Something often neglected in popular accounts of the Wild West is the extent to which its dramas were colored by the politics and personal resentments left by the Civil War.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every time I see something about the Wild West, I'm reminded that our version of history may not be what really happened.
It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show.
When someone talks about Western films, you probably think of those old black and white cowboy films your granddad likes. But the Western is a wonderful genre because it is usually a story of a lone hero fighting against corruption in a dangerous world.
With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.
The events of the Civil War are so odd, ferocious, and poignant that fictional characters do well simply to inhabit them.
But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.
The Westerns I like aren't really comedies. I'm drawn to the scope of them and the land as a central character.
I think that the Western went away for a while because part of its function was that it used to be America's action film.
Westerns are simple stories where there's good and there's evil and where people had a sense of space and freedom. Growing up in the city, as a kid, you've never really seen that before. It's a beautiful dream to go from concrete to big skies, dirt and horses.
The western is the simplest form of drama - a gun, death.