I haven't seen MAVERICK yet (but probably will eventually), but in re: the conversations about history and the western, it's often been observed that Westerns echo the times in which they were made (as per remarks on Leone, et al.), and that certainly seems valid for many, if not all, Westerns (not to mention other genres). STAGECOACH, for example, does offer Ford's "little person" populism and is a commentary on the Depression (Gatewood, the Banker and real villain of the film) mouths the pure Republican Party platform from the 1930s ("America for the Americans! Keep government out of business! We need a businessman in charge! The national debt is shocking!"--hmm, was that 1930s or 1980s?). What hasn't been looked at closely, as far as I know, is how direct memory and experience affect the portrayal of historical periods or events. For instance, Hoot Gibson and W.S. Hart had experience in the "old" West that they brought to their silent films. (Even Tom Mix did as well, as I recall.) The next generation of "mainstream" western directors (Ford, Hawks, others) tend to come from outside tradition, as much as they tried to recapture it. Post- WWII films from SHANE and HIGH NOON on tend to allegorize or become increasingly self-refential, until we come to attempts to recapture the surface structure of an older generation's filmgoing experience, not what those films represented, as in SILVERADO. Does this seem to make any sense? --Don Larsson