The actor:	Monty Montgomery
The character:	The Cowboy
The film:	Mulholland Drive
The line:	“Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad.“

Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn, Dodge City), the 1930s Cowboy — “You know, out here the trail boss has sometimes even go to take the law into his own hands.” The cowboy is his own master, the vouchsafe of law and order because the only people he’ll see between his starting point and his destination are either his responsibility or people who are out to take his property. The cowboy as stoic American small businessman, just with a faster draw than the guy managing the family grocery store.

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne, Red River), the 1940s cowboy: “Ten years and I’ll have the Red River D on more cattle than you’ve looked at anywhere. I’ll have that brand on enough beef to feed the whole country. Good beef for hungry people. Beef to make ’em strong, make ’em grow. But it takes work, and it takes sweat, and it takes time, lots of time. It takes years.” The cowboy has a civic duty beyond merely doing right by his boss or the cows. He now dreams of nation-building, anachronistically rebuilding a nation that hasn’t faced either World War just yet. Nation-building also means capital, and he seeks a great reward for his great effort.

Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson, Giant), the 1950s cowboy: “Doctor, that sure is a beautiful animal.” No longer the trail boss trying to make good, no longer the rancher who can smell wealth with the wind on thousands of cattle backs, he is now the Texan land baron who makes the fiefdoms of medieval Europe seem puny and anemic. In his greatness and vastness, he is arrogant as well, believing that nothing is outside of his ability to purchase it. That means horses, but it also means women, and he believes that there’s nothing more noble in him than his ability to break both of them.

Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas, Hud), the 1960s cowboy: “It don’t take long to kill things, not like it takes to grow.” There are no Levittowns on the open range, but the spirit of it, the rapidity of a life where automobiles are necessities and manufacturing is reliable, has invaded the territory of cattlemen nonetheless. An old cowboy, a rancher who did everything the right way, is still forced to watch his legacy wither in front of him because of a modern son with hedonism and hatred in his heart.

Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne, The Cowboys), the 1970s cowboy: “Well, I have the inclination, the maturity, and the wherewithal, but unfortunately, I don’t have the time.” The cowboy can afford to be seen as a slightly ridiculous figure, although not necessarily to be trifled with. He can be part of the firm of riding the trail even if he’s the cook. He’s been diversified, even if he’s not the main character or the main focus. He’s old, an old-timer. He’s charming.

Frank Canton (Sam Waterston, Heaven’s Gate), the 1980s cowboy: “If we fail, the flag of the United States will fall.” Romance has been stripped away from the cowboy. Frank Canton is not home on the range, he does not go where the skies are not cloudy all day. He heads an “Association.” He commands life and death for people, not cows, and not of criminals but of immigrants whose propety he cannot wait to wrest away. He is a monster of capital, of corruption. He is maybe the most historically accurate cowboy we’ve seen in the movies so far.

Tristan Ludlow (Brad Pitt, Legends of the Fall), the 1990s cowboy: “Susannah, all we had is dead, as I am dead. Marry another.” The cowboy as a tragic figure, felled by modernity. Nostalgia for the cowboy himself as a symbol of a bygone Americana, a mythologized one where white officers and Native American warriors can work together to carve out a dynasty like benevolent Montanan Sutpens. Name him ‘Tristan,’ which means ‘sorrow.’ Make him romantic and beautiful and doomed.

The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery, Mulholland Drive), the 2000s cowboy: “Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad.” The cowboy is now a messenger. He doesn’t ride anything. He walks into a setting and makes a series of opaque statements, except for this last one, a threat. The cowboy is recognizable first, and at first we might expect he only wears this costume for its distinctive quality; he may as well walk out dressed as a pierrot or wearing one of those costumes that make you look like you’re riding an ostrich. But he is, like most of the cowboys back in the 1930s, someone else’s man. We’re so used to the cowboy as self-employed, a renegade in his heart, that we forget he’s most likely employed to keep dumb animals from wandering around the prairie for hundreds of miles at a stretch. His job is about slaughter.