Drugstore Cowboy and Hats On Beds

Those of you who have been following HAT BLOG posts will remember the short article where I discuss Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing and the passage where Billy visits the Mexican man rumored to be a brujo and almost makes the serious mistake of putting his hat on the man’s bed.  [You can still read this, “More on Hats and Cormac McCarthy", at the Hats and Literature link on the right.  It includes a short explanation of the possible origins of this superstition.]    

What was a small reference to this old superstition in The Crossing is no less than a central theme and the turning point in the movie Drugstore Cowboy.  After reading about the “hats on beds” superstition, a HAT BLOG reader asked me if I had seen Drugstore Cowboy and if not, that I was in for a big surprise.  Boy, was he right.  The drug addicted, paranoid, obsessively superstitious, main character so much feared the idea of hats on a bed that it drove him to murder [I think he killed her although I know it's debatable as she may have died from a self-inflicted drug overdose] when a drug heist goes bad and he discovers one from his gang had put her hat on a bed that day.  This action becomes the movie’s turning point.  Drug induced dream sequences featuring hats floating around, becoming larger and smaller, changing colors, etc. are an integral part of the film’s action demonstrating the power of this idea in the mind of the main character. 

Not putting one’s hat on a bed may not be as iconic a superstition as not walking under a ladder, or not breaking a mirror, or doing one’s best to avoid a black cat from crossing one’s path, but to many, particulary those steeped in cowboy culture, it is to be taken very seriously. 

Fred Belinsky

http://VillageHatShop.com

Comments

[thephoenix]

Speaking of film references, ther is a much older one:

At about 34 minutes in to Bullet or ballots, Humphy Bogart says "that hat on the bed might be bad luck"

[Winston Churchill]

If you leave a sombrero on an unmade bed, a Mexican prostitute will descend from the crawl
space above you at exactly midnight and serenade your ancestors if you say a novena after she handles your don juan cigarello.

[Winston Churchill]

Bullet or ballots

[Winston Churchill]

Ja Rule say, "I and I never go astray, mon"
William Burroughs posited, "Wake up in the
morning, Oh, oh, The Israelite". All that, and a hat on the bed.

[Frigid Wife]

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[Matthew Gabbard]

The hat on a bed suuperstition is referenced in the film Jules et Jim. The hat is also used throughout the film as a symbol of death.

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Drug induced dream sequences featuring hats floating around, becoming larger and smaller, changing colors, etc. are an integral part of the film’s action demonstrating the power of this idea in the mind of the main character.

[Side effects of steroids]

Different superstions still live in many places on the Earth

[Sarah_Bakewell]

The hat on bed thing also crops up in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Joseph Cotten's character, a murderer on the run, is warned not to throw his hat on the bed, but does it anyway because he's feeling lucky. Big mistake.

[Fred]

Matthew and Sarah -

Thanks for those additional references. Interesting.

Fred