carly's great big doc holliday post
Apparently, myhappyface and I express our love through mutual blackmail. <3 This is part of a recent such event. It is extremely image heavy, and also contains me doing Literature Talk, and explaining 1880's slang. If you like Tombstone, or Val Kilmer, or in-depth discussion of literary devices in film, this post is your wet dream. If not, my feelings will not be hurt if you skip it.
Meet Doc Holliday.
He thinks poker is a decent way to make a living, and he likes the nightlife. Wine, women, song. He speaks sexy Latin, and can tell whether a woman's wearing a bustle or not just by touching her.
He doesn't like authority.
And he has a bit of a temper.
And he subconsciously touches his gun a lot. Do with that what you will.
Excuse him while he whips this out.
I really enjoy Disheveled!Drunk Doc. I registered, while watching the movie, that he drinks a lot. What I did not realize until I capped the film is how much he really drinks. Any time he's in a bar, he literally takes at least one drink in every shot. What I mean: say the camera pans on Doc, then to Wyatt for a moment, and then back on Doc. In those three shots, Doc takes at least two drinks.
The only thing he does more than drink is smoke, which is a bad idea because he's dying of tuberculosis. Omigod. That said: I love his expression in this shot so much.
Johnnie Ringo thinks, just because Doc is older and extremely inebriated and dying of TB, that he can rattle the old man. Doc feels differently.
Doc has been drinking and smoking and gambling for thirty-six hours straight. He knows how sick he is. He knows what's going to happen. He just can't help himself.
Which is why I find what happens next so interesting. The doctor comes, and he tells Doc what he already knows: that he's dying, and he needs to slow down, or he'll just die faster. Kate comes to him, and he tells her they need to redefine their relationship; he's prepared to tell her that they need to slow down, that he can't be this manic dervish all the time. It's odd, given how reckless he is, and his acquiescence when she tells him, "I knew it was nothing," is completely understandable.
Holliday is whistling, which is hilariously out of place in so many ways. First, it's a very somber moment for everyone but him; the Earps are walking into a confrontation that will almost certainly result in at least one death, but they must if they are to maintain order. Secondly, Doc is dying of consumption and does not have any extra air, and he's whistling. He just can't help himself.
Just like this. Holliday tends -- barrels -- toward chaos, and for him the waiting is a thousand times worse than anything that could happen during the gunfight, and so he has to, he can't help himself, from being the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Chaos reigns. Holliday is so manic and wild and desperate; when his gun is empty, and he cannot have the shot -- he has the shot, he always has the shot, but in this instance the gun cannot have the shot -- he stops, poses. He is in exactly the least desirable pose if you're trying to avoid a bullet; he makes himself as broad and open as possible. And he invites the Cowboy to shoot him, encourages him, "You're a daisy if you do."
This relates back to him pokering himself to collapse, and we're going to come back to it later. Put a pin in it.
I've already discussed the "I'm your huckleberry" scene, but let's look briefly at what Holliday's doing before Ringo forces his hand. He's sitting on the porch; it looks like the barber has actually started his work, but Doc is still very aware of everything that's going on. And it's not until Wyatt shows Ringo that he's unarmed that Doc gets up.
Job well done. Pack protected. A leonine stretch.
I have no real comments. I just wanted to look at this.
"What's it like to wear one of those?" My heart. His authority issues not withstanding, Wyatt is who Doc would like to be, had his life gone differently.
"I'm your huckleberry," which translates, in Leonard Cohen, to, "I'm your man." I can't decide if I would have liked that better.
I have given a lot of thought to why Holliday goes behind Wyatt's back to kill Ringo. It's a complicated issue, and it's really not answered clearly in the text. I mean, Holliday creates his own mythos, and he has already determined, as far back as their confrontation at the Oriental, that he has to kill him. So in a way it's self-serving, to kill this man he said he'd kill, to kill the challenger at his gates.
However. I can't believe that this isn't about Wyatt. Doc wasn't as sick as he said, but he still is very sick, and Wyatt's posse has been running ragged; I believe nothing was feigned when he fell off his horse. If he offered to go with Wyatt, sick as he was, Wyatt would have said no, or he would have been afraid because he knew he could not beat Ringo, and he would have said yes and felt guilty. And this is Wyatt's vendetta; it has to be Wyatt's kill. It has to look like it, to the Cowboys and maybe even to Wyatt's own posse . . . and spiritually it has to be that, for this wound to close. Doc doesn't ask Wyatt for the badge so that he can kill Ringo "legal this time;" he does it so that he can pretend to be Wyatt, so he can mark Ringo's felled body with Wyatt's symbol. This act is not about Doc; in this act, he is a vessel for Wyatt's reckoning.
And he's touching his gun again. I do the same thing when I have my keys in my pocket, and to my nose ring; just a little touch to make sure it's still there.
It looks like they're facing off to box, but Doc doesn't have his fists up, he's just still smoking!
They are shaking hands while riding horses. They are too manly to hug; this is the 1880's version of a high five. ALL BOYS ARE DORKS
Remember that thing we were putting a pin in, the whole Doc cannot help but to propel himself toward chaos thing? Oh, yeah, we're back to that.
In their first interaction, Ringo and Holliday know one another without having to be told. Doc says that Ringo reminds him of himself; it takes one to know one. Wyatt asks Doc to explain Ringo's mentality to him, and he does without pause. It's not because Doc is the smartest member of the posse, though that's true, as well, even though he usually hides it behind alcohol and one-liners. Doc understands what's wrong with Ringo because it's wrong with him, too. He could have been normal, but then his heart was broken, "the only thing [he] ever wanted" not just removed from him, but locked up beyond his reach forever, and "there is no normal life" anymore. He's become this frenetic, feral thing, endless appetites for women and cigarettes and alcohol and destruction.
But Doc isn't like Ringo. He has a sense of morality; he even has the sense, occasionally, to protect the sanctity of his own life. Wyatt, his friend, is his tether; if it weren't for Wyatt giving him hope and a decent example of what normal men are like, he would be Ringo. But Wyatt saves him from that, and this is why it's so important to Doc that Wyatt not see him die; that as he die, Wyatt be out living, be out continuing this example that has informed and (until now) saved his life. It doesn't matter what happens to him, but Wyatt needs to go on.
This is an extra-textual joke; Holliday has been quoted as saying he would die with his boots on. And here he is, dying in bare feet. "This is funny."
Oh. I forgot the most important, least literary thing. If this man were not semi-imaginary, and also dead of consumption, and he came up to me tomorrow and asked me to marry him, I'd totally do it. You know in The Invention of Lying, when Ricky Gervais tells Random Hot Blonde Chick that they have to have sex or the world will end, and she gets really earnest and says, "Do we have to do it here, or do we have time to get to a hotel?"
I'd probably lead with that.