all. The place looks so worthless. He imagines that McBain must have hidden away a treasure somewhere. Jill tells him that if so, she couldn't find it. All right, let's think about this. What what are we thinking about here? Dear listeners, Gallus is allowed to sit and make the gay joke. Just just so everyone knows that. If you're new to us. By the way. Dallas is gonna make whatever joke he wants, that's generally a problem. But there you are. There we are. Full disclosure. Mars and Tiger. Congress. All right, Chris, so what do we think about actual uh Well, you know, I'm gonna start with the the Eli Wallach thing, which is that forget about the script and just go and have fun with Sergio Leone.'Cause you know, I mean, seriously, it's like when you try and break a Leone film down into all three of your acts and go through the plotting, the plotting is always super, super complicated. Yeah. And it's hard to like actually track it. The joy is literally just experiencing the film and going through. And so, you know, we keep talking about this opening sequence. And the opening sequence does so many amazing things. One of the first things is that sound design. Like it literally builds sort of a score out of a continuous sequence of sound elements. So it's like you got these like three super bad looking dudes that you know are gonna be causing trouble. Basically. And they got their guns and they're going and They're station you know, they're sort of setting themselves around this train station and they're sitting there waiting for a train. And this train station's in the middle of nowhere. But every single element has like a different sound. You've got like the ticker tape from the like the telegraph going. That's got like sort of the beat. And then you've got like, you know, the sound of the old windmill going spinning around. And all of these things start to work together. To be able to create this amazing sense of tension. And before you know it, you have literally sat through like a six and a half minute sequence that has zero lines of dialogue, where it's basically just a bunch of dudes walking occasionally, but mostly just standing there waiting and totally engaged. And the thing that's super fun about all of that, so you introduce all these bad guys, they're like, these are gonna be the baddest dudes ever, but Then the train finally arrives, and then you finally get to introduce your hero, Harmonica. And, you know, right off the the bat, spoiler alert, he wastes all three of them instantly. But Sergio Leone also does something that's interesting he'd never done before, which is that in that gunfight where he duh is the quicker on the draw and wastes those other guys, he actually gets hit. And he actually like is vulnerable. Which is also a really cool thing 'cause usually in Western T Hero is certainly not First scene, not the introductory scene, he he's not gonna get shot, right? So this is like he's amazing but fallible, like not superhuman, right? You know, I think uh I I that that's kind of a stroke of genius for from my opinion, because we do realize, of course, very quickly this is our hero, but he does have, as you said, Dave, those sort of vulnerabilities. But it's also something that pulls us into this world so much more than any other cho option. Like you're sitting there and you're like, okay, yeah, this first of all, this is the old west. Shit was dire all around. And even if you were you know, even if you were a heroic sort of persona, um, the vulnerabilities were right there in your face twenty four hours a day, and you were gonna hit get hit by a bullet or die of dysentery or live your Oregon Trail, you know, nightmare like you know, we used to on the computer. But you know, it is just I think a stroke of genius to have him hit so quickly and to showcase that vulnerability. Yeah. Well, even even when we get to the sweet water place, like with the well of water that the guy built in there, like part of the point of that was that he had clean drinking water, which was a sure a special thing. Like, you know, this is like you said, dysentery, like you drank liquor. Like you lived off of alcohol because the water was kind of dangerous and not necessarily clean. This was not a well developed area. uh industrialized like, you know, progress, industrialization, it was coming, but it wasn't there yet. Okay, one one thing about that, Dave, one thing that we have we we g history has corrected us is often most places could access clean water, but they couldn't charge the same way they could for alcohol. uh Yeah, right, right. Would you like the expense of sparkling or bottled, you know, still water? And it's like if you want water, you're still paying for it, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. But it's like even at that point, like there's a part later where, you know, Joe McBain stops off at sort of the stagecoach place and like she asks if she can take a bath. And it's like, you know, the bath has been there. That water hasn't been changed. Only three people have been in it today. Yeah. It's actually pretty clean. That's actually not so bad. And that's like luxury, man. That's like you know, that's how you're gonna clean yourself in the luxurious establishment. This film does a great job of showing because it's that moment right before civilization comes to the wild west. And that's why the the train is such a key component to this thing. Right. Because basically, once you actually laid the train tracks that got all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast, this, you know, sort of myth of the American West, where there's poetic justice, where it's beyond the law, where it's, you know, an eye for an eye, and all that fun stuff that you know Westerns are based on. It all just goes out the window. So this is that moment where civilization is just about. To arrive and those old Western heroes like Harmonica, like Frank, that live and die by the gun are done and they know it. And that's a big part of what the the story ends up being is that it's the final days of that. And they both sort of acknowledge that, you know, this this is it, man. This is, you know, kind of our way of life is dying out. Yeah. Right. And this is as as Chris already pointed out, the that opening sequence. It sets up this movie. There is no dialogue in that opening sequence. Zero. Every even when everyone even when harmonica arrives, they don't stay buckets to each other. Then you know there's a standpoint. Great lines. They do say a couple of very small lines. Do they? We asked the yes, we asked the three dudes. You know, they're they're with the horses. Yes, yes, that like Frank. And they're like, you know, he's like, Would you bring a horse from the Two horses too many. Like looks like we're one shot. Looks like you brought two to a minute. That's right. Boom. That's right. That was really good. You brought two to This is what I get watching a few weeks ago. Whoopsie. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a fun fact about this movie that I also love is apparently if you take all the dialogue in the movie, um, it's only fifteen pages worth of script. If you put it all together. So it's like it's not dialogue heavy. And most of the dialogue is somewhat curt and opaque. And you know, people sometimes speak very directly and sometimes are speaking around each other. Um, but it's not that much dialogue i in as a whole. You know, Chris, you said you just said that and I I did I've never thought about this and I love this film and seen it numerous times. But and with what you're saying, Dave, about subtracting the dialogue and only being about fifteen pages, it does sit someplace between a silent film and a contemporary film, actually. Sure. When you factor in how well it's folied, how well the sound design is, how narrative the sound design is, it does kind of sit someplace between those two. Hmm. When you get this fun thing where when the dialogue hits, it's not none of it is plot oriented. They don't tell you anything that's about the plot. It's always fun like wordplay. You know, like the thing we just broke down with the bringing too many horses and that kind of thing. You got the other one where Cheyenne and Harmonica meet each other, which they maybe act to spoiler. They meet each other and they have this great interaction, you know, between Well, you know, do you actually play or, you know, do you can you shoot? And it's all of this like fun it's almost like early hip hop because it's like rhymes. It's like, you know, playing back and forth rhyme structure stuff. It's really I I made a note in my in my notes and for p specifically for the first scene, the first few sequences. This feels like a bunch of grown men fucking each other on camera without sex. That's what it but it's but to your point, Chris. It it's the interplay, it's that like jab that like pulled back, that jab that like pulled back. I'm like Well these guys are just banging right now. Alright. Yeah. It's like, you know, this is where heated rivalry came. Right. The gunfight, when the gunfight finally happens, that is the final you know the the the the the actual final sex, the actual final intercourse and it's all foreplay up until then. That's the that's the gasm moment. By the way, uh Smokey Smokey Robinson, our lovely Smokey Robinson, has an album he put out at eighty years old called Gasms. Just unrelated to anything else. but go on. At eighty years old, dude, he still loves the gasin. Well let's keep going on the what about wine pots? Dallas, kick us off here. What were you thinking after roughly act one of this movie? You know what's overwhelming about this film? And we've talked about it being so sensory, and I don't think I've ever done this before in terms of a a an approach to pairing. The color, this this color scheme, the palette of this film is just so alluring. And if you have the chance to watch this in any sort of um graduated kind of presentation level, like with, you know, technicolor or whatever it is, it is stunning. It is just a stunning film. and everything is just so sort of orange and rusty, but also arid and yeah, stop, stop wiggling your eyebrows just because I said the word orange. I saw that. No. but it it is it's like it lives someplace between an orange and like a pink kind of thing, a rose. And and so I couldn't get that out of my mind the whole time because it is kind of the the backdrop for this entire world, you know. so I'm I at this point that is the all I got. True. I'm like uh Like there's no tin no notes, no sort of like no no tannins, no I'm just like, okay, this is just orange and pink and I'm connected to that sensory kind of thing for the first time. Yeah. So yeah. I mean I will agree that like, you know, Westerns are it's a desaturated color palette, right? Um I I think it was either the cinematographer or the gaffer on this film that has is on record as saying something like with Westerns, he's like, you can't have too many colors in a western. Like you have to you got your browns, you got your oranges, you've got your gr your steel grays and your but I mean it it's like a relic all very muted, all very tight. So but on that note, yeah, there are There's always a particular kind of wine that I think of when it comes to a Western. Um, and it definitely is, you know, the textures of a Western, the color palette of a western, that dirt and dust and grittiness. So unlike you, Dallas, like the tannins all are always kind of important for me when I'm starting to watch a Western because it's always that kind of smoky, dusty, gritty. And I'm like, I gotta. I need s I want sand in my mouth, my friends. I I think I need that. It's like it's gotta be something I'm like chewing on and is like r you know scratching up my tongue on the way down, and it's not gonna feel right if that's not here. So this particular kind of wine that I always think of for a western, I was pretty sure it was gonna be that. And it's uh a type of wine that is, in fact, heavily associated with a specific part of Italy, which was perfect. And then even better. This is a type of wine that suffered a near extinction in the 50s and 60s when quote unquote progress took over and made it largely obsolete and made it disappear, or at least financially unsuitable compared to what progress and industrialization was suddenly allowing uh this the these parts of the world to do. And so all of that thematically was really falling into place for me where I'm like, okay, this is a hundred percent the style of wine I'm gonna stick to. I'm probably going to find it from that region in Italy, which maybe if this if this holds true, I'll reveal maybe in after act two here. Um, but those were my thoughts. And yeah, I was nothing in act one. I was like, it's still gonna be perfect. This is it's slow, something you wanna sip slowly, be brooding, have those textures, have that heaviness in the mouth. Because it's not you I this is not a like. Porter sipper wine, kind of a movie, like don't go through something fast because you will be drunk by the end of Act One. It's like you need to go. Yeah, yeah. Go go slow. So that that was my thought. How about you, Chris? What are you thinking at this point in terms of the line carry? I gotta admit, like when I was thinking about this, I probably came preloaded with a bunch of assumptions because I love Western so much. And there's so many things that, you know, if I'm trying to think about having never watched this film, which is ours I've seen so many times, you know, what are the kind of things that I'd be thinking about? And so I'm like, you know, I'm sort of in your your world, Dave, where I wanted something like sort of. Bigger, a little bit bolder, darker fruit, that kind of thing, but very comforting. Like a like a dude wine. I wanted like a guy's wine when I started this kind of thing. Because that was my assumption, is that like, I'm getting into the Western. I'm like, you know, haven't watched like Good the Bad and the Ugly Mind Dog twenty twenty or some Thunderbird is what you're saying, huh? Very wild. It's still gonna be polished because I still like my my stuff to have some acidity and some polish. I like stageability. But it was gonna be like more like a barbecue style wine, the kind