(Electronic Music)
- Hey did you see Mad Max: Fury Road?
- I showed my newborn child Mad Max: Fury Road.
- It's awesome, isn't it?
Man, Australia sure can make a western.
- False, Mad Max is a post-apocalypse movie.
- Right, which makes it a western.
All movie westerns happen after the apocalypse
in the future, not the past.
- Alex, what fresh bullshit is this?
- So you know how the actual old west
was nothing like Hollywood westerns?
- Let's say I'm willing to know.
- If we're talking about westerns as an overall genre
mashing them all together,
treating all 83 westerns John Wayne did as one movie.
- If we have to.
- A couple big tropes emerge,
gun violence, bank robberies, big hats.
- The three most American things in the history of things.
- And none of them match the actual old west.
That's an actual historical period,
that there are records of.
- I mean there's records of white western settlers
mistreating Native Americans, that's in westerns.
There's records of farmers and ranchers
fighting over land use, that's in westerns.
- And do you watch Westerns to see that stuff?
- Hell no, I fast forward to the gun fights.
- Exactly, and gun fights were so rare in the old west
it was a land of frontier villages, not the Thunderdome.
Also by the 1870's, most western towns
had some kind of local law in the books
against waving pistols around on main street.
- Gun control, scariest form of safety.
- Also, they had banks that were really hard to rob.
Tons of security, no emergency exits,
hard-ass townsfolk all around.
That's why in a 40 year period,
the old west had eight bank robberies. Total.
Also also, they didn't really wear
what we think of as a cowboy hat,
- No, cowboys wore cowboy hats,
that's why we call them cowboy hats
and not some asshole hats.
Why you trying to ruin cowboy movies for me,
you're supposed to be ruining Mad Max for me.
- Oh, right, so in post-apocalyptic movies,
when does the world end?
- Well some of them say we don't know,
some of them say we don't know and we're radiation mutants.
- Exactly, post-apocalyptic movies are about
a distant future society trying to remember
some scrap of the past.
In The Book Of Eli, they've got the bible.
In Water World, they've got cigarettes.
In Snow Piercer, They've got Ed Harris' man cave.
- And in Mad Max, they've got gasoline,
- And cars, and misogyny.
- Yeah... I mean yeah, you're getting it, not yeah misogyny.
Although, I will say this for misogyny.
- I'd rather you didn't.
- Misogyny is a key clue that normal movie westerns
happen in a Mad Max future, not the old west.
- So you're gonna tell me the old west was good for women?
- It wasn't perfect, but women in the old west
led communities, led pioneering,
and generally had it better than
the average american woman of that time.
Women even got the right to vote in Colorado, Utah,
Idaho, and Wyoming in the 1800's.
Decades before American universal suffrage.
- Huh, kinda makes me proud to be from the west.
- I thought you're from Virginia.
- West Virginia.
- Movie westerns have to take place
after a Mad Max type Armageddon.
That's the only way they make sense.
Because what would we do
if we ran out of electricity and laws?
We'd probably try to adapt to it,
by doing whatever pioneer-y stuff
we think people used to do,
but we'd also hang on to a lot
of our current societies key features.
Misogyny, gun violence, dental hygiene.
- Yeah, and lots of other stuff too, like vitamins.
- Oh, yeah.
- I mean all those cowboys just look like
tall handsome Hollywood actors.
Their diet is just whiskey.
- Which would have killed you in the actual old west.
Modern whiskey is merely poison,
but before congress passed the Bottled in Bond act in 1897,
there were no rules.
You could put any old junk in whiskey,
random other alcohols, varnish, sulfuric acid.
Also, most westerns show people
drinking sarsaparilla, all the time, but...
- Wait, I know this one, sarsaparilla
that's like a Hays Code thing right,
it's Hollywood for whiskey.
- Or it's a distant future society,
where sarsaparilla has become a popular fad.
- Oh like right now with kombucha, or snapchat, or fascism.
- All movie westerns make sense
if they're after a Mad Max type Armageddon.
That's why there's cookie cutter type towns,
healthy people and animals, everybody's armed to the teeth.
- And black cowboys like in Unforgiven.
I'm cowboy Morgan Freeman, a historical impossibility.
- Actually there were a lot of black cowboys in the old west
and basically every western ignores it, except Unforgiven.
- And Blazing Saddles.
- Oh, yeah.
- Piss on you, I'm working for Mel Brooks.
- Not in the face!
- Man, that movie is all over the time stream.
- Mel Brooks is so cool.
- Yeah, he's the best.
- I'm tired of ruining cowboy movies,
let's talk about Spaceballs.
You wanna talk about Spaceballs?
- I mean, I guess, why Spaceballs?
- Cause this is a dream, Alex.
My dream.
(Dramatic Music)
- Spaceballs. 1987.
Co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks.
- It's the only thing I've used this tablet for,
in like a year.
- It doesn't look like anything to me.
- Hey you wanna talk about Spaceballs?
- I showed my newborn child Spaceballs.
- It's so good.
- So good!
(Western Music)
(Peppy Music)
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