Richard Farsnworth is an interesting character. When only a teenager he began his Hollywood career as a stunt man. He worked on about six dozen movies starting with the Marx Brothers
A Day at the Races (1937) and including
Gunga Din (1939),
Gone with the Wind (1939),
The Grapes of Wrath (1940),
The Ten Commandments (1956), and
Spartacus (1960). Being good with horses he was in a whole lot of Westerns from
The Outlaw and
Duel in the Sun to
Red River and
Fort Apache, from
The Lusty Men and
The Tin Star to
Cat Ballou and
Support Your Local Gunfighter, from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean to
Blazing Saddles and
High Plains Drifter. His last credit in the stunt department came in Claude Lelouch’s
Another Man, Another Chance in 1977 when Farnsworth was fifty-seven. His face had appeared on screen many times in those decades, usually credited as Dick Farnsworth, but he didn’t get a significant speaking part until Alan J. Pakula’s Neo Western
Comes a Horseman (1978) with Jane Fonda, James Caan, and Jason Robards. He was nominated for Oscar’s Best Supporting Actor, the year Christopher Walken won for
The Deer Hunter. Thus began his second career as a bonafide actor. While he had many memorable supporting turns he only really starred in two films over the next twenty years. One was his last film, David Lynch’s
The Straight Story, which saw him nominated as Best Actor. The other is
The Grey Fox.
The Grey Fox is the true story of Bill Miner who had gotten a 33-year prison sentence in San Quentin for robbing a stagecoach. That was one of the few times he got caught, and his pleasant demeanor got him nicknames like The Gentleman Bandit and The Grey Fox. When he was released in 1901 he was sixty years old and he made his way into Canada, which is when the movie finds him. After being inspired by Edwin S. Porter’s
The Great Train Robbery Miner pulled what is believed to be the first train robbery in Canada. I’m not sure who has the greater life story, Farnsworth or Miner, but both come together perfectly in
The Grey Fox which won seven of the thirteen Genie Awards it was nominated for including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor for Farnsworth.
The Grey Fox was on six MoFo ballots including a third place nod on way to 71 points.
In tone and vision these two entries could not be much further apart. If you’re not sure if you’ve seen
El Topo before you most likely haven’t, because if you saw any ten minutes of it they would almost surely be burned in your brain. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Acid Western is outrageous, profane, divine, beautiful, and horrific. It follows a gunman in black, played by the director himself, who is given a quest to defeat the four Gun Masters. But while there is gunplay, brutality, and blood – so much blood – there is also philosophy and more symbolism than you can shake a dwarf at. Perhaps the first true midnight movie it has enjoyed a cult-like appeal since it was released. Here in our countdown four souls voted for it, including three top ten nods with a second, a sixth, and a ninth place showing.