Don't Come Knocking (2005)

The cowboy movie star Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) enjoyed his fifteen minutes of Hollywood fame, but when this film opens he walks off the set of his current production in Moab, Utah. He's sixty years old and searching for second chances with his family he's neglected for thirty years. First stop is his mother in Elko, Nevada. She welcomes him but wants to know if all that "stuff" about him that she's collected in newspaper articles is true — drugs, wild living, arrests, affairs. She advises Howard of skeletons in his closet that in his profligate past he didn't even know existed. He proceeds to Butte, Montana, connects with a five-minute-flame named Doreen (Jessica Lange), and learns further unwelcome surprises. Spence hopes for reconciliation but meets only regret and remorse. Clearly, acting roles in Hollywood are far neater and cleaner than real life stories, and so in the last scene he's back on set in Moab, riding into the sunset after kissing the gorgeous girl and promising her his love. The music of T Bone Burnett and the images of western wilderness compensate for director Wim Wender's quirky script and humor.