She asks him: “What else do you do, besides shoot?”
He replies: “It’s been enough so far.”
Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy originally was titled Deadly Is the Female, which is a bit obvious perhaps, and not as psychologically twisted (and truthful) as the later title: Gun Crazy. This is a movie with no apologies. It’s a precursor to Bonnie and Clyde, certainly, although any movie about a man and a woman on the run, having sex by night, and shooting up towns by day, owes a huge debt to Gun Crazy. Why the film is so subversive to this day, is it makes no bones about what is really going on between these two people: explosive sexual chemistry. Also, they love guns. For them, that’s enough. Until … it isn’t. Gun Crazy, at its twisted little heart, is about obsession. I suppose there are people on the planet who aren’t obsessed with things, but I have a hard time imagining what that must be like. There’s a fine line between obsession and total-detachment-from-reality, and those of us who walk that line know the dangers. Obsessions often have more vibrancy than the everyday business of life. You may not want to come out of that twilit world. Ever. And that’s okay by me because sometimes real life is as dull as dishwater. Children become obsessed with things. I know a child who went through a recycling phase. He organized the family’s recyclables with military precision and you would barely finish the last sip of soda before he whipped the can out of your hand. It was comforting to him, and his parents let him ride that obsession out. I know another child who was obsessed with bugs. My sisters were obsessed with Cabbage Patch Kids. I was obsessed with Trixie Belden. It’s almost uncomfortable, being obsessed. I know this well as an adult. It’s like having an itch you can’t fully scratch. I become voracious. I must enter into whatever the obsession is fully. And I do. Some people think it’s childish, judging from some of the comments and emails I receive on occasion. Adults are supposed to stop that whole obsession business, apparently. But obsessives make things happen, whether they are artists, choreographers, scientists, technicians, special effects creators, medical researchers. It is the ability to only have one thing in your mind at one time, to the exclusion of all else. Maybe an obsessive is hell to live with, but that’s not my concern.
Gun Crazy really gets obsession.
