Austrian Oscar magnet Christoph Waltz has already starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Dead for a Dollar. Both western films, of course.
But what the Genre of cowboys and gunslingers When it comes to this, Waltz has his own opinion, as he revealed in an interview last year.
Western yes, but only with spaghetti
In an interview with Panorama, Waltz admitted that he prefers Italian Westerns to their American counterparts:
The Western genre was a formative experience for me: when I watched these films as a child, I learned the difference between good and evil. But all the American stuff bored me, and to be honest, I have to say, For me the real westerns are only Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Although I never understood what spaghetti had to do with it.
Fans of the American western variant will have to be very brave, because it didn’t stop there. Waltz also unpacked a particularly hot take about cowboy icon John Wayne, who shaped the genre with films like The Marshal and Rio Bravo:
Maybe you get the impression that all cowboys are the same because many actors have played them as if they had to follow the archetype. Like the ones who wear a hat and feel like John Wayne. […] I always hated that. I mean, if you’re John Wayne and you’re playing a cowboy, why do you have to play John Wayne? Just playing the part is enough. The actor has to disappear into the character and not become the character.
If you want to see for yourself whether and how Waltz does things differently, you can catch Django Unchained on Netflix with the VoD lasso or stream Dead for a Dollar on Amazon Prime Video.
Podcast: 8 brilliant westerns that are worth watching, and not just for Yellowstone fans
Whether thanks to series hits like Yellowstone and 1883 or Tarantino masterpieces like Django Unchained: the Western genre is experiencing a popularity like never before. For all fans, we have selected the best Westerns that you can stream right now.
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The 8 Western highlights presented on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and MUBI include both absolute classics and lesser-known insider tips. There is something for every genre fan: Our recommendations cover a full 55 years of Western history between 1964 and 2019.