Headscratchers / Unforgiven

• According to Clint Eastwood, Bill Munny is what became of The Man With No Name from the Dollars Trilogy by Sergio Leone after settling down to a life of peace... If so, why the heck does an intelligent and cunning man like Blondie/Joe/Manco have such trouble holding onto the ludicrous windfalls of cash he repeatedly earns, and build a happy life with it? The fact that Blondie/Joe/Manco ended up a lowly dirt-poor pig-farmer means that he has blown through every coin from his share of the 200,000 Gold Pieces of Confederate Dollars he and Tuco won in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the $27,000 for the lives of El Indio and his gang (plus another $40,000 for returning the stolen money to the Bank of El Paso) that Colonel Mortimer let him have every cent of in For a Few Dollars More. Surely a man as smart as "Bill Munny" would already have invested in a big city canning business the very next day after killing Angel Eyes in Sad Hill Cemetery, and afford doctors who could have saved his wife's life (not to mention give his children a proper education). Instead, he wastes every penny of his hard won blood-money in the 25 years that follows, leaving his wife dead and his children in poverty. How does that make any sense considering how cunning/smart/far-sighted Munny has shown himself to be in The Dollars Trilogy?
  • He was robbed, lent money foolishly, invested unwisely, and gave too much away. Basically, the same thing that happens to modern lottery winners ... with some violence thrown in.
  • I think you misunderstood a bit what Eastwood said, he most likely is referring to the general archetype represented by the Man With No Name, not that he is literally playing an older version of the same character.
  • It is worth mentioning that within the context of the Dollars movies themselves, Blondie/Joe/Manco was ALREADY penniless by the time A Fistful of Dollars began. Though, Word of God stated that Blondie/Joe/Manco immediately gave the Confederate gold to Father Ramirez's mission because they needed it more than he did. Assuming he also gave them Angel Eyes' gorgeous stallion in exchange for a mule and that dovetails nicely into where Fistful begins.
  • It also has to be remembered that more than a decade separates The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars; the former takes place in February-March 1862, during the New Mexico Campaign of the American Civil War, while the latter occurs no earlier than 1873 (the film features a tombstone with the date of death as that year). Lots of things could have happened to the $100,000 in Confederate gold during the preceding decade, even without the Word of God above.
  • That's because Clint Eastwood never claimed that Munny is the Man With No Name. Original scripwriter David Peoples also indirectly verifies in this interview that he doesn't view Munny as the Dollars protagonist.

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