The first post of the new year is also the first Tuesday's Forgotten post of the year, and this week, my selection is the Robert Altman-produced anthology TV series Gun.
Gun was a six-week-long series that followed the trail of a single golden gun as it passed along from user to user, telling a different story each week with different characters. A pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini appears in the opening episode. Subsequent episodes feature Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, and Martin Sheen, among others. Directors of the episodes include Altman himself, Ted Demme, and Peter Horton.
The episode I feature below stars Daniel Stern as an unsuccessful actor who gives up his dream of stardom in Hollywood and decides to take his family back east to start over. He doesn't get far, however, as he becomes a near foil in a convenience store robbery involving the titular weapon. Seemingly a hero in the altercation, he becomes a media celebrity who isn't shy of cashing in on his newfound fame to jumpstart his acting career, if at a personal cost.
***SPOILER*** There's also a twist ending, which will be familiar to those who have read Ambrose Bierce.
Enjoy!
2 comments:
Did you ever catch the not-dissimilar earlier cable western series DEAD MAN'S GUN?
I haven't, but I imagine that tells just as many interesting scenarios as the modern day version.
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