ANGEL AND THE BADMAN REMAKE IN
THEATRES OCTOBER 9TH!
A very entertaining remake of the
very first film that John Wayne produced, 1947’s Angel and the Badman, will be
opening in theatres across the country on October 9th, the first
Western to receive a full theatrical release in the United States in two
years. The original was the first of 15
film collaborations between Wayne and writer/director James Edward Grant, which
would include The Alamo, The Comancheros and McClintock! It’s the story of a Quaker girl who nurses a
wounded outlaw back from the brink, while both villains and lawmen are
searching for him. The original stars Gail Russell as the angel, John Wayne as the
badman Quirt Evans, and Bruce Cabot – the one who saved Fay Wray from King Kong
– as the far worse badman, Loredo. Playing the lawman who’s just dying to hang
Quirt is a mentor of Duke, the legendary Harry Carey.
The remake, appropriately from
Angel Studios, stars Zachary Levi in Duke’s role. I didn’t recognize him at
first with a beard, but you may remember him in the title role of the series
Chuck. He’s also starred twice as Shazam, and was the romantic interest to the
divorced Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He co-stars with Liam Neeson in the action film
The Fix, which just opened in theaters on September 11.
Australian actress Meg Fraser has
the Gail Russell role, and as the worst badman, it’s the often-terrifying Neal
McDonough, of the pale blue eyes and platinum blond hair, from Minority Report,
Justified, Yellowstone, and several of the DC Comics series. And the great
Tommy Lee Jones takes on the role of the lawman relentlessly tracking Quirt –
come to think of it, it’s kind of a variation on his character in The Fugitive.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Zachary Levi and Neal McDonough for my True
West article on the movie, which will be in the November/December issue.
Surprisingly, Angel and the Badman had already been remade not that long ago. In 2009, Lou Diamond Phillips played Quirt, and the late Luke Perry was Loredo in a pretty good TV movie version. If you’re wondering why this film keeps getting remade, it’s because someone at John Wayne Productions goofed, didn’t renew the copyright, and the film fell into public domain: that’s why you can find the original on practically all streamers
‘DRUMMER BOY’ – A HISTORICAL MUSICAL – ALSO COMING FROM ANGEL STUDIOS
Angel Studios is a very interesting
company. They’re a streaming service, they make their own movies with top
talent onscreen and behind the camera, they theatrically release many of them,
and if you’re a subscriber, you actually get to vote on what projects they
greenlight. Back on the 4th of July, Angel Studios got a lot of
attention for their film Young Washington. On November 6th they have
another picture in theaters, Drummer Boy, a musical, directed by the Smallbone
brothers, a Grammy-winning Christian pop duo better known as For King and
Country. The story is about two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides
of the American Revolution, and one is a drummer boy. These Angel folks are
smart in the old Hollywood way. Both Drummer Boy and Young Washington were shot
in Ireland, I assume back-to-back, with 50 of the same crew members, and I
suspect some of the same sets and costumes.
MICHAEL KEATON DIRECTS AND STARS IN
RODE TO RUIN, HIS 1ST WESTERN – CO-STARRING MORGAN FREEMAN AND LAURA
LINNEY
Next, Michael Keaton will not only
star in his first Western, he will also direct it, and he’ll be co-starring
with Morgan Freeman. Freeman has only done one Western before, but it was Unforgiven,
so he chose wisely. In Rode to Ruin, Keaton will play a retired US Marshall who
has spent 40 years hunting his wife’s killer. Freeman is an aging outlaw who
may know something about the crime, but his memory is fading. Just added to the
cast this week is Laura Linney, who plays a frontier trader, who is one of the
very few people Freeman’s character trusts. It will be Linney’s first Western,
but she is no stranger to period stories, having so memorably portrayed Abigail
Adams in the John Adams miniseries.
Screenplay is by R. Dean McCreary,
produced by Lori McCreary, who has a long history of successful collaborations with
Freeman. Oh, and guess who has acquired Rode to Ruin? That’s right, Angel
Studios!
I PASSED THIS WAY SET TO PASS
BEFORE CAMERAS FOR JOHN SAYLES BEFORE YEAR’S END – AMY MADIGAN, CHRIS COOPER,
RON PERLMAN TO STAR
I Passed This Way is based on Eugene
Manlove Rhodes’ novella Pasó Por AquÃ. Although he is not so well
known today, in the 1920s and ‘30s, Rhodes was a commercially popular and
much-revered Western writer. Adapting and directing is long-time Rhodes admirer
John Sayles, the twice Oscar-nominated writer/director of Lone Star. It’s about
a young fellow who impulsively robs a bank, and ends up with Pat Garrett on his
tail.
At this point, who plays whom is
guesswork, but you can’t go wrong with this cast. Amy Madigan, who just won
this year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Weapons, was wonderful with
husband Ed Harris in the 1996 adaptation of Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple
Sage. Chris Cooper, in addition to starring in Sayles’ Lone Star, is an Oscar-winner
for Adaptation, and was July Johnson in Lonesome Dove. Ron Perlman, two-time
Emmy nominee for his star-making role in the Beauty and the Beast series, was
in 1994’s Cisco Kid, starred from 1998 to 2000 in the Magnificent 7 series, and
more recently played Judge Henry in 2014’s re-imagined The Virginian.
It's to be shot in Spain’s Canary
Island, which might sound like an odd location for a Western. But they have
great mountains and deserts, and were the location for the popular 1975 Western
Take a Hard Ride, which starred Lee Van Cleef and Jim Brown. Pasó Por AquÃ
was first filmed very successfully in 1948 as Four Faces West, starring husband
and wife Joel McCrea and Frances Dee. Their grandson, Wyatt McCrea, tells me
that it was one of their personal favorites.
CHARLES MARTIN SMITH ON HIS
ADVENTURES WITH PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, AND THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO.
The film that put teenaged
character actor Charles Martin Smith on the map was 1973’s American
Graffiti. The role was Toad, the nerd who seemingly had no chance with
lovely Candy Clark, but won her nonetheless. That wasn’t his first film, but it
was close. In 1971 he’d debuted on The Brady Bunch, played a bellhop on Monty
Nash, then made his first Western appearance with a featured role in The
Culpepper Cattle Co. There were parts in Fuzz, Room 222, Go Ask Alice;
then Sam Peckinpah chose him to play Bowdre in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Smith quickly became so in-demand in all genres that he did 4 tv episodes,
voiced 16 cartoons, and was in Spain, starring in his third Western, The
Spikes Gang, before American Graffiti was even released!
Since then, Smith has played over 90 different roles on big screens and small. In 1988, while continuing to act, he stepped behind the camera to direct Trick or Treat, and has gone on to direct 18 movies and TV shows, with a special expertise in ‘man versus the elements’ and animal-centered stories, an interest he developed while starring in the legendary Never Cry Wolf, directed by Carroll Ballard.
I had the pleasure of interviewing
Charles Martin Smith on Labor Day weekend of 2024. I was writing an article for
True West on the restored Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid from
Criterion (you can read that article HERE https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/pat-garrett-billy-the-kid-the-way-it-should-be-seen/). I took the opportunity to
discuss all of his Westerns with him because, happily, “These are films I'm
interested in talking about.”
(Note: Since the interview, a
number of people discussed, including Kris Kristofferson, Matt Clark, and L.Q.
Jones, have passed away.)
Henry Parke: Do you remember how
old you were when you did Pat Garrett?
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah, I was
19.
Henry Parke: You'd already done the
Culpepper Cattle Company. Did that help you get the part of Charlie
Bowdre?
Charles Martin Smith: I have no
idea. That would be a question that you'd have to try to <laugh> ask Sam
from ‘Beyond the Grave’. Culpepper was the first film that I'd ever done,
and I'd gotten cast when I was 17. And then that following year we did American
Graffiti, where I was 18. I turned 19 then in October of that year, and
then we shot Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid around the holidays. We were
all stuck in Durango, Mexico over the holidays, which made for some very
memorable experiences, <laugh> getting there on that film.
Henry Parke: Do you remember
auditioning for Culpepper Cattle Co?
Charles Martin Smith: Yep. Very
well. I'd only had a couple of auditions for things before that. I got the call,
went in, it was at the 20th Century Fox, in the main executive building there.
And I remember (director and co-writer) Dick Richards just sat behind his desk
and looked at me. There was no chit- chat, there was no talk. It was very
uncomfortable. I'm not quite sure what Dick was doing, <laugh>, except we
had a very strange first meeting. Then he gave me the scene to read, I came
back and did the audition, and ended up getting the part, which was pretty
exciting for me. It was my first paid acting job, in a film for 20th Century
Fox, and I got to join Screen Actors Guild. It was a good experience, and it
was a kind of a cool movie to work on, actually. You know, it didn't have any
big Western stars. It wasn't John Wayne or anything, but it was a collection of
really cool, interesting actors who had done a lot of westerns; Geoffrey Lewis
and Luke Askew and really great stunt guys. They were wonderful, just a great
bunch of guys. They were good to me. I only worked a week on it, but it was a
great introduction to being in the movies, down there in Mexico and shooting
this thing. Dick Richards was very much a visual stylist kind of director. When
I think about some of the shots that he got, it's pretty amazing. When we were
doing that buckboard race, he did one shot where the cameraman was strapped
underneath the buckboard, shooting through the wheels. And this was a full-size
camera. This was 1971. There were no remote heads or anything. This was a guy
strapped underneath with a huge camera. He got some amazing shots in that
movie. And I thought it was a really interesting, dark look at the West. There was
a wonderful line where somebody tells Gary Grimes, “Cowboyin's something you do
when you can't do nothing else.” Sort of took the glamor out of it.
<laugh>.
Henry Parke: When you got there,
did you already know how to ride and shoot, or did they teach you that?
Charles Martin Smith: Well, on Culpepper
I didn't have to do anything except drive a buckboard, which I thought was
gonna kill me. I didn't really know any of that stuff. My early childhood was
spent in Paris, in France. And then I lived in the (San Fernando) Valley, in
Northridge. I was just a Valley kid. I didn't have any particular knowledge,
but my father's younger brother Hank had been a cowboy. He was in the Agoura
Ranch area, and it was all still pretty rural. He usually had three or four
horses at his place up in Thousand Oaks. So I called my uncle Hank, and he
taught me how to ride a horse, and how to do some things. It was really, really
helpful. Hank had been a cowboy on these ranches, although he was an artist
like my father. He was shocked to see in the movies, one of his buddies. He
said, “What the hell? That's old Dick Farnsworth! What's he doing in the
movies?” And they got together again after all those years and, and palled
around some, when they were much older guys. It was kind of cool. So, yeah, Hank
was my cowboy advisor.
Henry Parke: Someone else in Culpepper
Cattle Co. was Matt Clark.
Charles Martin Smith: He was quite
a guy. When I did Culpepper and didn't know anything and was really
awkward; I'd never been on a film set in my life. There were all these old
cowboy actors, and Matt Clark really befriended me. He said, any questions that
I had, I should ask him. And if I needed any help with anything, Matt was
great. He was really good and really good to me. I've never forgotten how kind
he was to me on that movie when I really was scared to death and didn't know
anything. And the other guy that I remember was really good was one of the
stunt guys. His name was Walter Scott. He was great to me. And again, as a kid,
on Culpepper, well, I didn't know what I was doing. Matt Clark and
Walter were the two guys that really befriended me. And I've always been
grateful to those guys for it.
Henry Parke: Did you watch Western
movies as a kid?
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah, some. I
watched all kinds of movies as a kid. But I wasn't particularly drawn to
Westerns any more than any other genre.
Henry Parke: When you went up for Pat
Garrett, had American Graffiti come out,? Did you know what a
tremendous hit it was going to be?
Charles Martin Smith: No, it hadn't
come out. We shot in June of ‘72, so they were editing, so Pat Garrett
would've been November, December, January ‘72 into ‘73. Graffiti was still editing and nobody
knew anything about it. I remember telling some of the people on the show that
I'd done this movie with kids cruising in cars and all that, but nobody knew
anything about it other than that I'd done it. Now the story on Pat Garrett
was, that I went in for the role of Alias, the part that Dylan ended up playing.
In the script, he’s written as a 19-year-old, very shy kid with a stammer. And
I went in and auditioned for Sam, and I had a very memorable meeting in his
office in the back part of MGM.
Henry Parke: How was it memorable?
Charles Martin Smith: I mean, you
have a good idea of what kind of a guy Sam was. He was volatile, unpredictable;
some kind of edge about him. You just didn't know what he was gonna do. He went
on a long discussion about Mexico. We're gonna shoot this movie in Mexico, and
he's got a bunker down there, and when the shit hits the fan, that's where he's
gonna go, he's gonna be in his bunker. And I'm sitting, a 19-year-old kid
thinking, I might be over my head here with this guy. He was very intense. But
I read the scene for him, and he really liked it. So I felt pretty good about
it, and I thought there was a chance that I'd get offered the part. But I
didn't hear anything for a while. And then I did hear from my agent that (Kris)
Kristofferson's buddy, Bob Dylan, wanted to be in the movie, and Alias was
really the only part that they could find for him. So they were rewriting Alias
for Dylan to play the part. But they said, Sam really loved your audition, and he'd
like to offer you a different part, the smaller part of Charlie Bowdre. So I said,
sure, I'll be happy to do that. I don't think I would've normally been up for
the role of Charlie Bowdre if I hadn't met Sam on the role of Alias.
Henry Parke: So Pat Garrett
was your second Western to shoot in Mexico?
Charles Martin Smith: We shot Culpepper
in Sonora somewhere. I can't remember the name of the town. We moved around
a couple of towns in Mexico. We had some standing Western sets, beautiful sets,
which had been built for some John Wayne movies (in La Joya Ranch). You might
know more than me. Lot of weapons there.
Henry Parke: Was going to Mexico,
working for Dick Richards, much different than to go to Mexico and worked for
Sam Peckinpah?
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah.
Everything was different. Sam Peckinpah was different from everything. With
Dick Richards, I was only down there for a week, and I did my scene, and went.
On Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the schedule kept changing. And Sam
kept changing what he wanted to do, and rearranging things, not shooting what
was on the call sheet, but deciding to shoot something else. Very much an
artistic, auteur sort of approach to filmmaking, which I gather didn't really
go over very well with the executives.
Henry Parke: Not a great deal. No.
Charles Martin Smith: He got into a
lot of hot water there, and there was a lot of stuff going on. And as a result,
I went down there, but I would sit around for weeks without working. Because
he'd planned to shoot a scene that I was in, and then they'd shoot some other
stuff. And so I ended up just sitting in Durango for a long time. Sam was
unpredictable and wild, and had a terrible temper. You never quite knew what
you were gonna get. And on the days that I did work, it was pretty intense. I
think Sam liked to keep a sense of tension on the sets. I think it was
intentional. I think he felt like it translated onto film, that kind of energy,
that kind of real intense, edgy kind of energy. And so he kept his sets that
way. That was a new experience for me. I hadn't been around much, but it was
certainly a hell of a lot different from the way George Lucas directed. Sam was
kind of dangerous. And I remember a lot of guys that had worked with him.
'cause the cast in that was just about every great Western actor living. And a
lot of them had worked for Sam a number of times, guys like R.G. Armstrong. And
a lot of 'em said that was it: they weren't gonna do another movie with him
because it was just too stressful, with his temper and just the general sense
of tension on the set.
I got to be pretty good friends
with Kris Kristofferson. There didn't seem to be any issue with the tension
with Kris. He kind of rolled along, happy-go-lucky. He was a really sweet guy.
And, you know, I was just a kid, I was only 19, and most of the cowboys didn't
really want anything to do with me. But Kris did. He really befriended me in a
great way. And then 40 years later, I ended up directing him in Dolphin Tail
and the sequel to that. We'd sit around on set and talk about Sam.
Henry Parke: Now your big scene is
in and out of the cabin, but you were in other sequences too, so let me ask
about them first. Like the ‘shooting the chickens’ heads off’ scene and the
cantina scene, with Billy and Pat. Do you remember if those were done before or
after your big scene?
Charles Martin Smith: No, I don't
remember the order. In fact, it seems to me that it was all kind of split up
and shot piecemeal. That business, the chickens’ heads being blown off, that
was very disturbing. Then there was another scene where we're all inside the
cantina. The cabin was a practical set, meaning we could shoot it like a real
location. That cabin sequence took a long time to film, over a week, I think,
partly because of all the on-set effects, the squibs and all the gunfire and
stuff.
Henry Parke: Now, you were, as you
say, 19, but you were already an experienced professional actor. And in that
scene, you're playing with Kris Kristofferson, a great songwriter, but almost his
first time acting. And Rudy Wurlitzer was a great screenwriter, but not an
experienced actor. Did that make it difficult for you?
Charles Martin Smith: It made it a
little different, but you know, I wasn't that experienced an actor. I had only
been working in films for a year, maybe. I'd done a couple of shows, but I
wasn't like some seasoned pro. And Kris had been acting, he'd been in other
stuff too. So no, that was all good. And we enjoyed doing the scene. I remember
Sam saying that he thought it was the best single scene that he'd ever had to
direct. He loved that scene, just the idea of it. And the guy is getting pinned
down and Bowdre, as he's dying, taking a gun and going out, 'cause they can't hurt
him anymore; they already have, he's dying anyway. Sam just loved that. We
spent a long time on that scene and got a lot of coverage. We filmed a much
longer scene than ended up in the movie. The scene in the film is probably only
about half of what we shot, maybe even less.
Henry Parke: After you're shot the
first time, as you're bleeding, you're looking at some small things in your
hands. I was wondering if you remembered what they were.
Charles Martin Smith: While we're
waiting there and we can't do anything, we start playing cards, most of which
was cut. And then talking about me in
the past tense; it was really a lovely scene. I wonder if I still have the
script around somewhere. It might in storage. Talking about me in the past
tense, as though I'm already dead. And I had the idea that as I was dying, as
the guy is dying, he's looking at all the little details that you're never
gonna see again; you know, a piece of straw in your hand, or just even just
looking at your own hands and your own fingers and thinking, sort of saying
goodbye. I remember I had that idea and played that a little bit.
Henry Parke: I'm sorry that so much
was taken out of it. It's a wonderful scene as it is.
Charles Martin Smith: It is a good
scene as it is. It was, I think, even better before. Whether Sam cut it or
whether the studio cut it down, I never knew. But Sam loved it, and we spent a
long time on it with that long drawn-out card game. Maybe it was too long, especially
at the start of a film. Typically, you want to get the first act moving; you
don't want to be spending a long time lingering on scenes early in a film. But I
wonder if a full-length version of that original scene exists, whether there would've
been a rough cut or even just a first assembly by the editor. Because it was
pretty cool.
Henry Parke: Gosh, it sounds like a
great scene! When you were shot, was that your first time working with squibs?
Charles Martin Smith: Yeah, I guess
it would be. And they squibbed me up and down. I mean, they took a long time.
<laugh>. But I was kinda looking forward to it, 'cause it's a Sam
Peckinpah movie, and I'm getting the full Peckinpah treatment, you know? Slow
motion, with the bullets and the blood flying and that real Wild Bunch
kind of stuff. But they didn't trust me to set them off myself. In later films
where I had squibs on, there's a battery pack, and you’ve got a little button
hidden in your hand, and you set off your own squibs. That's the way we did it later
in The Spikes Gang, and other things I did where I was getting shot. But
they didn't trust me to do that 'cause -- and I don't blame them -- I was a
kid, and I'd never done this before. So the effects guy was setting off the
squibs, and what they did was they ran an extension cord down my leg and taped
it to my boot, and then plugged in a cord that then ran off-camera so the guy
could set the squibs off. He said, we're gonna set the squibs off and then yank
the cord and unplug it, and then you can fall back and everything. And I said,
when you yank that cord, how do you know it's gonna come out? You're probably
just gonna pull my legs right out from underneath <laugh>. They said, no,
no, no. It'll work, it'll work. Well sure enough, they pulled my legs out from
under <laugh>. I landed right in that doorway with that happening. But I
was scared to death that I wouldn't do it right. It took most of the day to rig
the shot. And you know, the cardinal sin with that is reacting to the shot
before it hits you. That's a thing. Because actors get nervous and they'll
react to the gunshot before it actually hits them. That'll ruin a take. And I
was nervous that it would be painful. I didn't know; I'd never had those squibs
before. You know, they put a little backing plate on each individual charge so
that it doesn't burn your skin. But still, I was nervous about it. And it
turned out fine.
Henry Parke: Now in the cantina
scene and then with the chickens, there you are as part of the gang, with Luke
Askew and L.Q. Jones, Donnie Fritz, Harry Dean Stanton, all these really
interesting guys --
Charles Martin Smith: -- Richard
Bright, I think was one of them.
Henry Parke: That’s right.
Charles Martin Smith: Those guys, they
were great.
Henry Parke: Did you get to know
any of them? You said you'd worked with Luke Askew before.
Charles Martin Smith: I had worked
with Luke Askew, but I didn't have any scenes with him on Culpepper, and
I didn't really know him. L.Q. Jones was a very gregarious, chatty, kind of
funny guy.
Henry Parke: L. Q. was very
friendly with me, and very generous with his time, in his later years.
Charles Martin Smith: Great guy.
And he was that way as a younger guy. So I kind of knew him, but the only guy
that I really kind of hung out with and got to know better was Harry Dean.
Henry Parke: Terrific actor. What
was he like?
Charles Martin Smith: He was always
terrific in everything. And then we did a movie called Rafferty and the Gold
Dust Twins a couple of beers later, with Alan Arkin. We shot that in
Arizona for a couple of months. So Harry Dean and I got to hang out. And I knew
him socially too, outside of film. He was a really wonderful guy and an actor
that other actors really appreciated; one of those guys. And I'd worked with Bo
Hopkins on Graffiti. He was the leader of the Pharaohs. I called him
when I was going to do Pat Garrett, because obviously he'd done The
Wild Bunch.
Henry Parke: That was his first
film, I think.
Charles Martin Smith: I think it
might've been.
Henry Parke: About Sam purposely
creating tension on the set --
Charles Martin Smith: -- That's my
theory. It was also his personality. He was just kind of out of control that
way. And he would get angry very quickly and easily. He fired the second A.D.
(assistant director) before I got there. And then the second A.D. that was
there when I was working said, well, I'm not gonna be around much longer
<laugh>. He said, 'cause every movie Sam fires the first second AD, and
then he'll fire the next second A.D. and keep the third one. I'm the second,
second A.D. on this, so he'll fire me too, because he just needs to fire people
to <laugh> keep everybody on their toes. And sure enough, Sam fired him.
Henry Parke: With all the tension
from that already, were you aware of the political problems between Sam and Jim
Aubrey and everyone at MGM?
Charles Martin Smith: Not really. I
heard rumors about it, when we changed the shooting schedule, and then I knew
there were some issues. I remember at one point a couple of executives did come
down, but nah, I wasn't really in the middle of it enough to be part of all
that. And I want to say that with Sam firing people, and yelling at people, and
of that tension, none of it was ever directed at me. I don't know, maybe it's
'cause I was the kid, but he was great with me. He would yell at other people,
and he'd turn and kind of wink and smile, like ‘this is just part of my deal, you
know?’ I had a lot of respect for him. He was a very good director, very
meticulous. Every piece of set dressing had to be just right. Everything. He
really was very painstaking and very careful and very creative. He was not just
some crazy guy. He was a really fine director. He just had this way of working
that kept everybody tense.
Henry Parke: Right. But it works on
the screen. You can't argue with that.
Charles Martin Smith: You can't.
I'd love to see what his cut would've looked like before the executives got it.
Henry Parke: You got along well
with Kris Kristofferson. How about James Coburn?
Charles Martin Smith: I hardly
talked to Coburn once or twice. But again, we didn't really have scenes
together. And I was one of a group of cowboys, so I never really got to know
Coburn like I did Kris. Coburn was very grand. I remember he always smoked a
cigarette in a long cigarette holder. The impression he gave you was that he
was a grand Hollywood actor of the old school, and he'd be out there with his
cigarette holder.
Henry Parke: There were so many
terrific actors in there: Jason Robards, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam.
Charles Martin Smith: Some of them I worked with, and some of them
I didn't. One guy that I was particularly interested to get to know was Elisha
Cook Jr.
Henry Parke: Yes, my hero.
Charles Martin Smith: Man, he was a
very cool guy. I only really chatted with him once, but of course I remember
him from Maltese Falcon and all that. I just was so happy. And I
remember having dinner once with Chill Wills, and how on Earth he and I ended
up in the dining room of the motel where we were all staying, having dinner,
just the two of us, I don't know. But he spent the most of the time ranting
about these damn college hippies who were protesting the war and all that. Here
am I, sitting there, having been to a bunch of Vietnam War protests myself,
<laugh>, and having long hair myself. And having been in rock and roll
bands, <laugh>, all that. I'm thinking, oh, this is a little
uncomfortable. There were some characters there. There were definitely some
characters. I would've liked to have gotten to know Slim Pickens, too, but I
didn't really, I just sort of met him just to say hello.
Henry Parke: How about Bob Dylan, who
got the part you went for?
Charles Martin Smith: Dylan was
great. Extremely shy, kind of awkward. And we were all told early on, don't
talk to him. Do not take his picture. Just leave Dylan alone. But we ended up
having some good conversations, and I did kind of get to know him. And he was
fascinated by movies. He really wanted to know more about film. He was
interested in making them. (Note: Dylan would go on to direct the feature Renaldo
and Clara, and 5 of his music videos.) He was writing some songs for the
film, which we thought was great. He was very into it. And then he was talking
with Kris and Sam about Sam's next movie, which was going to be bring Me the
Head of Alfredo Garcia. I remember Bobby talking about what a great script
that was, and how much he wanted to be a part of that, too. He was really into
it. And he had never really acted before. Actually a couple of times he asked
me for little acting tips, which I thought was pretty nice; giving acting tips
to Bob Dylan was pretty cool. <laugh>. I liked him. He was a good guy. It
took a while to get to know him; he didn't open up very easily. He was very…I
guess the best word for it is introverted.
Henry Parke: Any other thought
about Pat Garrett?
Charles Martin Smith: The way Sam
worked was pretty chaotic. I think if I was a film executive, I wouldn't have
been happy about it either. I later worked with (director) Carroll Ballard on Never
Cry Wolf, and Carroll had a lot of similar qualities, in that he was very
creative, and he would change his mind about what he wanted to shoot that day,
and do everything differently than he'd planned. Caroll's a great guy; he
didn't have the personality that Sam had, but just that kind of creativity, and
letting the movie kind of grow organically as he's making the film. That's the
way I remember Sam being. And I can imagine that the studio didn't like it, and
he didn't want anybody interfering with him or his process. I respected that.
But I can see that in the film business, which is a business, that would rub
people the wrong way.
Henry Parke: Sam Peckinpah was
first a successful screenwriter, then a hugely influential director. Those are
two branches of filmmaking that you would also excel in. Did you learn anything
in particular from working with Sam?
Charles Martin Smith: Absolutely. I
learned a lot from every director I worked with, 'cause I was trying to pay
attention. But I really was fascinated by the way Sam ran the set and, and how
he would do things. And his meticulousness, his attention to detail, and very
much about how is that gonna look through the lens? Not just how does it look
to the naked eye, like you're doing a play, but we put together a scene and
just his talking about the camera, where he was putting it in, what kind of a
lens he was going to use, and how this was all gonna look on film. That was the
first time that I ever really gave a lot of thought to that. I didn't even
really on Graffiti so much because of the way that was shot. But Sam
would be so careful about where that camera was, and exactly what it was seeing
and what was at the edge of the frame. And every shot was like a painting
practically, the way Sam did it. I learned a lot just by watching him do that.
AND THAT’S A WRAP!
Please check out the September/October
True West, featuring my article, Citizen James, where I take a look at some of
the more unusual film portrayals of Jesse James and his killer, Bob Ford!
Much obliged,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright
September 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
Not to be used for AI training!
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