The West News

The Big Gundown

• 11 Sep 2007

The shoot-out. As both Shoot Em Up and 3:10 to Yuma demonstrate this week, this is one of those dramatic situations that's essentially cinematic. Writers, painters and playwrights might convey something of the tension and excitement, but none of them can compete with the full-blown experience of the expertly staged movie gunfight. That said, it was a novelist who started it all. Owen Wister's "The Virginian" was published in 1902, and set the template for what became the standard climax of the Read more