This Budd’s for you!

Above: Budd Boetticher ‘directing’ a punch (click to enlarge)

“Budd Boetticher explored the base essentials of the Western,” wrote Martin Scorsese in A Personal Journey Through American Movies. “His style was as simple as his impassive heroes — deceptively simple. The archetypes of the genre were distilled to the point of abstraction.” Woefully underserved on DVD, Boetticher’s Seven Men from Now (1956) comes out this week from Paramount.

Mostly known for the series of seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott in the 50’s, Boetticher also wrote and directed The Bullfigher and the Lady (1951), based on his own experience as the first American to become a professional matador in Mexico.

Despite all of his films, Boetticher’s most memorable work is an autobiography, When In Disgrace. A fragmentary attempt to penetrate the alcoholic haze clouding a delusional man’s perception, it traces a stunted career in the bullring and ‘problems’ with authority figures in Hollywood. Amazed by his own good fortune in marrying actress Debra Paget, Boetticher sets his more fascinating accounts south of the border, from getting gored in the ass by a testy toro, to days and nights in rat-infested drunk tanks. A textbook example of self-will run riot, it surely deserves a second printing. (Copies are scarce.)

Turner Classic Movies will broadcast Seven Men from Now on Wednesday, December 21, at 9:30pm (EST). They will also show the new documentary, Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That, the same day at 8pm and 11pm (EST).


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