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4X4: WILLIAM WYLER. #3: THE BIG COUNTRY

(Note: Don't skip the theme song this week)

TGTPTU Host Ryan’s Willie gets a glow-up with THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), the third in our cultivated William Wyler collection.

Shot in glorious Technicolor on large-format Technorama to set it apart from the glut of midcentury black-and-white television Westerns, the big-budget film was not a financial success despite winning one, after being nominated for two, Academy Awards and starring at the time four-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck in the lead role of James McKay, a stranger who comes into town (thanks, Ken! 50-50 odds on this plot by your own estimation), who reunites with his fiancée out on the American frontier only to be hazed by her father’s foreman Steve Leech played by Charlton Heston (no Oscar noms at the time but a big win the next year on Wyler’s next film Ben-Hur, which, btw, did you hear someone died filming the chariot race?) and later to fall in love/respect/mutual ownership of property with school teacher and Big Muddy landowner Julie Maragon played by Oscar-nominated Jean Simmons (not that one, it’s spelled differently, Thomas). The voice and the eyebrows, the legendary singer and thanks to this film an Oscar-winner, Burl Ives plays Rufus Hannassey, the patriarch of a rival company of cowpunchers who also uses the Big Muddy and gets into a scuffle with Peck character’s father-in-law-to-be. This spat spirals out of control, Peck’s character presents the view with a confident pacificist, and there’s a good plot summary on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

What you can’t get elsewhere is Ryan’s special intro with lyrics and deep cuts even more deeply researched for you cineasts, Thomas’s pun on seamen, re-ranking the Major, a Hal Ashby connection, and a surprise new ghost guest added to the pod’s lore and collection when Charlton Heston’s noncorporeal agent visits the studio. The four hosts on this 4x4 do their best to discuss performative masculinity and the connection to war while ensuring they get their f*cking auto-assigned EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING from their AI censors.

“Now tell me, you: what did we prove?"

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias