The Wild Bunch vs. The End of My 20's

Thinking Beyond our Guns...
I'd spent the first half of that year blown apart. I gnashed my teeth and ambled about and tore at the already frayed ends of my threadbare existence. The girl with the one piece of my heart had something to do with it, but the truth was I had hate-dumped myself, not her. Sure, she totally dumped me, but that's more of a detail...

After an epic mope, a long time friend had one fix, and one alone. He bullied my Netflix queue into a position change (which is like blaspheme), and within 2-3 business days we sat down -- plus one whole pollo asados al carbon, corn tortillas, and lukewarm beer -- for what might have been the most important 145 minutes of therapy I've had in my adult life.

The Wild Bunch is an 800 ton western genre leveling bastard. In an appropriate eulogy, The Duke himself went public and criticized the film for killing the old west myth. It's the front runner of the modern, ugly western, and cornerstone of "F*cking Badass" as a cinematic movement. The lore around this 1969 film matches the final product. Phrases like 'disappeared into the desert', '300,000 plus feet of footage', 'probably real prostitutes', and 'no actual script', are thrown around with hot, sticky breath. In spite of terrible (just awful) fake blood, and the weird, saturated patina of Technicolor, this picture is grim for even a post-Unforgiven world. There was a 1994 re-release to commemorate the film's 25th anniversary, and it still got an NC-17 rating. And The Wild Bunch isn't NC-17 because of some Showgirls tits'n'ass softball bullshit, it's because life is mean...and way hard. That and it's crazy violent.

The movie washed over me like a blood stained riptide. A story about men, and being a man, and the uncertain crossroads at the end of your usefulness. My wounded sentiments found a symbol. The Wild Bunch came to me in the throws of a tectonic shift and took me in as it's own. Since that day I've  invoked the movie as both an object lesson and a hangover cure. The film fits into my life. And not just in that "I own the DVD," sort of way. It's a meditation. A guidepost for my inner outlaw still looking to find harmony on the eve of his 29th birthday.

We're not gonna git rid of anybody!
"We're not gonna git rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished. We're finished! All of us!"

The art school kids would call that a philosophical centerpiece. This film, of course, is above such petty airs, but the moment does count for something. The outlaws have been cast out into the desert, nothing to show for the carnage left in their wake. Tempers are short and the tenuous alliances between thieves shows like puppet strings. A misstep by the old man sends the bunch tumbling into the dunes. Guns are pulled, threats barked, and the flash of dissension wedges the men apart. Pike steps in, delivers his speech with square jawed sincerity, and cracks show in the tension. He crosses to his horse and as he goes to mount, his stirrup gives way. Crumpled on the ground, the value of the old men, the fading outlaws, is again called into question. Pike fights to his feet, hoists his leg over his horse, and pulls himself upright in the saddle. Without a word, he rides into heat smeared horizon a stoic black figure. The men follow.

I wish this was going to be a sweeping passage about the unfailing bonds of friendship, or some fierce defense of togetherness, but this ain't Hollywood. Being my friend can be really terrible. I wish I was Pike Bishop giving that speech to rally lifelong companions around our weakest ally, but instead, I think I'm the man on the ground. I worry I've allowed myself to be come the one peered at over-shoulder as my friends recite Pike's speech like a prayer before they decide to keep me one more time.

I mean, I'm trying to make this thing dance, so the self flagellation accentuated for dramatic effect. I can be very polite company and I'm not the first person to flake on a Facebook message, but there is a sense of closeness that's diminished in my life. What begins as a seed of my selfishness festers into some misguided sense of obligation. A foolish notion that something will be required of me outside the communion of friendship. An unknown burden I can't shoulder. These feelings protract into aversion and guilt and an entire laundry list of frailties. So it's not say that I'm missing closeness in my life, instead it's what I've done to expel it.

I've left men behind over small and ugly pride. I've allowed pieces of my life to go lost in the landfill of unreturned calls and texts. I've forsaken the bond between a man that sides with another man. But as good fortunes go, I have friends who can utter Pike's words with more conviction than me. Though, as all tough talking platitudes go, the more you have to repeat them to yourself, they harder they are to believe.

Guns for Mapache
I will work for my entire life. I'll die in my boots.

