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JOHNNY GUITAR: A FIASCO

from NICHOLAS RAY & ROY CHANSLOR

(in development)

Rejected as a “fiasco” in its 1954 premier, Nicholas Ray’s epic, genre-defying Hollywood Western Johnny Guitar went on to become a seminal cinematic masterpiece. A cult classic and a favorite of French New Wave filmmakers, the film centers around two women, Vienna (Joan Crawford) and Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge),  reimagining the cultural codes of the genre that has defined the contemporary American psyche.

 

JOHNNY GUITAR: A FIASCO is an in-progress devised staging of Johnny Guitar in which two actors mimetically reconstruct the iconic performances of Crawford and McCambridge. With gender-bent casting, fluctuating gender-roles, and delirious, dream-like imagery, the romanticized cultural legacy of the American WIld West is unraveled and laid bare.

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