Ep. 12 - Paint Your Wagon

Season 2

Jul 4

What happens when a multiple Oscar-winning screenwriter and a Pulitzer Prize-winning director adapt a musical by one of the most successful Broadway duos of all time? An absolute disaster.

Adam and Nate force themselves to watch Paint Your Wagon (1969), an infamous musical flop and part of the hilarious wraparound for Simpsons musical clip show, “All Singing, All Dancing” (S9E11).

Original poster for *Paint Your Wagon* by artist Peter Max.

Also in this episode:

An attempt to capitalize on 1960s counterculture with a cowboy throuple and folk music
How Alan Jay Lerner’s back-seat directing derailed the production and drove Joshua Logan insane
An uneasy combination of westerns and musicals, realism and slapstick
Lee Marvin’s alcoholic antics and the tragicomic on-set affair between Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg
Why did anyone think this was a good idea in the first place (seriously)?

Next time, Adam and Nate check out a blockbuster that barely exists, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982).

Every Reference to Paint Your Wagon on The Simpsons

By our count in The Simpsons Movie Reference Database, Paint Your Wagon has only been directly referenced in 1 episode of the first 13 seasons of The Simpsons. The only reference is a scene-long musical parody in “All Singing, All Dancing” (S9E11) from 1998, 29 years after the release of the movie.

Scene Parodies

All Singing, All Dancing (S9E11): The Simpsons first musical clip show begins with Bart and Homer renting Paint Your Wagon from the video store expecting a bloody Western shootout. What they find instead is a goofy musical starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin—which actually exists. Unfortunately, the songs in the original are not nearly as catchy as the one made up for the Simpsons parody.