The truth fell in me like a knife. I was too smart and beautiful for a life so...common. The coming days were wet with tears, saturated from immersion in my little tar-pit of despair. It was work's fault I didn't have a trust fund. It's was corporate Americas crime I hadn't done the work to live out my rock'n'roll fantasies captured in my non-existent boyhood journals. Work was my enemy. Work was the opponent of my artistic endeavor, and the only salve for that wound was to wage war against the beast. I spread dissension. I worked 20 hours and just sat at home the other 20 hours somehow in defiance of my work-a-day life. My only objective was misery and I could radiate like a coal furnace. I scowled and raged and collected write-ups like badges of honor, but the battle always ended in stalemate. We didn't need each other. Instead, we were make believe enemies with a shared goal: a bottom line. All we had on each other was what we wanted from each other.

Terrible, right? It's like the sell out's manifesto. I was willing to trade in my high minded ambitions, for what? A lifestyle?

Yup.

Because the unhappy necessary truth is that work is work is work is work. I make it as a writer and then there's unknown hands, with a commercial interest no less, that get to tear my work apart. I become a rock star and some A&R man kills my masterpiece because, "The studio doesn't hear a single". I manifest my cinematic vision and there are no asses in seats. And in all of these scenarios, it would actually count. There will always be someone else's bottom line, so I figured it was best to know my own.

For now, I get to write I want. A few times I've been able to position my actual life with the life I want. Work has financed screenplays, global adventures, and concerts that future generations will ask about with bated breath. I've been able to prop up my indulgences in a quiet way that suits me. Yeah, it's all possible without a job, but debts and benefactors are a hellish master much harder to walk away from than a 40 hour work week.

Depressed yet? Don't be. Just think about General Mapache. Cause like Deke Thornton says, "What I want and what I need are two different things."

The Wild Bunch we're in a bad spot. A robbery back in the states had gone real bad. Mexico -- as per the tacit agreement between America and Mexico -- was the only refuge. The Bunch stole away to Agua Verde, a sinister town held tight in the debauched fist of General Mapache. Out of money, out of options, and having gunned down one of Mapache's favorite whores, the boys are short on bargaining chips. Mapache wants guns, a shipment of guns guarded by the US Army set to cross the countryside. The Wild Bunch has two real options: Don't steal the guns and die broke and alone in Mexico. Steal the guns for a hefty take, but suffer the whims of the cruel Mapache. So they did what a man with a grasp on the life he's made for himself does...

Am I saying that I go out and steal to keep the power broker's pockets engorged and bellies fat? *ahem*...of course not. I'm saying that hard work is a noble deed that exists above the task. Work is indifferent, neither creativity's enemy or ally. Endeavors both menial and profound are built from the same stuff. It's an act, a ritual that carries weight above financial gain. Get yours, make it hurt, and drink deep from the real life that exists above work-a-day tedium. Take up your arms, and join the anonymous brotherhood of so many who came before us. The brotherhood of those grown ass man enough to go out and get their guns for Mapache.

The Walk
With no explanation, and one scarcely required, the film draws to it's dramatic conclusion. A gutty and wordless sequence, the finale registers one of the most iconic moments captured on film. The scene could be pinned down with words like fatalism or nihilistic, but that belies the dignity. The story was in it's final pages, and these outlaws were going to ink the final words.

Pike, the boys, they knew it was over. There was no lamentation, or room for remorse. This was the final charge, head long into the end. They could have limped away and let their inevitable end smoke them out of what ever far off crevice they disappeared into, but that's not the measure of an outlaw. A life spent wrenching the far edges of society of all it's victories and defeats doesn't go quietly into the night. Instead, this wild bunch grabs their guns and makes the long walk to an end that a word like death is too small to describe.
  
When that day comes, I won't weep for my inner outlaw. I'll lay that furious young man down to an honorable sleep. I'll kiss his swollen eyes and sweep aside his strings of long black hair. I'll lovingly brush out his ironic mustache, and press his old man slacks (worn in defiance of these asshats and their unimaginative denim). I'll cross his arms over the SAT practice test that was so far beneath him, and send him on that long walk to his inevitable end. Not because I resent or hate him, but because to keep him alive would be a disservice to all he's done for me.

An intrinsic, and at times tempestuous, part of my reflection, he's the keeper of the cone of fire. The part of me where adventure and risk and explosive passion blossom, imbuing my life with it's deepest hues. Maturation and growth have been the key to his survival instilling quiet dignity where piss and vinegar once boiled.

The end, that day is a long way off. There is still work for me and the boys to do, it's not like it used to be, but it'll do. But as life has a way of happening all of the time, if that day comes where my inner outlaw has outgrown the world around him, as long as I have an iota of irrational youthful vigor left, I'll make that walk. I'll strap my bandoleer across my chest, perch my black hat on top of my head, and as La Golondrina plays somewhere in the distance, I'll get behind that machine gun. And after the dust settles through the dying light, when they find me, my finger will still be on the trigger.