TRUE GRIT 1969 & 2010!!

Westerns With Dad

On this belated episode, we are talking about both versions of the Charlie Portis novel True Grit! The original, from 1969, is famously the film that won John Wayne his Oscar, and the 2010 remake from the Coen Brothers! Both are great, as it turns out, and surprisingly similar in a number of ways (largely owing to the use of Portis’ dialogue, we assume, having not read the original book). Both are largely esteemed classics of the genre, well worth your time, although they’re so beloved you’ve probably seen one or both already. Topics of conversation include a merciless comparison of each film’s lead performance (in which Dad discovers a new appreciation of Kim Darby), a few digressions on the Coens filmography, the popularity of Jeff Bridges’ performance as Rooster Cogburn and his attempts to reuse it in the following years, and a fair number of impersonations, of Bridges, Wayne, Robert Duvall, and Josh Brolin’s mush-mouthed villain Tom Chaney. Thanks for waiting for us on our late holiday schedule!

We talk a little about current Western projects to keep an eye on, and other recent viewings (Dad’s umpteenth viewing of A Christmas Story, and my appreciation of Guillermo del Toro’s latest, a interspecies romance set during the Red Scare, The Shape of Water. In the next episode of Westerns With Dad, we’ll be talking about a barely known Canadian TV movie entitled Ebenezer, a Western-set Christmas Carol retelling starring Jack Palance! Who knows how that’ll go!

True Grit 1969 stars John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell and Robert Duvall. True Grit 2010 stars Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin.