INTERVIEW WITH MATT CLARK, PLUS COWBOY SHOW AT THE REAGAN, PODCASTS, COMMENTARIES AND MORE!

 

Matt Clark as doomed lawman J.W. Bell in 

PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID

INTERVIEW WITH MATT CLARK

Character actor Matt Clark has died at age 89, in Austin, Texas, after having broken his back some months ago. If you don’t know his name, you’ll definitely recognize his face, from roles in The Cowboys, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Culpepper Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Jeremiah Johnson, and if you’re younger, Back to the Future III and A Million Ways to Die in the West. From 1964 to 2014, he played 120 different characters onscreen: good guys, bad guys, losers and heroic types, all of them entirely believable. I had the pleasure of interviewing him back in 2020, when I was writing an article about Monte Walsh (1970) for True West.

Whenever I have the chance to interview someone with the extensive credits of a man like Clark, I ask him about as much of his career as I can, and I’m glad I did. I tried to follow up later on, but between phone problems and health problems, it never happened again.  While editing this interview it struck that, although not so long ago, everyone we discussed, whom I’d interviewed for the Monte Walsh article – Bo Hopkins, Mitch Ryan, casting agent Lynn Stalmaster, and of course Matt – is now gone. Here’s what Matt shared with me.

MATT CLARK:  One day I'm on the set of The Cowboys. I'm standing around the chair where John Wayne sits, and there were three or four people that follow him, his entourage, standing around. He wasn't there, and they're saying, “God damn, those damn bastards! Why don't they leave that Lieutenant Calley alone?” (Note: U.S. Army Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968, in the My Lai Massacre.)  “God, the man's a hero! You never know when one of them gooks is gonna pull a hand grenade out, blow you up!” “You’re damn right! Shoot 'em, kill 'em all! Burn 'em all: women, children, everything!” So here comes Wayne lumbering up. And I really disliked Wayne at that time. ‘Cause he was so right wing, and it was during the war, and all of these statements he'd made. I liked his acting, liked it before. But when he started to get really politically crazy, I turned off. So here he comes, and I think, Oh my God, what is he got to say about this? And the guy said to him, “What do you think, Duke? We're just talking about Lieutenant Calley.” And Wayne said, “They ought to hang that murdering little coward up by his balls.” Everything went silent for a minute. And they all went well, “You're right about that, Duke! You got that one, right! Yeah, that was wrong!” I always liked Wayne a lot more after that. Anyway, let's get back to what you want to hear instead of my politics.

Jerry Gatlin, Walter Scott, and Matt Clark as the 

ranchhands who desert John Wayne in THE COWBOYS

HENRY PARKE: I understand that you're from Washington D.C. and you went to George Washington University.

MATT CLARK: I didn't go long. I made it about a year. I had this G.I. Bill after Korea. That's when I went. But I think I lasted a little over the first semester. I was in an economics lab with 300 people in an auditorium. I just got so bored, and all I wanted to do was be an actor. I said, I'm outta her,e and I up and left and never came back. So all that going into the Army in order to get the GI Bill, a lot of good that did me!

HENRY PARKE: You studied with Herbert Bergoff, did a lot of off-Broadway theater in New York.

MATT CLARK: I got a half a dozen shows, maybe all together. Only one that was The Living Theater.  (Note: The Living Theatre, founded in New York in 1947, is the United States’ oldest experimental theatre company) I was with the Living Theater for about a year and I didn't do much there. I stage-managed and I played tiny parts in a couple of things. And then I left to go into a play, playing James Joyce in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And that was a wonderful experience. I did that for eight months. Then I understudied Martin Sheen in The Subject Was Roses. And then I got a tiny part in a movie called Black Like Me, which was shooting in Washington, D.C. So I drove down to Washington. I had one day's work playing some nasty little Southern punk in an alley, who threatens (James) Whitmore. (Note: It’s the true story of a White reporter who dyed his skin to pass for Black in the 1960s South, to write articles about his treatment). I go down and I'm doing that. Then they call lunch, one hour. The crew, they were all going into a Ruth's Chris-type steak house. I said, that's a little over my pay grade. I was used to Flame Steaks on 42nd Street. I got a steak and a baked potato for $1.70. Remember that?

HENRY PARKE: I remember Flame Steak there and on 8^th Street in the Village.

MATT CLARK: Exactly. I went in with (them) and I sat down and I just was so uncomfortable, ‘cause I was, a hillbilly, I was a redneck. These guys were ordering prime rib, And I thought, I like ribs. I'll take the prime rib too. And they brought me this uncooked slab of meat. And I looked over and people were cutting into it with their fork. And I cut into it and I never put anything like that in my mouth. I said, and I don't pay for this? Whoo! I'm going to Hollywood! Up until that moment, the idea of being in the movies was foreign to me as being an airline pilot. I had a good time. Had a good life.

HENRY PARKE: With your background, I wouldn’t have guessed you go into Westerns, but you certainly had an affinity for them. Did you grow up with them?

MATT CLARK: No more than anybody else. Cowboys and Indians as a kid, but it was certainly a hell of a lot more Westerns available, even on TV. Now people won't watch the Western, young people, for some crazy reason.

HENRY PARKE: Unless Quentin Tarantino makes it. Your first Westerns were episodes of Dundee and the Culhane, and then Will Penny, and then the episodes of Death Valley Days and so on. What did you like in your early ones in particular? What's memorable?

MATT CLARK: Nothing. The only one was Will Penny. It was the only time I ever had a screen test in my life, and I got all excited, doing this film with Charlton Heston. So I went in, they said, thank you very much, then my agent says, yes: they want you. I said, that's great. Well, it turns out I don't have any lines. I just played a guy who gets shot by Charlton Heston, and I tumbled down the hill and into the river. And then take two, get up there, put on some dry wardrobe, bang, down the hill again. I did it three times. I thought, why were you getting a screen test just to be shot and fall in the river and have no lines? I don't get it. Then I began to realize I had saved them a bunch of money over having a stunt man, if nothing else. And I was doing Rat Patrol when that picture opened, with the same director, Tom Gries. I flew in (for the premiere), I didn't even see myself ‘cause it was halfway over. So I've never seen the movie.

HENRY PARKE: What an incredible string of Westerns you made in the early seventies, Monte Walsh, The Beguiled, The Grissom Gang -- sort of a Western, The Cowboys, Pocket Money, Culpepper Cattle Company, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. From 1970 to ‘73, you were in every Western worth seeing.

MATT CLARK: (laughs) I just got lucky.

HENRY PARKE: You were directed by every director worth remembering: Bill Fraker, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, Dick Richards, Sydney Pollock, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah -- it’s just astonishing.

MATT CLARK: Well, there were a lot of good ones. John Huston was my favorite. What a masterful person he was. And you want a couple of stories?

HENRY PARKE: You bet!

MATT CLARK: Well, no, I'm not going to give them to you, because I'm writing them in a memoir.

HENRY PARKE: I understand how that is.

