‘DELIVERANCE CREEK’ STAR CHRISTOPHER BACKUS INTERVIEWED

On Saturday, September 13^th, Lifetime will premiere ‘DELIVERANCE CREEK’, an original Western movie written by Melissa Carter, directed by Jon Amiel, produced by the tremendously successful novelist Nicholas Sparks (if you missed my review last week, go HERE )

Set in the South during the Civil War, it focuses on Belle Gatlin Barlow (Lauren Ambrose), a woman whose husband has gone off to war, leaving her to manage their farm and raise their three children.  Between an amorous lawman she encourages (after all, her husband might be dead), and amorous banker she discourages, Union soldiers and runaway slaves, who returns to complicate her life but her brother Jasper Gatlin, a Confederate guerilla soldier, portrayed by Christopher Backus.  Certainly by 21^st Century p.c. standards he may not be the most morally and ethically upright man in the tale, but guess what?  He’s the most interesting, both because he’s the most complexly written, and because Christopher Backus has a star’s innate ability to draw the eye, and make you care.

I first met Christopher back in 2011, on the set of the Western YELLOW ROCK, when he was the well-dressed member of James Russo’s gang, who were trying to enlist the help of Michael Biehn in finding a lost father and son.  In DELIVERANCE CREEK Backus has been promoted to running his own crew, trained by Bloody Bill Anderson and Quantrill.  He’s tal and handsome and charming and dangerous as a diamondback.  And if DELIVERANCE CREEK goes to series, which it should, his part will grow and grow.  On Friday afternoon I had the chance to talk with him about how his career began, Jasper Gatlin, and his hopes for the future.

 HENRY PARKE:  Hello Chris.  We actually met a few years ago, on the set of YELLOW ROCK.  And you were the only one I never really got to talk to.  Every time we started, you were needed on-set.   So I had to wait until your next Western.

CHRISTOPHER BACKUS:    I remember that.  Well at least it wasn’t too long, and I’ve got another Western on my résumé.  

HENRY: At what age did you know you wanted to become an actor?

CHRISTOPHER: I was late to becoming an actor.  I had graduated high school, and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.  I was 19 or 20, never in a high school play or things of that nature.  But as I got older, I was out of sports, and all the creative genes I’d been hiding kind of wanted to come out. 

HENRY:  Was there any incident that triggered it?  Any moment that you knew?

CHRISTOPHER:  It was just sort of chance.  I was struggling with what I was going to do, and casting director Christian Kaplan asked if I was interested in reading for a film, PEARL HARBOR or PANIC ROOM – I can’t remember which one was first.  He thought I had the right look and asked, want to come in and give it a shot?  Just through the process of preparing for it, I realized how I liked being lost in someone else, bringing this imaginary character to life.  Obviously I didn’t get either job, but it didn’t deter me from trying to figure out how to get to the next level; I was just winging it at that stage.

HENRY:  I understand you were born in Orange County.  Did you grow up ‘around the industry’?

BACKUS:  I was born in Long Beach, and spent my early years there.  But it seemed like a far-off 

planet – the differences between Orange County and Hollywood are pretty significant.  And ultimately I spent most of my youth in Kansas.  My father passed away, and we moved to the Midwest.  So then I was thousands of alien light-years away from Hollywood, living in Kansas. 

HENRY:  Was it pretty rural?

CHRISTOPHER:  No, I was in Overland Park, right on the border with Kansas and Missouri, south of the downtown area, where jazz was popular.  I remember being young and going and listening to jazz, and thinking that was the coolest thing that I had ever done.  I remember right before we moved to Kansas I had this image of moving into farmland.  And I had told my mom that if we moved to Kansas, my one deal was I got to build a FIELD OF DREAMS baseball field in our back yard.  But our backyard was not farmland.  So one day I plan to build a baseball field in my back yard, on my property.

HENRY: Your first credit on IMDB is a guest shot on WILL AND GRACE in 2004.  Was that really your first?

CHRISTOPHER:  It was; that was my first job, and it was a good first job to get.  At that time WILL AND GRACE was one of the most popular shows on television, and to work to with Eric McCormack and Debra Messing and Sean Hayes – it was just one of those experiences that you’ll never forget.  It’s your first gig, and you’re intimidated, and I never thought I was particularly funny.  So during the table read you kind of goose everything up.  And Eric McCormack came up to me after and said, “Kid, you’re really funny when you’re not doing it.  Relax and you’ll be fine.”  And he kind of put me at ease.   I’ll never forget, that changed my perception of what a table-read was.  That was a great introduction to the business, WILL AND GRACE. 

HENRY: What’s been your favorite role so far?

CHRISTOPHER:  Honestly, it’s the one I’m talking to you about right now, it’s Jasper Gatlin.  It’s one of those roles that you just cross your fingers and hope it comes across your desk.  I enjoyed playing Jasper so much; hopefully I’ll get to continue to play it.  

Christopher Backus in YELLOW ROCK

HENRY: Very few actors of your age have been in a Western, but you’ve been in two: YELLOW ROCK and now DELIVERANCE CREEK.  Is it just chance, or is there something special about the genre for you?

CHRISTOPHER:  There’s definitely something special about the genre.  They both came up by chance, but you know, I’ve always liked Westerns.  I grew up watching John Wayne with my father, and the great Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns, and to this day there’s no cooler man on the planet than Clint Eastwood.  So when you’re young and watch those movies, they just stick in your head.  When you decide to be an actor, you think you’d like to be in a western some day.  So you just cross your fingers, and hope that one of those comes across.  And I’ve been fortunate to get two, to rides horses; it’s one of those genres that speaks to you.

HENRY:  Speaking of horses, you certainly look competent on a horse.  Have you ridden much?

CHRISTOPHER:  I had never ridden before YELLOW ROCK.  It’s the old actor trick of, “Have you ever ridden a horse?” and you say, “Sure.”  And then you spend the next four days figuring out who can teach you to ride a horse.  And that worked out.  But with DELIVERANCE CREEK, we did two weeks of ‘cowboy camp’ in between rehearsals when we were in Texas, and those guys really taught me how to ride a horse.  And by the time that I left cowboy camp I walked away feeling like I was a cowboy.  They treated me so well, and quickly, and the horses are so amazing, and I wanted to do them proud, for how much effort they put into breaking me of my bad habits.  Because they sit in the back and watch Westerns, and they go, “Wow, he really doesn’t know how to ride; you can tell that he’s learning.  He’s not comfortable.”  So I really worked hard, and during our downtime on set, instead of going to my trailer, the other actor, Christopher Baker and I would go bother the trainer and say, “Could we borrow some horses and go riding around?”  One of them would saddle up next to us, and the three of us would take off for half an hour, come back, shoot our scene, and then get back on the horses and go back out.    

HENRY:  You mentioned Texas.  Is that where you shot?

CHRISTOPHER:  We did, we shot it in Austin, Texas.  So we lived in Austin and downtown.  All of the locations were like an hour outside in all different directions, trying to find places that had no power lines and cars and had open fields.  And it was pretty amazing how many unique locations were in Texas.  The house where we shot in DELIVERANCE CREEK was actually built in the 1850s.  And the center room was the only thing that actually existed; ten people lived in the house in just one room.  The art department built on in the same style the extra rooms to make it a little more cinematic, so we could space things out.  I’m tall, and so my hat would touch the top of the ceiling, which was sort of great for Jasper.  I know that our fantastic director, John Amiel, loved that when I came in I had to duck through doorways, and tried to capitalize on that element of Jasper being larger than life when he comes back to Deliverance Creek. 

Chris Baker

HENRY:  At Universal Studios, all the Western towns were built to ¾ height so all the cowboys would look bigger.

CHRISTOPHER:  I didn’t know that. 

HENRY:  Is there any western actor of the past you look at and say, ‘I wish I had his roles.’?

CHRISTOPHER:  Going back to the original 3:10 TO YUMA, the Glenn Ford part, you wish you’d get a part like that.  And all of those Clint Eastwood movies, if you could carve out a career like that.  My favorite western is THE LEFT HANDED GUN, with Paul Newman, where he played Billy the Kid.  Paul Newman is my all-time favorite actor, and I thought he was just marvelous in that.   I’ve seen it like fifteen times, and it was just so different from the Paul Newman we all know, just a brilliant acting thing. 

HENRY:  How did you get involved with DELIVERANCE CREEK?

CHRISTOPHER:  Well, I read for it; I went and saw the amazing casting director from Junie Libby.  I actually read for Cyril the first time I went in, who Christopher Baker plays.  I got a call from Melissa (Carter, the screenwriter) and Jon (Amiel, director) – Jon wasn’t in the room when I read.  And he said, “I’d like him to come back in and read for something else.”  So then I read for Duke, and was trying to push my way towards Jasper.  And the month of waiting, as the rest of the cast filled out, gave me time to prepare for Jasper, and it just worked out. 

HENRY: You play Jasper Gatlin, leader of a pack of Bloody Bill Anderson’s guerillas, and the brother of Belle, Lauren Ambrose’s character.  Jasper is charming, confident, and certainly a better man than some of those under him.  But in today’s terms, he’s a terrorist.  How do you try to make him sympathetic?  Or do you care?

CHRISTOPHER:  You do.  I never looked at him as a bad guy or an outlaw.  I felt that the Civil War had torn up the world, and if it wasn’t for the Civil War he might have been a farmer.  But once you get into that battle, you can’t go back and ride horses and work on your property.  That has been awoken inside of you, and he was a terrorist.  Jasper is sort of loosely based on Jesse James.  And history has been sort of rewritten to make him a Robin Hood, but he was a Southern vindicator of the Rebel cause; he was a terrorist to his dying day.  And what I think makes Jasper unique is that in that time period those guys all lived in grey – from one town to the next there was no black and white.  There was no good or bad.  For example, Wyatt Earp would come into these towns and take over saloon as the sheriff.  Couldn’t do that nowadays; a sheriff couldn’t come into a restaurant and say, “This is now my restaurant.”  The first time I read it, I was trying to wrap my mind around Jasper, whether he was good or bad.  And again with Paul Newman, in the movie HUD he says, “I’ve always viewed the law in a lenient manner.  Sometimes I lean to one side, and sometimes I lean to the other.”  And I thought that was what Jasper was.  He leaned on either side of the law for whatever was good for him or the cause.  And Jon and I talked about it.  Not the law, but his moral compass.  Jasper is a good man fighting for what he believes in.  And history makes him wrong, being on the Southern side, but I tried to treat him as if he was justified in his actions and what he believed in.  And hopefully you can see that he has both sides, good and bad.      

HENRY:  Did you do much historical research for your role?

CHRISTOPHER:  I did.  I’m a heavy researcher, especially when it comes to period stuff.  Because the times have changed so much.  And in DELIVERANCE CREEK we deal a lot with race and slavery, and in 2014, none of this makes sense.  But you have to go back in time, you have to figure some sort of historical element to ground you, so you’re not playing the mustache-twirling bad guy in terms of race.  Just because I am personally sympathetic to that cause, I can’t let that cross onto the screen.  So the historical research was a big part of that.  I’ve read THE GREY GHOSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY (by Richard S. Brownlee), INSIDE WAR (by Michael Fellman), which is still sitting on my desk, which is about the guerilla conflict in Missouri.  My big research book was JESSE JAMES, THE LAST REBEL OF THE CIVIL WAR by T.J. Stiles; that was my biggest reference point.  It also gave me a history of Jesse, in context with Bill Quantrill, because Jasper had ridden with Bill Quantrill before breaking off with Bloody Bill.  I try not to watch any (films about Jesse James), because I don’t want to be influenced by anyone.

HENRY:  You don’t want to be Tyrone Power’s version of Jesse.

CHRISTOPHER:  Exactly, so I try not to watch anything.  So to read those books, you can kind of create your own imagination around what these characters were.  And mostly for me it was less about who that character was but more about historically what they did, what their causes were.  And knowing that Melissa had sort of taken Jesse James’ trajectory for where the show would go, Jesse James became my lynchpin. 

HENRY:  I also got the feeling that Belle is based on Belle Starr

CHRISTOPHER:  That is true. 

HENRY: Jon Amiel has had a wide range of successes, from dark musicals, to comedies, to thrillers.  What was he like to work with?

CHRISTOPHER:  He was absolutely delightful –we’re still in constant contact.  He is generous and comforting and collaborative.  He just gives you this feeling that anything is safe and fair game.  That you can say, “Hey Jon, I don’t think Jasper would do this.”  It didn’t happen often, but a couple of times…  That scene with Rose, there was supposed to be some romantic tension, and I said I don’t think Jasper would do that.  I think he’s singularly focused on hitting the Union.  And Jon had my back all the way, and ultimately everyone agreed with that.  I think when you have a director who has your back, you feel like you can stand on the cliff and hang there, and know you’re not going to fall off.  From the very beginning, we did this thing; I hadn’t done it before, I don’t know if this would ever work again.  But Jon would send me and Chris Baker and Riley Smith to cowboy camp, and then we’d meet with him to do these rehearsals.  And we never once opened up the scripts.  But the first time he said, “Alright, Riley and Chris, you’re Jasper and Toby.  You’re twelve years old, and you meet for the first time.”  And we would act out these imaginary circumstances that he gave us.  And every day that we came back for two weeks, we’d be slightly older in the story.  We made up these ridiculous back-story things, to the point that at one of the rehearsals Lauren Ambrose, Riley and I are running across a busy street in Texas, carrying a barrel full of nothing, pretending that Riley had been shot with buckshot, we’re laughing and he’s screaming, and we’re running across the street, and it just bonded us in a way I don’t think we knew was possible. We went into day one of shooting as great, great friends, and I think that comes across on the screen.  Riley and I don’t actually say much to each other, but I think you can tell that there’s a closeness, that we’ve been through stuff together, and Jon just set that all up.  It was surprising, and so much fun despite the fact that we were nervous to do it on day one, that we couldn’t wait and see what Jon had in store for us next.   

HENRY:  A bloody Civil War revenge story is not the usual sort of project territory for Nicholas Sparks.  What was he like to work with? 

CHRISTOPHER:  I met Nick a couple of times while he came to visit on-set.  And he is just a supportive, fantastic man.  Obviously he‘s a genius creatively, and no one does those romance stories like Nick Sparks.  I think what’s great about this is he’s taken what he does really well and put it into a circumstance that no one expects, and said let’s go for this, let’s make it darker and gritty.  I think it’s a smart move by Nicholas to let it fly a little bit, and open up to this world that has outlaws and rebels and guns.  And I think Lifetime is a perfect match, because it’s unexpected, and I think it’s something that can really hit home for their audience, and bring in a large male audience, because it is a story told through a female perspective, but it still has all those male-driven western testosterone moments.  And of course Nicholas Sparks is so talented; I just hope we work together forever.

HENRY: About how long was the shoot?

CHRISTOPHER:  We were in Texas for forty-five days, and I think we had twenty-five shooting days.  We fit a lot in, in a very little amount of time, because when you add children and horses and animals and building towns and battle scenes, it was tight, but we made it. 

HENRY:  What was your biggest challenge in the making of this film?

CHRISTOPHER:  The biggest challenge for me was dealing with Yaani King’s character, who is a runaway slave.  Because it’s just not in my nature to judge anyone by the color of their skin.  And to wrap my mind around it, that it was okay.  She’s just amazingly talented, just this lovely person.  And I told her I’m going to look at you in the show like a piece of furniture, like you don’t even exist.  To wrap my mind around this idea that I was going to treat her like a piece of furniture was one of the most difficult things that I ever had to do.  And I would end scenes and go over and just hug her, just because I felt so bad about it.  That was the most challenging part for me, just mentally getting through that.

HENRY: What are your favorite memories of shooting DELIVERANCE CREEK?

CHRISTOPHER:  There were so many amazing memories, and it really it all had to do with the cast and crew, from executives on Lifetime to Skeet Ulrich, Nicholas Sparks.  We just bonded in a way that I think was really special.  We ate dinner together every night, we hung out together.  We had dinners every night with cameramen and sound-people.  And we’re still good friends.  On the 13^th we’re all going to get together and watch DELIVERANCE CREEK when it premieres.  As far as shooting it, every time I slid on that black hat, and put on the gun belt, and my gun was actually the gun, the dragoon, that Jeff Bridges used in TRUE GRIT.  Every time I put that gun onto my belt, and I was Jasper, and I walked out of my trailer, those were just fantastic days.  The moments of getting to be Jasper were just satisfying personally, career-wise, artistically – there was just something special about playing him. 

HENRY:  If it goes to series, what would you like to see happen with Jasper?

CHRISTOPHER:  (chuckles) Melissa Carter, who is our show-runner, and I have had multiple conversations about story ideas.  I’d like to see him hitting Union banks, seeing it as more of a targeted strike.   I want to see the human side of him as well.  Who does he open up to, who does he actually trust.  I have some specific story ideas, but I think Melissa would kill me if I gave them away. 

Wes Ramsey & Lauren Ambrose

HENRY:  What do you have planned for the future that we should be watching for?

CHRISTOPHER:  I’m in the final season of SONS OF ANARCHY, which premieres September 9^th.   DELIVERANCE CREEK and SONS OF ANARCHY do have these parallels if you just sub bikes for horses.  And I’m in the live-action SPONGE-BOB movie with Antonio Banderas.  I play Antonio Banderas’ father in flashbacks.  I’m a famous Spanish captain that sets Antonio Banderas’ life on this course.  And that was so much fun; to go from a bushwhacker to a pirate was pretty cool.  I didn’t do any work with the sponge.  And I do research, so I read the book, THE BLACK FLAG, an anthology of pirate stories, and then realized when I got there that I was in a SpongeBob movie.

HENRY:  You and your lovely wife Mira Sorvino have four school-aged kids.  Is it hard to juggle your careers and family?

CHRISTOPHER:  It is.  Like any other family when you have two working parents, it’s difficult.  But we’re very supportive of each other, and we’ve been lucky as well that our schedules haven’t overlapped that much.  She was in Vancouver shooting INTRUDERS.  So I would fly to L.A. and do SPONGE-BOB, and on the weekends fly back.  It’s difficult but workable, and we enjoy it.  And every time I find myself complaining about how hard it is, (I remember) we’ve taken our kids to some amazing places because of the jobs we do.  And the life experience that they get from being a part of that is pretty special when you look back on it.  We took them to Egypt literally a month before it collapsed when Mubarak was ousted.  And who knows when you’ll ever get back to Egypt to climb the pyramids.  And they’ve done those things.  In terms of DELIVERANCE CREEK, I have two little boys who ask me every day when we go to Texas and learn to be cowboys.  It’s fun that they relate to that sort of thing.  We love each other and we support each other and make it work.

