Timeout London has tallied up their favorite Westerns. A wonderful list filled with movies I never heard of, and a few I now want to see.

Readers of Oregon Movies, A to Z will recognize:

#45. Meek’s Cutoff (2010) Dir. Kelly Reichardt, written by Jon Raymond, shot in Harney County

# 44. Day of the Outlaw (1959) Dir. by Andre de Toth, shot on Mt. Bachelor

#23. Stagecoach (1939) Dir. by John Ford, based on a short story by Ernest Haycox

#11. My Darling Clementine (1946) Dir. by John Ford, with Walter Brennan

#6. Dead Man (1995) Dir. Jim Jarmusch, scenes shot in Grants Pass, Takilma, Rogue River, Applegate River & the Oregon Coast

Born: Kansas City, Missouri, 20 February 1925.

Education: Attended University of Missouri, Columbia (three years).

Military Service: Bomber pilot, U.S. Air Force, 1943–47.

Career: Directed industrial films for Calvin Company, Kansas City, 1947; wrote, produced, and directed first feature, The Delinquents , 1955; TV director, 1957–63; co-founder of TV production company, 1963; founder, Lion’s Gate production company (named after his own 8-track sound system), 1970, Westwood Editorial Services, 1974, and Sandcastle 5 Productions; made Tanner ‘88 for TV during American presidential campaign, 1988; directed McTeague for Chicago Lyric Opera.

Awards: Palme d’Or, Cannes Festival, and Academy Award nominations for Best Film and Best Director for M*A*S*H , 1970; New York Film Critics’ Circle Award, D.W. Griffith Award (National Board of Review), and National Society of Film Critics Award, all for Best Director, for Nashville , 1975; Golden Bear, Berlin Festival, for Buffalo Bill and the Indians , 1976; Academy Award nomination for Best Director, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film and Best Director, for The Player , 1992; Academy Award nomination for Best Director, for Short Cuts, 1993. more

I began suspecting  Oregon artists Marne Lucas and Bruce Conkle of being secretly French when they invented Eco Baroque. But here’s a few reasons to entertain the theory that all Oregon shares their hidden dual identity:

1. Wine

2. Food

3. Movies

4. Mass transit

5. Public spaces (beaches, parks, Pioneer Square)

6. Focus on quality of life (see above)

How French is Oregon?

The first ever Palme d’Or (as adjudged in 2003) went to a film based on work by an Oregon author.

In 1939, a brand new film festival on the French Riviera at Cannes was cancelled due to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. In 2003, Cannes went back and revisited the list of films that would have competed that year. That jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Union Pacific (above), directed by Cecil B. DeMille and based on a novel by Portland author Ernest Haycox.

Currently, four Oregon directors are much beloved in France.

#1: James Ivory (Klamath Falls), 6 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Winner of Cannes 45th Anniversary Special Award for Howard’s End(1992).

#2: Gus Van Sant (Portland), 3 nominations for the Palme D’Or at Cannes. Winner forElephant(2003). Winner of the Cannes 60th Anniversary Special Award for Paranoid Park(2007).

#3: Bill Plympton (Oregon City), 2 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. His latest feature, Idiots and Angels (2009), received theatrical release in France, and was seen all across that country.

#4: Penny Allen (Portland), whose latest film,The Soldier’s Tale (2007), has been seen by more filmgoers in France than America. It was a recent hit at the Nyon Festival Visions du Reel.

Oregon is so French, Bill Plympton says that everyone in France accepts without question the immediate assumption that Pink Martini is a French band.

Will 2010 mark the return of the Western? This year will see the release of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and  Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex. Both are set in the West – one is based on real events, the other on a comic book.

But Stagecoach, recently released by Criterion on DVD, is based on a short story by Portland author Ernest Haycox. The grandaddy Western of them all, it was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne as the Ringo Kid.

From the New York Times:

John Ford’s thrilling western about a group of travelers whose Arizona stage ride lands them smack in the midst of an Apache uprising has long been spoken of as a metaphor for how American civilization tamed the wilderness. But as Ford and his screenwriter, Dudley Nichols, portray it, civilization is something to escape. This is, after all, a movie where the hero, the young and charming John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, is an outlaw who has just busted out of prison. We never doubt the Kid’s goodness, just as we never doubt the rottenness of the banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill), even before we discover he’s an embezzler. And it’s a movie where the figure usually treated with tender solicitude, the pregnant young mother Mrs. Mallory (Louise Platt), is a cold snob toClaire Trevor’s Dallas, the hooker who tries to comfort her during their journey. (She accepts the protection of the gentleman gambler, and former Confederate soldier, elegantly played by John Carradine.)

Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln,” also from 1939, recalled D. W. Griffith. It’s Griffith’s own inspiration, Dickens, whom you can sense at moments in “Stagecoach.” Nowhere more so than in the faces of the Women’s Law and Order League, a group of crones without a whisper of compassion among them, who in the movie’s opening force Dallas and a drunken Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) out of town. The faces of these meddling biddies become windows into their sour, gnarled souls. They seem to have existed before you even see them, the way the illustrations that sometimes accompany Dickens’s novels only confirm the picture you have already drawn in your mind.

Contrast those faces with those of the Apaches, presented to us as the other, but not the objects of any real animosity. The Apaches are not alienated from their nature, as those self-proclaimed moralists are. The raid on the coach, the movie’s dramatic and visual highlight (featuring the astounding stunt work of Yakima Canutt), remains one of the most thrilling sequences ever put on film. But the real narrow escape comes at the end, as Dallas and the Kid ride off into the night with Doc Boone’s prayer that they be spared the blessings of civilization. That’s when you know “Stagecoach” is a work as deep in the American grain as“Huckleberry Finn.”

CHARLES TAYLOR, in the New York Times

Strange but true: A River Runs Through It, the Montana family saga/fly fishing tale, is an Oregon film. Director Robert Redford shot the fishing scenes on the Rogue River.

Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Grant McOmie for mentioning this particular chapter of Oregon film history  in the course of profiling Wolf Creek Inn, Oregon’s little known getaway to the stars.

Other Hollywood luminaries who loved Wolf Creek Inn were Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who came for the duck hunting, and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who came for the privacy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But that’s not the only Oregon connection. One of the co-producers of A River Runs Through It is from Oregon: William Kittredge.

I spoke on the phone with William Kittredge to confirm my suspicion that he attended high school in Klamath Falls. He said yes, and that it was his English teacher there who inspired him to dream of becoming a writer.

William Kittredge, Marc Davis, James Ivory, and Chris Eyre all graduated from Klamath Union High School, a track record unmatched by any other Oregon high school, including Lincoln High School (Ernest Haycox, Mel Blanc, Matt Groening), the oldest high school in the state; Catlin Gabel (Gus Van Sant, Eric Edwards, Margaux Hemingway), the richest high school  in the state; or Ashland High School (David Fincher), the high school voted most likely to succeed in producing show business oriented graduates.

I hereby claim A River Runs Through It as an Oregon film on the basis of  the location shooting on the Rogue, and on the basis of William Kittredge’s contribution as co-producer. Go Pelicans!

Keanu Reeves is a law man who male bonds with the thief  he is supposed to bring to justice. Patrick Swayze shows his willing student a thing or two about surfing (in the dark) and skydiving (holding hands) and choosing when/when not to obey the law. Keanu is from Ohio, so this is all new to him. Swayze’s spectacular physical grace temporarily blinds him, as it does everyone in the theater.  There is a moment in the skydiving scene where Swayze pirouettes in thin air. He spins around his own axis, just as if he was wearing ice skates and not a unopened parachute. Keanu, who is ambitious, impatient, and nursing an old football injury, is defenseless against this gratuitous display of physical confidence, strength and joy.

Kathryn Bigelow shot a tiny sliver of her fourth feature on the Oregon Coast, at Ecola State Park. The criteria for granting a director recognition as an Oregon filmmaker is notoriously elastic, and changes from case to case. Bigelow inadvertently solidified her claim on this title, despite the short amount of time she spent shooting in Oregon, by describing Point Break in interview as a “wet Western”.

Oregon has faultless bloodlines when it comes to the Western. The source material for one of the most influential Westerns ever made, Stagecoach (1939),was written in a small office right off Sandy Boulevard in Portland. John Wayne’s breakthrough role, the Ringo Kid, was invented by Oregon native (and Reed drop out) Ernest Haycox. Orson Welles famously prepared for  Citizen Kane by watching Stagecoach over and over again. Kathryn Bigelow was rumored to have done the same thing while in film school at Columbia.

In fact, the rumor was that that was all she did at Columbia.

I hereby claim Point Break as an Oregon film, based on location shooting done on the Oregon Coast, and in the Oregon rain.

Shawn Levy snapped this picture on his phone of Gus Van Sant, James Ivory and Bill Plympton, posing with Mike Rich at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival. For whatever it says about Oregon, Gus Van Sant, James Ivory, and Bill Plympton are all highly regarded in France. Who knows? With enough time, they could feel that way about Mike Rich.

Stagecoach (1939), based on story by Ernest Haycox, nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), based on Ken Kesey’s novel, nominated for 9 Oscars, won the top five, including Best Picture

Room With A View (1985), James Ivory nominated for Best Director

Howard’s End (1992), James Ivory nominated for Best Director

Remains of the Day (1993), James Ivory nominated for Best Director

Good Will Hunting (1997), Gus Van Sant nominated for Best Director

Iraq In Fragments (2006) James Longley nominated for Best Documentary, Feature

Milk (2008), Gus Van Sant nominated for Best Director

Not one of the cowboys in these Oregon Westerns came from Oregon. The closest thing Oregon has to a homegrown movie cowboy is Ringo Kid, Ernest Haycox’ fictional creation, played by John Wayne on the big screen.

Oregonians did lots of things in Hollywood. But not ride horses.

So who did?

J. Warren Kerrigan in The Covered Wagon (1923)

Hoot Gibson in The Flaming Frontier (1926)

John Wayne in The Big Trail (1930)

Eddie Cantor in Whoopee! (1930)

John Wayne in Stagecoach (1939)

Dana Andrews in Canyon Passage (1946)

Jimmy Stewart in Bend of the River (1952)

Robert Mitchum in The Lusty Men (1952)

Kirk Douglas in Indian Fighter (1955)

Jeff Chandler in Pillars of the Sky (1956)

Robert Mitchum in The Way West (1967)

Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon (1969)

Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif in MacKenna’s Gold (1969)

Photo credit: Anne Richardson. If you know where to look, you can make out the only traffic light in all of Wallowa County.

For people who missed it on Sunday, here’s Jeff Baker’s profile of Jon Raymond in the Oregonian.

My favorite part:

“Wendy and Lucy” is the second movie filmed in the same location Raymond used in a short story. The first, “Old Joy,” mostly takes place at Bagby Hot Springs, where Raymond and the gang from Plazm magazine once took photos of Bigfoot, with director Todd Haynes playing the lead role in a furry suit.

I’m trying to think of a New York magazine that would have thrown Todd into a furry suit and taken him to a hot springs. No wonder he moved to Portland!

Jon Raymond joins Ernest Haycox, Walt Morey, Ken Kesey, Walt Curtis, Jean Auel, John Varley and Chuck Palahniuk – all Oregon writers whose work has been adapted to the big screen.

Read more about Wendy and Lucy, which has replenished the spiritual stores of lots of hardened film critics, or better yet, go see it at Cinema 21.

I claim Cecil B. DeMille as an Oregon filmmaker on the basis of his adaptation of Portland author Ernest Haycox’ novel Trouble Shooter. Union Pacific , starring Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Preston, came out in 1939.