True Grit (1969)

 

The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance by Stuart M. Kaminsky (1986)

When I opened my eyes, I saw John Wayne pointing a .38 at my chest. It was my .38. I closed my eyes.

The inside of my head seemed to be filled with strawberry cotton candy with little unnamed things crawling through its sickly melting strands. Nausea forced my eyes open again. John Wayne was still there. He was wearing trousers, a white shirt, and a lightweight tan windbreaker. He was lean, dark, and puzzled.

“Don’t close your eyes again, Pilgrim,” he said.

I didn’t close them. He was standing over me and I was slumped in a badly sprung, cheap, understuffed hotel chair. I tried to sit up and speak but my tongue was an inflated, dry pebbly football.

Rio Bravo (1959)