The MoFo Movie Club Discussion - April

That seems to be one very convenient coincidence...

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I rented this from Netflix specifically to participate in this discussion. By the time I saw it and came here, it seems as if every possible angle I could have written about has already been covered. So, I'll just give my quick gut reactions to either the movie or the comments here:

-- I thought Affleck's performance was more fun to watch than Pitt's, although I usually think Pitt is a far finer actor than his pretty-boy image gives him credit for. Affleck seems so versatile to me, ever since seeing him in, yes, I admit it, Drowning Mona.

-- Pitt was good, but I think the script and direction failed him. I know very little about the Jesse James legend's particulars, and so I didn't pick up on the fact that he was supposed to be moody/psycho until later in the film. It seemed clear, of course, that his brother Frank was the more stable one (and older), and obviously was a better judge of character. But I hadn't picked up on just how volatile Jesse was. I kept waiting for something to be revealed (some dark secret Jesse was harboring, perhaps) that would explain the ups and downs of his reactions to things going on around him. It wasn't until he began methodically killing, err, previous "business partners" that I realized he was becoming unhinged. I think Pitt played it a little too close to the vest to pick up on that early enough to enjoy the tension it would have created.

I still don't quite "get," for instance (except after reading this thread) why Jesse took off his gun belt and stood on that chair. If he was giving up/resigning to his fate, as folks here state, then frankly, I didn't see that coming. Not sure if that was Pitt's fault or the director's fault or the scriptwriter's fault, but I didn't see before that point that he had any wish to die. He might have been melancholy, but suicidal seemed a stretch to me.

-- Affleck's performance was stalker-creepy enough that I was surprised that Frank didn't just shoot him dead out in the woods early in the film. At the very least, I was shocked to see Ford as a member of the gang robbing the train ... because Frank had clearly told him to get the heck outta there and leave them alone. It wasn't clear how he eventually weaseled his way into the group with Frank vetoing the idea so vehemently.

-- The movie looked gorgeous and that alone kept me watching. I also like period pieces with good attention to detail, so I enjoyed the sights and sounds of this movie. I thought the narration was spot-on (in terms of voice and timing) and I agree with whomever said that it helped get the story back on track. (PW?)

-- I'm still undecided about the title of this movie. It comes right out and says it's about Jesse's assassination, and it tells you who did it, and so as soon as you meet each of those two characters and in each scene where they are together, your mind can't help but wonder if this is the "The Scene." (Early on, of course, you're fairly sure this ain't it, but still ... flashbacks, backstory ... it COULD be it, right?) It almost (almost) unhinges the rest of the tension of the story by focusing the viewer's mental attention on the assassination itself. It's probably why I missed some of Jesse's subtle mental changes in the first place.

-- I too think this film could have used a few nips and tucks to keep the pace moving. In some cases a movie can slow things down in order to create tension, but in this film that didn't work. It just felt slower.

-- I think I liked all the information the post-assassination part gave us. But it did give me LOTR flashbacks of "Is THIS the ending? Wait, no, is THIS the end? Oops, not quite...."

All in all, glad I saw it once but probably won't watch it again.

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Roger Ebert wrote a pretty fantastic review of The Ass of JJ, in which he wrote...

"In a quiet parlor one day in Jesse's home, Robert knows, and Jesse knows, and we know, that the time has come. Ford doesn't so much shoot him in the back as have the back presented to him for the purpose. If he did not pull the trigger at that moment, I think they would both feel an appointment had been missed. Does Jesse want to die? I think he is fascinated by the idea, and flies too close to the flame."

I really like that idea - that James is just fascinated by death and flew too close to the flame.

Fair enough, and I like that too -- but honestly, I don't think I watched that scene and got that impression. That idea, to me, feels as if it's coming from separate reflection on the characters later, but not coming from the actual scene or acting itself.

He obviously presents his back purposely to Ford, knowing what is coming -- but I sat there thinking, "Why is he doing this?" because I hadn't seen him veering enough in that direction beforehand.

Just me, perhaps, though.

What? That the song worked Jesse's AKA-identity into its lyrics?

Maybe the scriptwriter, director, and actors were promoting that feeling in what I agree was an awkward scene at best. Or maybe Ebert just projected that interpretation.

But in real life there has been no indication that the real Jesse harbored a death wish. The man had been through too many battles, killed too many people, been wounded himself, and still viewed himself as fighting a civil war that had never ended. Had he wished for death, he could have embraced it many times before he did. And he certainly wouldn't have opted for an "assisted suicide" in his own home. Although a cold-blooded killer, Jesse actually was a devoted family man and took great pains to have his family with him as often as possible.

