Jon Favreau Revives the Western in Cowboys & Aliens

What movies or eras of Western films did you look to for inspiration? Even without the cowboy get up, Daniel Craig looks like a throwback to the yesteryears of film.

Jon Favreau:  He looks remarkably like Steve McQueen did in the 70's.  It's interesting, because you think of him as James Bond, but the minute you put him in - you'll see him in his whole kit, as he calls it - his whole outfit - and he feels like the type of actor that you could cast back in the 60's or 70's.  And we looked at films like The Professionals, Magnificent Seven.  But the first meeting I had, along with Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof and with Steven - he screened The Searchers for us.  So I definitely watched and went through all the John Ford films I could get my hands on.  And also some [Sergio] Leone.  

Each era did their version of a very similar structured story type, so we tried to preserve those archetypes in those characters, and figured it's time for our generation to take that class historian, and show it through our perspective.  And there was a big gap, because I don't think people accepted the Western the same way that they had pre-Vietnam, just because it felt a little insensitive, racially, at times, in who the bad guys are and what they represent.  As archetypes, it all worked very well, but as people became more socially conscious, it didn't - some people found it distasteful until you lost a whole tradition of the Western because it became - it felt anachronistic. 

Then action movies took over, or cop movies or vigilante movies, or sci-fi, would take those archetypes and stick them in space.  Now we kind of go back to the old Western and because now you have a bad guy that are aliens, it's not racially divisive anymore.  And actually we have -the story's about the Apaches and the cowboys being forced to deal with one another.  So we tried to start it off with this - as real as we could historically, and as real as we could, in the context of the Western, the traditional Western film.  And it's interesting to see how these characters are forced to interact with one another based on this looming threat.  It was an expression during the Cold War that said the only way Russia and the United States were going to get along and make peace is if a spaceship came and attacked the Earth.  You know - a common enemy is - it's interesting to examine all those characters in a strained situation, and try to play that out as real as we can.

There aren't many studios or directors making Westerns these days. Did you turn to anyone for help and guidance?

Jon Favreau: Yeah, we had - well, Ron Howard, certainly.  You know, with The Missing and Far and Away - just a student of it.  And Spielberg knows; I think when he was 16 he met John Ford and got some advice from him.  So that's been it.  And then watching them, listening to commentaries.  There's even like, online - I've listened to that whole series of online Western mythology of the Western -  iTunes U.  There's a whole series from Wellesley in that.  One of Alex's old professors, his partner's old professors, would show a Western and then talk about the context and the mythology and studying the genre of the Western.  So I've been hitting it from all ends - just watching them, commentaries, talking to the experts, and then even listening to lectures on it.

Have you been able to inject any of your own nostalgia for the genre or classic filmmaking into this movie?

Jon Favreau: I think I grew up on it, so it's in my bones.  So that's my context.  And I think you're seeing a lot of people of my generation - I mean, that's who we had.  That's what we've come up with.

Terry Leonard's our Second Unit Director.  And he's - you know, he worked with John Wayne and Yakima Canutt, you know, all the people that - he was a stunt man for a long time in Westerns.  So he'd been around all of it.  And as a matter of fact, we hired, well, it was one of his roping partners.  Brendon Wayne is here today.  That's John Wayne's grandson. Then we had the Taylor Brothers, and father.  You know, when you say you're doing a Western, people are lining up on the stunt man side, the writer's side - they don't make Westerns.  And there are people who came up doing them.  And so we have people from all over the country who came out just to be in this, because you don't get to make one. 

Terry had switched from Westerns to car movies, like the Fast and Furious stuff, because in the 70's, they stopped making the Westerns, and he switched over to being a stunt coordinator for car movies.  And now to be able to do a Western, with all the horse falls and all these things that he knows how to do in his sleep, it's great to have that, you know, that resource to tap into.  And they're off shooting right now, while we're shooting this stuff.  So that's been a really good education, as well.

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