of thing I would eat with ribs, that kind of thing. So that was probably like my first thinking point. And I like to think about it before we ever even actually watch the movie. And then, you know, it definitely evolved as I watched the movie and started thinking about it because The movie is quite different than I initially thought it would be. When I think back to the first time I saw it, it does evolve and change. So Yes, 100%. All right. Yeah. On that note, Chris, take us into act two. Alright, so here we go with Act Two, and so like I said, trying to read a synopsis of Leoni film is always a challenge, so hang with me here. So, all right. In a private railroad car, Morton, played by Gabrielle Ferretzi, uh crippled and dying railroad tycoon berates Frank for killing the McBain's. He only wanted Frank to scare McBain, not kill him. And now a misses McBain has shown up, making the killings pointless. Morton began building his railroad inside of the Atlantic Ocean, and then he means to build his way to the Pacific before he dies. Now he hired Frank to remove small obstacles from the tracks, but Frank intends to be a wealthy businessman himself. Morton tells Frank he will never be like Morton, because Frank doesn't understand the money is more powerful than guns. After sharing a congenial interlude with Jill, Cheyenne finishes his coffee and rides away with his men. Jill takes her travelin' bags out of the wagon, but Harmonica is there and demands that she stay. As he throws her down roughly and begins ripping at her clothes, Jill becomes alarmed. Instead of harming her, he simply removes the white trimmings from her black dress, leaving her in full mourning. They go to the well for a drink of water, only to be attacked by two more of Frank's men. Harmonica kills them, and from a nearby vantage point Cheyenne sees that how handy harmonica is with a gun. Well, clears that up. So he could play. He could act all right. So now we got something. So Jill goes to the laundry and asks Wobbles to tell Frank she knows everything and wants to negotiate with Frank personally. Wobbles denies knowing anyone named Frank. Dude, get over it Wobbles. That guy. Worst you're the worst middleman, Wobbles. You are the worst middleman. His death scene is so we'll talk about that. I love it so much. That's one of the best lines. Anyway, but Jill repeats her demand and leaves. Wobbles heads out to Morton's private train, unaware that Harmonica is following him. Morton scolds him for coming there, but Wobble says he wasn't followed. And he thought Morton and Frank would want to know about Mrs. McBain. When Frank sees Harmonica's shadow on the ground, he knows someone's on the roof and he signals the train to start moving. Stop in an open country. Frank captures Harmonica. Monica let f lets Frank know that the two men he sent to kill Jill are themselves dead. So I just want to remind everybody, we as the audience still have no fucking clue what Harmonica's beef is. What is going on? Yeah we are like an hour and a half. this thing, and he's got one mission, and we have no idea what it is. That's just a little reminder. Realizing this is the man who wanted to meet with him, Frank asks Harmonica who he is. Harmonica answers with the names of two men Frank has killed. Morton interrupts the interrogation to remind Frank, he has more urgent business. The woman. Taken to himself, he leaves the three men behind on the train to guard Harmonica and keep an eye on Morton, whom he doesn't trust. Over the next few minutes, Cheyenne craftily disposes of three gunmen one by one, sets Harmonica free. They now have Morton in their power, but they will deal with him later, choosing to stop the train and ride to Jill's aid. Back at Sweetwater, Jill is puzzled by the arrival of a large amount of lumber and building supplies that McVain ordered. Since he paid cash, it all belongs to her. What the fuck is he building? So neither the lumbermen. Nor Sam could say what it's for, but there are enough materials to build at least eight buildings. When the lumber man shows her a blank sign and asks if she knows what should go on it, boom, she recognizes its outline from the Mansion train station and tells him it should say station. Boom. Inside the house. She looks through the trunk again with model train station. Just then Frank appears and captures her. Inside a ruin at the Well, how do we get to the Navajo Cliff? Ruin, by the way. What happened there? He loves to do weird things with time and space and never answers it. Anyway, we're apparently now inside a ruin of the Navajo Cliff. I guess. Frank enjoys an intimate interlude. Mm Morton's just hanging out like waiting for him there and I'm like, Why is Morton there? Although to be fair, there's a whole lot to do in this town. So this is true. Where is this place? We've haven't seen this Nova O'Cliff at all in this film, and it just pops up here. So anyway, he remarks that she'll do anything to stay alive, and that it seems she can't resist a man's touch. Even the touch of a man who killed her husband. That didn't age well. Frankie knows from inquiry and said over the telegraph that Jill was one of the most popular prostitutes in New Orleans until she married McMaine. As he undresses her, he thinks of marrying her himself to take over the land. Realizing he would make a bad husband, he comes up with a quicker, simpler solution. Here's our fun little fact. Claudia Cardinale's very first scene, in fact, the very first scene shot in the movie was this intimate scene with one and only Henry Fonda. Paramount publicist had hyped it as the first true love scene of Henry Fonda's entire career and called a press conference just before the cameras rolled. That takes us throughout Love it. That's right. Yeah, act two's great. Act two's a lot. Act two. So this was where you know, when Cheyenne shows up to Jill's place and the conversation, going back to the how the dialogue can be very like there's a lot of wordplay and a lot of it's very opaque. It kind of talks or dances around things. I had to watch that scene twice to figure out what Cheyenne was trying, like what what was what did he just say? Like what just happened between these two characters? And the first time I watched it, the scene ended, and I'm like I I literally was paying full attention to this scene, and I do not know what just happened. Um, he came and he left, and I'm like, and she was kind of upset, but also kind of put up with him. And I replayed it and really paid attention to the dialogue a second time, and there and then it all clicked. And I was like, there is something about the way the dialogue works in this movie that is it's brilliant in its own way because it it rarely comes out and just says what it's trying to say. But It's all there and you can understand. And the plot is actually kind there are plot twists all throughout this this story, but they're so they're not revealed in any way. They're just sort of you just gotta follow what the characters are saying when they're kind of talking about the machinations that are happening behind the scenes. Um but yeah, this this act much more complex