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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
But, you know there's a lot of westerns - not that they were bad - it's just that they can be remade because they're great stories that aren't indelible in an audience's mind when it comes to both the cast and the story.
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.
In the Western tradition, the first writers were teachers and historians, vastly traveled, who spiced their reports with fantasies. They were also poets who sang and entertained prince and pauper.
I don't understand why we give up genres, and the Western is a great genre. It's a part of the rich history of cinema and who we are as we've evolved as people, as a community.
Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.
Throughout the movies' golden age, the Western enriched Hollywood financially and artistically. But in the 1970s, the genre lost its audience appeal to fantasy films of the 'Star Wars' stripe, which told more or less the same story - elemental animosities leading to an armed showdown - but at a faster tempo, and in outer space.
I grew up in wide-open spaces, but they didn't have the romantic history of the West.
I think writers from both East and West have long been fascinated by the ancient tales and the opportunity to reinterpret them.
I think for the last fifteen, twenty years or so, Hollywood has underestimated the appeal of the Western. I think there is still a huge market.
The 'Western' is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself.