Word: rodeos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...meaninglessness of Gay's life had he lived in a cowboy heyday and been able to profitably hunt and trap, or shoot Indians and harass settlers, or drive cattle instead? We'll never know. Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable star: Montgomery Clift steals the show as a jelly-brained rodeo rider. The mustang scenes are good action...
What is remarkable about Dirty Little Billy is the fervor with which its director has seized upon each thumping bromide of the anti-western and put them all on review, like a rodeo parade. Dragoti, formerly a director of television commercials, ought to have developed some expertise in manipulating an audience-but Dirty Little Billy, his first movie, is a shambling, enervating exercise...
...later, unsentimental education, mostly at the hands of a feisty, hard-drinking old rogue named Red (Richard Widmark) who signs him out of the reservation school. Red teaches him how to ride broncs and how to fall to up the odds. Together they tour the tank town rodeo circuit, always following the same strategy. Tom (Frederic Forrest) takes a tumble on his first ride, and Red offers high odds on the next event. The cowboys eagerly plunk their money down, and Tom rides flawlessly. It is a profitable little con, but Tom had something more conventional in mind...
...animate a characterization, not dominate it. Millar makes good use of him, especially in a devastating last scene when Tom returns as a man to the reservation school. "I've learned the new ways," he says, eyes full of grave irony suggesting scars without self-pity. The rodeo champion now wants only to tend the reservation horses, an ambition that suggests both a new awareness and a capitulation, a final defeat. ∎Jay Cocks
...mythic skill but a knockabout saint whose sort last surfaced in the works of Kerouac and Kesey. In short, he is good, clean wish fulfillment, and author and hero fall in love with him, in the manner of small boys. Santo does an impromptu star turn at a rodeo, befriends and soothes some strung-out hippies, and finally hands over his golden girl friend to Blake...