than act one. Sure. Um there's much more going on, far more characters all layered on top of each other. You have Morton, who suddenly shows up as sort of the main villain that's funding and kind of financing everything. Um and it's really fascinating, though, that the gunslingers they cannot quite accept that Morton's a threat. You know, they just keep leaving him there, even though if he went away. It's it's weird because I'm like, if you would just shoot the motherfucker, like there this would kind of stop. But they're like, Yeah, but you'll never shoot us, so we don't like what I don't understand. How are you a threat? Like there is that weird blotch. Isn't that such a perfect comment on America? You know, it makes sense. He makes a reference. I was it's I mean basically that's the thing that I love so much about this film is that it is an outsider's perspective on American history and American culture, and they have a very keen understanding of it. These are you know Italian guys that grew up watching you know American films, and so they sort of have this really, really interesting insight. into the American way that a lot of the time the people actually grow up and live in this country don't get. And I think that's why that like Morton Frank interaction is so fascinating because you know, so often, especially in Westerns, you assume that violence will always win and it will always trump any other form of power when in reality all they're fighting about this entire time is about land and money, which is essentially where we are. Right? Expansion. And It's a great commentary on capitalism. Yes. Where money is where all the threats actually lie, where everything that we complain about or need to fight back against, it's all coming from the people that have the power, the people who have the money who actually have the power, but we mostly get distracted by like being tough on quote unquote crime. Never white power crime. Um it's always the other kind of crime. And the man with the gun is the bigger threat forever and ever and ever. than the people who are actually shaping everything around. Well he has he has that line it may actually be in act three, but he says he has a stack of money and he says the only thing that beats what you have in your hand it is in Act Three I think is what I have in mind. And it's coming. Yeah, it's coming. so spoiler alert guys if you haven't seen this ninety year old film. Leading Morton 'cause like Cheyenne and Harmonica and Frank, they all just keep leading Morton alive. Because he's crippled, he's physically crippled and can't wield a gun. And Morton keeps telling everybody who will listen to him that he's more powerful than them because of the money. Right. And nobody can buy it. Not especially not these gunslingers, yeah. I think that's the comedy of this film. I think that is the core comedy of this film. Yeah, every time I see that I'm just like, guys, he's telling ya. He's telling me not only he's telling the cast, the the the the characters, he's telling the audience. He's telling the audience, you guys aren't seeing this. It's hilarious that you aren't seeing that this is the thing that makes all these other people kill one another, makes all these other guns fire. Right. You know. The other thing that's so great and brilliant about the structure of this film is that there's one central story that everybody wants to know. And it's harmonica, and why harmonica is dead set on trying to kill Frank. Yeah. And it's like, because that's what westerns are always about. And so you assume that that's the thing that actually matters. Is the least important Part of the entire film. When that story actually gets revealed, which I won't reveal, so that is 100% an act three thing. But that part, while it is super satisfying and wonderful, it's you realize that you're at the end of the movie by that point, and you've actually sort of subplotted all of the key stuff that actually mattered, which is the expansion of the the West and the domination of land and being able to you know, have the foresight to realize that water is here and, you know, that's gonna mean that this is going to be a town. So whoever owns that land is gonna be the one that's going to be rich. That's what they're fighting over. But all the audience cares about is why the one dude wants to shoot the Why the vigilante wants to kill the gun. Focused on this hero. They're focused on on this hero who is completely irrelevant now. Excited. And not even that inner. He's a protagonist and he has nothing to do with anything. Yeah. That's again, that's that core irony. The whole time I'm watching this film, I'm just laughing my ass off because for me, it's like, okay, the writer-director, this is a conversation between he and the audience. Really, truly, authentically a conversation between he and the audience. And so I'm just like, this is so fucking funny. This is great commentary, but also this is so ridiculously. It is. The one other thing I gotta say with Act Two is it does have one of my favorite lines, which is when they kill Wobbles and Frank kills him. And so Frank he's wearing, you know, a belt and suspenders. Yeah. You can't trust a man with a Yes. Yeah, he shoots both the suspenders and the belt. So how the hell can he trust a man who can't even trust his own pelt? Yes. You gotta love. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's a great wine thoughts, Dallas. Kick us off one more time. any evolution on your wine thoughts? oh Definitely some evolution. I I will say I I wanted something chalkier, of course, because now you know you get into it and all the dust stuffs, right? You get all the dust ups, right? You're getting all the dust stuffs. That's one thing about this this film. You see the the dust is so palpable. Like you're I'm out there and I'm just like, God, my mouth is dry. I'm just like that's so much texture concept of texture. Every concept, inversion, iteration of texture is in this film. That's why you can only have 15 pages of dialogue and still feel like it is chalk full of narrative. There you go. You're welcome. So um I think as we know, this film was primarily filmed in three places. Uh Cinecedar Studios in Rome, uh Monument Valley in Arizona or Utah. I think Arizona. Utah. Utah Utah. And Granada in Spain. and and the winery I chose is technically one degree away from the s line of latitude uh where this film was actually filmed. Um the vineyard is in the shadow of the Oberenus Mountains, um, and that is a very popular area for this style of wine. Um In fact, the traditional methods of uh this particular vintage were on the verge of extinction because of contemporary international winemaking uh for the previous 30 years by the time this vineyard actually came around. but the fittners at this winery worked very hard to keep their lots exclusive and tiny. We're talking tiny. it is a husband and wife team who, like the couple in uh in Eden, in fact, had different uh roots into winemaking. she was a proper Mittner winemaker and um and he was purely in the import side when they took over uh this winery. and yeah, that's all I'll say for now. Okay. Beautiful. So yeah, for me I think uh no real evolution. I I knew what I wanted. Um I didn't know the exact wine quite yet, but I knew it was gonna be an orange wine. Um as as Dallas somewhat revealed, or as I somewhat gave away the game when he said, He starts blinking and winking. I'm like, all right, Dave. Yeah, I know. You'd be so much. I know. But it's it's gonna be an orange wine, uh, which is but I decided, you know, the Italian region that really brought orange wine back kicking and screaming in the nineteen nineties into popularity was the Friuli Venezia Giulia reason region in northern Italy, once part of what is now Slovenia, but after somewhere there was some war, I don't pretend to know the history of this, but after certain wars it wound up becoming part of Italy instead, uh and getting absorbed into northern Italy. But it kept a lot of Slovenia's uh history in terms of especially orange wine making. And it wasn't until the 50s and 60s when progress of clean white wine and being able to mass produce. And white wine, um, for those for those listeners who aren't aware of what orange wine really is, it's just skin contact white wine. So you're soaking white wine on the white grape skins, just like a red wine, to give it all that texture, give it all that extra body. But it takes time, just like a red wine to make. And white wine, clean white wine, where you just press you crush the grapes, let the juice run off, and no nothing with the skins, and it's ready to drink right away. That when progress let wine become more industrialized, everyone was pressured to start making that. And orange wine almost disappeared even from Friuli Venezia Giulia. Um, and it wasn't until kind of the kids of the generations that had made orange wine last, uh their grandparents had were the last people to make orange wine, and in the nineties. The kids came of age, remembered. They still had their like they had tasted some when they were very young. And they were they were like, you know, what happened to that? We want to remember this old way of wine making, and brought it back, much to the shock of the world, who had all kind of moved on from orange wine because white wine was so much simpler, so much cheaper, so much faster that within 50 years. We had basically collectively forgotten that this style of wine even existed. And the few places that were still making it were all like hung like Georgia, um, Hungary. They were behind the iron curtain during those times. So they weren't going out to the rest of the world. So the rest of the world outside of the Soviet world had just collectively forgotten orange wine existed. They brought it back in the nineties, shocked us all. Everyone thought they like we were like, This what is this? This isn't real. This can't you you Don't pretend you like this. This is disgusting. Um and they basically had to slowly reintroduce us to it. But fun fact about orange wine or one of the fun facts I always love to give, it is technically the oldest form of wine known to man because white wine grapes would have been the first we ever cultivated. And uh so that would have been the f that would have been the OG wine. So it's not a new thing. Yeah, but it did come back in the nineties, thanks to that region. It's called Romato or Copper Wine in the Friuli Venice Agilia region. Um And so it definitely was gonna be a wine from that. One that I needed the grit. I needed the dust. So none of this one to two week skin contact bullshit. This was gonna be months on the skins. I needed to make sure it was gonna be one of those. And I did find a winery that not only did that, but um in honor of Chris and his Eaton documentary, it was a winery that just had the young generation taking over. from the parents, uh, much like the story in the Eden documentary. So we'll get to that in act three when I make the final reveal. But Chris, how about you? Where were you thinking during act two here? Well, so I had a lot of changes during act two because remember, I'm, you know, going under this assumption that I didn't know anything about this damn film going into it, so I'd made my decision and then I watch act one. So now we're in act two and I'm like, whoa, okay. I gotta do something different. So I'm in it for the long haul, because this movie is definitely an in it for the long haul. So I wanted something a little bit more complexity. I also one of the things I started to get excited about and picking up on is sort of the cultural exchange side of this. So I love that this film is a group of Italian people making a film about American and iconic American culture and doing some kind of an interesting interpretation of that. So that got really exciting for me. And so I decided to flip it. And instead go with an American winery that is doing an interpretation of a traditional French grape and in particular a French, you know, region um that is very, very well known. And so that started to get kind of exciting to think about it in those terms, because you know, you sort of have that reverse cultural exchange. Common, because we're talking the new world here. And this is a California winery, that a lot of the time we take our inspiration from the old world. And so it's sort of the reverse of what actually happened with this particular film. so I got really, really excited about that. And then the other thing that I really wanted that, you know, I think Dallas keeps mentioning is like the the smell. This like movie is like it's got so much texture and scent to it. I wanted heavy aromatic. Nice. really wanted it to be very aromatic so that like I'm like when I think of this wine I spend probably more time with my nose in there than I even do tasting it because it's like it just comes to life in the bouquet. So that's that's kind of where I'm at at this point throughout All right. Beautiful. All right, guys. Let's bring it on home with act three. After a threatening sexual encounter with Frank, Jill is forced to auction the land. However, Frank's henchmen intimidate bidders so Frank can buy it at a low price. Harmonica appears with Cheyenne in tow and bids $5,000, which is the bounty on Cheyenne as a wanted fugitive, don't forget Frank. made it look like Cheyenne is the one who killed the McBay. So that's why he's the one exactly. Frank is unsuccessful. Yep, yep. Frank is unsuccessful in buying Harmonica out and wonders why harmonica is pursuing him. Morton the the wonder for through the whole movie, he wonders again why Harmonica is pursuing him. Morton bribes Frank's own men to kill him, but Harmonica intervenes, helping Frank take out the lot of them. When Jill asks why he saved Frank, Harmonica replies, I didn't let them kill him, and that's not the same thing. Frank discovers the aftermath of a gun battle at Morton's train. Bodies of Frank's men and Cheyenne's men lie strewn along the tracks and in Morton's private car. He finds Morton crawling desperately to a nearby mud puddle. Frank draws and cocks his gun to finish him off. But then decides to let him suffer. Morton dies with the sound of the ocean waves crashing in his mind, but no one actually kills him once again. The tra the track lane crew is reaching sweetwater at last, and construction crews are busily turning the stacks of lumber into the beginnings of a town. Harmonica sits at the farmyard gate as Cheyenne comes riding awkwardly in and goes inside. Not quite his usual self, but again asks for coffee, which Jill has ready this time. They both sense that outside something important is about to happen with Harmonica. Cheyenne says he's Whitlin on a piece of wood. I got the feeling when he stops Whitlin, something's gonna happen. Frank rides up to the gate and Harmonica stops Whitlin. They exchange a few words. Frank admits he'll never be a businessman, just a man. They acknowledge they're of an ancient race being killed off by the coming of the modern age, arriving right next to them as they speak. Then Frank gets to the business between them. The future don't matter to us. Nothing matters now, not the land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you, 'cause I know that now you'll tell me what you're after. Only at the point of dying, Harmonica tells him. Frank says, I know. And they stride out into the farmyard to face off for the final show. Inside, Cheyenne begins to clean up and shave while he watches the railroad move up. He tells Jill she should take water out to the workers at the tracks, letting them enjoy the sight of the beautiful woman. And if one of them should pat her back behind, she should just make believe it's nothing. They earned it. Damn. Then they age well. As Frank and Harmonica square up a few feet apart, preparing to duel, Harmonica remembers his history with Frank in a flashback. A young Frank strides out of the desert to the isolated ruin of a Spanish mission, a lone arch with a bell hanging at the top. He places a brand new harmonica into a young man's mouth, telling him to keep his loving brother happy. The youth's hands are bound behind him, and his older brother also bound, is standing on his shoulders with a noof around his neck. Frank and his men wait for the inevitable moment when the boy's legs will give way and complete the hanging. The doomed man curses Frank and kicks his younger brother away. The harmonica drops out of the young man's mouth as he falls into the dust. Frank and Harmonica draw and shoot. It's Frank who turns around and staggers a few shit steps before he falls to his knees. He asks Harmonica again one last time, who are you? In answer, Harmonica places the old beaten up harmonica into Frank's mouth. Frank remembers. He sees the image of the boy falling into the dust and the harmonica dropping out of his mouth. Frank falls lifelessly into the dust and the harmonica drops out of his mouth. Diane tells Jill he's not the right man for her, but neither is Harmonica. There's something inside a man like that, he tells her, something to do with death. Once Harmonica has dealt with Frank, he will come inside, pick up his things, and move on. Harmonica comes in. True to sh and true to Cheyenne's prediction, picks up his belongings and tells Jill he has to go. Jill is wearing a dress whose top reveals her cleavage. They share a lingering look, and then he opens the front door and surveys surveys the developing street scene outside. Going to be a beautiful town, Sweetwater, he says. Jill hopes he will come back someday. With a doubtful someday, Harmonica leaves. Cheyenne too says goodbye and pats Jill on the behind, telling her to make believe it's not. As the two men ride away, Cheyenne pauses to get off his horse before dropping to the ground. Harmonica discovers the Cheyenne has been gut shot, the work of Morton himself during the gun battle of the train. There you go. Cheyenne asks Harmonica to go away. He doesn't want the other man to see him die. Harmonica turns away and soon hears Cheyenne fall over dead. Just then the work train rolls into sweetwater and stops the The station which has its station design in place. Harmonica takes Diane's body away as Jill carries water out to the newly arrived railroad workers. Roll credits. Yeah, but he's Wait, I gotta say one thing we cut out. So I got fifteen minutes just so you guys know and sort. Okay, we can wrap that up and yeah, we can we can probably get shot in. Two thoughts on the movie. I mean this is it's it's a perfect ending. Ki I mean there's just everything comes together in all the ways. It's tragic, it's semi heroic, and progress arrives and uh the and the the gunslingers right away. Yeah. They get their showdown. You know, and it's like well, 'cause like in a Sergio Leone film, ever since, definitely for a few dollars more a second film, they always had the ending of the showdown. And that gets so hard as a filmmaker, really any artist, when you get known for one iconic thing, how do you find a way to one up it? And one of the things that's so cool about this movie is that there's no way he was going to be able to one up. The epic showdown at the end of the good, the bad, and the ugly, which is also like a, you know, five-minute sequence all built to music and all three of those characters doing their showdown. He wasn't gonna do that. And so in the end, he gives you your showdown that you want and deserve and know, but sort of reminds you that it's actually kind of the minor part of the film. Yeah. Like the the actual reveal of why harmonica wants to kill Frank is somewhat unsatisfying because it's satisfying in the sense that you get it, he's scarred because he feels responsible for the death of his own brother. And you know, you tie the harmonica thing back in there, which is a great plot point. But it's like that's it. And at the same time it feels totally satisfying because it's what you should get out of it. But they solve it through Doing through the score, really, because the score is the thing that has been building to do all that. I mean, we haven't talked about the score since the beginning. The score has four main themes, and every other piece of it is a different instrumentation of that same exact score. And the original score that you hear is the original harmonica piece, which is the same piece that comes back for the end and it actually marries with Frank's theme. So that Frank's theme has harmonica in it. So they solve it all through the score and tie it all back together, even though like, you know, you don't necessarily need to it's not like a complicated backstory as to why the hell harmonica wants to kill Frank. I think uh I think the central I don't know thesis, but idea of this film is the micro versus the macro is like the the filmmaker is essentially saying, look, you were focused on this individual grudge between two individu two people. If you would just zoom out for one moment, he's saying that when it comes to the money and the the gunslingers, that concept, that idea. But he's also saying that in terms of, you know, the individual lives of these people, really important to the people. Not important if you just zoomed out and realized that there's an entire wave uh happening in the background of civilization that is going to make all of that obsolete and unimportant. Yeah. And Well and and to to Chris's point about this this revelation of what Harmonica was doing, it's such a personal just between these two men having nothing to do with absolutely anything. It's so small. With anything, but that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And they both place it as the greatest important. That's why that scene and you read the all of the dialogue that Frank says to Harmonica when he shows up at the game, because Harmonica's sitting there waiting for him. He knows that Frank can't not go on living, right? Knowing that there's this guy who has beef with him. And Frank throws away whatever evolution he was gonna do with Morton, like I'm never gonna be a b you what, I'm never gonna be a businessman. All I care about is this. Right. All I care about is having this fucking showdown with you. And I'm throwing everything else away to have it. Yeah. And it's a great study of masculinity and obsession and all the things that you try and build your identity around that then like make you blind so actually matters. And all that's left is the lone woman after all the men have left and died and taking care of everything and ushering in the new wave of the future. right. It's a great fucking movie. It's a great movie. It is. All right. So let's wrap this up because Chris has limited left. We we we just ramble, ramble, ramble. I'll start with the wine reveal here, because mine mine's gonna be relatively simple, but you know, it's orange wine, it's from the Fruit Friuli region, and it is a wine called Aransa, which is Friulian slang for or A-R-A-N-S-A-T. Um and this is it's a family run organization 18 hectares of organically farmed vines, 12 kilometers from the Slovenian border. This is a family affair with the younger generation inspired to take over for their parents after enjoying a bottle of Jruliano in the family vineyard as a king. This is Italy, after all. So this is a blend of Pinot Grigio and Savion Blanc. Natural fermentation on the skins occurring in stainless steel tanks at warmer temperatures around 24 degrees Celsius. Pretty warm. That's pretty up there. Post fermentation masturbation on skins lasting 90 days. So three months on the skins. the wine is unfiltered and racked twice prior to bottling. So this this guy, this is dust in the glass. This is on the skin. Oh, buddy, I I had a Mexican orange wine that was 180 days on the skin. Oh when I when I drained the bottle. The bottle had like stains like a red wine bottle has often, like when it's a really dark one. Like it was like stained orange all up and down. I was like, wow, I've never seen that before. Um, this one's not quite that bad, but this was this still is dusty. It's got the grit, it's got the tannins, you are chewing on it, it's got the textures. And the orange, you know, you've got the honey, you've got the apricot, you've got the minerality, you've got that bite and bitterness of the tannins. You need some bitterness to go with. movie too like don't do easy drinking guys you need something that's gonna you know this is a this is a movie that has hope for the future but it's about the bitterness of end of endings um and you know the grudges you hold from the past and yes I mean this is this is not we are kicking and screaming into the new era in this movie it's not happening naturally um everyone's trying to you know steal rob kill from everyone else in order to stake their claim and stake s stake out their place in the new coming order. Um so you need a wine that matches all of those things, the textures of this film. Um and also being a Western, orange wine, if you ever do a Western or post-apocalyptic movie, which are the two things Western progress hasn't arrived or is about to arrive in post-apocalyptic, it's gone away. And either way, that's where I think orange wine often comes into play, this very ancient type of wine. That progress does tend to obliterate. Um, and we have to very consciously choose to bring back and to keep uh to keep making. So that's my wine, Aran Sat, that's its full name. you can find this generally twenty, thirty dollars a bottle. It's relatively affordable and has everything I wanted in this bad boy. So all right, Dallas, kick us take it take it over. What's next? Yeah, let's run through this real quick 'cause you've got what, three minutes left. All right, so uh I'll do the th six. Six. Chris, you go first, so if you have to bail while Dallas is doing his, let's go with that. So go ahead, Chris. You go next. Yeah, I'll try and keep it kind of quick. So in the end, I ended up with a Syrah because I absolutely love that smoky nature, right? And I like the acidity. It's definitely a new world Syrah. It's got all that like texture, but it's got that, you know, fresh acidity. And so, like, this to me is the blending of the new and the old all coming back around together. So I went with a 2023. Pax Sonoma Hillside Syrah. I absolutely love Pax. Um if anybody, you know, has ever heard of them. Yeah, P-A-X. You guys ever heard of Pax Mall? Yeah. So they're up in Sebastopool. my goodness. So Pax loves the Northern Rhone. And so it's this family-owned winery. And you know, they've been around since 2000. And you know, Pax is like an aromatic master. He's, you know, big into whole cluster. Carbonic maceration. He doesn't, it doesn't see new oak. It's all in concrete. So what you get is a very fresh expression, but he purposefully chooses all of these very cool climate, you know, Sonoma Coast, California, Syrah vineyards that get those epic aromatics, man. It's like you get all that meatiness, you get all the smoke, you get like that. wild feral nature that you get from like a coat roti or an ermitage or that kind of thing. But it's also mixed with the very high acidity that you get from sort of that new California wine style, right? Because it's like his stuff comes in at like, I think this wine's like 12.8, you know? So it comes in very low ABV and high acidity. It's super ageable too. Like it's, you know, the tannins really start to Calm down, it gives you a nice good mouthfeel. But it's like every time you go back to that nose, it's evolving and changing on you. And so it's like it's a super fun wine to have with this kind of a movie because if you allow yourself to take a break and like focus on the film, the thing is evolving the entire time. Absolutely. So is so are all your assumptions about what you cared about. And that's one of things that we've been talking about this whole way through, right? So much of what they do with this film is mess with your own assumptions because they, you know, sort of hold back the things that you hold dear and think that you care about in the Western and then embed all of those subplots, which are actually the most important pieces, to be able to make a really interesting cultural commentary on an Italian perspective of American culture. And it's all in there. And I think this this wine very much has a lot of that um in there. It's pretty relatively small production, but you know, you can get it online. You can obviously get it from them. 2023 is a dynamite vintage because it's a super cool vintage. It always does better in a cool vintage because it doesn't get too alcoholic, too fruity, anything like that. So um PAX Pill said Syrah. it. Real quick. All right. So as I said, the Bittners are husband and wife team, you harking back to your Eden uh central characters. I wanted something, of course, that was dry, but also very sleek. This film is very sleek, the whole world is sleek, it is alluring. Um, like we said, every moment of this film just fucking pulls you in, draws you in. Um there we talked about the smell, the sensory thing, right? the there's all this sort of floral in this this this wine. There's the herbal thing, a really acute herbal. Um it is the region is, as I said, is on the same uh lines of latitude as uh the filming location. the region is the Obernes Mountains in Spain, of course. And if you know anything about Spanish wine, of course, it is one of the regions of Rioja. Um, so I went with, and this of course is a blend. Uh it is 85% biura grape, 10 pent 10% ganache and ganache blanca, and then five percent tamperno blanca. Um and uh I went with, of course, here is the bottle, one of the new new bottles, if you can see it is the Valganon, the Allegre Valgan. oh okay. That's okay. That's okay. It's really it blows out. Yeah, yeah. It is it's it is lovely. Uh as I said, the Vintners keep their lots very small. Um they source from it is the allegre balgan. I'm butchering that. It's Spanish, of course. but yeah. but We'll have it down below in the show notes description of this episode. Absolutely well. On the nose, you get some of that limestone, you get all that sort of uh mineral thing, you get the herbal thing, it's dry, you get great texture. Um, it is very fruity, but at the end it leaves you very chalky and with that dry sensation, which is exactly what this film is. We talked about the micro and the macro and pulling out. Um, and uh yeah, that's what I got. It's fantastic, and you should try it. Woo! All right, everybody. That wraps up today with our epic discussion of once about a time in the west with here Chris McGilvery. Go watch his Eden twenty twenty four documentary now streaming for free on Plex, or you can rent it on Apple TV or YouTube and elsewhere. Chris, thank you so much. This has been a blast. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. It's one of my favorite movies and it was so fun to get to think about it through the lens of pairing it with a wine, man. What a cool d Fantastic. Thanks for coming, man. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. We hope you enjoyed this epic chat about Once Upon a Time in the West with director Chris McGilvray. Once again, make sure to check out his feature-length wine documentary, Eden, from 2024, about the Mount Eden Vineyard and Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains, considered to have the longest lineage of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in all of North America. Currently streaming on Plex, at least here in the States, and also available to rent or buy on Apple, YouTube, and Fandango. Now, before you go, if you love what we do here, we ask only one thing broken down into about 12 sub things. Follow and subscribe to us. That this does help us grow. Uh gets us in tight with all the algorithms. Also tell a friend or fellow Cinephile or Owenophile about us, especially if they're both. If they're a Cinephile and an Oenophile, they have got to be listening to us. There's gotta like what, a few dozen of us crazy bastards in the world. So for fuck's sake, they should all be listening to the only Wine and movie pairing podcast in existence. Even better. And to endear yourself even more to our completely self-obsessed hearts, go follow us on Substack. Just go to Vintertainment Studios.com, where we'll keep you all up to date on all our upcoming live in-person wine and movie events. The first one scheduled for June 19th. Yes. Juneteenth, we have a series of four short films, each paired with the wine. we will tell you where in just a moment. Those tickets are gonna go on sale the first week of June. So next week. We will give you more information on that in next week's episode. But we have limited space. So if you're in the LA area, you will definitely want to check this out. go follow us on Substack Entertainment Studios.com. We will also where you will also find collabs with other writers, filmmakers, wine peeps. If you ask us nicely, even on Substack, DM us, slip into our DMs, and we will help you with your own personal wine and movie pairing at home. Tell us what you're watching, tell us what kind of wine you got. We will help you find the right thing to pair it with. we love doing this. We are okay with doing it more. And many thanks to our sponsor, Curated Wine Shop. No idea where to begin finding a wine that pairs with your movie. that's okay. Almost literally nobody does. But curated is here to help. They accept every entertainment-inspired challenge and will curate the selection to match your palette. Just tell them what you're trying to pair with, your budget, your preferences, and they will show you the way. Curated is a boutique wine shop on La Brea Avenue, Mid City Los Angeles, founded and operated by Peeps Currently and previously part of the entertainment ecosystem. Johnny, Kelly, Allison, and Mia, they are all fantastic. Go meet them. They carry an ever-changing, wide-ranging selection of small lot artisanal wines from the known and comforting to the completely unique reds, whites, roses, oranges, sparklings, dry wines, sweet wines, everything in between. Go check them out if you're in the LA area. And that is where our June. Event of four short films paired with wines will be. So definitely check them out and be ready to snag your ticket. We have about 30 spaces for this event, so they're gonna go bloody fast. Find them online at curateddashwines.com. They do ship, so if you want to talk to them online, send them an email, they'll help you with your wanted movie pairing, and they can ship it to you if you're not gonna come into the store if you're too far away to come into the storefront proper. That is curateddashwines.com for them and vintertainmentstudios.com for us, Vintertainment Bros. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back in one week with another wine and entertainment pairing, Foyov Entertainment. It will be, in fact, 2008's Bottle Shock, starring Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, Chris Pine's Wig, and Rachel Taylor. Next week is the 50th anniversary of the real life event that that movie chronicles, The Judgment of Paris. So if you have not seen this movie yet, you've got until next week to do it, and then come join us as we talk all about what the Judgment of Paris was. How it changed the wine world forever, especially the world of California wine, why it was so important, why it was not so important, um, and talk everything about this movie Bottle Shock, which I've I've loved for a long, long time. It's very cheesy, it is not accurate to real life, um, but it's a lot of fun, and we are gonna talk all about it uh and the judgment of Paris. So join us next week for that, and we will see you then. Ciao.