Cowboy junkies

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[Melancholy-yet-heroic music throughout]

[SUPER: Warner Brothers pictures logo.]

[Sepia footage of old-time rodeos.]

V/O OF CLEM: Yeah, you was pretty good in your day, old-timer. Useta be folks’d come from miles around to see the steer-ropin’ and the bronco-bustin’. But when they come away, all they useta talk about –

[Sepia closeup of men in cowboy outfits with garish white makeup on their faces and red balls on their noses, jumping over a fence as a bull comes by.]

— was them rodeo clowns.

[Sepia footage of one skinny rodeo clown pretending to sweep up after a bull, giving mock bows to the audience, and later distracting bulls from fallen riders.]

There weren’t nothin’ like ‘em on either side o’ the Pecos. But one in particular they all talked about was you: Zeke, king of the clowns.

[Sepia footage close-up of the skinny clown squeezing his big red nose and mouthing the words “honk honk” and grinning.]

Until the accident.

[Slow-motion sepia footage of the skinny clown getting rear-ended by a bull and flying twelve feet in the air. CUT TO ZEKE [CLINT EASTWOOD], today, a flinty, ornery cuss in a Stetson, standing in some kind of old-timey office or something; REVERSE ANGLE of callow, middle aged CLEM, also dressed cowboy-like but neither flinty nor ornery and certainly not a cuss.]

I think it’s time you hung up yer spurs, Zeke. Figuratively speaking, of course, since you basically just spend your days hangin’ around the office and lookin’ ornery and drinkin’ Ensure and watchin’ “The Golden Girls. “

ZEKE: You always was a little pissant, Clem. Now remind where it is I live again and what my name is so I can get the hell out of here.

[ZEKE angrily clatters his walker and makes for the door.]

[Music swells. SUPER: A NEW FILM BY CLINT EASTWOOD.]

V/O OF CLEM: Zeke, I need your help.

[CUT TO ZEKE in some wood-paneled place that looks something like a lodge or a sheriff’s office, who knows, talking to CLEM.]

ZEKE: You want me to get your boy, this half-Mexican kid, out of the clutches of gangsters in Mexico so you can get money out of his rich mother?

CLEM: I’m surprised you still remember all that.

ZEKE: I’m readin’ it off a damn piece o’ paper. How the hell you think I can remember that if I can’t remember my own name? It’s Zeb or somethin’, right?

CLEM: Zeke. But you were close!

[CUT TO shots of ZEKE driving his pick-up through south Texas.]

V/O OF ZEKE: This ain’t gonna be no piece o’ cake. I’m a hundred an’ three years old this Tuesday an’ my prostate’s the size of a grapefruit.

[CUT TO a couple of Mexicans getting ZEKE’s Rascal out of the back of the pick-up.]

[CUT TO ZEKE rolling in his Rascal through a deserted Mexican bar.]

ZEKE: You can come out, Rafael. I’m a – [reads off index card] a friend of your Paw.

[RAFAEL, a photogenic young Latino looking like a young Lou Diamond Phillips and wearing a bandana, pops out from behind a booth.]

RAFAEL: Hey, old man, I keel you and steal your scooter chair!

ZEKE: Don’t sass me! I got a taser and a Life Alert.

[CUT TO ZEKE and RAFAEL riding in the pick-up with a fighting cock.]

RAFAEL: They say when you were young you were muy macho, old man. Like my rooster, Cialis.

ZEKE: Yeah, well, things change. Now when I go to pee I gotta bring a squeegee and a blow dryer.

RAFAEL: That’s pretty funny, old man.

ZEKE: Once a clown, always a clown.

RAFAEL: I introduce you to this lady who I think you will like. She tell me once I look like George Chakiris, so I know she is old like you.

ZEKE: Good, the audience will relate to a 103-year-old man flirting with a woman in her 60s. Wait, did I just say that out loud?

[CUT TO what looks like every jacal from a ‘50s Western, home of MARTA, a beautiful Mexican woman of 60 with hair dyed jet black and drawn-on eyebrows. MARTA and ZEKE regard each other with obvious interest. ZEKE charms her grandchildren by sweeping up a spotlight with a broom. CUT TO ZEKE and MARTA in medium close-up, standing in a doorway, silhouetted by moonlight, faces inches from one another.]

ZEKE: [Softly] Listen, Moira, you know where I can find a squeegee?

[CUT TO a parking lot where RAFAEL is menaced by burly thugs and ZEKE rams some of them with his Rascal and punches them in the dick.]

V/O OF ZEKE: Listen, Radio or whatever your name is, this thing I been making millions of dollars off of, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s why years ago, when the audience started to get more collegiate and effete, I started making movies that seemed to “subvert” the Western genre, but I still put in plenty of action and cynicism, so I wouldn’t lose my old fans.

[CUT TO CLINT EASTWOOD continuing this speech to the actor EDUARDO MINETT (who plays RAFAEL) and a bunch of other young Hollywood weasels, all with bottled water and iPhones in front of them, around a conference table in a swell conference room.]

CLINT EASTWOOD: By the time you fellas get old enough to make your own movies, none of this will make any sense. Probably most of America will be either a desert or a flood plain, and people will go to the movies just to see ridiculous displays of CGI or whatever comes after it, and to hear loud explosions and ugly music, so they can forget the nightmare that is their lives. By then I’ll be dead and in the ground. And if I have anything like a consciousness then, I’ll be damn glad, and looking forward to seeing what you kids will make out of it.

[CLINT EASTWOOD puts his fingers around his nose and double-squeezes.]

Honk honk!