Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

While gushing over the new renaissance of the Western one of PEOPLE WARNER's top publicity vice-presidents (or most likely his assistant, who provided all the quotes while he played with his keyboard) stumbles and falls over the truth -- the only way such typists ever encounter it:

Hollywood has also lost its teeming cavalry of saddle-up stars and stuntmen. Peter Fonda, who directed the fine western The Hired Hand in the 1970s and appears in the new Yuma, recalls that before shooting began, "they had what's called cowboy camp. A lot of the younger actors hadn't shot a pistol, didn't know how to ride horse. You know, it's hard to make a horse hit a mark."

Dick, we could say something -- but then you'd probably lash out at us insisting GUNS CAUSED COLUMBINE!!!!!, or that MICKEYMOUSE NIXON was a hero, or some such synergistic neurosis, so we won't say what we think this says.

"Americans don't like the past," says Andrew Dominik, the New Zealand-born writer-director of Jesse James. "They're O.K. with future and the present, but they can't remember anything before 1980." They see the western as a historical costume drama--Merchant Ivory in chaps.

Sorta like ad-blurbists, n'est-ce pas? Although you can remember back to 1967 -- and Bonnie and Clyde.

Dick, isn't it disappointing you couldn't have plugged another movie for PEOPLE WARNER?