"Dans les bottes de Clint est un documentaire qui traite moins de rodéo que de la façon dont un fils incarne les rêves de son père. Dont les rêves du père investissent le corps du fils. Chez les Grecs, ça aurait donné une tragédie. Chez les cow-boys, c'est un western." Frédéric Laffont In Clint's Boots SCAM Star 2013 Télérama: “ What has become of the world whose agony John Huston celebrated in The Misfits in 1960? This is the question that guided documentary filmmaker Frédéric Laffont to the American West, to meet these cowboys who are so endlessly dying that some of them still exist, animated by the spirit of the pioneers whose mark Westerns bear. "Arriving in Houston, I see some guys and I ask them about the character of Montgomery Clift in The Misfits. I call up this fictional character that they obviously don't know—they haven't seen any movies, nor read any books—to see if they know anyone whose life would be comparable to his. Someone who would get smashed from rodeo to rodeo, all the time saying, 'Don't worry, Mom. Everything's fine. I won a hundred dollars.' They laugh and tell me that the best of them is Clint Cannon. That's how I first met Clint, in his small house in Waller, Texas. "Behind the cemetery, near a big oak tree," he told me over the phone. The shutters were closed. After pushing open the door, which of course creaked, I made out in the gloom about twenty hats and as many rifles. A large screen was showing images from Afghanistan, in front of which sat Clint and his brother, wearing hats and dressed in black. Without turning around, Clint asked me if I'd eaten. I thought, "That's him!" From this meeting and the 20,000 kilometers spent with him on the roads, riding from rodeo to rodeo in pursuit of the dream common to young cowboys (to acquire a ranch), Ballade pour un cow-boy was born in 2006. "This first film was a bit like the cowboy's wandering in the great outdoors, as ARTE wanted. In Clint's Boots, which I later directed for France Télévisions, is a more ambitious documentary, which deals less with rodeos than with the way a son embodies his father's dreams. How the father's dreams take over the son's body. For the Greeks, it would have been a tragedy. For cowboys, it's a western." After being tempted to integrate the cowboy and his world into a fictional film – “a stupid idea, a complete mistake, as if you had to distance yourself from the documentary to go further!” – Frédéric Laffont returns from Texas and is now preparing to enter the editing room to give shape to what could be the culmination of seven years of companionship with Clint, who ended up becoming vice-world rodeo champion and bought two ranches. “He and his father don’t speak to each other anymore, okay. But everyone is now living on cloud nine.” Before discovering this feature film in theaters, immerse yourself in the shoes of Clint, the hero of his life – however difficult it may be. A film by Frédéric Laffont Duration: 1h03' © Les Films d'ici, Camera Magica 2011 Editing: Jean François Giré Pauline Casalis Clint Cannon is a rodeo cowboy. Like his father, he dreams of qualifying for the Las Vegas finals. His future is the next rodeo, and from rodeo to rodeo, he crosses America. He often sleeps in the car, he sometimes runs out of food, but a cowboy like Clint doesn't complain. Being a cowboy at the beginning of the 21st century means braving miles in an air-conditioned car, loneliness and boredom in parking lots, but it also means, for Clint, defending a certain idea of homeland: “The whole world knows that America was made by cowboys. We're not going to let it die.” Over the course of the rodeos, he risks losing almost everything (his fiancée, his health, his last dollars); everything except his illusions and the unconditional support of his father. The rise and fall of dreams. On the road to the world title!