THE ROUND-UP’S FIRST CONTEST: HOW YOU CAN ATTEND THE NEW YORK CITY
On Thursday, September 29th, at 7:00 p.m., four lucky
New York-area Rounders – that is, readers of Henry’s Western Round-up -- will
attend the premiere of BLACKTHORN, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures! It will be at the Cinema 2, at 1001 3rd Avenue
A pair of tickets will be awarded to each of the first two
entries which correctly name three shows in which Butch Cassidy is a character
– movies, TV movies and TV episodes are all acceptable – and the actor who
portrayed him. And you can’t count Sam
Shephard in BLACKTHORN as one of them!
E-mail your entry, including your name, e-mail address, zip code and telephone number to cassidycontest@gmail.com. If you’re not in the
SAM SHEPARD ACTS ‘BUTCH’ IN BLACKTHORN
We all hate to lose our heroes. That’s why there are people desperate to
believe that James Dean didn’t die in that crash, and it wasn’t really Elvis in
that coffin, and someone other than John Dillinger was gunned down outside of
the Chicago Biograph. So it’s no
surprise that someone would want to tell a story where Butch Cassidy wasn’t
shot to pieces with the Sundance Kid in that little town in Bolivia in 1908. (And if you consider that a spoiler, this may
not be the blog for you.)
BLACKTHORN suggests that, while Sundance may be gone, Butch
(Sam Shepard) , circa 1927, is alive and well, breeding horses in Bolivia Yana
(Peruvian actress Magaly Solier), but she’s not the love of his life. That woman is gone, died recently of
tuberculosis back in the States. And
that leaves her son, who is Butch’s nephew… or something…alone. Butch decides it’s time to pull up stakes,
get back over the border, to meet his kin while he’s still able.
Making his way towards the States, he has an unexpected
and fateful encounter with Eduardo Apocada (Eduardo Noriega), an embezzling
bookkeeper on the run from his mining-mogul boss, and Cassidy eventually
concludes that they have no alternative but to work together, to put their
hands on the kind of money both men need.
But though Eduardo does develop a degree of hero-worship, this movie
does not descend into the predictable plot that you think you see coming – this
is no generic ‘buddy’ movie. There is
humor here, and irony, but underlying it all is the knowledge that these men
are being relentlessly pursued by a posse that is decidedly devoid of humor. They are also pursued by Mackinley (Stephen
Rea), an investigator who feels his life and career were largely ruined by his
failure to capture Butch and Sundance decades before.
Throughout the film, flashbacks remind Butch of his younger
days, when he and Sundance and Etta Place rode together, the filmmakers drawing
parallels and contrasts between the two different periods in his life. It’s a tough balancing act here, because the
film clearly does not want to be ‘just a sequel’ to BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE
SUNDANCE KID, and yet it assumes knowledge of the earlier film. So relationships change in unexpected ways
that propel much of Butch’s actions in the 1920s story. Etta
Place Redford more than he does a young Paul Newman.
Playwright-turned-actor (and sometime rodeo rider)
Sam Shepard’s long string of credits includes quite a few Westerns and
neo-Westerns: THUNDERHEART, STREETS OF LAREDO, PURGATORY, ALL THE PRETTY
HORSES, BANDIDAS, and THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT
FORD, where he plays another celebrated outlaw, Frank James. But he first gained attention onscreen back
in 1978, as the doomed farmer in Terrence Malick’s achingly beautiful DAYS OF
HEAVEN, and BLACKTHORN’s Bolivia may be the most striking background he’s
worked in front of since then. Bolivia
Director Mateo Gil, best known as a screenwriter (OPEN YOUR EYES, THE SEA INSIDE) and screenwriter Miguel Barros have told a story that mixes adventure and melancholy, sentiment, philosophy and action. The men live in a beautiful but hard world, and Butch’s recognition of that hardness, his own view of the degrees of right and wrong, are central to the story. The action and gunplay is sufficient but not overblown. In fact, the grim efficiency of it, as portrayed by the filmmakers and exercised by the shooters, is much unnerving than the excesses of a lot of action films – and saying anything more on that score would be a spoiler indeed.
My only criticism would be the filmmakers’ apparent eagerness to leave plot scenes and get to the next character scene: our leads don’t try hard enough to catch the runaway horse, or put more distance between themselves and their pursuers after a lucky escape, because the story-tellers want to get to the emotional drama.
Sam Shepard started his career as too good-looking for a playwright, and his face has taken on added character with the years; he’s playing a man of his own age, and it suits him. He plays Cassidy with an understated and direct honesty. Cassidy’s not a ‘nice guy’ but he’s a decent man with a sense of honor and fairness, in a way that echoes William Holden’s version of the character in THE WILD BUNCH more than the cheerier Paul Newman take.
Produced by Andrés Santana and Ibon Cormenzana, BLACKTHORN is well made and well-worth seeing.
You can view the trailer on YouTube HERE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4SgoLvj6FQ
BLACKTHORN opens theatrically on October 7th.
BOOK REVIEW:
AND…ACTION!
And…Action! is the story of a fascination with the Western
film as seen through the eyes of four people: a kid who grew up on the edge of
the film business, an aspiring teenage actor, a TV and movie costumer, and a screenwriter. The odd thing is, they’re all the same man,
Stephen Lodge.
Stephen was eight years old in 1951, and like most American
boys of the time, he and his kid brother Bobby were obsessed with Westerns --
the B kind and the TV variety. But
unlike the rest of us, he was in a position to do something about it that went
far beyond wearing his cap-gun rig and watching the tube. Not only did he live in the San
Fernando Valley , where so many of the movies were made, his Aunt
Bette was a secretary at Monogram Studios, and his Uncle George was a script
supervisor for Gene Autry’s Flying A Productions!
(Steve and Bobby with Johnny Mack Brown)
So Stephen begged and bugged his mom until she finally broke
down and got his Aunt and Uncle to arrange a visit to a set. The first time it was the Iverson Movie Ranch,
for a Johnny Mack Brown film, and from that moment on, the kid was hooked. Soon mom was driving the kids to
Corriganville to watch the GENE AUTRY SHOW being filmed, where they met Gene, Pat
Buttram and Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan; the family vacationed at Big Bear Lake
(Gail Davis shooting ANNIE OAKLEY at Melody Ranch)
And Stephen could be a pretty conniving little cuss: he
pretended to have started a Jimmy Hawkins fan club to get into Melody Ranch,
where THE ANNIE OAKLEY SHOW was being filmed – Hawkins played Annie’s kid
brother, Tagg. Over the next few years
he had the chance to visit Pioneertown, Bell Movie Ranch, Spahn Movie Ranch
(yeah, the one the Manson Family moved in on).
As teenagers, he and his friends even got kicked off the set of BAT
MASTERSON, although Gene Barry turned out to be such a nice guy that he shared
his lunch with the outcasts.
Though written by an adult, the stories are told from the
perspective of the little kid who lived them, which is so much of their charm,
although the adult world peeks in occasionally: Dickie Jones, BUFFALO BILL JR.,
is unhappy with negotiations with Flying A, and after he does his scenes, drives
away like a bat out of Hell. Another
time, the family leaves Iverson Ranch, disappointed that a Roy Rogers shoot has
been cancelled, only to learn the reason: one of the Rogers
(Filming THE ROY ROGERS SHOW)
Stephen pursued an acting career for a time, appearing in TV
shows like FURY, THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER, DR. KILDARE and MY THREE SONS, and features
like DINO with Sal Mineo. At age sixteen
Stephen spent a summer working as an actor/stuntman at Corriganville, and gives
a fascinating and nostalgic description of that summer job most of us would
have killed for. (Although maybe not on the day Ken Maynard showed up drunk and
belligerent!)
But his long-term film and TV career was as a costumer, starting
in 1963 with THE FUGITIVE, followed by the short-lived John Mills Western
series, DUNDEE AND THE CULHANE, which took him to Flagstaff ,
Apache Junction and Old Tucson Studios in Arizona CAMP RUNAMUCK Burbank
Over the years he worked at all of the studios and ranches,
and his passion for them is palpable. He
has plenty to say about which were great, like Republic; which were
ridiculously small, like Allied Artists (once Monogram, then a PBS station and
now a studio for the Church of Scientology); which were chopped down to
nothing, re-dressed until they were unrecognizable, or nearly burned to the
ground. He worked on Western comedies
like THE DUTCHESS AND THE DIRTWATER FOX, TV series like THE DEPUTIES (which
introduced Don Johnson), TV movies like THE SUNDANCE WOMAN, and has insights
into them all. He worked for Quinn
Martin and worked around Andrew Fenady (THE REBEL), and tried desperately to
work for Sam Peckinpah. He hung out at
the last of the great Western Cowboy Saloons, the Backstage Bar, right outside
the Republic gate. Now it’s a sushi bar.
