Ranch movies

The ZX Ranch, headquartered in Paisley, covers 1.3 million acres.

You may want to get up off the sofa and just drive down to Paisley. Its scenery rivals that of the movies, but you won’t see much Western-style love and rivalry.

For that you need to get back on the sofa.

The 1800s ranch-style love quadrangle in The Big Country (1958) involves characters played by Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker and Charlton Heston. The movie’s downright un-neighborly rivalry is fought out by Charles Bickford and Burl Ives (who won a Supporting Role Oscar).

“Ranch raunch” appears in the form of an uncouth lout aptly named “Buck” who is earthily acted by The Rifleman’s Chuck Connors. Buck comes into the family cabin and asks his father, “You want me, Pa?” Dad answers, “Before you was born I did.”

The Big Country appears to take place in the American Southwest and includes scenes of Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Most of it, however, was shot in California.

You may recognize Jerome Moross’s terrific score (nominated for an Oscar).

Legends of the Fall (1994) supposedly takes place in the early 1900s in Montana, although it was shot in Canada with a small dose of Jamaica. John Toll won an Oscar for his Legends cinematography even though the scenery is in the wrong place.

Legends’ rivalry constitutes a love triangle that’s a quadrangle until one of three competing brothers gets killed in the Great War, sort of a complicated romance simplified by the universal blue-eyed beauty of the Ludlow brothers (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas) and their Colonel father (Anthony Hopkins).

Colonel Ludlow has a good line for J.R. Simplot who controls the ZX, but only owns 73,000 of its acres outright. The rest is leased from Uncle Sam. “Screw’m! Screw’m all! Screw the gov’m’nt!”

Amazon.com says that James Horner’s Legends music “sounds the way a Montana sunset looks: big, wide, far-reaching, and full of color.” You decide.

Dimitri Tiomkin was nominated for a Best Music Oscar for Giant (1956), a movie set in the mid-1900s. Director George Stevens won an Oscar for the movie.

Rock Hudson (nominated for an Oscar) plays Bick Benedict, owner of a Texas ranch called Reata, a piddly 595,000 acres, proving that some things are bigger in Oregon than in Texas. Giant really was shot in Texas on a great cattle-and-then-oil-ridden plain with the Benedicts’ mansion sticking up out of the dust with one scrawny tree by the BBQ pit.

Bick and Mrs. Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor) are part of the love quadrangle as is their daughter (Carroll Baker). Jet Rink (James Dean, also nominated for an Oscar) is Bick’s rival in love, land, and oil. After Jet discovers the slippery black stuff, Uncle Bawley says, “Bick, you shoulda shot that fella a long time ago. Now he’s too rich to kill.”

Giant, 201 minutes long, has time to examine racial injustice. Bick’s fight with a racist diner cook is worth every minute.

Rancho Deluxe (1975) is my family’s favorite but is not a family film. It’s very much for grown-ups — Western grown-ups. Back-East critics just didn’t get it but, being mere city folks, they probably haven’t seen or smelled a ranch.

Rancho Deluxe is a satire. The pretentious owners of the movie’s big Montana ranch are John and Cora Brown (Clifton James and Elizabeth Ashley), former owners of a Schenectady beauty salon. He has a prize bull and rides around in a helicopter. She wears leather fringe and tries to stir up Gothic ranch action with her two dumb ranch hands, Curt and Burt.

Brown’s rivals are Jack (Jeff Bridges), a rich kid from back east, and Cecil (Sam Waterston), a “100 percent American Indian.” They shoot Brown’s cattle with a Sharps .50-caliber buffalo rifle and then cut them up with a chain saw. Brown hires a detective (Slim Pickens) to find the rustlers.

Curt (Harry Dean Stanton) falls hard for the detective’s drop-dead-gorgeous sidekick while Jack and Cecil have some foot-stomping, hip-grinding times with two cute cowgirls.

Rancho Deluxe brought together director Frank Perry, writer Thomas McGuane and musician Jimmy Buffet. It is a perfect film. The soundtrack is without compare, as is the scenery.

Everyone on the ZX will understand Cecil’s father when he spies his son’s glorious new pickup truck and says, “I’ve seen more of this state’s poor cowboys, railroaders and Indians go broke buyin’ pickup trucks. The poor people of this state are dope fiends for pickup trucks! ... And there’s a sickness here worse than alcohol and dope. It is the pickup truck death!”