Popping My Western Cherry


My first western snuck up on me. I might have turned the channel had I known what I was watching.

I don't know how it worked south of the Tim Horton's line, but in Canada pay-tv was introduced in the early eighties offering three choices, all movie networks: First Choice, Superchannel, and the name of the third one escapes me but it lasted about as long as a Fox sitcom. It wasn't a part of your cable package--you had to get some fat dude to come in and hook a de-scrambler up to your television.

First Choice was all about new movies, thus it became the sexy channel to own. Superchannel offered some new releases but mainly focused on older material, which caused many anal-retentive parents, including my own, to lean in its direction. Eventually the two companies merged to become, ironically enough, First Choice/Superchannel--and the rest is something resembling history.

The moral of the story is, I spent a lot of time as a youngster watching bad transfers of old movies because my parents didn't want me staring at The Goonies or Girls Just Wanna Have Fun five times a week.

One day I flipped to 24 on my dial (Superchannel) and noticed a man slumped in his chair, with his hat pulled over his eyes. I became transfixed--not by the rather unexpressive character, but by a fly, buzzing around his nose. All was silent, but for the mischievous insect. The screen seemed extra big somehow, stretched out wide just so I could see something as tiny as a fly destroying an afternoon siesta.

Then the scene shifted to another man, standing in a mostly-empty room. He was even more still than the man trying to sleep, and again silence reigned--with a single exception: water dripping from the ceiling, landing on the brim of the man's hat. The hush and still of the surroundings made each drop sound like an explosion. I had no idea what I was watching, but it was clear to me that I had never seen anything like it.

The opening scene of Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West continues on for some time, turning something as simple as three men waiting on a train into a mesmerizing, ethereal epic.

It was the first scene from a western I ever saw, and remains to this day, the finest scene I have ever witnessed on film.

The copyright of the article Popping My Western Cherry in Westerns is owned by Bob Stenbaugh. Permission to republish Popping My Western Cherry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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