When John Wayne informed Bruce Dern that Dern's character would shoot Wayne's in "The Cowboys" (1972), he told Dern that audiences would hate him for it. Dern responded by saying, "Yeah, but they'll sure love me in Berkeley." Shortly after the film's release, Dern received death threats for his character shooting Wayne in the back.
"I remember the day I shot John Wayne in 'The Cowboys.' He had never had a bullet hit put on him. Never! And he leaned into me and said, 'Is this gonna hurt?' And I said, 'Absolutely it’s gonna hurt! You should get one of those big USC Marching Band Roman shields that you put on the front of you, ’cause they’re gonna blow a hole in your chest!' And he knew that, but he’d never had it done. Mark Rydell was the director, and we decided that the only way the scene could really work for an audience is if Wayne was surprised. So unbeknownst to him, we put a bullet hit in the back of his jacket. And I shot him in the back the first shot. And he did not know that was gonna happen. He played it like a pro, went all the way through it and everything, got up, and told Mark Rydell and I we were both pr!cks."
Dern:"(Wayne) was just great to me. He did something to me that was the most welcoming, inviting thing in my career. He said to me on the first day, 'I want you to do me a favor.' I said, 'Yessir?' He said, 'I want you to pick on me all day, every day, and be absolutely careless with your attitude toward me, so that these little kids that are scared sh!tless of me, if you can treat me like that, then what might you do to them?' And it worked! And had he not given me that blessing, so to speak, I’d have backed off a lot. But I didn’t."
