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I've been haunted by the opening of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West since I first watched it about a month ago. I had a dream about it yesterday while napping. I found it online and I thought I'd present it here as part of some random trivia. It runs a bit long, but it's genius. You can definitely see how Leone influenced modern directors like Tarantino in the dramatic intensity department.

RANDOM TRIVIA: After making his stunning American civil war epic "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Leone had intended to retire from making Westerns, believing he had said all he wanted to say. When Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda, his favorite actor with whom he had wanted to work for virtually all of his career, Leone accepted this offer. Leone commissioned Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento – film critics, who later became directors – to help him develop the film in late 1966. The men spent much of the following year watching and discussing numerous classic Westerns such as High Noon, The Iron Horse, The Comancheros, and The Searchers at Leone's house, and constructed a story made up almost entirely of "references" to American Westerns. The opening sequence is an homage to that seen in High Noon. Actor Al Murlock, the shaggy-haired bandit, committed suicide during the film's production by throwing himself out of a hotel window.


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