Billy the Kid always sat well with me when I first heard the legend as a boy.
I
was a mark for Young Guns in my teen years, and like to think, since I had a tele/vcr
and the tape in college, I helped sell the movie to Gen-Xers who never
spent much time thinking about it. My favorite scene is not on youtube,
but it features the gang at their moment of doubt in the upstairs of
the McSween house, surrounded by Murphy men and local military, and
Bowdre starts to lose it.
Charley Bowdre:
Hey, Billy. I've got to get out of here. I've got a wife. She's this little Mexican gal. Please, Billy.
William H. Bonney:
Charley, if you don't stand up and start whooping some ass, you ain't ever gonna see her again.
Charley doesn't make it, but there is that moment of cinema
where Charley starts shooting and yelling crazy, and Billy laughs and
shoots wildly with him. (this is roughly historically plausible during
the escape from McSween house.) Keifer, Doc, realizing he is
in the house of the insane, cuddles with his China doll. Keifer got a
second life during our days with the relatively pro-national security
state show, 24. Keifer's dad also plays the stereotype Executive in the
Hunger Games.
It's not lost on me that Charles Brewer, the
straight of the gang, aka Charlie Sheen, dies in the film, early when
Buckshot Roberts nails him.
And that's how I feel about voting in this election.
