“Every western is about America, whether it knows it or not: among the major film genres of comedy, horror, romance, noir, thriller, musical, gangster picture, and science fiction, the western is the one that can’t be anything but American regardless of samurai templates or Italian reinterpretations. Around the world, the Old American West has, for a century of cinema, represented the last earthly frontier of the human psyche, where dreams and lies clash just for the sake of telling each other apart; in the western, passion is more violent, freedom is more rapturous, aspirations are more berserk than in any other genre of any other art form.”

–Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Renegade’s Requiem

By Steve Erickson