Hawks on Hawks

13. Comedy and Tragedy

80 13 Comedy andTragedy Your attitude is basically comic, even in a tragic situation. For instance, Al Capone is not really a funny story, but you made a comedy out of it. Well, would you rather see something dead serious or laugh at something ? In the first place, true drama is awfully close to being comedy. The greatest drama in the world is really funny. A man who loses his pants out in front of a thousand people—he’s suffering the tortures of the damned, but he’s awfully funny doing it. I had a damn good teacher, Chaplin. Probably our greatest comic. And everything he did was tragedy. He made things funny out of tragedy. I work a lot on that. I wanted to do Don Quixote with Cary Grant and Cantinflas, and people said, “But that isn’t a comedy—that’s a tragedy.” I’d have to go into a long explanation. I think we could have a lot of fun with it. I think that Don Quixote’s the basis really for the Chaplin character. Maybe we’ll do it; I don’t know. Before Cary gets too old or I get too old, we hope to do it. Your movies have been compared to Buster Keaton’s in some ways, for the visual sparsity, the lack of frills. Do you like Keaton’s movies? I like Keaton’s. But Chaplin is the best of ’em all. I would have thought you’d prefer Keaton, because Chaplin is very sentimental , and Keaton is sort of tough, like your characters. Well, I couldn’t do the sentimental type, and so I happen to like ’em better. You’re famous for taking a scene that has elements of pain and humiliation , such as the finger amputation in The Big Sky or the “Who’s Joe?” scene in Only Angels Have Wings, and either playing it lightly or for outright slapstick. Can you explain why you like to do something like that? You’re looking for something new to be funny. The only time John Wayne ever objected to a scene was on our first picture, Red River. I said, “Duke, I’ve got a good idea. You get your finger caught between the rope Comedy and Tragedy 81 and the saddle horn, and it’s all smashed. You show it to Walter Brennan, and he says, ‘That finger ain’t gonna be much good to you.’ And you say, ‘No, I guess it isn’t.’ So Brennan calls for somebody and says, ‘Stick an iron in the fire. Get a block of wood, and get a nice big jug of whiskey.’ And they get you drunk, and they heat up the iron to cauterize the thing. Brennan starts sharpening his knife. Then we’ll fuss around in there until somebody says, ‘I think he’s about ready for it.’ And then they’ll hold your finger over a chopping block, and cut it off. They say, ‘He never even felt it.’ And just when everything is very happy, why, you say, ‘Where’s my finger? A man oughta have his finger. He should be buried with it, whole.’ And you all end up on your behinds looking in the ashes.” He said, “You think that’s funny?” “Oh,” I said, “if you’re not good enough then we won’t do it. I’ll do it sometime with somebody who’s a better actor.” So I did it with Kirk Douglas, who is not as good an actor, but Kirk did it, and it was very funny. Duke saw it, and he told me, “If you tell me a funeral is funny, I’ll do a funeral.” One of the best scenes that I ever made was in Rio Bravo. Wayne hit a fellow across the face the most horrible way. Dean Martin said, “Hey, take it easy.” And Wayne said, “I’m not gonna hurt him.” The audience thought it was funny. In Rio Lobo, we set a man on fire. He tries to hit Wayne with an oil lamp, and Wayne knocks him against a wall, and the lamp breaks, and the oil spills over him. He’s burning , and somebody goes to pick up a blanket to put the thing out. Wayne says, “Let him burn.” And the other fellow [Jack Elam] says, “Don’t let him burn so much he can’t sign the papers we want him to sign.” And, I don...