Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast 219. Bryan Burrough on America's Vigilante Past - and Present
Nancy and Sarah chat with Bryan Burrough, author of Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. Bloody history is something of a specialty for Burrough, a former Vanity Fair scribe whose other (great) books include Days of Rage, about violent radical movements of the ‘70s, Public Enemies, about the ‘30s crime wave, and Forget the Alamo, about, well, trying to remember that famous Texas showdown in a more accurate light.
Their conversation takes place several days after a shooter opened fire at a Minneapolis church, killing two children and injuring many more. Online discourse has yo-yo’ed from gun control to trans issues to the problem of marijuana, but America’s history of violence goes much deeper than culture-war issues. We’re a country forged in guns, whether we like it or not.
Burrough talks about the psychopaths, swindlers, and survivors who shaped the frontier and went down in pop-culture history: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp. We also talk Westerns: What’s his take on Tombstone? Deadwood? And which critically acclaimed Western movie made Bryan and Sarah bored out of their skulls? (Hint: It stars Brad Pitt.)
For a conversation ostensibly about the Old West, there’s an awful lot of talk about modern movies, books, and the craft of writing.
Also discussed:
* Sarah says: The Old West = BORING!
* Sam Colt’s pistol was initially a flop
* Honor culture, explained
* Why did Bob Dylan add a “g” to John Wesley Hardin?
* Doc Holliday was a … dentist in Dallas?
* “A man with that great equalizer: a gun.”
* Billy the Kid, the “most ambivalent” of the Old West gunfighters
* “Texans. We have a lot to answer for.”
* Lawlessness can be thrilling
* Wild Bill Hickok, the greatest fraud of the Old West
* Unforgiven is the ultimate anti-Western
* Comanches were not messing around
* When “whore” was a job description
* Jesse James, the first celebrity criminal
* Lonesome Dove is Texans’ War and Peace
* A big gush of love for author Beverly Lowry
* Sarah vs. Nancy on the movie Tree of Life: Pistols at dawn!
* The postpartum aimlessness that comes with finishing a book
* Remembering actor Graham Greene
Also, Nancy, Sarah and Bryan choose the Old West characters they’d most like to be (guess who chose “whore”?), the frontier’s go-to slur, and much more!
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Didn’t happen this way, but great nonetheless: