Walter Hill still a man of the West

GROWING up in Long Beach in the 1940s and ‘50s, writer-director Walter Hill and his younger brother could always be found at the local movie theater. “I always loved movies,” he says, “but I loved westerns the best.”

During his nearly 40-year career, the writer-director has carried on the western tradition shaped by such filmmakers as John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh and Anthony Mann.

“I always say somehow, it is like imprinting with animals -- you take the little duck and put it next to a clock, and it thinks the clock is its mother. My brother and I, it seemed all we ever did was go to westerns as kids.”

This week, American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica is offering a tribute to Hill that features his latest western, the two-part miniseries “Broken Trail,” which airs June 25 and 26 on cable’s AMC, as well as two of his other sagebrush sagas: 1980’s “The Long Riders,” which focuses on Jesse and Frank James, and 1993’s “Geronimo: An American Legend.” Rounding out the retrospective are Hill’s directorial debut, 1975’s “Hard Times,” and the 1989 drama “Johnny Handsome.” Hill will appear at the Aero on Thursday and Friday.

The Cinematheque, says Hill, suggested films for the retrospective, and he agreed. Not that the features selected are necessarily his top picks.

“People always want to know what your favorite films are, and I resist that,” says the 64-year-old Hill over bacon and toast at the Polo Lounge.

“I always say, ‘The next one.’ It is complicated. They are not simply aesthetic experiences. They are social experiences -- an investment -- and sometimes you had a good time doing them and sometimes you didn’t have a good time, and that clouds your judgment.”

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Cable guy

HILL, who hasn’t had a hit movie in years, has found a new outlet for his craft on cable. In recent years, he has won the Emmy and Directors Guild of America awards for directing the impressive first episode of HBO’s western series, “Deadwood.” And now he has “Broken Trail,” which stars Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church.

AMC, he says, chose “Broken Trail” as its first miniseries “not simply out of their love or reverence for westerns. They find that their basic ratings go up when they air westerns.”

It was the Oscar-winning Duvall, with whom he worked on “Geronimo,” who sent him the script penned by Alan Geoffrion.

“Duvall had developed it with Alan,” says Hill. “I thought it was a good story, and I was looking to do something that wasn’t biographical. I wasn’t constricted by the historical aspect. If you do a movie about [Wild Bill] Hickok, he has to go to the No. 10 Saloon and he’s going to get shot in the back of the head ... and Geronimo is going to go to Florida. I wanted to do something that maybe had a little bit more open canvas and also something that wasn’t as blood-and-thunder as other things I had done.”

Duvall plays an aging cowboy who teams with his estranged nephew (Church) to drive a herd of mustangs to their buyer, knowing that if the venture fails, it will bring financial ruin to both men. Along the way, they end up taking care of five young Chinese women sold into slavery who were on their way to being delivered to a brothel in a rough-and-tumble mining town. The town’s madam discovers what’s happened to the girls and sends a group of vicious henchmen to bring them back.

“The thing that struck me was that these are men who lead not particularly remarkable lives up to that point, who take on a situation for reasons of family and finance that is an enormously difficult thing to do -- drive these horses for 8- or 900 miles,” muses Hill.

“Through fate, they become the unwitting and unwilling protectors of these five girls, and this brings out complicated human reactions. They are not always perfect in their decision-making, but they are basically, despite their weaker moments, real decent guys, and the situation brings out the best in them.”

Though the film was shot on a TV budget and schedule in Alberta, Canada, Hill decided to shoot it big. “I am going to let it breathe and let it play. It’s not a hard-driving, fast-paced type of thing. We are out there in God’s country, and we’re out there with God’s creatures, and the herd [of horses] became endlessly fascinating to me.”

One scene he’s most proud of occurs when Church’s character has to put one of the horses down by shooting it after it hurts its leg.

“So little is said, and I thought Tom handled it with just the right amount of purpose -- to get it over with, to dispatch the situation as smoothly as possible and at the same time feel the pain. To me it is almost a microcosm of what the entire sensibility of [the movie] is about. It’s the working man, good at what he does but having a larger sensibility. I think if you apply that to the situation involving the young Chinese women, it kind of encapsulates it all.”

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Walter Hill In-Person Tribute

Where: American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave.

When: Thursday through Saturday

Price: $6 to $9

Contact: 323-466-3456 or go to www.Americancinematheque.com

Schedule

Thursday: “Broken Trail,” 7:30 p.m.

Friday: “Hard Times,” “Johnny Handsome,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: “The Long Riders,” “Geronimo: An American Legend,” 7:30 p.m.