Matt Clark in Back to the Future III

MATT CLARK: And you know who I loved, and thought would make a great (subject for a) Western, and I've never seen a good one about him? It was Quantrill. I don't know whether it would work today. His was kind of a gentleman, you know. When he went into Northfield, Minnesota, they didn't kill all the women. They shot a bunch of men up. I think Bloody Bill was with him, wasn't he?

HENRY PARKE: Oh yes

MATT CLARK: I just thought he was a genius and a good guy from everything I read. I must've read 10 books on him, but nobody ever has made a decent movie about him. Another thing they have never shown, which was part of the founding of the West, was the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

[Matt Clark suddenly launched into a 10-minute, detailed dissertation on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the subject of the recent miniseries American Primeval. Although he hadn’t studied it in years, he easily recalled a very complex timeline of events, names of participants, distances between locales, outcomes and sentences.]

MATT CLARK: I thought that's an interesting story.

HENRY PARKE: Absolutely! Let's talk about Monte Walsh. Did you audition?

MATT CLARK: Yeah, I'm sure I auditioned. It wasn't like it is today. I guess there must be a hundred casting directors in LA. now. Back then there were like two or three that had any majors (studios), and one of them was Lynn Stallmaster, who cast all that stuff. When I first went out to California, I ran into Martin Sheen, who I had understudied in New York. He was with a touring company of The Subject Was Roses. And somebody wanted him to play a part in In the Heat of the Night. (Note: Matt would play that part, of Packy Harrison, in the film). This is a little sidebar; you don't have to print this. But for years I got residual checks that I guess they didn't have enough room to write In the Heat of the Night on. So it was In the Heat of the Nig.  This went on for years. Good God! Is this the way they printed checks that they send to Poitier? Anyway, that's when I met Lynn Stalmaster and he cast me for years, and he was still casting not too long ago.

HENRY PARKE: I met him a few years ago --  
MATT CLARK: He's 90, I think. He was such a gentleman, such a sweet guy, and he got me started. I wouldn't have been an actor without him. And why he liked me, I have no idea. I'm happy as I sit here in quarantine, and don't have a worry in the world. I have my S.A.G. pension and my Social Security. (Note: Lynn Stalmaster died in 2021 at 93.)
HENRY PARKE: Tell me why Monte Walsh was one of your favorites.

MATT CLARK: Just because it was a Western and I loved them, and I learned to ride in Westerns, which I really enjoy. I love when you were sent out on your horse, and you sat on your horse for an hour before the shot, and that they wave you in, they shoot it, and then you go back, sit on the horse again! The most fun I ever had in a Western was on The Cowboys, which I'm only in the credits of, but it took a long time to shoot. You remember in the opening they had a zoom, multiple lenses, multiple shots of cowboys working horses, bulldogging and everything. And everybody with me was a stunt man or a rodeo cowboy. So I got to hang around for almost three weeks with all these famous rodeo cowboys. The most famous was Casey Tibbs, who was my stunt double. There was a simple shot that I wanted to be in, because I could ride all right, which was riding with a group in and amongst a group of cattle crossing over and rounding, playing around with them and out, across a field. I wanted to do that shot, and the stunt coordinator wouldn't let me because he said it was too dangerous. I said, "come on, it's riding a horse!" He said, "No, I'm going to have Casey do it.” So Casey doubled for me, and in the shot, Casey's horse stepped in a gopher hole and went head-over-heels. And Casey was laid up for a bit with that. And I thought, wow, these stunt guys know what they're doing sometimes.

HENRY: I was just talking to your Monte Walsh co-star, Mitch Ryan, yesterday, and he said to say hello to you. (Note: Mitch Ryan died in March of 2022 at age 88.)

MATT CLARK: I talked to him three or four days ago and asked him whether or not you had contacted him.

Matt Clark in The Culpepper Cattle Company

HENRY: Good; we're all on the same page. What was Lee Marvin like to work with?

MATT CLARK: Lee Marvin became one of my best friends. We did a few things together, but I remember the first time I met him, he'd been always one of my favorite actors, in the classic sense of an actor alcoholic. But we just hit it off. When I came up, he was in a chair, telling a story and it was a funny story, kind of; not overly funny. But I was so impressed that I was actually standing next to and talking to Lee Marvin, that I kinda went, "Heh-heh-heh." And he stopped talking, he looked up at me and he said, “Well, that's a pretty guilty laugh.” And I got kinda sheepish. I said, “Yeah, I guess it was.” And I think we became friends right there ‘cause I wasn't bullshitting him, you know? We became fairly close after that. Here's something I'll tell you. Mitch (Ryan) and Billy Green Bush and I were all going to be doing a scene, and we were riding to the set together from Tucson. It was about an hour drive. So Lee Marvin gets in the car and he is drunker than Cooter Brown. It's like eight o'clock in the morning, and we start to talk about the scene that we're going to do. How should we do this? We're discussing what the scene's about. And Lee had some really good ideas. We talked about it for the hour. We finally get to the set, he steps out of the car, he's completely sober. He had the most incredible metabolism of anybody I ever saw. I've never seen anybody go drunk to sober so quick. And he turns to us and he says, “All right, we've talked about it. Forget all that crap, just do the damn scene.” And he walks away. And it was a real interesting lesson for an actor, which is, you examine, investigate the scene, you decide what you're going to do. And then once you've done all that, forget all that crap and just do the scene. I thought it was really a great, great acting lesson. So that was one thing I'll remember Lee for.

I don't know whether you remember the scene that Billy Green Bush and I are standing at the bar, we're kind of bad company. We're questionable, unlawful cowboys, if you will. We'd been fired, too. And then Mitch was also fired, so he had joined up with us, and we're in a bar. Leroy Johnson, the stunt man, comes in and he's playing the marshal. He comes in to arrest us for bank robbing. And the scene is, we are supposed to pull guns and shoot at him, but he's standing there with a gun on us. I said, “This doesn't make any damn sense. I'm not going to pull a gun and shoot somebody who’s got a pistol on me, and take a chance on being shot.” I wasn't going to do anything like the script called for, because we're supposed to shoot at him, dive, shoot at him, and then Mitch stands up and kills him. But I couldn't figure out how in the hell can we do that? (Note: Lee Marvin is not in the scene. He’s just giving advice.) So Lee said, “Matt, what if you have your right arm on the bar. Billy is lighting a cigarette, with his left gun obvious. But he reaches over and pulls his other gun out of his holster on the right-hand side, flips it, turns it and drops it into your palm, and the marshal can see your gun all the time. You're not going for your gun.” That's brilliant. That really shows a couple of bad guys that work together, you know? And I must say, if Lee did have alcohol problems, they never seemed to affect his work. Jesus, he got an Academy Award for it.

HENRY: For playing a drunk in Cat Ballou?

MATT CLARK: That's right. I never saw him that he wasn't completely professional. Never saw him screw up a line or come late to a shoot. I never saw him do anything like that. So that's one of my Lee stories.

HENRY: That scene you were just talking about is one of my absolute favorite scenes in the film. And you look so terrified, and him slipping that gun to you is so unexpected. Then it's a whole explosion of action. Your director on Monte Walsh was Bill Fraker, a great cameraman directing for the first time. What was he like to work with?

MATT CLARK: I like Bill a lot. I was a little disappointed that he didn't cover that transfer of the gun, ‘cause you really don't see it. I thought it was so important to show these guys are two really bad guys, but the film, as far as I'm concerned, it’s one of the most beautiful Westerns ever made. Just cinematically, it's shot so beautifully.

HENRY: When you were doing it, did you think it was going to become a classic?

MATT CLARK: I never thought of anything except acting, I mean, what I was doing. Just like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, I knew that if I'm working with Peckinpah and (Bob) Dylan and all the rest of them that were in that film, I knew that I was headed for a really special experience. Or when I did Judge Roy Bean and was going to work with John Huston, I knew it was going to be extraordinary. Number one, Mitch (Ryan) and I had known each other for a long time, we knew each other in New York and we did a two-man scene at the Actor’s Studio once years ago. We went back a long way, so I was looking forward to seeing him again. But I was also looking forward to working with Lee who I guess still I think of as my number one actor. And after that, solving that question of how do you pull a gun on the sheriff who's got the drop on you, without it being just some crazy movie bullshit, I thought his solution was just great. And I thought, if he'd been interested in anything other than catching big blue Marlins and drinking, he could have been one of the best directors going.

HENRY: How about Jack Palance?

MATT CLARK: Jack was a character. We were in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a hard-rock mining town, and it's certainly not the most beautiful place I've ever been. We're in this bar, we're drinking, all these locals are saying, “Oh my God, Jack Palance!” These hard-rock miners are tough fuckers, and they're all talking with Jack. And they would look out and they'd say, “Jack, have you ever seen anything that beautiful?” And it's not really great. And Jack said, “Jesus, how do you people live here? That is awful! You think that's nice? Good God!” And they're getting ready to punch the shit out of him. He was a tough guy, but those people were not gonna be demeaned like that. And as soon as they started to get angry, he said, “I'm just joking with you guys.” He said, “No, it really is beautiful!” And they would be all, “Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack!” He would just spin them like that. He played with them that way. And I thought, you are a character. That's my big Jack Palance memory.

HENRY:  Of course, director Bill Fraker you worked with later in The Legend of the Lone Ranger.

MATT CLARK: Well, you know, that was interesting, and I don't know whether you want to use this or not, but they cast as The Lone Ranger, a guy that looked like a million dollars, Clinton Spilsbury. But he was nervous, you know. He'd never really had a lot of acting chops. And so he was scared. It was obvious that they didn't think much of him, but they kind of all kind of ganged up on him, I thought. And I said to Fraker, good God, this guy is already scared enough. You should be building his confidence rather than taking his confidence away. And I think that was the big problem with the picture, Clinton Spilsbury's performance as The Lone Ranger. Otherwise I think it would have been a better film. And I agree with you, it wasn't much of a movie.

HENRY: Is there anything else you want to share about Monte Walsh?

MATT CLARK: You know, I ordered the thing from Amazon. Sellick obviously redid it, but I made sure that I was ordering the Lee Marvin version. And they still sent me the Tom Sellick. I watched the opening of it, which wasn't bad; then I sent it back. I've done a couple of things with Tom, Magnum P.I.  He's a nice guy. But Monte Walsh was a special film and looking at it and realizing, God, I remember how beautiful this was, what fun it was.

HENRY: Was it a rough shoot physically?

MATT CLARK: Not for me at all. Another thing I remember was Bo Hopkins. Did you talk to Bo?

HENRY: I was thinking of it. His part is so small. I wasn't sure what to ask. (Note: For the record, I did subsequently interview Bo Hopkins about Monte Walsh.)

MATT CLARK: Oh, you should talk to him anyway. He always loves to talk and he's still in show business. You know, I think he did a movie last year. I'm so glad that I'm not one of those people waiting for my agent to call, but you know, I've had other things in my life. And I'm real happy to have had the joy and the luck that I had, to have done what I did at the time I did it. I can't imagine having had a better life. You know, we all enjoy being little boys and playing cowboys and Indians or let's pretend. And to be able to do that into your sixties is a pretty, pretty remarkable thing. Yes, indeed. At one point I directed a film in Ireland, Da. (Note: Martin Sheen stars as a Broadway playwright who returns to Ireland when his father, his ‘Da’, Bernard Hughes, dies, and encounters him as a spirit.) Did you see it?

HENRY: I saw it when it originally came out, but it's been a few years.

MATT CLARK: It only played for several weeks in five theaters around the country, but I have had so many people strangely enough to come up and tell me that it’s one of their favorite films. And it's mainly because of Barney Hughes's performance, which is extraordinary, and the script. And I was just given that as a great gift. But there's a character in it, Drum, who I thought of Lee (Marvin) playing ‘cause he could play any damn thing. And I asked him about it. I had done a movie, Pocket Money, with Lee and Paul Newman, and the script was by Terrence Malick, the guy that wrote and directed Badlands. Great filmmaker.

I just had a small part in that movie, where I play a prisoner in a jail in Mexico, and they play these two losers who go down to Mexico to bring back rodeo cattle. And they're stopped at the border, because the cattle have a disease, like the clap, like syphilis for cattle. But anyway, they played these two losers who bounce off of each other. I thought they were closer to who I had seen them, as people, than anything else I had seen them in. I thought it was a terrific movie. When I was playing that guy in the jail, Lee came up to me one day, I had been in wardrobe, and I had regular leather shoes, but I stepped on the back of the heels, to turn them into what are called jailhouse flippers. You just have to slip your feet in them to get around. And Lee looked down at me and he said, “You're a fucking rag actor.” And I thought he was insulting me. And he says, “I'm gonna tell you a secret. I do half of my performance in the wardrobe fitting.” So he meant it as a big compliment, you know: choose what you're going to wear as this character. Anyway, I went to ask him if he would play Drum, which would have been a real stretch for him, to play this snob Irishman; but I thought he'd have been just great. He said he would like to do it, it looked like it would be fun to do, but he said, “I can't do it. Because I have learned that it would just be counterproductive to the show, because people do not accept it. Once you're a star and you've established your personality, your star character, that's what people expect from you. And if they don't get that from you, they're pissed off and think that you have screwed them.” He said, “I'm afraid I'm already Lee Marvin. It’s who I am.” And unfortunately, when I was in Ireland is when he died. It’s a great lesson about films and how they work. And you don't see many people that have broken that rule. Daniel Day Lewis, they're very rare actors who are movie stars and big stars who can (play) completely different people. It's like Meryl Streep, these kinds of actor actors, who can get away with it, and they've done it from the get-go. They start out and they never do the same thing twice. So that's what's expected of them. Whoa, what are we going to get from Daniel Day Lewis this time? What are we going to get from Meryl Streep? And you can get anything from My Left Foot to There Will Be Blood. You get characters that diverse. But you don't find many stars that can do that. If you're looking at Paul Newman movies, he’s pretty much always Paul Newman, you know? Everybody is who they're set to be, and that's who the public expects them to be. That's why being a character actor was so much fun, because you're playing different characters all the time. You're not playing the same kind of thing each time.

HENRY: Speaking of which, I really enjoyed you in The Outlaw Josey Wales, where you got to play a nice guy for a change. There was a really interesting little world in that ghost town with you and Royal Danno, Sheb Wooley and all those people. How did you like working with Clint Eastwood?

Matt Clark and Royal Dano in

The Outlaw Josey Wales

MATT CLARK: I did three films with Eastwood. The first one, I don't remember that much. That's The Beguiled, when he was a prisoner in the Civil War. I do remember Josey Wales. And then I played in Honkytonk Man. I played his brother, I think. And the thing that I liked about him, because I thought that this is a profession, and you should act professionally. So you should really at least know your lines and be able to get through the scene. It's not that you have to do it the same way the next time, but you should be able to get through it and say your lines, so you have to be prepared enough to do that. And so many times you'll work with an actor, and I'm not talking about stars necessarily, but just other actors in the film. You'll be doing a scene and you’re all ready and you do your thing and they're doing theirs. And then they fuck the take up, and they say, okay, cut. Let's go again. And you have dumped; you've put it all out there. And you do that maybe 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 or 14 times when they can't get it right. And finally they get it where they get through, and they haven't absolutely stomped on their dick in the scene. The director said, that's it; move on. Meanwhile, you have just blown your wad 14 times in a row. So the thing I loved about Clint is that he doesn't mess around. I'm telling you, I think that if the camera doesn't fall over, you shoot it, that's a print, that's it. So you know that you’d better be ready to work, or he'll cut around you, cut you out of the Goddamn thing. So that's who he is as a director, and I really enjoy that about him. And while politically we're not maybe on the same page, I liked him as a person a lot. I think he's a good man.

HENRY: I've never gotten to speak to him, but he’s a great talent.

MATT CLARK: You better get moving, ‘cause he's gotta be ninety. (Note: at this writing, Clint Eastwood is 96.) Here's the thing I couldn't believe about him. He's a big guy, but he looks put together, not like a big fat guy. But in the scene (in Honkytonk Man) he was drunk, passed out, and we had to pick him up and carry him in the house. I remember trying to lift him, and it was like trying to lift 500 pounds. He was the heaviest, because he's so dense, I guess. And so he’s a strong guy, mentally, physically, artistically. So that's my Clint Eastwood. Give Bo Hopkins a call. Tell him Matt said that you should call him.

HENRY: I sure will. He actually,he gave me a good interview about a year and a half ago about making The Wild Bunch. (Note: Bo Hopkins died about 2 years after this interview. In 2020 he came out of retirement to play his last role, Pawpaw, for Ron Howard in Hillbilly Elegy.)

Matt's final role was as a prospector in

A  Million Ways to Die in the West

MATT CLARK: It's tough to be at that age. He doesn't work much, and he wants to. His drive for show business, his drive to be a star is so much stronger than mine ever was. I never had frankly much interest in it. I had a great life doing what I did. You know, the stars have to work all the time, and I could go to Europe for three months and work two weeks. A lot of people would like to have done it, I'm sure. Now there's so many, I don't know how you could keep track of all the actors today, with all these streaming services, you know? It’s overwhelming. Just so much shit being done all the time. When you either made feature films or you did television series for the three networks when I started, that was it, you know? There were damn few jobs. I know movie stars that can't quit and you've seen them do other things. You've seen them do commercials; they will do anything. You'll see a movie and you go, Holy Christ, this guy was a big star. What the hell? Why is he doing something like this? The reason I quit acting when I did, said “enough,” and walked away, and I wouldn't even let my ex-agent know when I was in town out of fear that they would send me out to act again. I had had it, because the only thing I was getting, the last few jobs, the parts were so not fun. Insignificant, either television crap or what movies I would get, there wouldn't be any significance to the characters. I’d play a judge, and that kind of shit. And all the parts for people over 60, that used to go to us character actors, that we would compete for, now they were being taken by stars who were too old to be leads in movies, but they can't give it up. They'll do commercials and they do things that you think, why would somebody like that do that? And I think it's just the nature of being an actor. There's something so addictive about it, and so different from anything else. Maybe it's like politicians: most of them don't know when to quit and can't quit. And I know one guy that I joke that he would do a Kotex commercial if he didn't have anything else going on.

HENRY: I remember when Ray Milland was doing The Thing with Two Heads, and an interviewer asked him, why? And he said, well, I did Love Story. That was the last one where I had a real acting part, and I proved I can still do it. And I just like to work, and I'll frankly do anything they will pay me to do.

MATT CLARK: Exactly. Fortunately I never had that disease. And I've worked all over the country and all over the world, and met so many wonderful people. And all I did was play cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. And what a way to make a living, huh?

 

COWBOY – HISTORY AND HOLLYWOOD AT THE REAGAN!

Trigger, Buttermilk and Bullet waiting to

greet you at the Reagan Presidential Library

Here’s a True West article that hasn’t run on the page yet! We tried to squeeze this piece, about a terrific show at the Reagan Presidential Library, into the March/April issue, but that issue was just too packed! It’s running in the upcoming May/June issue, but the show is only going to be at the Reagan is only running until April 19^th! From there it’s moving to the Mulva Cultural Center in De Pere, Wisconsin. To give West-coasters the best chance to see it, True West took the unusual step of posting the article ahead of time, at their website. Here’s the link: https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/cowboys-history-hollywood-at-the-reagan/

 

HAPPY PASSOVER!

Because this site obviously leans kinda Western, it’s worth noting at Passover that the very first Western movie star – actually the first movie star of any genre – was Jewish! Broncho Billy Anderson, born Maxwell Henry Aronson, was in The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first movie with a plot, and would produce and star in 148 silent Westerns. His studio, Essanay, was the phonetic spelling of S.N.A., and the A stood for Anderson. The link below is for Broncho Billy’s Sentence, and you may be surprised to find that Broncho Billy is definitely not a good guy at the story’s start. Enjoy!

RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER!

On the show coming up this Thursday, April 2^nd, Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell and I will be joined by Peter Sherayko, author of Prove it Safe: Gun Safety For the Movies, and Manuela Schneider, author of Dr. Goodfellow: Bullets, Blood, and the Gunfighters’ Famous Surgeon. Here’s the link to follow the show, which airs at 6pm Western time.

 https://www.facebook.com/rendezvouswithawriter/ 

TRUE WEST – MARCH/APRIL 2026

As you can tell from the cover, the heart of this issue “The Mother Road”, aka Route 66. Please enjoy my article, T.R.’s Return, about premiering season 2 of INSP’s Teddy Roosevelt series, ELKHORN, in the actual town in North Dakota where the story takes place. And check out my review of Classic Flix’s Blu-Ray of 1958’s The Proud Rebel.  

 

MORE COMMENTARIES ON THE WAY!

Once again, filmmaker/novelist/film historian C. Courtney Joyner and I have tag-teamed on a couple of new Blu-Ray commentaries. 1971’s Red Sun is directed by Terence Young, and stars Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress. 1959’s Last Train from Gun Hill is directed by John Sturges, and stars Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones and Earl Holliman. I’ll update you when I find out when they will be available.

 

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

 

Happy Trails,

Henry

 

All Original Contents Copyright March 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

Not to be used for training A.I.

‘RIDICULOUS 6’, ‘C-BAR’ REVIEWED, PLUS ‘JOSEY WALES’ AT 40!

THE RIDICULOUS 6 – A Film Review

Adam Sandler plays Tommy, a boy whose father disappeared, and whose mother was murdered before his eyes when he was a child.  Adopted by Apache Chief Screaming Eagle (Saginaw Grant), he has taken on their ways, adopted the name White Knife, and has developed a phenomenal skill with knives.  He is on the verge of marrying Smoking Fox (Julia Jones) when his bio-father (Nick Nolte) reenters his life.  Dad was an outlaw, but is now old and dying of consumption, and wants to make amends.  But suddenly Dad’s old gang, led by Cicero (Danny Trejo), appears, wanting the loot Dad absconded with.  They take him away, and Tommy, sure his father cannot come up with his own ransom, sets out to raise the missing money to buy his father’s life.  On his quest he meets his five half-brothers, and they join forces to save their father.    

On a recent JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE appearance, Adam Sandler described THE RIDICULOUS 6 as, “A real Western, but funny.”  He’s right.  Look at that plot-line – if you drop the name Smoking Fox, it’s the plot of a straight Western.  And straight is how Sandler plays it.  Although the film is very funny, he’s loaded the cast with other comedians because his character makes few jokes in the film.  His relationship with his fiancé, his Apache father, his mixed feelings about his real father, and the feelings of loss for his mother, are played with utter seriousness. 

Sandler’s buckskin costume is somewhat Indian-ized version of Alan Ladd’s in SHANE.  His few jokes are big and physical – he does some astonishing – actually impossible but very funny – acrobatics and knife tricks that are heavily influenced by Terrence Hill’s LUCKY LUKE films, and by Jackie Chan as well.  Not bad influences, to be sure.

Sandler’s stable of half brothers includes Terry Crews as a well-hung saloon pianist, Jorge Garcia as an unintelligible strangler, Taylor Lautner as Gomer Pyle with a lobotomy, Luke Wilson as Abe Lincoln’s contrite bodyguard, and Rob Schneider as the Mexican brother who plays it as straight as Sandler, but is hysterical.  Among the delightful supporting players are Harvey Keitel, Will Forte as the head of a one-eyed gang, comic and COMANCHE MOON star Steven Zahn as a man who wants to join the one-eyed gang (go figure), Jon Lovitz, Steve Buscemi, Norm MacDonald, Chris Parnell, and the voice of Robin Leach.  Then there are the cameos of historical characters: David Spade as Custer, Blake Shelton as Wyatt Earp, Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain, John Turturro as Abner Doubleday, and Chris Kattan as John Wilkes Booth. 

Raise your hand if Nick Nolte is your dad.

At a minute under two hours, the movie is long, especially for a comedy, but if some scenes could be trimmed, they don’t drag.  Director Frank Coraci has helmed several Adam Sandler and Kevin James comedies.  Sandler co-wrote with Tim Herlihy, who has written several Sandler comedies, and wrote on 139 SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE episodes.  Aussie DP Dean Semler is no stranger to the Western: he lensed both YOUNG GUNS films, CITY SLICKERS, THE ALAMO (2004), APPALOOSA, and won his Oscar for DANCES WITH WOLVES. 

During the shooting of RIDICULOUS 6, the film was criticized by several American Indian actresses who found the writing demeaning, and walked off the film.  They made their point: the most offensive material described at the time did not make it into the movie.   

RIDICULOUS 6 was long assumed to be a MAGNIFICENT 7 parody, but it is in title only.  While it is very funny, and often pretty coarse – frankly I find the frequent burro diarrhea gags more revolting than amusing – the drama that grows out of Sandler’s and Nolte’s scenes is the core of the movie’s strength.  It’s available exclusively on Netflix.

C-BAR – A Film Review

C-BAR, the movie, borrows its title from the ranch where the story takes place.  It’s set in Arizona Territory in the 1860s.  It’s the home of the aging cowboy Dockie Barnett (Mark Baugher), his wife (Sande Comenzind), and their son (Adam Newberry) and daughter (Robin Grande), both in their twenties.  They come upon a young woman (Marissa Neel) who’s been unspeakably abused, and whose family has been slaughtered by a local outfit, led by one Buck Montgomery (played by Buck Montgomery).  While Dockie would prefer to leave the case in the hands of the frankly ineffectual local law, his offspring are determined to track down the killers. 

Dockie reluctantly agrees, and leads his kin as they run the bad men down, on the way picking up for assistance several of his old compadres, whom his son refers to sarcastically as, “All my uncles that I’m not related to.”  It becomes clear that while Dockie and his old friends were not as bad as the folks they’re tracking, in their youth they were no angels.  If they were, they wouldn’t be much use in this kind if lethal work.  When they catch up with Montgomery, the bloodshed and repercussions begin. 

The story is just that simple and straightforward.  It’s both taut and tight – the movie runs just sixty minutes.  The work of first-time filmmakers, it’s unexpectedly impressive and entertaining.  The screenplay is by Mark Baugher, adapted from his own first novel, and yes, he also stars.   The director and cinematographer is Patrick Ball, late of Ball State University in Indiana.  And, unbilled, he plays one of the worst of the gang.  The retiree and the college kid make a remarkably strong team.  While clearly working with a non-pro cast – the female lead was found working at a feed store – the script has been written and scenes assembled to work convincingly within the abilities of the actors.  The speeches are short; the story is told largely through visuals. The faces are just right, and everyone rides like they live in the saddle.  The format is roughly Panavision in shape, the cinematography by Ball and co-camera Aaron Newton is beautiful when it should be, barren or grim when it needs to be.  In a rare combination of jobs, Morgan Stehr is both editor and composer, and the juxtaposing of image and sound is at times striking. 

Of course, no film is perfect.  A sombrero-wearing character only has a Mexican accent half the time, and the woman whose victimization sets the story in motion doesn’t look bad enough.  But these are churlish criticisms of a fine piece of work. 

A CHAT WITH ‘C-BAR’ CREATOR MARK BAUGHER

Mark Baugher as Dockie

Sixty-five year old retiree never intended to get into the film business.  “I’ve had different business adventures; I’ve been a horse shoe-er for years and years.  I dealt in real estate, I owned a transmission repair business, I was a stockbroker.  I was a farm-boy from Illinois, and my my whole goal was to some way make enough money so that I could move out to Arizona,  buy some real estate, and do the things I wanted to do rather than have to do.”

He had a story he wanted to tell.  “I’d written the novel and put it out on Amazon.  And his (Patrick Ball’s) girlfriend found it, gave it to Patrick and said, ‘Read this.’  He read it and called me on the phone, and asked me, ‘Have you thought about making a movie based on your characters?’  Immediately I said, yes, though I hadn’t.  We met in a restaurant in Sedona, and we just hit it off.  I went home, wrote the script.  Thirty days later we started pulling (the film) together, and it came together effortlessly.”

Mark’s been a voracious reader all of his life, but he wasn’t a trained screenwriter any more than he’d been a trained novelist.  “I just went on the internet, and found a program that lines it out, formats it for you, paid $25.  Somebody asked if I was going to take classes.  I said I’m afraid to.  It seems to be working with what I don’t know.  I’m afraid to learn something that might get in the way.”

Bromance!  Baugher kisses director Patrick Ball

when they win a cinematography award

Shooting the movie was not a fast process.  “It took eight months to shoot thirty-eight days, and the reason was, everyone was working.  No one was being paid; we had to work around everything and everybody.  It was always a matter of when can I get all these people together at one time.”  It didn’t help that the actors were not professionals.  When the original actress wasn’t up to the part, Marissa Nell, who was originally the acting coach, had to step into the role of the victim.  “We probably had three days of reshoots, because of actors that didn’t work out.”

Surprisingly, the filmmakers went to crowd-funding not before, but after the film was made. “We used Kickstarter, and raised enough money to buy all of our own equipment.   We’re self-sufficient now: I’ll do the writing, Patrick will do the directing and cinematography.  We have everything we need, except we do need to have some money this time, because we could never ask for people to do for free the second time, what they did the first time.  We’re looking for someone who wants to partner up with us.

“Here’s the plan.  I didn’t want this to be a one movie thing and done.  I really want this to be episodic, same characters, and bringing in more characters, as a web series.  So what we’re doing is we’re going to give away our first episode to anyone who will watch it.  And that will get a quicker audience.  Hopefully they’ll get involved with us, and it’s the second episode we’ll charge two dollars for.”  If you’d like to see C-BAR, for free, visit the official C-BAR WEBSITE, and send Mark a message that you’d like a link sent to you.  And let the Round-up know what you think of it.

OUTLAW JOSEY WALES – Forty Years Later

In November I had the pleasure of introducing a screening of THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES at the Autry Center, in the Wells Fargo Theater; part of the Museum’s monthly ‘What is a Western?’ series.  It’s hard to believe the film will be forty years old in June of 2016.  In researching for my presentation, I learned so much about this remarkable film, and its making, that I decided to expand my talk into an article for the Round-up.

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES is one of Clint Eastwood’s finest movies, and finest Westerns.  His work both in front of and behind the camera is exceptional.  It’s one of his personal favorites, and a film that is not shown nearly enough.   Eastwood had become a star playing the ‘Man With No Name’ in his three Sergio Leone films, and played similar mysterious avengers in several others.  Eastwood said, “Josey Wales is a hero.  You see how he gets to where he is, rather than just having a mysterious hero appear on the plains, and become involved in other people’s plight.”  He liked the idea of playing a man with a name and with a past, and a reason for the things that he does.  It’s one of his finest performances.

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES is a rare story, which examines parts of the Civil War that are usually skipped over.  It focuses not on the famous battles, but on the guerilla war fought in Kansas and Missouri between two brutal and vicious armies, neither with official standing: the Union loyalists, known as Red Legs because of their ‘uniform’ of red stockings, and the Confederate-loyal Bushwhackers.  Most of the story centers on the immediate post-war era, and the disenfranchisement of the Southerner by the less forgiving and more opportunistic elements of the government and the Army.  While it focuses mostly on one man, Josey Wales, who had no part in the war until his family was slaughtered by the Red Legs, leading him to join with Bloody Bill Anderson and his Bushwhackers, it also casts a light on the plight of Indians, particularly the Cherokee, and the others that comprised what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes – Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cree and Seminole, who sided with the Confederacy, and were singled out for particular abuse by a vengeful Federal government.  It’s a very brutal story at times, but also one with a great deal of humor, romance, and a startling degree of heart. 

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES was released in 1976.  As Sondra Locke said to me, “I’m shocked at how long ago it was.”   At its core it is the vision of two men: the author of the novel, Forrest Carter, and the director and star, Clint Eastwood.  Also of tremendous importance is the work of screenwriters Phillip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, who adapted the page to the screen.  JOSEY WALES is a story of people rather than big events.  It’s told in many small, intimate scenes and moments, and reading the novel reveals what a masterful job the screenwriters did in preserving the very words and ideas of the author, seamlessly turning description into dialogue and action. 

Clint Eastwood needs no introduction, of course, but he deserves one.   One of the brightest stars in the history of movies, he began as a contract player at Universal in 1955, working his way up from uncredited bits in films like REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE IN THE NAVY, and TARANTULA.  Of course his first big break came in 1959, when he was cast as drover Rowdy Yates in RAWHIDE.  His second big break came when RAWHIDE was on hiatus, and he went to Spain to star in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964).  They say that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan.  If you want proof, in more than five years of writing about Spaghetti Westerns, I have never spoken to an actor, screenwriter, or director who was NOT the person who suggested casting Clint Eastwood in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.  While continuing his enviable career as an actor, he branched out into directing in 1971 with PLAY MISTY FOR ME.  He’s earned four Oscars: Best Director and Best Picture for UNFORGIVEN (1992); Best Picture for MILLION DOLLAR BABY(2005); and The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.  He was additionally nominated for Best Picture for MYSTIC RIVER (2003), LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2007), and last year for AMERICAN SNIPER (2015).  He was nominated for Best Director for MYSTIC RIVER and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, and twice nominated for Best Actor, for MILLION DOLLAR BABY and UNFORGIVEN.  

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in 2011, Eastwood described JOSEY WALES as an “antiwar” film, and his own military experience colored his viewpoint.  “I was drafted during the Korean War.  None of us wanted to go…It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended.  We said, ‘Wait a second?  Didn’t we just get through with that?’  An atomic bomb, the pacification of Japan…and here we are back in it again…But everybody went.  You objected, but you went.  You said OK, this is what you’re supposed to do.

“As for Josey Wales, I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time.  Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends.  A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.”   

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, released in 1976, was Clint Eastwood’s fifth feature film as a director, his second Western; the first was HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, three years earlier.  Now, thirty-nine years later, Eastwood is 85 years old, and he’s directing his 35^th feature, SULLY, starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesty Sullenberger.  He was on the news recently, commenting on how happy he is to be back at his original studio, Universal, and still considering another acting role, if something good comes up.

JOSEY WALES author Forrest Carter was not an educated man.  According to his autobiography he was orphaned at the age of four, and raised by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather. They died when he was ten, and he’d been on his own ever since. A natural story-teller, he was convinced by his Indian friends to turn his stories into a book.  He did, called it THE REBEL OUTLAW: JOSEY WALES, and it had a grand press-run of seventy-five copies.  He sent one to Clint Eastwood’s Malpaso Company, but like most film companies, it was against their policy to read unsolicited non-pro material – the chances of a lawsuit were too great.  But producer Robert Daley was so moved by the cover-letter that he decided to give it a read, and was immediately hooked.  Daley told Eastwood, “This thing has so much soul to it that it’s really one of the nicest things I’ve read.”  Eastwood read it and was equally impressed.  He bought the film rights.

The original novel

As Eastwood prepared the film, the book got a much larger press-run under the title GONE TO TEXAS, a title Eastwood disliked because he thought it was too regional.  Even more were printed under the title THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES. 

As the popularity of the book grew, so did the fame of its author.  He also published his memoir, THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE, about his childhood and upbringing by his Cherokee grandparents.  Forrest Carter was interviewed on THE TODAY SHOW by Barbara Walters.  It was the first time he’d been seen on television.  And some people thought they recognized him, but they knew him by another name.  A short while later, an article appeared in the New York Times, and revealed that in the 1950s and 60s, Forrest Carter had been known as Asa or Ace Carter.  He was at that time a prominent member of, and spokesman for, the Ku Klux Klan, and a virulent racist and anti-Semite.  But feeling the Klan was too ‘soft’ – I’m not kidding – he started his own off-shoot branch.  In a dispute over the finances of the group, he shot two of his associates, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, but the charges were dropped.  He was a speechwriter for Alabama Governor George Wallace.  He wrote, among many other speeches for Wallace, the infamous inaugural “Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever,” speech.  He split with Wallace when he decided the governor had become too soft and liberal, and actually ran against him for the governorship.  He lost, badly, 4^th place in a field of 4, and quietly faded away, until more than a decade later when he reappeared as Forrest Carter. 

Some of Carter's most creative fiction.

The memoir was pure fiction; he was not orphaned, he was not any part Cherokee, and Cherokees who’ve read LITTLE TREE say that the supposed Cherokee words in the text aren’t real.  But Mr. Carter has turned out to be something of a Teflon Imperial Wizard.  LITTLE TREE became a best-seller, and the New York Times, the folks who exposed Carter in the first place, had to be reminded to move it from the non-fiction to the fiction best-seller list.  It has won literary awards, and was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, although she rescinded when she learned the whole story.  It’s popular in schools all over the country.  It was made into a film by Paramount in 1997, starring James Cromwell and Tantoo Cardinal as the grandparents, with a screenplay by WALTONS creator Earl Hamner Jr. 

Carter also wrote a novel sequel to JOSEY WALES, THE VENGEANCE TRAIL OF JOSEY WALES.  Clint Eastwood initially optioned the book, but dropped it.  It became a movie in 1986, as THE RETURN OF JOSEY WALES, screenplay by Forrest Carter, starring and directed by Michael Parks who, interestingly, shot his own career in the foot when he endorsed George Wallace for President back in 1968.  Rarely seen, it’s not a bad little Western.  Parks is good as Wales, and directs the mostly unfamiliar cast well.  Although shot with care at the handsome Alamo Village in Bracketville, Texas, the audio quality is weak, and the image is worse, as it was recorded on video tape at a time before film-quality video cameras had been developed.  

But Carter did not live to see these later successes.  He died in Abilene, in June of 1979, at the age of 53, of a heart-attack, allegedly brought on by a fist-fight with one of his sons.  He was a hateful man in many ways, and a fraud in many ways, but there was nothing fake about his literary talent.  JOSEY WALES is a remarkable, uplifting novel.

The film has a fine cast.  In addition to Eastwood, Sondra Locke, the female lead, was making her first of six features and one TV episode with Eastwood.  All but two – the two with Orangutans – were directed by Eastwood.  In 1968 she’d made a tremendous splash with her debut role, as Mick in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER.  She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance.  But after following up with female leads in COVER ME BABE and WILLARD, she’d been mostly relegated to playing waifs on TV episodes until Eastwood cast her in JOSEY WALES.  After a very public break-up and protracted lawsuits with Eastwood, she would move behind the camera, and direct four features.

Discovered by the Comancheros

No hero is better than the villain he faces, and JOSEY WALES boasts some gems.  Fletcher is played by John Vernon, he of the ice blue eyes and melodious baritone – he did hundreds of cops and criminals on film and TV, but is best-remembered as the ineffectual mayor in DIRTY HARRY (1971), and as Dean Wormser in ANIMAL HOUSE (1978).

The leader of the Red Legs, Terrill, is played by Bill McKinney, who is chilling as a degenerate mountain man who sexually assaults Ned Beatty in DELIVERANCE. 

Sam Bottoms and Clint

Among the much more likable characters is Jamie, the young partner who idolizes Josey, played by Sam Bottoms.  In his first film, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971), he was the simple-minded kid who never spoke, and was always sweeping the streets.  And feisty little Paula Trueman, who plays Sondra Locke’s grandmother, started out in Vitaphone shorts in 1929, appeared with Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON (1969) and would go on to appear in MOONSTRUCK (1987) and DIRTY DANCING (1987). 

Clint & Chief Dan George

The three major roles played by American Indian actors are strikingly un-cliché’d. Chief Dan George, Oscar-nominated for LITTLE BIG MAN (1970),  plays Lone Watie, and has a wonderful monologue, really a soliloquy, describing his and other Cherokees attempts to be civilized, and the way they were treated as a result.   Clint Eastwood said of Chief Dan George, “He says the simplest thing, and it sounds like an important statement.”    George was not a trained actor, was 77 years old, and had trouble memorizing his lines.  This caused some problems in the editing, because often the camera caught Clint mouthing George’s lines along with him.  Will Sampson, who was the silent Indian in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUKOO’S NEST (1975), plays Comanche Chief Ten Bears.  Geraldine Keams, who made her film acting debut as Little Moonlight in JOSEY WALES, has no lines in English, but never stops talking. 

Will Sampson as Ten Bears

And there are some very special appearances for us Western crazies.  Bloody Bill Anderson is played by LAWMAN (1958-1962) star John Russell.  Folks appearing as gunmen, bounty hunters and Rangers include John Mitchum, John Davis Chandler and Bobby Hoy.  And who turns up as denizens of a ghost town but prairie-trash Matt Clark; Western stalwart and the voice of Abe Lincoln at Disneyland, Royal Dano; and Clint’s long-time RAWHIDE co-star Sheb Wooley.  If you look quick, you can even spot an unbilled Richard Farnsworth as a Comanchero, and Josey’s wife briefly seen at the beginning is Cissy Wellman, daughter of director Wild Bill Wellman.

Behind the camera, Cinematographer Bruce Surtees certainly had the right pedigree.  His father was three-time Oscar-winning director of photography Robert Surtees.  Bruce Surtees had been camera operator on a pair of Eastwood-starring films directed by Eastwood’s mentor, Don Siegel, COOGAN’S BLUFF (1968) and TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970).  Siegel boosted Surtees to D.P. for his creepy Civil War noir, THE BEGUILED (1971), and Eastwood had Surtees shoot his directorial debut, PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Surtees was equally elegant on Westerns and crime films.  He and Eastwood would be associated on fifteen films, including the westerns JOE KIDD (1972), HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973), and PALE RIDER (1985).  Working again for Don Siegel, Surtees would film John Wayne’s final movie, THE SHOOTIST (1976). 

Jerry Fielding’s bold and stirring score for OUTLAW JOSEY WALES was his third, and last, to receive an Oscar nomination – the other two were for STRAW DOGS (1971) and THE WILD BUNCH (1969) and, incredibly, he never won.  Starting out on radio as orchestra leader on programs like THE JACK PAAR SHOW and THE LIFE OF RILEY, he moved on to early TV shows like YOU BET YOUR LIFE, with Groucho Marx.  Then he ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Never a communist himself, nonetheless he refused to name anyone he suspected, and was blacklisted in Hollywood.  He relocated to Las Vegas, where he led the orchestras for Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Betty Hutton and Abbott & Costello.  In the 1960s, when McCarthyism had abated, Betty Hutton got a TV series on CBS, and insisted Fielding be her orchestra leader.  He returned to Hollywood, was hired by Otto Preminger to score ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962), and his career was soon back on track.  He began a long association with three directors: Sam Peckinpah, Michael Winner, and of course Clint Eastwood, with whom he collaborated on THE ENFORCER (1976), THE GAUNTLET (1977), and ESCPAPE FROM ALCATRAZ (1979). 

The film was shot in autumn, Eastwood’s favorite time of year to film westerns, in Wyoming, California, and several locations in Utah, including Kanab Movie Ranch, and several in Arizona, including Old Tucson and Mescal movie ranches.  It was shot in 8 ½ weeks, had a reported budget of about $3.8 million dollars, and if you know anything about Eastwood, you know that it came in on-time and under-budget.  He is considered not only one of the industry’s most talented directors, but one of its most efficient.  A personal note here.  A couple of years later, I was in Phoenix, watching the filming of my first screenplay, SPEEDTRAP (1977); Clint Eastwood was filming THE GAUNTLET, and we were all based at the same Ramada Inn.  There’s always product placement.  Our deal was with Schlitz beer, and Eastwood’s was with Jack Daniels, so you can tell which was the prestige film.  On our set, a dozen cases of beer were delivered every morning, and gone by noon.  On his set, a case of Jack Daniels was given to every crew member on the last day of filming.   You can probably guess which film’s editors didn’t have to deal with any out-of-focus footage or mics in frame. 

Although his company, Malpaso, was producing the film, Eastwood had not intended to both direct and star.  He’d hired Philip Kaufman to adapt the book, and to direct.  Four years earlier, Kaufman had written and directed the Western THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID, a very tough, unromanticized look at the James gang and the Youngers, starring Robert Duvall and Cliff Robertson.  While script development went well, Kaufman and Eastwood started having artistic differences early into the shooting. 

Sondra Locke recalls in her book, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE VERY UGLY, “Within a week the tension that had been growing between Phil and Clint came to a head….  Kaufman had an entirely different approach than Clint to making a film.  He is very meticulous and thoughtful and layered about each shot – an intellectual as well as a visual approach.  Clint is all guts and instinct.  He, a ‘big picture’ person in life as well as in filmmaking, is not at all interested in details.  ‘If they’re looking at that, then the film’s not working, and the audience is bored,’ I heard him say many times…  To Clint, the differences in these two approaches mean time and money.  Kaufman’s approach took more time and therefore more money, and with Clint, that was an impenetrable impasse.  Clint’s legendary ‘shoot the rehearsal’ approach did not work for Kaufman.” 

There were also personal problems.  Locke says in her book that it was love at first sight for her on the set with Eastwood, and their ten-year romance began.  Of course, he was married.  So was she.  So was Philip Kaufman, who was also making a play for Locke – and he had his wife on the set.  But that didn’t stop him, which didn’t endear him to Eastwood.  “I don’t like the way he touches you.”

When Eastwood started talking about firing Kaufman, who had worked hard in pre-production, Directors Guild President Robert Wise, of SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) and WEST SIDE STORY (1961) fame, flew out to try and convince Clint not to do it.  The Guild was especially upset with the idea of a star-producer firing the director and taking over the job himself.   The Guild tried hard to get Eastwood and Warner Brothers to back down, and when they failed, they imposed a $50,000 fine on the production.  That was real money in the 1970s.  This led to a new addition to the DGA agreement, known as the Eastwood Rule or amendment, which says that if a director is fired, they must be replaced by a director who is not associated with the production, or the Guild can impose punishing fines on the film company. 

While Kaufman undoubtedly resented being fired, it was not a major career setback for him.  He would go on to write and direct THE RIGHT STUFF (1983), RISING SUN (1993), THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988), HENRY AND JUNE (1990), and many others.  Perhaps his most lucrative success was when he and George Lucas developed all of the characters for the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/INDIANA JONES franchise. 

The other credited screenwriter was Sonia Chernus.  It was her only feature film credit, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t an important writer, and important in the film and TV industry.  Starting as a secretary, the legend is that she promoted casting Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates.  She wrote one RAWHIDE episode, was story assistant on others, and when Eastwood created his Malpaso production company, she was his story editor for many years, and found many of the properties that became his movies.    

Sondra Locke generously shared the following memories of the making of THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES.  “Altogether the filming of JOSEY was a wonderful experience.  It has left a warm place in my heart.  JOSEY and BRONCO BILLY are my favorite films I made with Clint.  It was the first of six films I made with Clint. 

“It is the only western film I have had the luck of making.  Living in that period alone was a great experience - the horses, the primitive nature of everything.  I mostly recall the beautiful countryside.  Lake Powell at sunset was amazing.  The cast of JOSEY WALES was full of such good actors.  I will always recall Paula Trueman, who was 80 years old at the time, and how feisty she was.  She put me to shame with her somersaults!  Yes, she could still do them at 80!  She loved to show off now and then on the set.

“And, of course, working with the great Chief Dan George gave such an authenticity to the experience.  He was a wonderful person and told great tales of times gone by.  In between takes I always found myself moving my chair near his so I could hear his words.

“I have nothing but great memories of the making of JOSEY.  I wish I could be with you all at this screening.  I haven't seen it in quite a while.  Your honoring it makes me want to see it again.  Have a great event.

“All my best,

“Sondra.”

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES is available on BLU-RAY and DVD from Warner Brothers, and can be streamed from Amazon and watched on Netflix.

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

I’m still getting used to this every-second-week schedule for the Round-up – I didn’t see Christmas coming, and it’s almost here (I’d better start shopping)!   Thank you all for your continued readership in 2015!  We’re read in over 100 countries, and today I added a new one to the list – welcome Nepal!  There have been nearly 250,000 hits on the site, and 605,000 pageviews (sometime I’ve got to find out the difference between hits and pageviews), and this week I’ve had as many readers in Russia as in the United States!  Thank you again, and whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Ramadan, Kwanza, Festivus, any other, or none at all, have a wonderful one!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Material Copyright December 2015 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved