Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke to Star In Almodóvar’s Gay Western, ‘Strange Way of Life’

Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke are going to star in a gay western film by legendary gay director Pedro Almodóvar. I'm going to need you to read that entire statement again and let it really sink in because my '90s crush is about to star in a gay western with my current crush, and it's being directed by PEDRO FREAKING ALMODÓVAR!!!

The official poster for Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘STRANGE WAY OF LIFE’ starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke has been released. pic.twitter.com/6yIQra4UOW

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) April 11, 2023

According to the movie's official synopsis, the story focuses on two men, Sheriff Jake (Hawke) and gunslinger Silva (Pascal). Pascal's Silva "rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake (Hawke). Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva (Pascal), the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship."

 

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Almodóvar said that though the movie is Queer, it is also 100% a proper Western. "It’s about masculinity in that deep sense because the Western is a male genre," the Spanish director said. "It has the gunslinger. It has the ranch. It has the sheriff. It has the town. It has the showdown." But don't let the standard tropes of Westerns distract you from the fact that this is, in fact, a queer story. "This is a queer Western in the sense that there are two men and they love each other," Almodóvar told Dua Lipa on her podcast, At Your Service. Almodovar expanded on this a bit in an interview with IndieWire. "So one of them travels through the desert to find the other," Almodóvar said. "There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate." Asked whether the film will be romantic, Almodóvar chuckled, saying, “You can guess." Adding, "I mean, masculinity is one of the subjects of the movie."

 

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And Almodóvar has stated fairly directly that Strange Way of Life will also act as him finally getting to direct a specifically Queer western, given that he was being considered to direct Brokeback Mountain before Ang Lee came on board. "It could be like my answer to Brokeback Mountain," he said. The iconic director is also excited to make something that he thinks is unlike his previous work. "It’s something very different," he said. "I mean, it's another genre that I've never done before."

Almodóvar is currently editing the film but said it will make its international debut in May at the iconic Cannes Film Festival in France, being presented by Persian fashion house, Saint Laurent.

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