Hucksters, myth and the selling of Bill Cody

Press, 26 March 1979, Page 12

Hucksters, myth and the selling of Bill Cody

• What a pistol shot that 'Buffalo Bill is — watch him [toss those glass bails in the lair and bang, bang, no more 1 glass balls. How does he do jit? With grapeshot, that’s how. He can’t miss, only nobody's Ito know. After all. Bill is the Wild West’s living legend. I Can’t have him exposed, get : upset and have his flowing I blond wig come askew. Robert Altman is a great one for taking the mickey out of American myths. In “Buffalo Bill and the Indians,” at the Academy, be delightfully pastes up a comic cutout of an inept, drunk, womanising frontier scout turned showman.

Dime novelists had a lot io do with inventing Buffalo Bill, and Altman re-invents him, along with Annie Oakley and a travelling crew intent on showing the West as it wasn’t. It’s all show business, Bill (Paul Newman) assures Annie when she pleads for a little truth once in a while. The image can’t be changed. He has a better sense of history than the rest of them. Sitting Bull may be dignified, he may be able to make the grey mare dance when no-one else can, he may cross the uncrossable river without getting wet, but where is the glamour in that? Bill Cody’s producer, a master of the spoken word, even talks of “extraordinable” ideas and “special inventions.” He is always worried that “the Cody Cavalcade is not commercable enough.” Great ideas are bandied about. Sitting Bull, leader of Custer’s killers, must be interested in show business, or he never would have become a chief. The Indians can be given slower horses to make the cowboys look better. Bill may have been invented by someone else, and that someone (Ned Buntline, played by Burt Lancaster) is always there to remind him, but his real ability is in expanding the legend by learning how to lie big. He has nothing personal against the Indians, “just so long as they don’t live to

spoil the truth." He is the “true monarch of genuity,” his producer says. He is a big phoney. Bill acknowledges that “history is made with each

performance. Each time it comes out a little different.” He can’t have Bull coming in and telling the people about cowardly white men who can’t fight worth beans. ‘‘Welcome to show business,” he tells the old chief. “It ain’t that much different from real life.” Not much, it ain’t. As usual, Altman peppers his film with splendid cameo performances. There are opera singers, Bill’s passion, bursting into arias at the drop of a canary cage, a U.S. President who relies for all his spontaneous remarks on a prompter, buffaloes that run in front of Bill on cue and a music hall cast of hundreds. Most westerns have a feel of unrestricted room, but Alt-

man does an interesting thing with his West. Using telephoto lenses for most of the outdoor shots, he brings everything in the camp so close it feels almost claustrophobic. Plonked down in the wide open spaces, the showgrounds are a confined stage set where nothing is real. Then the actors are set loose, and proceed gleefully to cut Buffalo Bill down to size. All together now, cowboys stage left, Indians stage right. strike up the band and mix it up in grand style. Just make sure Bill’s wig doesn’t come off.

AT THE .CINEMA Stan Darling