Portland Freelance Writer

This blog post is the first of several examples of great writing (in my opinion).  As a freelance writer, I wanted to share the kind of writing that inspires me.

Today I’m writing about Unforgiven, one of my most favorite films.  It stars Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Jaimz Woolvett, Richard Harris, and Frances Fisher.  William Munny (Eastwood), a former train robber and mad killer, is called out of “retirement” by The Schofield Kid (Woolvett) to kill two cowboys, one of whom attacks a prostitute Delilah (Anna Levine).   Her fellow sex worker, Strawberry Alice (Fisher), offers a huge reward to anyone who kills both cowboys.  Munny is long out of practice with gunfighting  (he can’t even shoot straight anymore), so he brings along his old partner Ned Logan (Freeman).  Munny, Ned, and the Kid, though, are unprepared for the sheer brutality of the town’s sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Hackman).

Unforgiven uses the trappings of a Western to tell a tale of regret, hypocrisy, and coming to terms with the past.  I say that last bit deliberately … I don’t think any character finds redemption in this film.  I believe the screenwriter, David Webb Peoples, wrote the film as a repudiation of the Old West’s reputation for romance, honor, and clear-cut morality.

Here is one of my most favorite passages in the film:

Will Munny:  I ain’t like that no more. I ain’t the same, Ned. Claudia, she straightened me up, cleared me of drinkin’ whiskey and all. Just ’cause we’re goin’ on this killing, that don’t mean I’m gonna go back to bein’ the way I was. I just need the money, get a new start for them youngsters. Ned, you remember that drover I shot through the mouth and his teeth came out the back of his head? I think about him now and again. He didn’t do anything to deserve to get shot, at least nothin’ I could remember when I sobered up.

Ned Logan: You were crazy, Will.

Will Munny: Yeah, no one liked me. Mountain boys all thought I was gonna shoot ‘em out of pure meanness.

Ned Logan: Well, like I said, you ain’t like that no more.

Will Munny: That’s right. I’m just a fella now. I ain’t no different than anyone else.  No more.

—

I saw Unforgiven in the theater with my Dad when it came out in 1992.  I was a senior in high school, learning about elegies in my English class, and I realized that Unforgiven was definitely an elegy.   The film resonated with me because graduating high school was an elegiac experience for me … I was ending the first major milestone in my life with people I had known since I was five.  And yet, despite the fact that I’d spent 13 years with my classmates, I didn’t know any of them.   I felt sad at the time because I knew the end of high school was also the end of my childhood.

Of course, that type of teenage-angsty-melancholia passes fairly quickly.  And now, nearly 20 years after the film came out, I can definitely look back at my 17-year old self and say, “I ain’t like that no more!”

Which films inspire you?  What kind of impact have they had on you at different points of your life?

Here’s the trailer for the film (in HD):