Since Jesse and the Fords were the only ones in the room at the time of the shooting, we have only Bob's and Charley's account of what happened. But there is other antedotal evidence that Jesse's daughter was playing outside and scraped a knee causing her to cry. According to this version, Jesse started outside to check on the girl, then realized the whole neighborhood would spot the two guns he carried in a shoulder harness since he wasn't wearing his coat. So he took off the holsters and guns, went outside, and failed to replace them when he came back in.

Now I don't have trouble accepting that Jesse died primarily because he forgot to strap his guns back on when he came back into the house. There was another post-Civil War feud in which another gunman awoke one morning and went out to the well for water. Before going out, he strapped on his holsters but then forgot to pick up the two pistols he usually carried. He exited the house where three opponents were waiting for him. At the last minute, he slaps empty leather and the three gunmen put more than 20 bullets into him (seems one of his feet kept twitching so they kept shooting until he quit moving.) Famous Texas gunmen John Wesley Hardin was captured by Texas Rangers on a railroad car in Florida because when Hardin went for the guns he carried in his waistband, they got tangled in his suspenders, allowing the Rangers to get close enough to club him down. Hardin eventually was shot down in the Acme Saloon in El Paso by a city constable. Seems the constable's son and Hardin had been quarreling over the same woman, and Hardin threatened to kill the other man on sight. That night as Hardin was playing a dice game with a bartender at the bar, the constable stepped through the saloon door with his gun drawn and from across the room fatally shot Hardin in the back of the head. The constable was tried but acquited on the grounds of self-defense; he claimed it was a fair fight since Hardin could see him in the bar's mirror.

See now if the narrator had worked a little bit of that in we may have had an entirely different film, thanks ruf, that was a really good post.

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You've put your finger on the generational divide of this film, Austruck. Old folks like me grew up hearing about Frank and Jesse James and the Youngers and the Daltons and Billy the Kid. We've seen Jesse portrayed by Roy Rogers, Clayton Moore, Wendell Cory (in Alias Jesse James 1959, in which Jesse on a trip back east buys a life insurance policy from Bob Hope), Tyrone Power, Robert Wagner, Robert Duval, James Keach, Audie Murphy, and others.

In my day, everybody knew who Jesse James was, how he rode with Quantrail in the border wars, turned outlaw with Frank and the Youngers, survived the bloody shoot at in Northfield, Minn., in which the Youngers and other members of his old gang went down, and finally was killed by Bob Younger, shot in the back of the head while hanging (or dusting or adjusting) a picture on the wall. No matter what the title of the film or how they changed the plot, people of my generation knew the facts about Jesse James.

But you younger folks do not. Not your fault; it just isn't an area of interest to you.

However, it puts me in mind of a newspaper cartoon back when Titanic was king of the box office; the cartoon showed a middleaged couple standing in line for tickets and the man says to his wife, "I hear the special effects of the ship sinking are really spectacular." Behind them in line is a group of teenagers, one of whom says, "The ship sinks? Well, thanks for spoiling the movie for us!"

I agree that the film could have been tightened, but I don't think it was building tension so much as providing color and historical background to new generations who don't know diddly about Wild West outlaws.

Well, whatever, rufnek. I'm giving you positive rep for saying "you younger folks" and including ME! (I'm 47.)

The scene that comes the closest to the real Jesse James is during the train holdup when he tells the railroad clerk to get on his knees, clubs him down when he refuses and starts to shoot him in the head. When a member of the gang cries out, "Don't kill him!", Jesse replies, "Don't tell me what to do."

Jesse was a stone cold killer. So were Frank, the Youngers and other gang members who came out of the Civil War and kept making raids on banks and trains. There was a story about Jesse when he was riding with the border guerillas in Missouri during the Civil War: the group had raided a Yankee town and captured a train just as it pulled into the station. Aboard the train were a couple of dozen unarmed wounded Union soldiers on their way home for convalescent leave. The rebel raiders had the Union solders sit on the ground in a line, and the leader told Jesse to "give 'em their discharge." Jesse then proceeded down the line, shooting each of the captives in the back of the head. Of course, that same story is told of Bloody Bill Anderson. Might have been either of them, could have been both.

There was another story told of a member of the James gang who either complained about the split after a robbery or gave some indication of disloyalty to Jesse. Jesse waited until the man went to sleep, then bashed his brains out with a rock.

Frank and Jesse were really bad people, but they were Southern and a lot of Southerners stuck up for them and aided them when they turned outlaw after the war. There was one ex-Confederate newspaper editor that wrote some of the most blatant untruths in the defense of Jesse and Frank, plus of course the dime-novels of the 19th century that made heroes of them.

I just turned 65 last month. But I grew up in Texas where there were still a lot of stories and songs about the James boys. I don't remember which movie it's in, but Groucho Marx sings the opening verse of the Ballad of Jesse James in one of his comedies, so you can see that song and story traveled far and wide from the late 19th through the early 20th centuries.

No, that Howard rhymes with coward...

Indeed. I came across a lot of different variations but the one I printed is the one that's familiar to me. I wonder what version Nick Cave sang in the film?

He's big mates with Shane MacGowan so I'm betting that it's either verbatim, or pretty close to The Pogues' interpretation.

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Sorry, I'm not familar with Nick Cave (apart from the small role in the film), Shane MacGowan, and The Pogues (the generation thing, probably). But I did notice that the movie version of the song referred to 3 James children when in fact (and in the movie) there were only two. Incidentally, the son Jesse Jr. had some connection with an early silent film about his dad's wartime experiences entitled something like Jesse James Under the Black Flag. The black flag, of course, meant no prisoners taken. He later did another film, Jesse James, the Outlaw.

Post Script:
A Wikipedia site mentions “a somewhat different song titled "Jesse James," referring to Jesse's "wife to mourn for his life; three children, they were brave," and calling Robert Ford "the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard," was also the first track recorded by the "Stewart Years" version of the Kingston Trio at their initial recording session in 1961 (and included on that year's release "Close-Up"). But of course the song is much older than that.

Thank you!

Did you notice, too, that there were no "fair" gunfights in the film. In all of the shootings and pistol-point confrontations, the victim was either shot from behind or from the side while focusing on something else (in the scene where Bob Ford kills Jesse's cousin) and that in many cases the victim or potential victim was unarmed. That certainly was more in keeping with the reality of the Old West vs. Hollywood's version of a face-down between two gunman on main street.

I got the idea that James was ready to go not from the shooting scene, but the earlier one where the other two guys go off to talk and James chastises them for wandering off. I had the feeling he knew they'd stepped away to talk about him, and he realised that the rest of his life was going to be filled with (probably justified) paranoia.

This film, to me, was not about Jesse James so much as about the price of fame. It was set in the old west, but might just as well have been set in NYC and been about Heath Ledger.

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Fair enough again, but I'd say you read that into it, read between the lines/scenes, so to speak. He yelled at them for going off together and he told them never to do it again.

But I just didn't see that leap anywhere in the film itself. He didn't seem any weaker after that point or any more resigned to anything. Nothing had changed in his characterization except that he was indeed more paranoid.

I know paranoid people (one was tested as such), and even when their paranoia gets to critical levels, they don't really just give up or give in. In fact, I've seen the opposite to be true -- they become more tenacious, more tight-gripped about everything. They hold onto everything a little closer. But they never loosen that grip and give up.

Just my own observations. You can make a good case for what you said based on external logic, but I'd say you can't make the case simply from the contents of the film itself. That's kinda what I wanted to see -- something that made it clear to me that something had changed for Jesse internally. The only time I might have gotten that gist is the actual assassination scene itself, and even that wasn't all THAT clear.

I did notice that and that's another thing about the film I both liked and disliked. The shooting scenes were really well done as far as the realism went and yet at the same time they almost seemed like an add-on, like the director just figured we have got to have some shooting in here or else no one will watch my western kind of thing. Maybe I'm reading to much into it but I wonder if he (the director) just couldn't quite decide if he wanted to make a western or a documentary. At times it feels like both and personally I would have been happier with more documentary, the story of the James Gang does seem pretty interesting. I'm going back and reading what I just wrote and am not sure if that even makes sense. Does it?

I agree with you there, that makes a lot of sense.

It's not just old folks, it's 35 year olds who grew up watching old westerns (even though he also grew up thinking that there was an actress called Audrey Murphy, he'd rather not mention that. Bugger ) in a country which still venerates John Wayne as one of the greatest screen actors and claims him, however tenuously, as one of 'their own'.

I also loved the title of the film - not just because I've been familiar with the song for half my life but through the above films and the pouring over books containing the Earps, Davey Crockett, the James Gang, Custer, the Alamo etc etc. I doubt I'd have thought any differently if I hadn't known about Jesse James (and I only knew the very basics of the story here) and the name of the man who killed him.

The assassination could have happened in the first 5 minutes and the rest been told in flashback - what mattered was the 'why' rather than the 'how'. The structure of the narration lent an after-the-fact 'flashback' tone anyway.

Sheesh, I'm beginning to sound like I enjoyed the film rather more than I actually did...

This has turned into a great discussion, by the way. I must admit to not having high hopes in the first few days, not because of what was contributed but because we all seemed to be saying variations on the same thing - the film wasn't bad, nothing more and nothing less.

Thanks to everyone who's kept this going.

Aha, but since you say we needed the "why" more than the "how" (and I can see how that is true), then that's another reason in my mind for the film to need more clarity about not only why Ford shot James (which was plain enough) but why James seemed to allow it (if, in fact, he did).

It's not like the movie was moving too fast for them to squeeze that stuff in...