Before Dirty Harry, before the Oscar wins, before he became a Hollywood institution, there was a broke TV actor who took a job in Spain for $15,000. It shouldn't have worked. Instead, it created the most famous cowboy in the world.

We travel back to 1964 and the unlikely collaboration between Clint Eastwood and 24-year-old Italian director Sergio Leone that revolutionized the Western genre. A Fistful of Dollars wasn't just a movie—it was cinema's first postmodern Western, a film that understood American mythology better than Americans did.

From the iconic poncho to Ennio Morricone's haunting score, we explore how Leone and Eastwood created the Man with No Name—a character who was both completely amoral and utterly compelling, who stripped away everything heroic about Western heroes and left only competence and survival instinct.

This is the story of how a European vision of the American West created a new kind of movie star and changed cinema forever.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which seays UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!  You also get 20+ other shows on the network ad-free!