INTERVIEW WITH “LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON” STAR/DIRECTOR/WRITER LEAH PURCELL, PLUS REMEMBERING JOE DON BAKER, AND MORE!

LEAH PURCELL -- THE WOMAN BEHIND, AND IN FRONT OF, THE CAMERA ON THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON, A.K.A. THE DROVER'S WIFE

Back in 2022, when I interviewed Leah Purcell, the writer, director and star of the excellent new Australian Western, The Legend of Molly Johnson, I’d intended to run the article immediately. But the film had not yet been released in the U.S., and so I decided to wait until it was. I don’t know exactly when it was finally released here – I think it’s been a while – but it’s available now, streaming on Hulu, Plex, Prime, Roku, and Tubi, and I strongly recommend that you pick one, and watch it! 

Some of the then-upcoming projects which we discussed are still in the works. Leah Purcell has also recently starred in the Amazon Prime series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and stars as a police detective in the Australian BINGE network’s series High Country, which is not yet available in the United States.

In the U.S., the film is called The Legend of Molly Johnson, but in Australia, that’s the subtitle; the main title is The Drover’s Wife.  In fact, it would be something like blasphemy Down Under to remove the original title from Henry Lawson’s story. ( HERE is a link to Lawson’s original story.)  Purcell, explains, “You could compare him to your Mark Twain: he's considered one of the greatest storytellers of our country. He was looking at the colonial period when he was writing. Henry would go on walkabouts as they say in Australia, and meet up with people and sit and observe. But he also based The Drover's Wife loosely on his mother's experience, and his mother was a newspaper proprietor. She actually published his first poetry, and she was a writer herself.”

Lawson’s story takes place on a single night, with a woman and her four children alone in their farmhouse in the bush, waiting for her drover – a man who drives livestock – to return.  A snake gets into the house, into a hollow woodpile, and the wife and her dog spend the night awake, protecting the family from the snake.  Forty years ago, another Australian classic, Banjo Paterson’s poem The Man from Snowy River, became a tremendously successful film, and the filmmakers took great care to elaborate, but not stray from, the original, beloved story.  Purcell has taken a very different route, using the original story as what she calls, “A Trojan Horse,” as a springboard to a much more complex tale, with a backstory that is slowly revealed as the main story moves ahead.  It is a beautiful but unflinching film, brimming with suspense, hate, brutality, violence, and hope.

Purcell, who played Queenie, Danny Huston’s girlfriend, in The Proposition, and has an extensive resumé as a television writer, director, and actor, already had created a successful stage version of Drover’s Wife before she filmed it.  You’ll learn in the interview why it’s a profoundly personal story to her.

 

Purcell directing

HENRY PARKE: How long have you known Henry Lawson's story, The Drover's Wife?

LEAH PURCELL: When I was a five-year-old, my mother would read that story to me. She had his little book of short stories, first published in 1892. And that was the first time I used my imagination, where I put myself and my mum in that story, because my story was very similar. My mother's Aboriginal, and my dad is white, but he was not in my upbringing. So it was just me and her. We lived on the outskirts of a small country town. We had a wood heap; she could swing an axe. She taught me to split logs to chips, and she taught me to stack wood. She would say, "Don't stack it hollow, or the snakes will get in under." So words in my life were sort of echoing the story. My mom passed away, and when she did pass, that book was the one thing I took. I carried that story with me for 42 years.

I was a director in a writer's workshop, but I got very frustrated with these writers because they just kept churning out the same 12 pages. So then I thought, maybe it's time for me to write. I wrote the play in 2014, and we world premiered it at the Belvoir Street Theater in Sydney, one of our prestigious theater houses, (and) we sold out. I'm a bit crazy, Henry. I'd get the feedback from the audience, (then) go home at night and work on the film script. I always try to leave my work open-ended, so I leave them wanting more. And they did want more, and I said, well, I can do that in the film. Once I got the first draft up, and we got into pre-production, I was then finishing off the novel. We got a book deal from Penguin, Random House. And that was amazing because what I could do with those chapters on the characters was to give their chapters to my actors. So it was an enriching project and a process for our film; they came with a strong understanding of those characters. And it just all built upon one another and it made for a rich, rich film, I think.

HENRY PARKE: How ingrained is The Drover's Wife in Australian folklore?

LEAH PURCELL: Henry Lawson is considered one of the greatest storytellers of our country.

And in the film, The Dawn, that Louisa (played by Jessica De Gouw) writes for, is a homage to Henry's mom: her name’s Louisa Klintoff, after Louisa Lawson. The Dawn was her paper and she was writing about battered wives, temperance. She was before the Suffragette movement; she really pushed it in Australia when it came. She was a woman before her time. So the story The Drover's Wife is a classic. And when I had my producing hat on, I knew that it could be the Trojan horse to bring his loyal fans, where they might have thought they were getting a literal interpretation, but were pleasantly surprised – a majority of them – with the indigenous flavor that I put through.

Through my work, I want my audience to sit, think and have conversation. And I've witnessed that; I've gone to the film, sat at the back and watched the audience sit there until the credits roll. I'm listening to the conversation, and the ushers are telling us to get out because the next session is starting. So I've done my job. And as an indigenous person, as a storyteller, a truthteller on my people's plight, I wanted to open those conversations up, and hope people can take an interest, an understanding from an indigenous perspective, and maybe have their own interest to research more, to find their own understanding on those issues.

HENRY PARKE: In Lawson’s story, you learn her children’s names, even that her dog is called Alligator, but the drover’s wife’s name is never said. But you named her.

LEAH PURCELL: Well, she's a woman and she needs a name. The funny thing is when I sat down to actually write the play, I grabbed the book and put it beside me. And I said, I'm not gonna reread it. I'm gonna remember what my mother told me. And once I'd done the first draft, I gave it to my partner in life and in our production company. I said, you read this and tell us if we're onto something. And while he read that, I went back and read the book. And the first thing I said was, he doesn't give her a name! What's going on? It was important that I gave her her identity. I understood in those times, for protection, it was important for a woman to be married, to have her husband's name, and to be able to mention it, because of the danger of being on a property on her own while her husband is away; it gave you some status. So I understand that, but I wanted to play on that. And Molly does that: whenever she introduces herself at the beginning, “I'm Mrs. Joe Johnson.” He's the boss. He'll be home soon. That's her way of protecting herself. But then when she finally finds the friendship, she clearly gives her name, and that's such a big thing because she's owning her identity in that moment. And then, without giving too much away, that opens up even further with the indigenous man, what he's there for. The name Johnson actually came from my great-grandfather, who was non-indigenous and who loved his black wife and his Aboriginal children. My grandmother was part of the stolen generations. (Note: from the 1910s to the 1970s, in a policy that echoes earlier ones in the U.S. and Canada, as many as 300,000 Aboriginal and mixed-race children were forcibly taken from their families by the Australian government, to be raised as white.) She was stolen, and he tried to save her and her sister and brother; he managed to save his son, but not the two girls. And that's where Johnson came from: paying homage to the men in the family who stuck by their Aboriginal women.

HENRY PARKE: Was it very difficult for you to move the story from the stage to the screen?

LEAH PURCELL: No. I loved the challenge, and I wanted each experience to be different. So I really thought about those processes. I can't wait to do the play again, because if you read the book and you’ve seen Molly on the screen, now come and meet her in person on the stage. With the novel, you get more of a spiritual and an internal thought process about what happens to her. And in the film you get the raw, in-your-face: here it is. I've had a lot of people say that they've read the novel, and they cried.  “But when we got into the film, we wanted to get angry. We wanted to get even.” The women were empowered. So no, I really enjoyed the process of finding the difference.

HENRY PARKE: You have extensive experience directing television, writing episodic TV, and I'm sure that was wonderful preparation for you. But why did you decide to do your own stunt fighting?

LEAH PURCELL: Because I I'm a very physical actor. I love my sports. I come from a boxing family. My brothers and nephews were all Australian champions. My non-indigenous father was a boxing trainer; that was how we could get close to him, by going boxing training. And, I just wanted to show off my skill. It was an opportunity. Because my dad said to me, if you were a boy, you'd be an Australian champ. I was 49 when I ventured out on this, and I said, I'm gonna give it my best shot, and do my fight stuff. I had a ball! All the producers were on-set. When Molly takes the fall, I did that 12 times, and they're going, “Stop! Stop!” And I'm going, “But I'm having so much fun doing it!” Even the stunt coordinator, he said, “You're a man.” And I said, “Yeah, I know.” I said, “When I grow up, I'm gonna become a stunty in my seventies.”

HENRY PARKE: Great. I do know stuntman who are in their seventies and they're stunting for actors in their eighties. I was wondering what Western filmmakers, Australian, or American, or both have influenced you?

LEAH PURCELL: The biggest one for me is Clint Eastwood. My mum was a big fan, so I watched a lot of his movies. Growing up in a small country town, you don't have a lot of choice in what you watch. So we grew up on westerns; a few spaghetti westerns found their way out, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. There were other movies; Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood. Hondo, with John Wayne. I got a bit scared because, oh my gosh, some of my lines (in Molly Johnson) are in these films. I hope people haven't thought I ripped it off; I want it to be an homage to them. Shane was another film that we looked at, Deadwood of course, and in Australia, The Proposition.  John Hillcoat was the director, and I acted in that one as well. I played Queenie, Danny Houston's girlfriend. And that was shot in my great-grandmother's traditional land of Winton. So that meant a lot. And Mudbound was the other one, just looking at the female character, Carey Mulligan, as the protagonist in that. And I threw in 12 Years a Slave. Just for the sort of character, that he was wrongfully arrested, and trying to get home. So, they were the main ones that I looked at. And the one with Leonardo de Caprio, The Revenant. That was another one that I was looking at, the shots of the action, the low angles. And so for when Molly has that fall, when Leo was fighting the bear -- we really studied it. We've got a scene where a horseman is coming down the hill at pace; that’s a little homage for the fans of Banjo Paterson and The Man from Snowy River. They were the main ones.

HENRY PARKE: What is your next project? Are you tackling another Western?

LEAH PURCELL: No, I've been advised to try something different. I'm acting in a film at the moment. So on my downtime, I sit and I write. I've finished a treatment that I think will be my second film, but I've gone totally the other way. It's PG, it's family. I'm really excited about it. There's an indigenous component in it, which is loosely based on my family's history again, as a foundation. It's a bit of animation in there as well. And you know who I am as a writer, so there's this subtle subtext of an issue; of a few issues; I'm excited about that. But also I've just finished the bible for the The Drover's Wife limited premium, TV series; about to go shopping it. It starts in 2020, and the little girl in the film, Delphi, it's her great, great, great, great granddaughter in 2020, and an incident happens and she's got to go back to the high country. She's been estranged from Australia and her family. She's been living in America as a defamation lawyer. She comes back home and her work sends her back to the high country. And then her history starts running back to her. She finds out that she's connected to Molly Johnson, and you find out what happened to the children. So that's exciting to do. And we've been offered an opera version or a musical version, like Porgy and Bess. The composer has been chasing me for nearly a year now, and we finally sat down and had the conversation, and contracts have been drawn up. It's exciting. I think for me, the TV series will wrap it up and I'll put Molly to bed. And then of course, hopefully I'd like to do the play again at some stage, because we only did a short season in Australia, we only did one city. So I'd like to do a tour. I'm just on this trajectory of film and television at the moment, so I might have to give over the role of Molly to another person to get it back out there. But I love that role and I want to play homage to it again. And I know that my fans in Australia do want to see me in that role on the stage again, so there's plenty of stokes in the fire to keep me busy for a good while.

If you’re in Southern California, and would like to see Leah Purcell on the big screen, On Sunday, June 1^st, The Proposition is an opening night film for the American Cinematheque’s 4^th annual Bleak Week, at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Director John Hillcoat and actor Robert Morgan will be there for an in-person Q&A, and and Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Guy Pearce and Emily Watson will take part virtually. Here’s the link: https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/the-proposition-6-1-25/

 

 REMEMBERING JOE DON BAKER

Joe Don Baker died earlier this month, at the age of 89. Best known for starring as lawman Burford Pusser in Walking Tall (1973), from his first screen credit, a 1965 Honey West episode, to his last, the exceptional 2012 film Mud, he had a screen presence that was unmistakable, and upped the ante of every scene he appeared in. The towering Texan served in the Army, graduated from North Texas State, and studied at The Actors Studio. His Broadway debut was 1963’s Marathon ’33, about Depression-era marathon dancers, written by June Havoc, with a cast that included Julie Harris, Lonny Chapman, Gabriel Dell, Conrad Janis, Doris Roberts, and Ralph Waite. The following year he was in Blues for Mr. Charlie, directed by Burgess Meredith, and co-starring with Rip Torn, Pat Hingle and Diana Sands. He was in 3 James Bond movies, sometimes a villain and sometimes a good guy, tough crime pictures like The Outfit and Charley Varrick, and was nominated for the Best Actor BAFTA award for the BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness, and a Best Supporting Actor Cable Ace award for playing Alabama Governor Big Jim Folsom in the George Wallace miniseries.

Joe Don Baker on THE BIG VALLEY

He did a fair number of Western television episodes, playing a wide range of white hats and black hats.  On one of his Gunsmoke shows he blames Doc for letting his wife die in childbirth, for instead attending a wounded outlaw. On The Big Valley he played a college-educated Modoc who ascribes all of his problems to white racism. He also appeared on Bonanza, Iron Horse, High Chaparral, and on 3 episodes of Lancer, one of which was the model for the episode-within-the-movie of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, with DeCaprio reprising Baker’s role.

George Kennedy and Joe Don Baker in

GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT 7

On the big screen, Joe Don starred in 1969’s Guns of the Magnificent 7, the best of the sequels, playing a bitter one-armed former Confederate officer who forms an unexpected alliance with formerly enslaved Bernie Casey. He supported William Holden and Ryan O’Neal in Blake Edwards’s 1971 Western The Wild Rovers, and in 1977 was again an ex-Confederate, this time hunting for stolen diamonds in the supernatural Western Shadows of Chikara, opposite Sondra Locke. Perhaps most memorably, he was Steve McQueen’s real estate sub-dividing brother in Sam Peckinpah’s 1972 film Junior Bonner.

Steve McQueen, Ida Lupino and Joe Don Baker

in JUNIOR BONNER

To me, Joe Don Baker’s most important film was 1977’s car-crash crime-thriller, Speedtrap, because it was my first film credit -- I co-wrote it with Fred Mintz during my last year of college, and we were credited with the original story. I was on the set in Phoenix for the last few weeks of filming, and Joe Don was particularly welcoming, friendly, and easy-going. Back then, every film production had its official t-shirt, and the silent way to show off your resume’ , was to wear a different movie’s crew t-shirt every day for as long as you could. Our shirt was yellow, with blue type, and said, “FIRST ARTISTS, SPEEDTRAP” on the front, and “SCREW THE DIALOG, LET’S WRECK SOMETHING!” on the back. They destroyed 136 cars making the film. Joe Don was so kind, he thought my feelings would be hurt by the slogan, and apologized for the shirt, assuring me that they really did care about the dialog. He seemed relieved when I was wearing my, “SCREW THE DIALOG” shirt on-set the next morning.

I’d written a film noir script called Unfinished Business, with him in mind as the lead, and the morning after I’d given it to him, he told me he loved it, “And I love how you make me sound like Humphrey Bogart.” After we wrapped that day, and after a lot of us had had a few drinks – I know I did – someone said, “let’s go to Malibu Grand Prix and race!” In case that’s before your time, Malibu Grand Prix was a chain of family race tracks with mini formula-one cars. Joe Don said to me, “Ride with me and we’ll talk about the script.” We’re tearing along the freeway, talking about the script, and Joe Don says, “Grab the wheel – I want to roll a joint.” And he lets go of the wheel and gets out the makings. Terrified, and drunk, I reach for the wheel, miss the near edge, and grab the far edge, falling into his lap the process, BOUNCING us over the divider, into on-coming traffic. Joe Don is frozen for a moment, Zig-zag papers in one hand, a shaker-bottle of weed in the other. Then he throws them in the air, grabs the wheel out of my hand, BOUNCES us back into our own lane. We’re both silent and shaking for a moment, and then he says, “Henry, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

I said, “Joe Don, I don’t know how to drive.”

“You don’t know how to drive? No wonder you write these fucking movies!”

Joe Don Baker and Tyne Daly in the

German SPEEDTRAP poster

After some initial failed attempts to get Unfinished Business made, we were both on to other things, and were rarely in contact besides Christmas cards. I’ll always remember my surprise and delight when, maybe twenty years later, out of the blue, may agent called me. “Guess what? Joe Don Baker just took an option on Unfinished Business.” We still never got it made, but it brought us back in touch for several years.

A few years ago, my Christmas cards started coming back as undeliverable. The phone number I had was disconnected. I’d been interviewed for a documentary, and the guys making it wanted to interview Joe Don. I tried to put them together, and failed. I checked IMDBpro, to see if he had management that I could go through. His manager had four clients listed. Besides Joe Don, they were John Saxon, Stuart Margolin, and Dick Gautier. All dead but Joe Don, and now he is as well. I was, not surprisingly, in the mood to watch a Joe Don Baker movie, so I checked my streaming services, to see what was available, and to my amazement I saw that Speedtrap is streaming on Tubi. Here’s the link!

https://tubitv.com/movies/100028258/speedtrap

MY RECENT WRITINGS

Please check out my newest articles. The May/June True West is our All American Primeval issue, and I have four articles in it! Here are links to two of them. The first is about the Indigenous Consultant who made sure the portrayals were correct ...

https://truewestmagazine.com/article/an-indigenous-consultant-ensures-accuracy/

...and the second is an interview with the actors who play the most interesting characters in the story, Jim Bridger and Brigham Young.

https://truewestmagazine.com/article/showdown-bridger-vs-brigham/

My newest article for the INSP Blog is What Makes a Great Western Movie? Unpacking the West, where in I reverse-engineer some classic Western films to see what traits they share.

https://www.insp.com/blog/what-makes-a-great-western-movie/

On the first Thursday of every month I'm a guest on Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell's podcast, Rendezvous With a Writer. I give an update on what's new in Western film & TV, and stick around as they interview a guest author. Their guest this time was Anne Hillerman, who has continued her father Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito novels, and has just published her 10th, Shadow of the Solstice, which is excellent! Give it a listen, won't you?

Listen HERE.

or watch HERE.

AND THAT'S A WRAP!

I've got a bunch of up-dating to do on this site, but I need to get this posted NOW, so I'll be polishing the site up in the coming days. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, so don't forget to take time out to think about the millions of brave American men and women who have given their lives in war to keep us free!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright May 2025 by Parke -- All Rights Reserved

‘BLACK CREEK!’ ACTION STAR CYNTHIA ROTHROCK ON MAKING HER FIRST WESTERN! PLUS UPDATE: STARTING AT 8 TONIGHT, THURSDAY, TCM WESTERNS: “TCM SPOTLIGHT: THE DEFINING FRONTIER”

R. Marcus Taylor, Keith Cooke, Cynthia Rothrock,

Richard Norton, Don 'The Dragon' Wilson

‘BLACK CREEK!’ ACTION STAR CYNTHIA ROTHROCK ON MAKING HER FIRST WESTERN!  PLUS WESTERNS TO CATCH AT THE TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL, AND MORE!

When Cynthia Rothrock first appeared on the action-movie scene in 1985, she was exactly what the industry needed: a striking blonde actress who just happened to be a record-holding martial arts master in several disciplines. The undisputed Queen of Martial Arts films has since starred in 70 more action films, and a few comedies, but she never made a Western until 2024. Black Creek will be released early in the summer of 2025. It is a somewhat whacky, wonderfully entertaining revenge Western, and Cynthia has loaded the cast with faces that may not be that familiar to most Western moviegoers, but will be a thrill to action movie fans, as it includes many of the best on-screen fighters in the business, including R. Marcus Taylor, Keith Crooke, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, and Cynthia’s most frequent costar, Richard Norton. Before our interview, which was punctuated with her disarmingly girlish laughter, she’d sent me a link to the then nearly-finished film, and when I emailed back that I’d enjoyed it very much, she replied, “Glad you liked my film. A lot of love and hard work went into it.” I told her that was obvious.

Cynthia Rothrock: Oh, thank you. We did this movie in 14 days, if you could believe it, and I was just so excited because everybody just gave their all, and it was such a hard shoot. We had freezing nights because I wanted the look to be eerie, you know: candlelight and lanterns. We had to light up everything, so everything took longer, but it was worth it. But it was so cold -- like 4:00 A.M. doing a fight scene, your muscles would freeze up. I had all these guys standing around the corral, and they were like, “We're doing this for Cynthia.” They were such troopers. It was such an amazing thing. I created this Facebook page for Black Creek, and we have so many people from different countries that came over, and were working on this film. They became this really tight-knit close family, where they hadn't met before. It's just beautiful to see how everybody is so involved in this project. It's so cool.

Henry Parke: You have a very impressive list of movie credits, but I believe 2024’s Taken from Rio Bravo, starring Alexander Nevsky, directed by Joe Cornet, is your first Western. 

Cynthia Rothrock: Right. That was just a cameo I did as a favor 'cause Alexander as a friend of mine.

Henry Parke: You do a very nice job in it. I was wondering if you sort of looked at it as a dry run for Black Creek?

Cynthia Rothrock: Well, I learned what I didn't want to do, because of it. I liked their Western town, I liked the setting, but we went with Mescal Movie Set instead, because it had a better feel. It was actually more difficult, because Mescal didn't have electricity, so we had to bring in generators, which was another big expense. Some of the people that worked on Taken from Rio Bravo, because they were from Arizona, worked on mine too. So it was a really good connection for my film. What really gave me this idea is, I love Westerns, and if you Google “woman gunslinger,” you get Annie Oakley or Selma Hayek. And I go, gosh, I wanna be known as a gunslinger that can really fight, you know? My inspiration came from Yellowstone because I just loved Yellowstone. I liked the gritty darkness of it. So when we decided to do my own film, because I've done 70 films – but this is the first time I've decided to take the helm and do my own film. Robert (Clancy) and I were coming up with stories, and he’s like, “What do you wanna do?” And I said, “A Western.” He looked at me like I was crazy. “A Western?” “Yeah.” And he's like, “Okay…”

Keith Cooke, Cynthia, Brandy Futch

Henry Parke: I was surprised that you designed and made many of the costumes yourself.

Cynthia Rothrock: Costuming was so expensive. We're like, oh my gosh, that's not in our budget. So (Robert Clancy) and I both did the costumes for the whole entire movie. We researched everything: you can't have this on your boot, you can't have an emblem, no rubber soles, you can't have zippers -- every little detail. We started two years ago with the Kickstarter program. It's funny because, when I did the Kickstarter, all my male peers -- you know, I grew up in this male dominant world?

Henry Parke: Clearly.

Cynthia Rothrock: Being, in the early days, the only female competing against men, I just kind of looked at them as my peers. And a lot of them were saying, don't do a Kickstarter. You're not going to make it. It's going to be embarrassing. There's one actor that has done some big movies, and he failed at (crowd-funding), and they're like, if he failed, why do you think you could do it? And I went, I'm going for it. And we became like the second highest funded action picture in the history of Kickstarter.

Henry Parke: That's great.

Cynthia Rothrock: You know, this was a fan-based production: if it wasn't for the fans supporting us, we wouldn't have been able to do this movie. One of our top incentives for Kickstarter was they could be in a fight scene, or they could have a line in the movie. And we had a lot of people do that. We had people from Greece, England, Australia, a lot of different countries coming just to do this. They did a phenomenal job. We had some working with acting coaches, we would do readings every month and go through the script with everybody. And even if they only had one line, we'd still involve 'em. That's a really good memory for me.

Henry Parke: How many people took part in the Kickstarter program?

Cynthia Rothrock: We had over 500 people. People were saying it was a fluke, right? You'll never do it again. Well, we have the graphic novel for Black Creek coming out as well. We did an Indiegogo campaign for that, and we came in 220% above what we asked for. I just can't wait for everybody to see this because I'm just so proud of it. I'm so proud of everybody – with 14 days and the limited budget -- what we pulled off.

Henry Parke: May I ask what your budget was?

Cynthia Rothrock: It was about $425,000.

Henry Parke: Oh my goodness! I work on a lot of low budget films, so I’m very aware that that is a small amount of money to have something that looks so elegant, and your art direction, your production design, is so impressive.

Cynthia Rothrock: We were drawing how we wanted it to look, and the stunts; we were so, so much involved in this. But I've had a lot of people do favors for me. Our music team is sensational. Doing our main song, and then the ending song, is Jim Peterik, who won a Grammy, and was nominated for an Oscar, for Eye of the Tiger that he co-wrote for Rocky III.

And Benjy Gaither, and he currently has a number-one hit song he wrote for George Strait, Three Drinks Behind. And Mark Shearer -- I've never met him, but he’s been a fan of mine. And these three people teamed up and did all our music. And what we would have to pay for that is crazy! We've just been so blessed! And I'm hoping that someone will say, wow, look what she did for two weeks of shooting and this money! If we give her a million or a million and a half and 20 days of shooting, what can you pull off?

Henry Parke: Is this your first screenwriting credit?

Cynthia Rothrock: Yes, it is. First time as a co-writer; first time as a producer. And it was a whole different experience for me, because usually I'm sitting in my trailer and just studying my lines, but now I have no time to sit in my trailer. I knew the script inside out because I was one of the writers, so thank God for that. But I had to be on set all the time to make sure everybody was happy doing their parts, dealing with any issues. It was an eye-opening experience for me, being there way early every morning and then being the last person to leave.

Cynthia gets the drop on Keith Cooke

Henry Parke: You said that you were a big Western fan and that Yellowstone inspired you. Do you have any other favorites that inspired you?

Cynthia Rothrock: Tombstone, Outlaw Josey Wales. I remember when Sharon Stone did The Quick and the Dead, I was like, wow, that's really cool that she was doing that role. I liked a lot of the old Westerns that you would see on TV. When I was a kid I’d read about Annie Oakley, that she was this tough woman back in that era, tough with the guys. And it's funny because I grew up in that same kind of situation, you know?

Henry Parke: Tell me a bit about your character, Rose Jennings.

Cynthia Rothrock: She's a little rough; she likes to drink, she's got a little bit of a potty mouth, and isn't afraid of anybody. She’s very close with her family, but it's hard for her to settle down in one place. She takes off for a while, and when she comes back, she finds out that her family was killed. And then all hell is loose. She's getting these people (who killed them), and saving the rest of her family.

Henry Parke: I was kind of overwhelmed by the physical demands this movie places on you. Wearing so many hats, did you have to do a lot of training while making the movie?

Cynthia Rothrock: No, because I was on-set every day, and if it wasn't me rehearsing my scene, I'm with the other actors because none of these actors got to practice. My stunt coordinator knows how I like to move. And everybody is different; they all had their own fight styles, and he was familiar with them. So we put together a composite so they can watch it and study it and say, Hey, is there anything in here you don't like? And then of course, when you get to the set, we would just be rehearsing while cameras were setting up. And if there was something that wasn't good for someone, we would change it on the spot. It was almost like the old Hong Kong fighting: learn it, shoot it. That's how I got my start. I did seven movies in Hong Kong before I came to the United States and then started doing films. My first movie was in 1985, with Michelle Yeoh, we did Yes, Madam.

Cynthia and 2023 Best Actress Oscar-winner

 Michelle Yeoh in Yes, Madam!

Henry Parke: I just watched it on Prime, under the title In the Line of Duty II: The Super Cops. It was hysterical.

Cynthia Rothrock: That was my first, and I thought I'd just do one movie, you know? I'm kind of an out of the box person. I never really want to do something that's the same, the same, the same. I always want to try to put some unique flare into it. There was something so unique going to Hong Kong. I didn't think it was going to turn into a career. I thought, oh, I'll just go there and I'll do one movie. And it's funny, in my mind, I was thinking, well, maybe I'll be on the poster and I could show my kids someday, saying, “Hey, look, your mom was in a movie.” It really wasn't my intention that I was going to become an action film star.

Henry Parke: Was Black Creek your first time riding a horse in a film?

Cynthia Rothrock:  It was my first time riding a horse on my own. I've gone on trails where you follow the leader. I didn't want to look like I didn't know what I was doing, so the horse wrangler told me, don't put your two hands here, do this here. And actually I got really comfortable with the horse. There's one scene where there were two horses on the side, and me, and they shot some rounds off down below, and it freaked the horses out -- the two horses on the side started bucking. And I just turned my horse around nice and calm and went down the hill. It was funny because someone said to Robert, “Wow, how long has she been riding?” And Robert said, “About two hours.”

Henry Parke: With so many of the smaller westerns, they have no time with the horses, and they have inexperienced riders, and everyone's shouting, “We have to put together a posse and get after those guys!” And they jump on their horses, and walk slowly out of town.

Keith Cooke, Don Wilson, Brandy Futch

Cynthia Rothrock: I know! I did have an incident on-set with the horse wrangler. The horse was so big, and I'm five foot three, and no matter what, I could not get my foot into the stirrup and get it up over the horse. And so he lifts me up, and I'm like five, five and a half feet off the ground. And he dropped me, and I fell on my right, on my back and on my head. We were off to the side, so nobody saw it. And my hat saved my head, because my hat was kind of like a little helmet, and my belt saved my hip, so I didn't get hurt, but it took the air out of me. And the wrangler goes, “You're a karate girl. You should be used to this kind of stuff.” I said, “When I get on the horse, can I get an apple box to stand on?” He says, “Oh yeah.” And I'm like “Why didn't you think of that in first place?”

Henry Parke: This is the first feature directing credit for Shannon Lanier.  Where'd you find him?

Cynthia Rothrock: We had two directors. Shannon was directing the acting scenes. I met him, we talked, and he seemed to have my vision, and he worked in low budget film. I said, “Look, I’m bringing this guy in from Germany for the fights; when it comes fighting, I want him at the helm. I want him with the camera, to direct that,” and he said, “Okay.” So all our acting scenes, Shannon directed, and all the fight scenes, Mike Moeller directed.

Henry Parke: Mike Moeller has quite a resume, doing stunts on the Hunger Games, Matrix, and John Wick films among others. Very impressive.

Cynthia Rothrock: He's so awesome. It's funny, because we brought his stunt team over, and I wanted him to fight me. And he's like, “No, I don't want to fight. I just want to do the choreography.” And I went, “Okay.” And when he saw the trailer, he’s like, “Oh, I should've been in it! I'm fighting in Part Two!”

Henry Parke: I guess you have to be very physically capable to be on a Cynthia Rothrock set. I notice even your cinematographer, Aaron Johnson Araza, is a former stunt man.

Cynthia Rothrock: Yeah. Well, they're moving pretty fast, getting down low with the camera -- it’s good because he understood the action, and that helped us. Aaron would be directing some of the scenes, and we’d go, wow, that's a great shot! It was a collaboration, with everybody pulling this film together.

Henry Parke: What was the most challenging part of making Black Creek?

Cynthia Rothrock: We had 150 people on-set on our first day. So we did the hardest days right in the beginning. I think the most challenging part during the whole movie was, are we going to get all these scenes in? Some of the fight scenes, I wanted more to them, and we had to cut them down because of time. I'm definitely planning that on Black Creek 2, every fight scene has one whole day to shoot. And I must thank James Marlowe. He has the Marlowe-Pugnetti Company; he’s a fan of mine, and he came on as an executive producer. We've become really good friends, and he is definitely my guardian angel, helping us with post production, with editor Ben Ho, getting the right sound person, and just being a mentor through it; he is definitely a big part of bringing this movie to fruition. We put him in as a partner, and when we do Black Creek 2, we'll involve him. (Note: since the interview, it’s been decided that James Marlowe will direct Black Creek 2: Retribution, which is already written.)

This interview is really exciting for me because you're not in the karate world, you're in the Western world. And that's what we want to do as crossover, not only having Martial Art fans, but get Western fans loving this movie as well. And it's unique because you don't really see Westerns where everybody does Martial Arts

Henry Parke: You certainly don't.

Cynthia Rothrock: (Kickboxing legend) Don “The Dragon” Wilson said to me, “But Cynthia, how could everybody know martial arts? There weren't martial arts schools.” I said, “Don, because the Chinese were there. They came in for the gold rush; they all knew it. They taught it.” He goes, “Oh. Okay.”

Just as I was finishing my editing of this interview, I learned that Cynthia Rothrock’s close friend and Black Creek foe Richard Norton had just died. It would be their last of more than a dozen films together. I asked her if she would like me to include a remembrance of him.

“I am beyond words and deeply shocked by the sudden passing of my dear friend and fellow martial artist, Richard Norton. The martial arts world has lost a true legend. We shared an incredible journey—starring together in numerous action films, from China O’Brien, Millionaires Express, Rage and Honor to Lady Dragon. I was thrilled to have him join the cast of Black Creek as the formidable antagonist, Damien Sinclair. His performance was nothing short of extraordinary. Our final fight scene together will forever hold a special place in my heart—a moment I’ll always cherish as the last dance of the “Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers” of Martial Arts action. Richard’s talent, kindness, and dedication to Martial Arts will continue to inspire generations to come.”

WESTERN HIGHLIGHTS AT THE TCM HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL

Me and Shirley Jones -- and a few others -- at the

2014 TCM Fest screening of Oklahoma!

From Thursday, April 24^th through Sunday, April 27^th, The Turner Classic Movies Channel will hold their wonderful annual Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. Screenings and other events will be held at the Chinese IMAX Theatre, The Chinese Multiplex, The Egyptian Theatre, The El Capitan Theatre, and around the pool of The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. While the big packages for attendees can run in the thousands of dollars, individual screenings are only $20 each, although there’s no guarantee you’ll get in. This link will take you to the official Festival website, with complete details: https://filmfestival.tcm.com/

Among screenings of particular interest to Western fans, on Friday they’re showing 1940’s The Mark of Zorro, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Hollywood’s greatest actor/swordsman (just ask him), Basil Rathbone. 

On Saturday they will premiere a restoration of 1958’s Gunman’s Walk, directed by Phil Karlson, and starring Van Heflin and Tab Hunter, and introduced by Keith Carradine. 

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Also on Saturday, on the big Chinese Theatre IMAX screen, they’ll be showing a 35mm VistaVision print of 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, directed by John Sturges, starring Burt Lancaster as Wyatt, Kirk Douglas as Doc, John Ireland as Johnny Ringo, Earl Holliman as Charles Bassett, and Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton.  

And on Sunday morning, 1955’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, will also be presented on The Chinese Theatre IMAX screen. Directed by Fred “High Noon” Zinnemann, this, the greatest of Western musicals stars Gordon Macrae as Curly, Shirley Jones as Laurey, Gloria Grahame as Ado Annie – who can’t say “no,” and perhaps the only singing film performance by Rod Steiger as Jud Fry! And the film will be discussed by Shirley Jones’ son, Shaun Cassidy.

UPDATED 5-8-2025: TCM FOCUSES ON WESTERNS IN MAY WITH “TCM SPOTLIGHT: THE DEFINING FRONTIER”

Every Tuesday and Thursday night in May, Turner Classic Movies will feature Westerns, 46 in all, in generally chronological order, focusing on various aspects of the genre. I’ve included links to a few of my related articles, for more detailed information about the films.

Thursday, May 1^st – The Foundation, focused on silent films, from The Great Train Robbery (1903) to The Iron Horse (1922).

Tuesday, May 6^th -- The Quintessential Cowboy: John Wayne and the Idea of America, included the film that should have made him a star but didn’t, Raul Walsh’s The Big Trail (1930); and John Ford’s film that did make him a star, Stagecoach (1939); Howard Hawk’s film that proved even to his harshest critics that Wayne could act, Red River (1948); and the epic that was so epic-ish that it took not just Ford, but Henry Hathaway and George Marshall and Richard Thorpe to direct, How the West Was Won (1962).  

And now, the ones we haven’t missed yet!

Thursday, May 8^th -- Rugged Individualism, will begin with a look at great paired actor and dire ctor individualists like James Stewart in Anthony Mann’s The Man from Laramie (1955), Randolph Scott in Budd Boetticher’s Ride Lonesome (1959) , and Barbara Stanwyck in Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns.  A weird choice is James Cagney in Lloyd Bacon’s The Oklahoma Kid (1939), which is better than you’d expect, and does feature Humphrey Bogart as a Mexican bandito. Rounding out the program are a pair of Eastwoods, Hang ‘Em High (1968), the pretend Spaghetti Western from Ted Post, and Clint’s first self-directed Western, High Plains Drifter (1973).

On Tuesday, May 13^th – Social Commentary in Disguise, is dominated by post-war, noirish Westerns. The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) looks at mob rule, individual responsibility, racism, and lynching. Henry Fonda deserves all of the attention he gets for this William Wellman film, but equally affecting are Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, and Harry Morgan. Jacques Tourneur’s Wichita (1955), was one of the Joel McCrea starrers – here as Wyatt Earp – that were so good that they turned a poverty row studio, Monogram, to a major, Allied Artists. Elmore Leonard’s novel was the basis for Martin Ritt’s Hombre (1967), a pressure-cooker of a movie that looks at anti-Indian and anti-Mexican racism, with Paul Newman as the multiracial center.  Sergeant Rutledge (1960), John Ford’s courtroom drama starring Woody Strode as a black sergeant accused of the rape and murder of a white child, is so uncompromising and blunt that it’s astonishing that it was made, no less released. Rounding out the program is one of Sergio Corbucci’s finest, and most rarely seen Westerns, the snow-bound The Great Silence (1968), starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, and a pre-Blaxploitation Vonetta McGee.

Thursday, May 15^th -- Heroism and Sacrifice are themes that are unforgettably explored in John Sturges’ TheMagnificent 7 (1960), which made stars out of 6 (and Brad Dexter had a very respectable career), made an unlikely Western star of Eli Wallach, and featured future Chinatown cinematographer John Alonzo as one of the townspeople who hires the 7.  It's followed by Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which turned Clint Eastwood from TV actor to superstar, and triggered Spaghetti Western mania in the U.S. Fred Zinneman’s High Noon (1952) is next, for which Gary Cooper won an Oscar, as a lawman whose town abandons him at the first sign of danger – heavily influenced by screenwriter Carl Foreman’s experiences during the Red Scare. My Darling Clementine (1946), starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, and Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, is arguably the best movie about the O.K. Corral, although not the most accurate, despite or because of John Ford’s relationship with Wyatt Earp.  The program ends with a 2022 short, High Noon on the Waterfront, about the personal and professional risks taken by the people who made those two films.  

Tuesday, May 20^th, A Changing America: Disillusionment and the Rise of the Antihero is the theme, featuring film stories fomented and fermented during the late 1960s’ and early 1970s’ mélange of disappointment and cynicism. George Roy Hill’s ButchCassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) made charming rascals out of bank-robbers, and Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) made lovable scamps out of mercenaries: both wonderful Westerns, and Butch’s William Goldman screenplay is often cited as the best screenplay ever filmed. Eleven years after his final Leone film, Eastwood directed his remarkable anti-war Western, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), considered by many to be the zenith of Eastwood’s Western career, as an actor and as a director. Finally, Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christy as a frontier gambler and a whore in a cheerily grim yet sentimental movie that defies meaningful description.

Thursday, May 22^nd, Cultural Breakthroughs features Westerns that opened their stories beyond the usual white males.  Delmer Daves’ BrokenArrow (1950), tells the largely true story of the friendship between ex-soldier Tom Jeffords (James Stewart) and Cochise (Jeff Chandler).

In William Wellman’s Westward the Women (1951), written by Frank Capra (who'd hoped to direct), stern and sour Robert Taylor reluctantly takes an all-female wagon-train from Chicago to California, doubting he’ll get half there alive. It balances Capra’s charm and Wellman’s toughness beautifully. Despite the low-expectations of Blaxploitation films, Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher (1972) is a thought-provoking and entertaining surprise. Buffalo Soldier-turned-wagon master Buck (Poitier) leads freed slaves west with the reluctant help of Preacher (Harry Belafonte), who murdered his master and took over his scam. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2006) is the contemporary Western that had traditionalists up in arms, until they learned that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were portraying shepherds, not cowboys. The final film in the program is the documentary Bearing Witness: Native American Voices in Hollywood (2024).

On Tuesday, May 27^th, American Psyche might nearly be called American Psycho, focusing on the dark side of the West. In John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), the fictionalized search for Comanche captive Cynthia Anne Parker gave John Wayne one of his most compelling, and least likable characters. 

King Vidor’s (and several others’) Duel in the Sun (1946) might have been a good Western if producer David O. Selznick hadn’t been so driven to top his Gone with the Wind, that he forced an epic out of a potboiler plot. Anthony Mann’s Winchester 73 excels with James Stewart as a man obsessed with hunting down the fellow whose coveting of a perfect rifle led to murder.   In Robert Wise’s nearly all-at-night Blood on the Moon (1948), Robert Mitchum is drawn into a cynically manipulated range war.

On Thursday, May 29^th, the series ends with The End of an Era, a look at “end of the West” Westerns. Featured are two very different, but very sentimental films from SamPeckinpah, the gently charming The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and the anthem of doomed manly camaraderie, The Wild Bunch (1969). Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is the Spaghetti Western epic that has never been topped. And John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) studies the regretted compromises men needed to make for the West grow, through the characters of lawyer James Stewart and cowboy John Wayne.   

ONE MORE THING

Until I have a chance to write at length about the late Val Kilmer’s immense contributions to film in general, and Westerns in particular, here’s a link to his first lead in a Western. In 1989 he played the title character in Billy the Kid, a Ted Turner-produced TV Western that was scripted by Gore Vidal, based on his novel, The Left-Handed Gun, which had first been the source for the 1958 Paul Newman film.

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Please check out the March/April issue of True West Magazine, featuring my article/interview, Kris Kristofferson: A Texan at Oxford.

And here’s the link to my newest piece for the INSP blog, What Makes a Great Western Movie, wherein I try to reverse-engineer some classics to figure out what makes them work.

https://www.insp.com/blog/what-makes-a-great-western-movie/

And if you haven’t snapped up a copy of my book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made, and The People Who Made Them, wait no longer!

Here’s the link to the Amazon page, but feel free to order it from your local independent bookseller – we have to keep them in business too!

https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Westerns-Ever-Made/dp/1493074393?_encoding=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=insptv-20&linkId=40670747d047d3241c54003bcabb179f&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Happy Trails, Henry

All Original Content Copyright April 2025 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved