Stupid people are underrepresented in the movies. Yes, 90% are geared for tard consumption, but more often than not, they feature people of normal intelligence doing stupid shit. With Urban Cowboy my goal was to make a movie where every character was just as stupid as the people paying to see it. It’s a Joe Popcorn movie 100% on Joe Popcorn’s level. The movie did well, so I guess I succeeded in my mission. It was hard though, because I’m highly not stupid and could only guess at what it’s like to be named Bud or Sissy.
Bud is a young cowboy wannabe who moves from Dodge City, Kansas to the big city of Los Angles, Missouri. At first he is alienated by the bright lights and men wearing earrings only in their right ear, but his Uncle Buck shelters him from the modern storm by giving him a job shoveling pig shit at a horse-food factory. And for their nightly dose of hard drinkin, lovin, and fightin, he introduces Bud to Gilley’s, the cities only no gay no black no vermouth bar.
At this bar, Bud meets his dreamgirl, Sissy. Their passion for each other is so severe that she is impregnated by his hillbilly gaze alone. A Bud Light vending machine marries them, and the two are overly excited to move into a used trailer and work out their plans for more family (one kid every 20 months until she grows a mustache). That night she asks him to do it in the butt, but he won’t cause he says that’s gay, and she falls even more in love with him cause he passed the “make sure your cowboy isn’t gay” test her mother taught her. By accident, they do it in the butt anyway, which pushes a twin into her already pregnant belly.
Unfortunately, strife enters their union the next day when Gilley’s installs a mechanical bull (made in Korea). Sissy wants to ride it, but Bud forbids this because watching his wife do something so manly confuses his boner. Additionally, he forbids her to vote or enjoy sex. (I think we all know how Bud feels about cunnilingus: he thinks it’s a disease you get from being too cunning.)
This doesn’t go over with the urban half of Sissy’s urban cowgirl DNA. They get in a fight, and leave in the arms of substitute lovers. Sissy’s with the ex-convict mechanical bull operator. She wants to make Bud jealous by being with the man most likely to punch her. Bud leaves with a city socialite posing as an urban cowgirl (this makes her a FAKE fake). She’s at the bar because she wants to make her father jealous by being with the man most likely to rape her.
These new lovers don’t work out. Bud and Sissy long to reunite but it’s difficult because Sissy’s fella leaves her handcuffed to the refrigerator 20 hours a day, while Bud’s girl is really fucking hot.
What solves this problem is the exact same thing that created it: the mechanical bull. Gilley’s has organized a tournament to see who can ride the dumb thing longest. Bud signs up, of course, but so does Sissy’s new fella. By the way, this guy is played by Scott Glenn at his absolute ropiest. If Scott Glenn and I were on a plane that crashed in the alps, I’d definitely eat him last and even then only if I had some A1 sauce and dental floss.
Anyway, the tourney comes down to Bud and Scott Glenn. According to redneck law the winner can kill the other guy, so Sissy is especially interested in the outcome. To make things more tense, Bud is competing with a pig shit related injury to his back. To make things even more tense than that: no one mentions how gay it is that the bull they’re riding isn’t real.
Scott Glenn wins. Instead of killing Bud, he chooses to have him banned from Gilley’s for life. Furthermore, Bud’s injury strongly hampers his pig shit shoveling ability, and he’s fired from his job. Exposed to the modern world, Bud must change his name to Tad, and start watching Absolutely Fabulous. Finally coming to terms with his emerging gayness, he buys a jumpsuit and enters a new bar: Beegee’s.
Sissy doesn’t make it. After Scott Glenn overdoses on tequila worms, she moves in with her mother, Aurora, and soon after dies of voice cancer.