Suicide is the end of artistry.

Hemingway once observed: “Writing is easy. Just sit at the typewriter and bleed.” Suicide is when the powers of genius fade and fail, when the individual is no longer the author. Suicide is what is left for a true artist.

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The role of Curly was Mr. Palance coming full circle by playing the same menacing part that he inhabited decades earlier but now with a magical difference. City Slickers is Mitch’s marvelous journey and the menacing Curly is actually the wizard with a timely moment of wisdom for Mitch. No longer is he the movie’s monster needing to be vanquished. And Curly gives Mitch the key to life in literally one line with two words. The key to life is One Thing and one thing only. It’s what matters most of all, and all the rest don’t mean shit, says Curly. What is that One Thing?, asks Mitch, still perplexed by the meaning of life. You, says Curly , have to figure that out.

In a sense and upon reflection the movie is not actually very heroic or marvelous since Mitch does figure out the one thing and then he goes home basically to be a better ad executive who sells empty commercial airtime over the radio only he will do more of it with a bit more quality. Plus, now there is a literal baby cow in New York where there wasn’t before so this cow, once somewhat free to roam in the last vestige of the Old West, is now a held captive in a petting zoo somewhere in Queens. Again, see the movie. But really this is just an everyman’s hunger to be satisfied with a not-so-special life with an admittedly decent wife and an obviously slutty daughter and that gay cowboy Jake Gyllenhall amid a sea of humanity still swimming in all directions regardless of whether Mitch makes it back alive or is swallowed up in that raging river. My guess is that the pitch was something like, Willie Loman meets leathery cowboy and doesn’t end up swinging in the basement. The End.