Ever since Ang Lee’s earth-shatteringly beautiful ‘Brokeback Mountain’ we have had a thing about cowboys. Just as in that movie when Jack Twist says to Ennis ‘I wish I knew how to quit you’, we cannot stop yearning for a rugged man in spurs on horseback. Or in fact any type of Cowboys, including the ones who have never worn their boots on a ranch. Here then are our Top Ten Movie Cowboys.
1) Brokeback Mountain : 2005. If you really do not know why this should unreservedly be our Number One, then shame on you. It’s time you gave your ‘gay’ card back. On the other hand, no matter how well you think you know this movie, it is always worth another view. Grab a bottle of wine, a box of tissues, and ‘him indoors’ and just hunker down and let yourself go.
2) Midnight Cowboy : 1969. Every time we hear the haunting melody of the theme song it sends shivers down our backs. This story of a naive prostitute (Jon Voight) and his sickly friend (Dustin Hoffman) who struggle to survive on the streets of New York City quite rightly won 3 Oscars including Best Picture. Totally unmissable.
3) Drugstore Cowboy : 1989. This stunner from Gus Van Sant (‘My Private Idaho’) is one of the very best films in the long tradition of American outlaw road movies. Starring a very young Matt Dillon who gave a chillingly perfect performance as the leader of the pack. A real treat.
4) Urban Cowboy : 1980. Back in the days when we still loved John Travolta for being a great actor he starred as a young man from the country who learns about life and love in a Houston bar. Well worth watching too because it was also Debra Winger’s breakthrough role.
5) Cocaine Cowboys : 2006. In the early ’80s, a new business emerged in Miami, Florida that changed the face of the city forever. That business was cocaine smuggling. This is one of the scariest true stories we have ever seen, and it would have stopped any of us ever wanting to leave the airport in those bad old dangerous days if we had only known.
6) Blazing Saddles :1974 To dedicated cinephiles this masterpiece from comic genius Mel Brooks is every bit as good as his more well known ‘The Producers’. To ruin a western town, a corrupt political boss appoints a black sheriff, who promptly becomes his most formidable adversary in this most ridiculous and hysterical laugh fest. Just as funny as it was originally over 40 years ago.
7) Carry On Cowboy : 1965. So its confession time. We LOVE all the classic quintessential British very low brow comedy of ‘Carry On’ Films that starred camp Kenneth Williams and all his mates. This one, which had the byline ‘how the west was lost’, is an hilarious romp through the bars and bedrooms of the Wild West! Sid James is on top form as the Rumpo Kid, an outlaw who shakes up the sleepy residents of Stodge City.
8) Django Unchained : 2012. By rights this exhilarating and appalling bloodbath by Quentin Tarantino which is downright so entertaining, deserves to be higher in our top ten: it is simply that brilliant. With the help of a German bounty hunter (played by Christoph Waltz who won a Oscar for this) a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. Overly long, but well worth it for a change
9) Cowboys and Aliens : 2011 Funnyman Jon Favreau takes a western story and throws in an alien invasion and the result is blissfully hilarious. Starring hottie Daniel Craig always good to goggle at especially when he dons a pair of chaps (phew!), and Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell and Paul Dano
10) Queens and Cowboys: A Straight Year on the Gay Rodeo : 2015. Chronicles a complete season of the International Gay Rodeo Association. Roping and riding across North America, the IGRA’s courageous cowboys and cowgirls (who get to live out all our fantasies) brave challenges in and out of the arena on their quest to the World Finals. A sheer joy.
P.S. In 2005 when ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was the most talked about movie of the year, comedian and satirist Jon Stewart was hosting the Oscar Ceremony and he presented this hilarious montage to show how heterosexual the old westerns really were (not)!
