I don’t think there’s a film genre that’s more American than the Western. And no other filmmaker is as synonymous with the Western than John Ford. Ford directed movies in a wide range of genres but it’s the Westerns he made (many with his favorite star, John Wayne) that he’s best remembered for. He immortalized both Wayne and Monument Valley, the location of many of his classics, in works like Stagecoach, Fort Apache and The Searchers. I love Westerns. If there’s one type of film I hope to make before I die, it’d be a Western so Ford is definitely one of my favorites. And it was when I started studying his films more closely in high school and college that the first clear model for what a viable filmmaking trajectory for an Asian American might be started to emerge in my mind. Let me explain.

John Ford Point in Monument Valley

You have to first understand that during this period (late ‘80s/early ‘90s), there weren’t too many “successful” Asian American filmmakers in Hollywood that a young kid with similar aspirations could emulate. There was really only Wayne Wang, but his whole career felt like an anomaly; an exception to the rule. In a way, this absence is what led me to really embrace the work of a Caucasian director like Sam Fuller who to me seemed like he had done more to further images of our people on screen than anyone else—Asian or otherwise.

Then, came John Ford. This may seem like a confusing choice because as far as I know, Ford never made a film that featured a significant Asian character. But Ford was Irish American–fiercely and proudly so. And he brought that aspect of his identity into all of his films whether they were directly about the Irish or not. It was the way he tried to do this which really provided me with the guidelines for how an Asian American might navigate through this same minefield decades later. Yes, I realize there’s a big difference between being Irish and being Asian—despite the discrimination they faced, the Irish are still Caucasians and can assimilate in a way we can’t. But in general, I think these lessons are still largely applicable.

John Ford was one of the original filmmakers who really pioneered this idea of “one for them, one for me.” The thinking behind this is that you do a commercial film that will make the studio happy (in Ford’s case it was usually his Westerns) and that will allow you to alternate those with lower-budget, personal films that may not be as commercial. Contemporary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh have acknowledged that directors like Ford have inspired them to take the same approach to their work. Even my fellow Offender Justin tries to mix up the bigger studio projects like the Fast & Furious franchise with smaller indies like Finishing The Game.

What was unique about Ford’s smaller, personal projects was that he made a conscious effort to tell Irish stories. This was during a time when most ethnic filmmakers went the opposite way–denying their heritage and trying to reinforce their “American-ness.” But in films like The Informant, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man and others, Ford unabashedly embraced his Irish-ness. Some of these passion projects even became huge commercial and critical successes (How Green Was My Valley won the Academy Award for Best Picture), but he would not have been able to make them had he not also approached his commercial studio projects with the same care and level of craft. And had he not decided to make a star of a fellow Irishman named John Wayne.

Wayne was not a star before he met Ford. Although he had a significant part in one film directed by Raoul Walsh, Wayne was basically a stuntman and bit player. In fact, several studio executives and filmmakers told him he’d never make it in Hollywood. But Ford rightly saw that elusive movie star quality in him when no one else could. I suspect that the fact that Wayne was also Irish American played into Ford’s decision to try to groom him into a star. I think Ford knew that for the type of films he wanted to make, he needed to create a star who would not only be devoted to him, but bring that rugged “Irish-ness” he was looking for. Basically, Ford was looking for his screen alter ego. This is just conjecture on my part—I’ve never heard any film historian talk about this, but I think the filmic evidence supports it.

Ford first cast Wayne as the lead in his classic 1939 Western Stagecoach. You can see Ford deliberately working to turn Wayne into a star in this film (and he did—both the movie and Wayne were huge hits). Look at the following sequence below. This is our first introduction to Wayne. The way Ford shot him with such care; the way the camera moves in so quickly on Wayne that it goes out of focus because it can barely contain its exhilaration–it’s not an exaggeration to say that this single shot turned Wayne into a star:

And Ford didn’t stop there. Throughout Wayne’s career, Ford gave the actor some of his best roles and allowed him to mature and grow which, in turn, allowed him to remain a star. Even back then, Wayne had a reputation for being very right wing and slightly racist and what did Ford do? He used that in his masterpiece The Searchers where Wayne is playing a version of this persona—a racist Civil War veteran who both hates and understands the Indians who have slaughtered his family and kidnapped his young niece. He becomes obsessed with rescuing his niece; spending years tracking her down. When he finally finds her, she is a teen who has assimilated into the Indian tribe. She is basically one of them now and instead of saving her, Wayne decides he needs to kill her because she has become what he most hates.

This is pretty edgy stuff for a Hollywood film from the 1950s—the audience is being asked to identify with a racist protagonist who is filled with such hate and anger, yet we also sympathize with him. Aside from Citizen Kane, I think The Searchers may arguably be the most influential American film ever made. It ushered in a new sub-genre: the rescue narrative where the protagonist must enter a foreign and hostile world to rescue an innocent (usually a girl). That’s basically the plot of everything from Star Wars to Taxi Driver to this year’s surprise hit Taken. Here’s a short clip from an AFI special where directors Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg talk about the influence of The Searchers:

Making and keeping Wayne a star allowed Ford to tackle a highly personal project like The Quiet Man which a studio may never have green-lit otherwise. In that film, Wayne plays a disgraced Irish American boxer who returns to his ancestral hometown in Ireland to escape his past. It’s the type of drama that doesn’t look commercial on paper unless you have a John Wayne in the lead. In turn, it was also a great role for Wayne that allowed him to show other colors (like his vulnerability) that helped him stretch as an actor.

Watching and studying Ford’s films inspired me to believe that there was a way to apply his philosophy to our careers as Asian Americans trying to break through in Hollywood. It made me think that there might be a way to create our own stars (and this is key because Ford made John Wayne, he didn’t wait for Hollywood to find someone for him) and to find a way to balance commercial work with smaller films that could deal more directly with the Asian American experience.

But even in his “non-Irish” films, I think you can feel that fighting Irish spirit in every frame of his work. Take The Grapes of Wrath, for example. You can see the very real empathy Ford shows for the downtrodden class. His sympathy is always with the underdog and I think this largely comes from his background as an Irish American. Check out this fantastic speech that Henry Fonda gives in the film. You can put this very speech into the mouth of a character in a contemporary film today and it would still be relevant:

“Well, maybe it’s like Casey says. Fella ain’t got a soul of his own. Just a little piece of a big soul. One big soul that belongs to everybody… I’ll be around in the dark—I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look—wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be there in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be there in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry, and they know supper’s ready, and when people are eatin’ the stuff they raised, and livin’ in the houses they built, I’ll be there, too.”

Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath

Or this dialogue that Jane Darwell speaks at the very end of the film:

“Rich fellers come up. They die. Their kids ain’t no good and they die out. But we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. Can’t wipe us out. Can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, ’cause we’re the people!”

I believe these films only work as well as they do because they were made by someone who knew what it meant to be an outsider. It’s interesting because I think our community sometimes has a tendency to criticize our artists for not being “Asian” enough. When Fast & Furious came out, Justin got some criticism for not including more Asians. Even with this blog, some people have told me they don’t really think it’s Asian American because we write about non-Asian related subjects. But my philosophy, and this I can also attribute to learning from the work of John Ford, is that everything I do is Asian American because that’s who I am. I’m proud of who I am and that identity is an ingrained part of me so that even if I choose to write a story that’s set in 19th Century England, there will still be an Asian American perspective there. How could there not?

Even if I hadn’t found Ford, it wouldn’t have stopped me from pursuing the career I’m pursuing. But because I did discover his work and he showed me a concrete example of one possible path that I can follow (and believe me, it’s still a hard path), it gave me more hope that, yes, this dream might be within my reach. And for that, I say thank you to Mr. John Ford.