John C. Reilly Is Buffalo Bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-J68TTWfD0

On April 10th, John C. Reilly steps into the boots of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody in Heads or Tails, a new Italian-American Western from directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis. And I have to say, I'm excited.

Reilly is one of those actors who seems incapable of giving a bad performance. Whether he's breaking your heart in Chicago, making you laugh until it hurts in Step Brothers, or disappearing into the quiet dignity of Stan Laurel in Stan & Ollie, the man finds something real in every role he plays. He's been in so many movies I've genuinely loved that seeing him take on Buffalo Bill feels like a gift.

The film is based (very, very loosely) on real events from when Cody's Wild West traveled to Italy in 1890. In the actual history, a famous contest was staged on the outskirts of Rome between Cody's cowboys and the Italian butteri, the cattle-herding horsemen of Lazio and Tuscany. Legend has it the Italians won. Heads or Tails takes that kernel of truth and spins it into something far wilder: a tale of murder, runaway lovers, and Buffalo Bill himself chasing the myths he helped create across the Italian countryside.

That premise alone says something about the enormous reach of the man. Consider the distance — not just the miles from frontier Nebraska, where a young Cody first met a Virginia-born cowboy named John B. "Texas Jack" Omohundro in 1869, to the sun-baked hills of Lazio, but the distance in time. We are now 180 years removed from Cody's birth and approaching 154 years since he and Texas Jack stepped onto a Chicago stage in The Scouts of the Prairie, the play that launched the Western genre. And here we are, still telling stories about him. Still fascinated. Still unable to look away.

So yes, I'm looking forward to Heads or Tails. Reilly looks terrific in the trailer, and the reviews out of Cannes suggest a film that's playful, visually gorgeous, and willing to take the kind of surreal swings that keep the Western genre alive and evolving.

But I'll admit that my excitement comes with a familiar wish.

I look forward to the day when Buffalo Bill isn't used primarily as a vehicle to say something about the way we view the West, but as a window into the man under the hat. Not just in films like this one, or in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, but in something closer to a genuine biopic. A film willing to sit with the actual life.

Because even though Buffalo Bill the global sensation is a remarkable lens through which to examine popular culture, collective memory versus history, and a hundred other fascinating things, the real story is every bit the amazing tale. The story of how William F. Cody and John B. Omohundro, a plainsman and a cowboy who had no business being actors, looked at each other and decided to turn their lives into a kind of storytelling that we are still captivated by more than a century and a half later. That's more than just a good movie. It's one of the great American stories, and it's still waiting to be told on screen the way it deserves.

In the meantime, I'll be watching Heads or Tails on April 10th. And I suspect John C. Reilly will make me glad I did.