And then there was another career, as a screenwriter. With Steve Ihnat, an actor he met as a guest
star on DUNDEE , he co-wrote the rodeo comedy
THE HONKERS (1972), starring James Coburn and Slim Pickens. But aside from co-writing KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS RIO
DIABLO made in 1993, starring Kenny Rogers and Naomi Judd, it was after more
than a decade of trying.
Now retired from costuming, and writing fulltime, he and his
wife have moved to Rancho Mirage, not far from one of his favorites haunts,
Pioneertown. When I spoke to him about
AND…ACTION! recently, he told me he hadn’t set out to write a book. “I wrote every individual story when I felt
like writing one. They were stories that
I wanted to share with people, and I’d send them to all my friends. And finally I decided that maybe I ought to
put them all together into one big compilation of stories.”
HENRY: What was your favorite experience as a kid visiting a
set?
STEPHEN: I would have
to say it was Johnny Mack Brown at the Iverson Western
Town
H: Well, she hadn’t done the SUPERMAN series at that point. What was your favorite encounter on a set,
with a star, when you were a kid?
(Steve with Andy Devine)
S: I think probably
the coolest guy was Andy Devine. He was
nice to my brother and me; let us sit in a chair with him, offered to buy us a
Coke. Pat Brady was just great – he
really entertained me.
H: You visited pretty
much all of the ranches. As a kid, did
you have a favorite?
S: Corriganvile. And
I ended up working there. That was kind
of a dream. I was sixteen years old,
believe it or not, with a .45 tied to my side, out there every weekend.
H: What was Crash like to work for?
S: A very pleasant man. I mostly worked for a guy named Charley Aldrich, who ran the street shows. Crash was there every weekend, and had pictures taken with kids, on his horse, and all. He wanted to do movies in the middle of the week, during the summer, for the people, when there were no movie companies out there. He had an old script for a Billy the Kid show, an old 16mm camera, and a sound system. He cast me as Billy the Kid, so I’d go out there every day, and put make-up on – we had a small number of people pretending to be the crew. We started with film in the camera – and I’d love to get my hands on it, and I think Tommy Corrigan’s got it someplace. We shot two weeks or so, and I rode Flash, his horse, and he let me borrow his gun for the whole thing. That went on until September, when I had to leave abruptly, because I got a real job in
H: You acted on shows like FURY.
S: That was basically a silent bit. But I did shows like MY THREE SONS, and DR.
KILDARE. And not too many more.
H: What was it like, after spending so much time on sets,
behind the camera, to suddenly be in front of them?
S: (laughs) It’s a
little more scary being in front of them.
H: You have a lot to say about Pioneertown.
S: I grew up near Pioneertown. We were up here in the 1950s, when
Pioneertown was in pristine shape. We
never saw Gene Autry shooting here, but he was shooting up here at the same
time. The Red Dog Saloon was open for
business, the bowling alley was open for business, the restaurant was open for
business – it’s not anymore, but that’s the way it was. It was kind of nice in the old days. I haven’t been there lately, but I’ll be
going up there this week. There’s a
friend from out of town that I’m going to take up there.
H: What was your first show as a costumer?
S: My first was a commercial at Columbia
H: That was a show that was always on the road.
S: We had a lot of fun with that. It was like being in the Army.
H: As a costumer, are Westerns more fun than non-period
things?
S: Oh, for me it is.
A lot more fun, because that’s what I always wanted to do: whether I was
a cowboy or a costumer really didn’t matter.
H: Is it very different being an in-town costumer, versus
being off to the Painted Desert or Old Tucson?
S: Well, when you’re
on location you get a lot more freedom.
So does the director; so do the actors.
You get too far out, and someone will make a phone call. I enjoyed the locations more than the at-home
stuff.
(Steve at Old Tucson)
H: Do you have any particular memories of Old Tucson?
S: Yeah, that it was awful hot. I always ended up there in July, and it was
in the monsoon season. It would rain all
night, and bake you during the day. The
other little town that Old Tucson owns, I don’t know what they call it
now. They used to call it Harmony.
H: Now they call it Mescal.
S: That’s it. They
used that in TOM HORN, and I was out there on GUNSMOKE. That was a nice little town. Looked like it was out in the middle of
nowhere, but it was actually not that far off the road.
H: You worked on one of my favorite quirky Western series of
the late 1960s, HERE COME THE BRIDES.
S: Oh yes! I’m still
in touch with a lot of the fans – the middle-aged women. I was on that for half of the first season,
and the last season. (We shot that at) Columbia Burbank , or behind Glendale ,
and we’d go up to Franklin
Canyon
H: What’s a ‘green set’?
S: That’s where there’s trees and rocks and it looks like
outdoors, but it’s really on a stage.
Like WAGON TRAIN, whatever was set up was set up on a green set. That was a fun show to work on. A lot of good people to work with, not only
in front of the camera, but behind the camera.
H: In 1972 you went from costumer to screenwriter with THE
HONKERS.
S: (laughs) But didn’t stay too long. The money runs out and you go back to
rag-pickin’ again. I got three more
(movies made) than most.
H: How did THE
HONKERS come about?
S: I’d gotten to know Steve Ihnat, we’d done about four,
five shows together, and we’d always talk.
He’d just finished making this little movie he’d shoot on the weekends I
said I’d just written a screenplay, called HONCHO, with Dave Cass, who was my
writing partner at the time. I let him
read it, and he came back and said, ‘Do you want to write a rodeo script with
me?’ I’d go to his place every weekend,
write everything down, and during the week I’d put everything into a screenplay
format, and come back. We worked on it
four weeks. Then we went to a rodeo, to
see if we got it right, to get the color, to get the announcer’s way of saying
everything. His agent told him to write
a script and he could get him a deal directing it, too. They got us a deal immediately with Filmways,
for Martin Ransohoff, but Marty passed on it.
You’ve got to remember when this was, and we were talking about shooting
in real locations, in real houses, and he was talking about building sets in
the stage. He passed, and that was a big
disappointment. They went to Levy-Gardner-Laven (producers of THE RIFLEMAN and
THE BIG VALLEY), and they set up a deal.
And before I knew it we were in Carlsbad ,
New Mexico
H: Any particular memories of James Coburn or Slim Pickens
on that?
S: Slim Pickens is probably my favorite guy I ever worked
with. And he drove his Mustang like he
rode that bomb in DR. STRANGELOVE. A
crazy sonofabitch, I’ll tell you. All
cowboy.
H: He started out as a rodeo clown. You can’t get much more dangerous than that.
S: No, and in THE HONKERS he fought the bull a little
bit.
H: You continued as a costumer and a writer – KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS
S: (laughs) They didn’t pay me too much for that; it was a
success for everyone else. But it’s a
good credit to have, because it became a ‘midnight classic.’
H: You didn’t write
another western movie until 1993’s RIO
DIABLO.
S: Actually we wrote
that in 1975, and it was optioned a few times here and there – we probably made
more off the option money than on the sale.
We made some pretty good money on it when CBS picked it up, but that was
way later.
(Steve with Dickie Jones on the BUFFALO BILL JR. set)
(Steve with Dick Jones recently at Lone Pine)
H: Was that a cathartic experience, to get it made so many
years after you wrote it?
S: Yeah, and it’s also a very disappointing thing when they
start cutting big chunks out of it.
There was a lot more with Kansas Kansas
H: Are you still writing screenplays?
S: Yes I am, still trying to sell ‘em. (The one I’m working on) is called SHADOWS OF
EAGLES; it’s one of my novels that I turned into a screenplay. It takes place in Texas Monument
Valley Terlingua , Texas Winchester Texas ’ Big Bend . I have a guy who’s publishing it as an
e-book.
If you’d like to purchase AND…ACTION!, or any of Stephen
Lodge’s other books, or look at his remarkable collection of on-set photos,
visit his website HERE.
INSP PREMIERES ‘BIG VALLEY’ MONDAY
The classic 1960s Western series THE BIG VALLEY will begin
airing on INSP on Monday, September 26th. They’ll show two episodes each weekday and
one on Saturdays – check your local listings for times.
CELEBRATE GENE AUTRY’S BIRTHDAY AT HIS MUSEUM!
On Thursday, September 29th, the Autry will
celebrate Gene’s birthday by screening fully restored and uncut episodes of THE
GENE AUTRY SHOW from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.
And on Saturday, October first,
see a free double-feature of Gene’s movies starting at 11:30 a.m.; THE
SAGEBRUSH TROUBADOUR (Republic1935) and BLUE CANADIAN ROCKIES (Columbia1952).
On Saturday, October 1st,
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee, inarguably the world’s
greatest video store for Western fans, will have their first parking-lot sale
in years. There will be THOUSANDS of VHS
tapes, including HUNDREDS of Westerns, on sale for $1 or $2. Additionally there will be DVDs for $5 or
less, movie posters for $2, CDs for $3, LOOK magazines for $5, LPs for $2, plus
books, laserdiscs, sheet music and T-shirts!
Eddie’s is at 5006 Vineland
Avenue, North Hollywood , CA 91601
TCM FANATIC - WESTERN NOW ONLINE!And speaking of TCM, have I mentioned that the segment I was interviewed for is now viewable here?
THE AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER
Built by cowboy actor, singer, baseball and TV entrepeneur Gene Autry, and designed by the Disney Imagineering team, the Autry is a world-class museum housing a fascinating collection of items related to the fact, fiction, film, history and art of the American West. In addition to their permenant galleries (to which new items are frequently added), they have temporary shows. The Autry has many special programs every week -- sometimes several in a day. To check their daily calendar, CLICK HERE. And they always have gold panning for kids every weekend. For directions, hours, admission prices, and all other information, CLICK HERE.
HOLLYWOOD HERITAGE MUSEUM
Across the street from the Hollywood Bowl, this building, once the headquarters of Lasky-Famous Players (later Paramount Pictures) was the original DeMille Barn, where Cecil B. DeMille made the first Hollywood western, The Squaw Man. They have a permanent display of movie props, documents and other items related to early, especially silent, film production. They also have occasional special programs. 2100 Highland Ave., L.A. CA 323-874-2276. Thursday – Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. $5 for adults, $3 for senior, $1 for children.
WELLS FARGO HISTORY MUSEUM
This small but entertaining museum gives a detailed history of Wells Fargo when the name suggested stage-coaches rather than ATMS. There’s a historically accurate reproduction of an agent’s office, an original Concord Coach, and other historical displays. Open Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Admission is free. 213-253-7166. 333 S. Grand Street, L.A. CA.
FREE WESTERNS ON YOUR COMPUTER AT HULU
A staggering number of western TV episodes and movies are available, entirely free, for viewing on your computer at HULU. You do have to sit through the commercials, but that seems like a small price to pay. The series available -- often several entire seasons to choose from -- include THE RIFLEMAN, THE CISCO KID, THE LONE RANGER, BAT MASTERSON, THE BIG VALLEY, ALIAS SMITH AND JONES, and one I missed from 2003 called PEACEMAKERS starring Tom Berenger. Because they are linked up with the TV LAND website, you can also see BONANZA and GUNSMOKE episodes, but only the ones that are running on the network that week.
The features include a dozen Zane Grey adaptations, and many or most of the others are public domain features. To visit HULU on their western page, CLICK HERE.
TV LAND - BONANZA and GUNSMOKE
Every weekday, TV LAND airs a three-hour block of BONANZA episodes from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. They run a GUNSMOKE Monday through Thursday at 10:00 a.m., and on Friday they show two, from 6:00 to 8:00 a.m.. They're not currently running either series on weekends, but that could change at any time.
NEED YOUR BLACK & WHITE TV FIX?
Check out your cable system for WHT, which stands for World Harvest Television. It's a religious network that runs a lot of good western programming. Your times may vary, depending on where you live, but weekdays in Los Angeles they run DANIEL BOONE at 1:00 p.m., and two episodes of THE RIFLEMAN from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.. On Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. it's THE RIFLEMAN again, followed at 2:30 by BAT MASTERSON. And unlike many stations in the re-run business, they run the shows in the original airing order. There's an afternoon movie on weekdays at noon, often a western, and they show western films on the weekend, but the schedule is sporadic.
AMC has been airing a block of THE RIFLEMAN episodes early Saturday mornings, usually followed by Western features.
And RFD-TV is currently showing THE ROY ROGERS SHOW several times a week, and a Roy feature as well -- check your local listings.
That's all for this week's Round-up! I'm working on a documentary all this week, but hopefully I'll have my article on the Bonanzacon ready for next week's Round-up! Have a great week, and be sure to enter our Butch Cassidy contest, even if it's just to show off!
Much obliged,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright September 2011 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved
