Movie |
El Paso | Vietnam Veteran
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Budget 2,000,000 USD
Quentin Tarantino named his distributing company, Rolling Thunder Pictures, after this film. Rolling Thunder Pictures released B-movies, cult classics, independent films, exploitation movies, and foreign films. The company went under due to poor sales.
James Best initially turned down playing the role of the Texan because he objected to the profanity in the script. However, Best eventually agreed to play the part after he learned that both William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones were attached to the movie. Best put ice cubes under his cowboy hat to convey that his character was always sweating.
In the book "Schrader On Schrader" Paul Schrader who co-wrote the movie complains how the studio completely twisted his original version of the story. He wrote it as a critique of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and fascistic and racist attitudes in America. Rane was originally written as a white trash racist, with many similarities to Schrader's more famous character Travis Bickle (the main character of Taxi Driver (1976). Bickle, in fact, even makes a brief cameo in Schrader's original screenplay). In this version, Rane becomes a war hero without ever having fired a gun, and comes home to confront the Texas Mexican community. Rane's racist upbringing and hatred that grew in him in Vietnam, slowly come out. This version ends with Rane's indiscriminate slaughter of Mexicans, which was meant as a metaphor for Vietnam. Schrader concludes with a claim that he basically wrote a film about fascism, and the studio made a fascist film.
In his 1982 book 'Adventures in the Screen Trade,' William Goldman called an advance screening of this movie "the most violent sneak reaction of recent years... the audience actually got up and tried to physically abuse the studio personnel present among them."
Kris Kristofferson was set to star, but dropped out and the role was recast with William Devane.
"Major Charles Rane: I found them. Johnny: Who? Major Charles Rane: The men who killed my son. Johnny: I'll just get my gear. Major Charles Rane: They're in a whorehouse over in Juarez right now. There's the four that came into my home, and there's eight or ten others. Johnny: Let's go clean em' up."
"Candy: What the fuck are you doing? Johnny: I'm gonna kill a bunch of people."