HENRY: If you weren’t an actor, what would you be?

CHRISTOPHER: Wow – I’m not sure I’m good at anything else!  My wife likes to say that I’m black or white – I’m all in or I’m all out.  So for the last ten years it’s been all in on acting.  I wish I was a musician, but I just play around on it.  But if I could do anything else and be good at it, I’d be a musician. 

MARK OF ZORRO LACMA Sept 9 1pm

On Tuesday, September 9th, at 1 pm, for a paltry four dollars, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present Rouben Mamoulian's brilliant film of Johnston MacCulley's delightful novel The Curse of Capistrano, THE MARK OF ZORRO!  It is a feast to watch, starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and as wonderful a pair of villains as could be desired, Basil Rathbone and Gale Sondegaard.

Basil Rathbone & Gale Sondegaard

THAT'S A WRAP!

Next Sunday, would have been Clayton Moore's 100th birthday, and I plan to feature my interview with his daughter, Dawn Moore!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright September 2014 by Henry C, Parke - All Rights Reserved

‘TURN’ PREMIERES ON AMC, COWBOY FEST TICKET GIVEAWAY, PLUS FIRST LOOK AT ‘THE HOMESMAN’!

‘TURN’ - SERIES PILOT REVIEW

Tonight, April 6^th, at 6 p.m. Western time, 9 p.m. Eastern, AMC’s new drama series, TURN, will premier.  Set in the midst of the American Revolution, it is based on the true story of the Culper Ring, a group of grown-up boyhood friends who became a spy network working to get information on Redcoat troop movements for General George Washington.  

Based on the best-selling history book WASHINGTON’S SPIES by Alexander Rose, it is a spy-thriller with three-cornered hats, and I found the pilot enthralling.   Shot in Virginia, and set in New York’s Long Island, the story centers around farmer Abraham Woodhull, a married man with a baby son.  Long Island is occupied by the British, and the Woodhulls are among the families suffering the indignity of having a British soldier quartered in their home. 

Woodhall has other problems as well: his crop of cauliflower is infested with maggots, which makes it unlikely that he’ll be able to pay off his debts – owed to a tavern-owner now married to Woodhall’s former beloved.  With the government controlling commerce, the desperate Woodhall tries to sell a few head of cauliflower on the black market, unsure of whether he has more to fear from British or the gun-toting colonists – and his simple act sets wheels in motion that will change the lives of everyone he knows.

The at-first reluctant spy Woodhall is played convincingly by Jamie Bell – remarkable to realize that at the turn of the last century he amazed us all as the title character of BILLY ELLIOT.  Meegan Warner plays Mrs. Woodhall who wants her husband to have nothing to do with spying.  Heather Lind, who played Katy on BOARDWALK EMPIRE, plays Anna Strong, whom Woodhall would have married if she hadn’t spurned him.  And Seth Numrich, late of the grim comedy series GRAVITY, plays Colonial Army officer and Woodhall’s childhood friend Ben Talmage, who approaches Woodhall to help his country-in-the-making. 

Written by Alexander Rose and producer-writer Craig Silverstein, whose voluminous credits include NIKITA, TERRA NOVA and BONES, the plotting is clever, the telling is smart, quick and sensible, with a fine eye for historical detail that creates reality without screaming about it.  The action is exciting and not for the squeamish – the occupying army is unflinchingly brutal, and the occupied must at times answer in kind.  

Rather than being played as symbols, as is often the case with movies of this historical period, and despite the powdered wigs, the characters are motivated by a mix of practicality and ideals, just like real humans. 

For myself, the most unnerving aspect of the show is that Robert Rogers, of Rogers’ Rangers, is one of the principal villains of the piece!  Having grown up loving the NORTHWEST PASSAGE series, starring Keith Larsen in that role, as well as Spencer Tracy in the feature, it’s troubling to see the rest of his history on the screen.   For hero though Rogers was in the French and Indian Wars, he was fighting alongside the British against the French.  It’s disappointing, but not unreasonable that he sided with the British again during the American Revolution.  Here he is played with gravitas by Angus McFayden, who was excellent in the recent COPPERHEAD, and is perhaps best remembered as Robert The Bruce in BRAVEHEART.  

Tonight’s opener is ninety minutes, and will be repeated later tonight, plus on Monday, and next Saturday and Sunday.  The regular episodes will be an hour.  I’d make a point to see the pilot if I were you – it’s fine stuff, and my guess is it will continue to improve.

FIRST LOOK AT ‘THE HOMESMAN’!

Here are the first images from THE HOMESMAN, which will premiere on May 24^th at the Cannes Film Festival!  Co-written, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, based on the novel my Glendon Swarthout, Jones plays a rustler who takes on the job of transporting three madwomen across the desert to an asylum in Kansas. 

Joining Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones are fellow statuette owners Hilary Swank and Meryl Streep, as well as John Lithgow, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld – Mattie Ross in the TRUE GRIT remake, William Fichtner, and Barry Corbin.  It’s produced by Luc Bresson, the French writer-producer-director who created the LA FEMME NIKTA, TRANSPORTER and THE PROFESSIONAL franchises.

Novelist Glendon Swarthout has an excellent record in the cinema.  Films adapted from his novels include BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN, WHERE THE BOYS ARE, and the Westerns 7^TH CAVALRY, THEY CAME TO CORDURA and, most famously, John Wayne’s final film, the marvelous THE SHOOTIST.  Glendon’s son, Miles Swarthout, wrote the screenplay for THE SHOOTIST, and was involved in THE HOMESMAN as well. 

I’ll be interviewing Miles Swarthout about his own and his father’s career at the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival, at Melody Ranch, on Saturday and Sunday, April 26^th & 27^th, at the Buckaroo Book Shop.  We’ll talk at 12:30 on Saturday and 2:30 on Sunday. You can learn all about the events at the Buckaroo Book Shop by going HERE.  https://www.facebook.com/events/434317293370585/434413240027657/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity

You can learn all about the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival HERE http://cowboyfestival.org/

WIN TWO TICKETS TO THE COWBOY FESTIVAL!

Speaking of the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival, and yes, I’ve been speaking about it a lot, it’s coming to the Veluzat family’s Melody Ranch on Saturday and Sunday, April 26^th & 27^th.   What started as a working ranch has been a popular location for filmmakers for nearly a century.  Owned at one time by Monogram Pictures, then purchased by Gene Autry and christened Melody Ranch after his radio show, nearly every A or B Western star worked there at one time or another.  A very busy movie ranch, in growing demand with the resurgence of the Western movie and TV series, it was home base for both DEADWOOD and Quentin Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, as well as many other films, music videos and TV commercials.

The Festival is an outgrowth of a Cowboy Poetry Festival held annually at Santa Clarita High School.  When the 1994 earthquake demolished the school’s auditorium, the Veluzat family offered the use of their movie ranch, and a twenty-year tradition was born.  There’s still poetry, as well as food, shopping for all things Western, strolling the ranch and visiting its museum.  There activities for children and adults, and all manner of entertainment, including magician Pop Haydn, gun-slinger par excellence Joey Dillon, and lariat-tosser Dave Thornbury.  Then there’s the music – at five different venues big and small throughout the ranch, more than twenty acts will perform, including Don Edwards, Sons of the San Joaquin, Waddie Mitchell, Cow Bop, Dave Stamey and many more. 

Miles Swarthout & C. Courtney Joyner

And at the Buckaroo Book Store, run by the folks at OutWest, Western fact and fiction writers will be meeting fans, signing books, and giving talks.  Among the authors attending will be Cheryl Rogers-Barnett (daughter of Roy and Dale), Margaret Brownley, Jim Christina, Peter Conway, Steve Deming, Edward M. Erdelac, J.P. Gorman, Dale B. Jackson, Jim Jones, C. Courtney Joyner, Andria Kidd, Antoinette Lane, Jerry Nickle (a descendant of Harry Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid), J.R. Sanders, Tony Sanders, Peter Sherayko, Janet Squires, ‘Cowgirl Peg’ Sundberg, Miles Hood Swarthout, Rod Thompson, and Nancy Pitchford-Zee. 

And in addition to the interviews I’ll be doing with Miles Swarthout, I’ll also be moderating a pair of authors’ panels.  On Saturday from 1:30 to 2, the topic is THE WEST IMAGINED, and I’ll be talking with Western novelists Edward M. Erdelac, author of COYOTE’S TRAIL; Jim Christina, author of THE DARK ANGEL; and C. Courtney Joyner, author of SHOTGUN. On Sunday, from 1:30 to 2, the topic is THE WEST LIVED, and I’ll be talking to non-fiction writers Jerry Nickle, great-grandson of the Sundance Kid; JR Sanders, author of SOME GAVE ALL; and Peter Sherayko, author of TOMBSTONE – THE GUNS AND GEAR. 

Admission is $20 per day for adults, $10 for kids, but the good folks at OutWest – click their logo at the top of the page to learn all about ‘em – are going to give away a pair of tickets to the event!  Thousands will pay, but you won’t have to if you’re our lucky winner!  How do you win?  Answer this question: For a long time, after Gene Autry had stopped making movies at the ranch, Gene held onto the property to provide a home to one particular horse.  What was that horse’s name?  E-mail your answer, along with your name, address, phone number, and what day you’d want the tickets for, to swansongmail@sbcglobal.net , with ‘Cowboy Festival Ticket Giveaway’ in the subject line.  The winner will be selected randomly from all correct entries, and announced in next week’s Round-up.  Good luck!

ROBERT DUVALL IN ‘A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO’

Check out the trailer for the new present-day Western starring Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irvine, and Angie Cepeda.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL OPENS THURSDAY APRIL 11

For details on what Westerns are playing, check out last week’s Round-up here: http://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2014/04/free-tcm-movie-locations-tour-heston.html

For details on all films and events, go here: http://filmfestival.tcm.com/

SEE TY POWER AS ‘JESSE JAMES’ SATURDAY, APRIL 12 AT THE AUTRY

As part of the Autry’s ‘What is a Western?’ series, Henry King’s dazzling Technicolor telling of the James Brothers myth will be screened in 35mm!  The original screenplay is by the great Nunnally Johnson.  The cast includes Henry Fonda as brother Frank, Nancy Kelly, Randolph Scott, Henry Hull, Brian Donlevy, John Carradine, Donald Meek and Jane Darwell.  The film will be introduced by curator Jeffrey Richardson, who always provides fascinating background and insights into the films in this fine monthly series.  It’s at 1:30 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Theatre, free with your museum admission.

MICKEY ROONEY DIES AT 93

Just heard that the Mick has passed away.  I saw him at a number of events, but never got to talk to him.  But I had the pleasure of speaking with many child stars of the 1930s and 1940s over the years, and without exception they all held that the most talented and versatile of them all was Joe Yule Jr., a.k.a. Mickey Rooney.  A tremendous talent who will be sorely missed.  I’ll have more in next week’s Round-up.

THAT’S A WRAP!

I’ve got the TCM Festival coming up this week, Rob Word’s Cowboy Lunch @ the Autry saluting THE WILD BUNCH a week from Wednesday, and the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival the week after that!  Should be a lot of interesting stuff coming up in the Round-up!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright April 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

GIVING 'HEATHENS' A VOICE!

INTERVIEW WITH ‘HEATHENS AND THIEVES’ WRITER AND CO-DIRECTOR JOHN DOUGLAS SINCLAIR

When I ran my review of HEATHENS AND THIEVES in the beginning of July, (to read it, go HERE) I was discussing a movie that few people had as yet any chance to see.  Since then, this Western Noir has been playing in festivals and garnering awards:

Special Jury Award and Best Actress Award for Gwendoline Yeo at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival.

Outstanding Dramatic Feature at the Sacramento International Film Fest.

Audience Favorite Award at the Downtown Film Festival, Los Angeles.

Best Western at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival.

Audience Choice for Best Feature at the Sacramento Music & Film Festival.

Coming up on Friday, September 21^st, HEATHENS AND THIEVES will screen at the New Jersey Film Festival.  In fact, this Saturday, September 8^th, it’s the Closing Night film of the Rome International Film Festival – and while that may be in Rome, Georgia, the movie is getting an international reputation:  on Friday, October 12^th it will screen in Spain, at the Almeria Western Film Festival, along with other Round-up favorites LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE and YELLOW ROCK.

And in October and November, HEATHENS AND THIEVES will become available in DVD and VOD – I’ll have the exact dates very soon.   The film was made by OROFINO, a production company consisting of writer/co-director John Douglas Sinclair, co-director Megan Peterson, producer Peter Scott, and director of photography Pyongson Yim. 

HENRY: You wrote it, but you co-directed it.  Most co-directors these days have the same last name, whether it’s Coen or Singleton.  How did you two come together, and what is it like co-directing?

JOHN: The way we came together was, we and the director of photography, Pyongson Yim, had been friends for a number of years.  We had all been working in ‘the industry’ in various ways.  But none of us doing what we’d set out to do in the first place, which was getting features made. 

H: What had you and Megan been doing prior to this?

J: Well, I had been writing.  I won the Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy for screenwriting, so I had been working on trying to get my own stuff made.  I hadn’t been successful in selling or making it myself, and Megan and Pyongson had both been working a lot in reality television, doing some really interesting DISCOVERY and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC shows, but also less interesting reality shows.  Megan was field producing, and Pyongson was shooting.  Most people get into this business with either narrative features or TV in their heart, and so you have to remind yourself, hey, if we don’t do it, we’ll never get it done.  So we kind of put ourselves to it, and started telling everyone that we were going to make a movie, and realized, oh my God, now we’re on the hook; we’ve got to do it.

We realized that, between the three of us, we had the ability to do this.  The way it started actually was that Megan and Pyongson had been talking about doing a film, but I’m more of a writer than they are.  So I mentioned maybe I could come up with a script, and Megan said, “Well, we have to do a western.”  I’m like, “Why a western?”  Because I’d never written a western.  But it was because Megan’s family lived up north in Etna, California, surrounded by friends who have ranches and old properties and horses and things, and she said, “I can bring a lot of that to it.” 

H: I was struck by how many horses you see in one shot.  Because with westerns today, sometimes you say, ‘Isn’t that the same horse the other guy was riding?’ 

J: Exactly!  We were so lucky!  When I heard we were going to get twenty-five or thirty horses, I said, “Well, I’ve got to write a stampede into this.”  I really wrote around the location and the resources – what we had.  Of course I threw some challenges into the script that we weren’t really prepared for, like the explosion. 

H: That was huge!  I that that was going to take out all the buildings on the farm! 

J:  It took out all the windows in the actual set house that we used, even though we had boarded them up.  I grew up like anyone, loving westerns, but I didn’t have any particular special knowledge of them.  Rather than go back and watch a bunch, I said, well, let’s just see what comes out.  What’s in my subconscious; what kind of western would I like to see.  We always knew we wanted it informed by a sense of noir, not a hyper-stylized noir, but we loved the sense of playing with some shadows, playing with some moral ambiguity, and a femme fatale at the center.  I wanted everyone to have a real motive, nobody just to be a villain entirely, which I always respected about UNFORGIVEN: that was always one of my favorite Westerns.  Everyone has a reason for being the way they are, even if they’re a little misguided.  So that’s how we came together.  And as far as co-directing, we spent a lot of time in pre-production just making sure we were on the same page on everything, and also with Pyongson, our D.P.  The three of us really worked the story together so that by the time we got on the set, we were able to make decisions without always consulting with each other.  For the hard stuff, we would always hash it out.  But a lot of times, Megan would rush off and help establish a lighting mood with the D.P. while I was walking the characters through the next scene.  We stepped in wherever we were needed. 

H: You rarely run into a female D.P.

J: Yes, it’s rare, and not only is she a woman; she’s a Korean woman, which is not super-common.  I felt from the beginning that no one but Pyongson could have shot this movie; she’s such a rising talent, has a unique vision.

H: Visually, it has a DESPERATE HOURS kind of a feel, where a great deal of it is taking place on one night, in one place, so what the interior looks like is hugely important.  There was a tendency in westerns, in the late 60s and 70s to bounce-light everything, and it was always too bright.  And after that it got terribly murky and dark.  She did a beautiful job of using shadow, but not making everyone pitch black, making the lighting seem motivated. 

J:  Thank you.  One of the things she was up against was, we shot it on the Red One camera, and it was kind of experimental because none of us had used that camera before.  She wanted to use that noir shadow thing, but she didn’t want to lose detail by not lighting enough.  And so she was walking an interesting line there, to have enough to play with on post production.  And I should say that the four of us, we raised the funding ourselves, so that between the four of us we would have complete creative control, and live or die by our own sword, instead of someone else’s.  So the four of us brought together whatever talents we could.

H: Tell me about that huge explosion.

J: Steven Riley is the guy who was responsible for setting that all up.  He is one of our executive producers, he and David Poole.  Steven’s the pyrotechnics and special effects coordinator in the last eight or ten Clint Eastwood movies.  He claims that for GRAN TORINO, he’s the only man who’s ever shot Clint Eastwood dead in a movie.  He’s done SPIDER MAN, he’s done PEARL HARBOR, he was the head guy on the train crash in SUPER 8.  We were so lucky to get this guy.  Basically he was in a point in his career where he was doing this for years – his first movie was PETE’S DRAGON, back in the 70s.  And he said, I want to learn the producing side a little bit.  He came on as executive producer.  His son Ryan Riley became the special effects coordinator, with his father kind of overseeing, and together they brought up their 46 foot trailer with everything you could ever want, and we really couldn’t have done it without them setting up the explosion.  They even brought out the guy who was responsible for overseeing pyrotechnics in TITANIC for the day, and he helped oversee as well, because it was super-dangerous apparently. 

And when we’re ready to do the explosion, he calls the local volunteer fire, to arrange for a permit for the day.  And they said, what day of the week are you planning top do this?  Tuesday.  They said, oh, we’re off that day.  Go ahead: do whatever you want.  Half the town came out and watched.  We had warned them because we didn’t want any unpleasant surprises.  This is one of those dream situations where you’re bringing up a village of people from Hollywood, and then combining them with a village of locals who came together – the locals were our extras, they were our carpenters, they were our horse wranglers.  Both sides learning from each other; they’re learning the movie business, and we’re learning all about ranch living. 

H: You shot it all in Etna California?

J: Yes, almost all in Etna and the surrounding valley.  It’s 11 ½ hours north of Los Angeles, you’re maybe an hour and a half from the Oregon border. The reason we chose that setting is because we had access to it.  But it inspired us too.  Because so many westerns have been made on the dry, dusty plains, that kind of New Mexico feel. There are some, but not as many that take advantage of that forest-y feel.

H: You’ve got the green west; not the tan.

J: Exactly.  And because I knew we were doing it there, I thought, what is unique about that area, when I was trying to think what kind of western.  I thought that the Chinese element is something that’s been really overlooked.  In DEADWOOD you have that element.  But when I was researching, I could only find one American western that singled out a Chinese woman as a major character, and that was A THOUAND PIECES OF GOLD, with a young Chris Cooper in it, back in the 80’s.  I don’t think it’s ever even made it to DVD.  It’s not a very well-known movie.

H:   It certainly isn’t.  There was the AMC miniseries, BROKEN TRAIL, and of course you have the lady from BROKEN TRAIL, Gwendoline Yeo. 

J:  When I saw BROKEN TRAIL I thought, my God, she’d be perfect!  And she really wanted to do it, she loved the character,.  But she said, ‘My agent has warned me, if you do this, don’t make it like BROKEN TRAIL.  Make sure that they let you look prettier.  More made up.”  Because in BROKEN TRAIL she was out on the road and had no make-up on. 

H: I hadn’t thought of it before, but in a way her character is very much a parallel character to Claudia Cardinale’s in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

J: Yes, very much so, but I hadn’t thought of that either. That isn’t what I modeled her on, but I’m sure that was buried in my psyche.  I love those Sergio Leone’s – those are my favorite westerns.  Along with UNFORGIVEN, and some of the earlier Clint Eastwood ones, JOSEY WALES.  Those are the kind of westerns that I really love. 

H:  As you said, you weren’t setting out to make westerns initially.  Did you watch westerns very much as a kid?

J: I was aware of westerns.  I remember seeing some John Waynes, the original TRUE GRIT, as a kid.  I think it would be hard to grow up in this country and not be aware of westerns; they’re in our psyche.  But at the same time I never was particularly drawn to them.  When I saw GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and UNFORGIVEN, that opened my eyes – I wasn’t aware of this kind of western earlier, and that’s what excited me.  My manager jokes that anytime anyone asks what genre I’m into, he’s like, ‘Pick a day.’  I just finished writing, for another director a script for hire, an independent documentary.  There’s a lot of recreations and things, so it’s very narrative, and I’d never done that before either.  That’s what I love, to pick up a challenge; there’s a story for every genre’.

H: Do you see yourself primarily as a writer or a director?

J: I really feel like I want to write and direct, both.  Writing has been the base of my career; I’ve always been a writer, trying to sell scripts for other people to do.  But once I got a taste of directing – I started off with some shorts, separately, as did Megan, but when we did this feature I realized: this is the reward!  All the pain of writing – this is the fun part, going out there with an army of talented people!  We had a production designer and art director who really just excelled in finding authentic stuff from that time period and making it feel real.  And our costumer – she had done a lot of independent film before; she’d done CHUCK AND BUCK and REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES.  And that’s what brought her onto our set; she was looking for a western because it was the one thing she hadn’t done, and she wanted to try her hand at it.  I have to say, all of us up on that set, surrounded by mountains and horses and guns and everything!  It really brings out the six-year-old kid in everybody, to do a western – even if they didn’t know they were western fans at heart. 

H: How long a shooting schedule did you have?

J: We had a unique case.  We shot it in two parts, over about two weeks in the spring, then took the summer off, to raise more money, because we knew we didn’t have enough money to shoot the whole thing.  So we took a real risk in saying, let’s shoot about a third of the movie, and we’ll cut the footage into a trailer, and try to excite more interest to bring everyone back together.  So we came back in the fall and shot for close to a month; five or six weeks shooting (altogether). 

H: What sort of scenes did you shoot in those first two weeks, to raise the rest of the budget?

J:  We shot almost entirely interiors.  We realized that the weather was going to change vastly from spring to fall, so if we shot outdoor scenes, they would look very different (and not match).  And the only exterior scene in the movie that we shot that first spring period was a nighttime shot, because no matter what the weather, it will look like night.  It’s when he’s sneaking out of the bunkhouse with his boots off. 

H: What was your budget?

J: We’re really not supposed to say.  If we hadn’t gotten so much from people giving their time, their services, their resources, I would say it would be a two to four million dollar movie, if we had to pay for everything.  The explosion alone would have been a good portion of a million, probably, if Warner Brothers had done it. 

H: The production is very impressive.  You really feel like it’s all on the screen.

J: That’s why we ran out of money so often.  Like when we finished in the fall, we had to raise money to do post (production), because we wanted to do it right; we didn’t want to short-change what was on the screen.  We were so lucky to have so many good people.  And Don Swayze, Patrick’s brother, became such a great force on set; I think he gave just a riveting performance. 

H: He was terrific.  I love that he was a villain that doesn’t think of himself as a villain.  And I think it’s a tribute to your writing; I’m sure what appealed to these actors so much is that everyone is playing a really solid character. 

J: On a practical level, too, when you’re doing a small independent movie, you don’t have a lot of money to throw at actors.  You want good actors, and the only other way to get them is if they feel like these are really meaty roles to play.  It’s not what I set out thinking, but in retrospect that’s really important, I think, not to overlook the practical side of filmmaking.  When I started on the story I knew that we would be limited, that we wouldn’t have a cast of hundreds.  We’re not going to have a big town like DEADWOOD or anything like that.  So I realized that every character becomes more important, because you have so few.  I first thought, what kind of western do I like?  And I thought THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.  Well, what’s that about?  It’s about three guys after the same thing.  That’s the whole story in a way.  And if you stick to something simple like that, then each of their motives – it’s less about plotting and more about who they are and how they collide with each other.

H: It’s like the MALTESE FALCOLN isn’t about the falcon; it’s about all the people who want to get it. 

J: Like the gold or the falcon, it really doesn’t matter: it’s about the people, and what they’re willing to give up, or do to each other. 

H: How did you get your cast together?

J: We cast over a period of, like, six to nine months.  We saw tons of people.  Some of the small characters, Pearl, the blonde in the saloon, and the deputy, Joel Barry and Cecelie Bull, they were friends of mine and Megan’s, and I wrote those parts with them in mind.  Everyone else came in various ways.  For Gwendoline, we had a friend who had acting classes with her, so he sent her the script, and she was cool enough to come to an audition.  And she was responsible for bringing us Don Swayze and Boyuen, who plays her husband in the movie.  Again, she had had acting classes with them in the past.  The moment she saw the Col. Sherman Rutherford role, she’s like, I know the perfect guy for this.  Don came in and auditioned with Gwendoline, and he’s throwing her against the wall, and they’re beating up on each other, falling on the floor, and I’m like oh my God, these two are perfect together. 

When we were shooting in the spring, Don’s brother was dying.  And he was really just filled with rage and sadness and fury, so he said he kept himself sane by pouring it into that character, just letting it go.  Every night he was on the phone with his brother, and hoping that Patrick wasn’t going to die when he was up there, and Patrick kept telling him, you’re doing the right thing, this is a good role for you.  Patrick didn’t die until the shoot was over, so Don, thankfully, was able to be with him. 

H: Andrew Simpson, the male lead, is interesting because he has virtually no credits.  But he’s very good; he’s someone the camera really likes. 

J: He’s doing a web series now, but we get to say he’s our discovery, because he hadn’t done much.  When we were looking at guys for the lead, I realized, and Megan realized that the great western leading men of the 1960s, like Clint and Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson – those guy were real men, and you could believe that they had killed people, you know?  Or they could live for a week in the forest.  Whereas it’s hard to find leading men of that age-range now that feel like that.  Even when you look at the big Hollywood movies now, they’re all too pretty. 

H:  Pretty and soft.

J: Yeah!  We don’t want an Orlando Bloom, someone like that.  When we met Andy, at first we weren’t sure what we thought of him; he came to read for Moses, the man in black.  Then we saw him and said, why don’t you read for the lead.  We tried him against Gwendoline, and again, of all the guys we put against her in the audition, (he was) the only one that seemed really able to handle her.  He felt to me like he was tough, but also had that wounded element to him, like a prize-fighter, who’s had some rough knocks in his life.  And we felt he had the right presence, so let’s see if he can carry this feature. 

This isn’t explicit in the movie, but in my mind, this story was, you have your archetypal ‘man with no name,’ but how did the guy become that guy?  Where did he come from?  And in a way, Andy’s character, Saul, I feel is the guy that, the next time you see him, he’ll be riding into one of those dusty towns, a man with no name, cold and hard, but with maybe a little bit of warmth inside him.  But he’s a killer now; he’s a hero and a killer.  To me the story was about getting him there.  Even the name, Saul.  Biblically, he’s Saul before he becomes Paul, becomes that transformed guy.  This is his Saul stage.  That’s not something everyone’s going to look into and see, but for me, creatively, those were sort of important elements to his arc.     

 

TYRONE POWER in MARK OF ZORRO at the AUTRY Sept. 8

As part of their continuing series, What is a Western?, the Autry will screen one of the greatest of swash-bucklers, THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940), starring Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell, and directed by the maestro of BLOOD AND SAND and DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Rouben Mamoulian.  It even features, from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, the greatest of all sword-wielding villains, Basil Rathbone, and the most delightful friar of them all, Eugene Pallette.   Jeffrey Richardson, the Autry’s Gamble Curator of Western History, Popular Culture, and Firearms, will lead the discussion before the film, which screens at 1:30 in the Wells Fargo Theatre. 

 

And if this one puts you in the mood for more of the bold renegade who carves a Z with his blade, come back to the Autry on Saturday, September 15^th, when, as part of the Latino Heritage Month celebration, the Autry will screen episodes of the 1990s ZORRO series, and of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, all featuring actor Henry Darrow, who will be signing his autobiography.

 

EASTWOOD AT THE AERO SANTA MONICA

 

The American Cinemateque at the Aero is featuring several Clint Eastwood Westerns in September.  On Wednesday, Sept. 5^th it’s THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES; on Monday, Sept. 10^th it’s a 20^th anniversary screening of UNFORGIVEN; and on Tuesday, Sept. 25^th it’s TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARAH, co-starring Shirley Macaine, directed by Don Siegel, scripted by Budd Boetticher, with an amusing score by Ennio Morricone. 

 

‘THE VIRGINIAN’ RETURNS ON INSP!

 

Not content to rest on their laurels, after announcing the return to the airwaves of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, INSP has announced that THE VIRGINIAN will be added to their Saddle-Up Saturday schedule!   Coinciding with the series’ 50^th Anniversary celebration at the Autry on September 22^nd, a VIRGINIAN marathon will play on INSP, and the following Saturday it will become part of the regular line-up.    Premiering in 1962, it was the first western series to run 90 minutes; in effect, it was a weekly movie.  Based on Owen Wister’s novel, it ran nine seasons and 249 episodes, all of them starring James Drury as the title character without a name.  Drury says, “I am thrilled that THE VIRGINIAN is coming back to television.  And there’s no better place to call home than INSP.  They have brought back so many of the shows that America still loves, and THE VIRGINIAN is sure to fit right in with their western line-up.  INSP and THE VIRGINIAN prove that good television never goes out of style.”

That's all for this week!  Next week I'll have info about an upcoming RAMONA event, The Western Writer's of America's Round-up Magazine's take on direct-to-home-video westerns, my review of two different published screenplays for CHEYENNE WARRIOR II, and more!

Hope you had a great Labor Day!  Uh-oh, it's dark, and I' haven't brought the flag in yet!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright September 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved