'HELL'S GATE' SWINGS OPEN JUNE 19TH!

INTERVIEW WITH WRITER-DIRECTOR TANNER BEARD

When I first saw Tanner Beard’s LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE, which I caught on-line in February (and you did too, if you took advantage of the special ½ price offer to Round-up readers), my immediate thought was, who is this guy Tanner Beard?  He’s managed to write, direct and co-star in his first feature – an elegant, polished and powerful Western – and he’s not even thirty!  Where did he come from?  That was my first question to him.

TANNER BEARD: Have you ever heard of Snyder, Texas?  It was mentioned in the movie. 

HENRY:  I’ve only heard of it in the movie.

TANNER:  It’s like eighty miles south of Lubbock, in West Texas, where Texas University is.  Like Abilene, Midland, Odessa – kind of in the middle of all those towns, in the middle of nowhere. 

H: It’s funny; I’ve found Hell's Gates in New York and Idaho, but I couldn’t find any in Texas.  Is it your invention?

Tanner Beard, Lou Pucci, Eric Balfour

TANNER: Really?  No, absolutely not.  It’s a town. There’s a huge man-made lake there called Possum Kingdom Lake; it’s a tourist destination spot. On the 4^th of July people dock their boats and get wasted out there at Hell’s Gate. There are just two historical structures, along a canyon.  There’s a gap in the canyon, and before there was a lake, it was an entryway for people to cut across the canyon a lot quicker.  I grew up going to the lake, and that’s how I learned of the story.  I’ve always been fascinated by it. 

H: Now I notice there are a lot of the same character names in your earlier short film, MOUTH OF CADO.  Was that sort of an audition film for THE LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE? 

TANNER: (laughs) Probably more of an audition film for me to be a director, producer, writer, actor in the movie.  At the time that I made MOUTH OF CADO, I wanted to make a feature, but I wanted to make a short film first.  Obviously we didn’t have any money. And I didn’t know too many people who were going to give a 23-year-old kid a couple of million dollars to make a Western.  We got really lucky with the budget we had.  We were able to stretch it. 

H:  Can I ask you how much you spent on HELL’S GATE?

TANNER: Yeah; it was 2.1 (million dollars).  Everyone we showed it to thought it was closer to eight to ten. 

H: I’ll tell you, every dollar’s on the screen.

Jamie Thomas King as Doc Holliday

TANNER: I didn’t even take any money for the script, or directing.   I had to get paid as an actor, for S.A.G., but I think we spent that money on music.  I just pulled out every favor in the world.  We shot a lot of it on my folk’s land, which is not too far from Possum Kingdom Lake.   So I probably saved millions of dollars on land rental, just from having a crew of a hundred out there for a couple of weeks.  The bills would have started to add up pretty quickly.

H: So that’s what you had, a crew of about a hundred?

TANNER: Yes, on certain days, like the big ‘town’ days.  (Mostly) we had a crew of about forty or fifty; it was a standard sized crew for a union movie.  So it was important that we didn’t shoot too much that we weren’t going to use.  We do have a bunch of deleted scenes that are going to be on the DVD actually. 

Jenna Dewan-Tatum

H: Very cool; it always makes me feel like an insider to see that stuff. 

TANNER: (laughs) Right: see all the Summer Glau scenes that no one’s ever seen.  My sister actually did the music for it.  But it could never have happened without my producer, Suzanne Weinert; she’s just amazing.

H: How did you two meet up?

TANNER: Actually, she used to work for Julia Roberts.  It’s kind of amazing; the people she worked for are Paul Newman, Ron Howard and Julia Roberts.  She and Julia were together for a decade running Julia Roberts’ old company, Shoelace Productions.  Julia was really good friends with a guy from Snyder named Barry Tubb, who is actually in (my) film.  He was in TOP GUN and LONESOME DOVE, and a huge deal in Snyder, where I come from.  Anyway, Barry was making a movie there in Snyder, when I was like sixteen, and I  jumped at the chance to work as an intern for the first couple of weeks, and eventually come on to the payroll.  It was called GRAND CHAMPION; it was kind of a Western kid’s movie, set in the present day.  It had Joey Lauren Adams, and Emma Roberts when she was a little girl – she’s huge now.  Julia Roberts made an appearance in it, Bruce Willis made an appearance in it.  George Strait, Natalie Maines, a lot of country singers.  When you go on to IMDB, and look at the entire cast list, you go, ‘What is this movie?’  All these A-list people, but it was just film-school for me. 

Back Taylor, Corey Knipe, Jim Beaver

Tubb actually went to high school with my dad, so he was like, “You’re Rick Beard’s son?  Come on board.”  And that was how I met Suzanne, being on the set.  And then her and Barry Tubb teamed up again in 2004, and did a little comedy called CLOWN HUNT, and that’s when I met Brendan Wayne.  I told him, “Dude, I have always wanted to make a Western.”  He said, “Are you kidding me?  My granddad’s John Wayne.  All I’ve ever wanted to do was a Western.”  I said, “I had this idea about Hell’s Gate – I’ve always loved the name, loved the place, and it’s an interesting story about these cowboys, and how it got its name.  And I’d love to make an eight-minute short.”  So I got Brendan on, and all these other people attached, a lot just for the genre’.  I was able to raise a little bit of money.   And we made the short; it looked like we had a lot more money than we did.  So with a thirty-minute short, which is an epic-long short -- it was more just to show investors -- I said hey, obviously I’m young and inexperienced, but I’ve got a handle on this project.  And here’s the proof.  And we won some festivals, and a year later we’re geared up for the feature, so I got incredibly fortunate.  Some people it takes ten years to make a movie; it only took me four. 

H: With LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE you surrounded yourself with some familiar names and talents:  Henry Thomas, Buck Taylor, Indian actors like Zahn McClarnon and the Spears brothers.  What do you think attracted them to the project? 

TANNER:  I just thought I was the luckiest person, I thought I found the Golden Ticket.  But Suzanne said, at the end of the day, everybody liked the script, because I tried to make every single character somewhat important, so we could get cameos.  Because you know that, if the movie gets sold, you’ve got to have someone on the DVD cover.  Actually the crazy thing is there are so many people in there from Snyder, like Kevin Alejandro and Steven Taylor.  I called out a few favors.  I’m really good friends with (ONE TREE HILL star) Robert Buckley, and Rob said, ‘I’ve got this buddy of mine, and he just wants to be in a Western.  He says he doesn’t care if he has a line: he just wants to be in it.’  And I said sure, man, we’ll find him something.  And it turned out to be James Lafferty from ONE TREE HILL, which has this huge following.  Every fifteen-year-old girl in the nation knows who they are.  James is such a great guy, and Kevin Alejandro and those guys are in the movie for such a short bit, but it looked like they had been out there for a while.  They were kind of thrown together, but they had camaraderie between them, I thought. Have you seen Eddie Spears on HELL ON WHEELS?

Henry Thomas

H:  I sure have; he’s terrific.

TANNER:  He’s awesome – so good in that.  He cut his hair for it; it was a really big deal.  They had a ceremony for it. 

H: I was at the première of YELLOW ROCK.  Eddie was looking at the movie, and saying after that he was sentimental about it, not only because it was a good part in a good film, but because it’s the last time he’ll see himself with all that hair.  How did you get Henry Thomas?

Summer Glau

TANNER:  We had a great casting director, Sid De Miguel out of New York.  He helped us get Henry Thomas, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Eric Balfour, Lou Pucci.  Suzanne got Glenn Morshower on board, she knew Buck Taylor from some films they had done together. A lot of people, when they saw that it was a western, wanted to jump on board. 

H: I as very impressed with your cinematographer, Nathanial Vorce.  Am I right, that this his first feature? 

TANNER:  It is, to be in the driver’s seat.  He’s worked on Terrence Malick’s TREE OF LIFE.  He was 2^nd or 3^rd unit director of photography, because they had they had quite a few on that film, but Terrence Malick’s B or C-team guy can be my A-team guy any day.  We had a great time.  He had such a great vision.  We shot on digital, but we brought together digital with sort of an old-style image.  We went to Panavision, got a bunch of amazing Panavision lenses from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, that a lot of old Westerns were shot on.  And they’re like hundred-thousand dollar lenses, but nobody’s used them in so many years, because they’re obsolete.  But the technology, we thought it would be such a cool look to bring the digital world mixed in with that classic wide-screen look.  And I loved it.  He had such a vision for it.

H: And it absolutely looks like film. 

TANNER:  We had a great colorist, too.  Again, a lot of people pulled out favors, and everybody gave 110.  We were shooting on Red cameras.  Nobody shoots 35 any more.  I would love to do a 35 mm movie some day, just because there’s nothing like it.  But times are changin’. 

H: What length was your shooting schedule? 

TANNER:  Again, this attributed to Suzanne Weinert; we somehow shot it all in four weeks.  And Nathaniel and I went off for a fifth week, on our own, on my parents land, and shot just a ton of ‘B’ roll (cut-away and atmosphere footage).  Because again, we’re shooting on digital, so it’s not like you’re  burning up film.  We shot all around the ranch; we boated out on Possum Kingdom Lake.  Got the shot that you see at the end of the movie; that’s the real Hell’s Gate.  We CGI’d out the water only, so everything else was real, and I think the folks around that area, the Western history buffs, will appreciate that. 

Robert Buckley, James Lafferty

H: In addition to your parents’ land, you were shooting in a Western town. 

TANNER:  This great place -- I’ve got to plug it -- called Enchanted Springs Ranch, outside of Boerne, Texas, where Summer Glau is from.  It’s just outside of San Antonio.  And Henry Thomas is from San Antonio.  So all their parents came down when we were shooting in that town; we roped most of them into being extras with us.  That was cool – Henry got to act in front of his parents.  He enjoyed that.  We filmed in Boerne, Texas.  Then we went north around Granberry, Texas, to shoot for Dallas.  We shot a ton around the Granberry area, and also the Possum Kingdom area.  The final sequence, with all the cliffs, that was on the same mountain chain as Hell’s Gate, but several miles away, on the other side of the river.  We pretty much shot this where it historically took place. 

H: I’ve got to say, your art direction, production design, costume work is just gorgeous, just real.  You forget you’re watching a movie. 

TANNER:  I’ll definitely send that message toward Kari Perkins and Chris Stull because they really were the entire backbone of the film, and we couldn’t have stood up without them.  Kari Perkins was amazing.  She bent over backwards; she knew the budget wasn’t huge, and she somehow pulled together a lot of amazing costumes, and they really distressed them, and Chris Stull was just a miracle worker.

H: Jamie Thomas King is very entertaining as Doc Holliday.  Isn’t he a Brit?

TANNER:  He is.  He was on THE TUDORS.  We got Jamie really late in the game, because funny enough, nobody really wanted to touch the Doc Holliday character, probably because nobody wanted to go up against Val Kilmer.  He’s so loved in that role, it’s a touchy one.  So we had to dive into the acting pool; we really needed an actor to play this guy.  He’s a precursor really to the Doc Holliday character that we all know, like at the O.K. Corral.  This was actually his first recorded gunfight, with Champagne Charlie Austin.  I thought Jamie did a helluvah job – it’s a tough character to take on.  . 

H:  I liked the stuff with just the two of you in the dentist’s office; I loved that tooth flying up in the air.  I suspect that was CGI.

TANNER:  It was, but the tooth was real.  (laughs)  It was my cousin’s – he had just had his wisdom teeth taken out; just gnarly looking teeth.  I said, dude, that thing looks like it hurt when it came out.  I’ve got to use it.  I don’t know if that’s going to be on the director’s commentary or not, but it definitely makes us laugh. 

H:  You have two very beautiful leading ladies, Jenna Dewan-Tatum and Summer Glau.  What were they like to work with?

TANNER:  Amazing; and again, they’re both from Texas, which was a fun part of the movie.  Most of the cast hired out of L.A. were native Texans.  Jenna was an absolute sweetheart, and really dived right in.  Nobody got to really see each other.  I don’t know if she ever met Lou or Summer or Eric on-set, because of the way the scenes were shot, but she was an absolute delight to work with.  She really got into it; she loved the costumes – she never wanted to leave the costume trailer.  Summer Glau is just so incredibly professional.  She actually flew from Hawaii, from a movie set, went home for an hour, then drove back to L.A.X., got on a plane to San Antonio, had to drive all the way to set, straight into hair and make-up.  She came out and caught us for the tail end of the day, when the Moon family is outside of their house, and we had just enough light that it looked Terrence Malik-y out there.  I said, we’re going to go ahead and roll this one.  She just dove right in, and really had no idea what the scene was.

H:  Well you wrote it, you directed it, you acted in it.  What do you think of yourself as, primarily? 

TYANNER: I’m a pretty good…I don’t know.  I’m a pretty good procrastinator.  People ask me what I do, and I don’t know what to say, except that I’m in the motion picture business.  Everybody moves out here to be an actor, so I try to consider myself that, but for the last couple of years I’ve been so into the business side.  Really, I’ve always wanted to do anything, as long as it involves movies.  I’ve got to say that my love is being in front of the camera.  It’s just too much fun to get out there and play pretend.  Sometimes you don’t get as many opportunities as you like, so you try and create them yourself.  I’ve created a thousand, and maybe one of them hits.  I would hope to always consider myself a film maker.  But I definitely love to act. 

H: Speaking of which, I understand your next project is about Cherokee bank-robber Henry Starr. 

TANNER:  We’re definitely excited about that.  I just tied up the books rights.  It’s not based on a book, but he’s done a lot of history on it, and I had to get the rights to progress forward. 

H:  I know you’re part Cherokee.

TANNER: Right – Cherokee and Choctaw.  So would you be playing Henry Starr?

TANNER:   No, absolutely not.  I’ll definitely have a supporting character, I just have to: the movie sounds like too much fun to not be a part of.  But we’re raising the bar pretty high with this one.  We’re looking to shoot in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

H:  All the Indian Territory.

TANNER: Pretty much.  It’s more of a biopic than an action movie the way HELL’S GATE was.  You know, Starr robbed over thirty-something banks, and his story has never been told on film, which completely blows my mind. It’s such a fascinating story; he even wrote, directed and starred in his own movie.  We’re trying to make this one more studio-friendly, and maybe have a studio attachment on board before shooting. Suzanne Weiner’s also got another period piece set in Texas, about the Irish that sided up with the Mexicans, in the Mexican-American War.  John Riley, he’s kind of a Mexican hero.  So we’re pitching those movies as kind of a package, and I’m attached to direct that one.  Suzanne is producing it.  So we’re waiting to see which bites first. 

H:  Would be writing both of them?

TANNER:  ST. PATRICK’S BATALLION I did not write.  I’m just attached to direct. 

Henry Starr I’d be writing and directing, and I’d be acting in it, too.  I need to fill it up with people that will make it sell first, and then I’ll take a role. 

H: Have you always been fond of westerns?

TANNER:  Oh yeah.  My dad, to this day, goes to sleep every night watching the Western Channel.  I grew up in Snyder, West Texas: tumbleweeds and dust and wind.  It was what you played outside; cowboys and Indians.  My dad and my grandpa, they’re just huge western fans, which is what they grew up with.  I’ve learned so much about the western genre with the TV shows.  There’s always GUNSMOKE, but I love BONANZA, RAWHIDE, CHEYENNE.  Some of the writing is so good in these shows.  Obviously they’re older Hollywood; they don’t have all the fancy things we do now, but the writing, the stories; they hook you and you can’t stop watching.  And before you know it you’re an hour into something from 1956.  

H: Do you have a favorite western?

TANNER:  My family’s favorite is TOMBSTONE, great movie, but my favorite is ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  I love the Clint Eastwoods, I just think they’re fun, but I love the John Waynes too.  I’ve really grown to appreciate the two different sides of the western.  They were able to kind of put a fork in the road with the standard Gene Autry type of stuff; once he got older, he got cooler, more realistic.  

NOTE: I conducted this interview with Tanner a couple of months ago.  When I contacted him yesterday, to see if he had any news, he e-mailed me, “I couldn't be happier that Lionsgate came on board to distribute the DVD.  We have four projects in the works but St. Patrick’s Battalion and Henry Starr are next up.  I'd say St. Pats is next up for us but we'd like to start Henry Starr directly after.  Unless plans change, both would shoot in TX between now and 2013! We have sold LOHG in several foreign territories already and even more recently at Cannes, so I’m very excited about that.  And LOHG is on its way to the Almeria Western Film Festival in Spain in September! On a personal note I have a film coming out this year called "The Letter" with James Franco and Winona Ryder. Just acting in this one but I'm very excited about its release as well.”

Movie Review – THE LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE

Treading ground reminiscent of B. Traven’s TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE is Tanner Beard’s THE LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE. It is an extremely impressive feature directorial and screenwriting debut, and a visual feast.

Filmed in Texas, a Texas not of desert, but of green and water, it’s the story of a group of people whose initial connection seems slight at best, except that they are desperate and struggling, and largely dishonest: a young outlaw (Eric Balfour), of a wolf-pack hired to kill one Champagne Charlie Austin.  A young Irish railroad worker (Tanner Beard), with doubtful morals and an agonizing toothache.  A young and desperate thief and cut-purse (Lou Taylor Pucci) who manages to be at the wrong places at the right times, with an ear to every half-opened door.  It’s a triumph of writing, direction and performance that we care what happens to each man. 

What draws the three together is not accident or conspiracy, but fate, at its most sinister and relentless.  Along the way there are white buffalo; deadly bowling matches; beautiful women -- with morals and without them; shootouts between men too drunk to care about the danger to bystanders; and Indians that have always been friendly up until now.

It’s an ensemble piece, with roles for the supporting players so rich, and well acted, that it intentionally takes a long time for the viewer to figure who the lead characters are.  Among the notable performers are Buck Taylor as a businessman with political aspirations, Henry Thomas as a bartender with a secret, lovely and too sympathetic Jenna Dewan, and FIREFLY star Summer Glau.   One of the best scenes feature TUDORS star Jamie Thomas King as Doc Holliday, blissfully drunk at the card table, and amused at a poor loser.  Another standout performance is by YELLOW ROCK star Michael Spears as an increasingly menacing Indian the boys want to trade with. 

The photography by Nathaniel Vorce, making his feature debut as a cinematographer, is not merely beautiful.  It creates an idealized realism that makes everything that happens in the story all the more credible.   Likewise Kari Perkins’ handsome and accurate costumes and production design and art direction by Christopher Stull and Yvonne Boudreaux combine to draw the audience into the movie’s beautiful but grim world.

If I can give one warning to the audience, and I don’t think this is a spoiler, the opening scene is confusing because it is a flash-forward.  If you think of the movie as starting a couple of minutes in, when you first see buffalo, it will be chronological, and much more understandable.    

Update, August 12, 2012 -- If you'd like to run out and rent LEGEND OF HELL'S GATE, and you should, RedBox has a link, so you can check to see if it's available in your local kiosk: http://www.redbox.com/movies/the-legend-of-hells-gate  

FIRST LOOK AT BBC-AMERICA’S ‘COPPER’

First look at COPPER, BBC America's first original drama, coming in August. It's set in 1860s New York City, in the infamous Five Points gang area Scorcese revealed in GANGS OF NEW YORK. Sure, it's an 'Eastern,' but let's be open-minded: after all, Billy The Kid came from Brooklyn!  I’ll have much more about this series in next week’s Round-up!

'HELL ON WHEELS' -- GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS.

The good news is that season 2 of the hit AMC Western series will begin on Sunday, August 12th. The bad news, for DISH satellite customers, is that DISH is dropping AMC. If you want to keep AMC on DISH, AMC asks you to let your voice be heard by calling 855-KEEP-AMC, or going to KEEPAMC.COM.

‘DJANGO UNCHAINED’ TEASER TRAILER

After a rash of often clever but fake trailers, the official first teaser trailer is here.  I’m delighted that the first face you see is James Russo, and the last is the original Django, Franco Nero, talking to Jamie Foxx.

OAKLEY, CODY, MASTERSON ITEMS ON THE AUCTION BLOCK TODAY

Sunday, June 10^th, in Dallas, Texas, property of Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody and Bat Masterson will be auctioned, for a preview, check out the video.

Well folks, that's what I've got for this week.  Next week I'll have more about COPPER, and some other items I'm still working on.

Happy Trails,

Henry

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

HALLMARK'S 'HANNAH'S LAW' SATURDAY

HANNAH’S LAW – Film Review

HANNAH’S LAW, the Western that premieres on the Hallmark Movie Channel next Saturday, June 9th, is the story of a young woman’s efforts to establish a life on the frontier, and a personal campaign for justice.  It is also so beautifully photographed by Ken Krawczyk that it could be enjoyed with the sound off as a series of stunning visual compositions.  It’s the best-shot Western that HALLMARK has ever produced – and considering that they make at least two westerns a year, that is no minor compliment.

Hannah Beaumont is a small child, hiding from her parents to get out of her chores, when she witnesses a crime that will scar her for life: a wolf-pack of bandits ride onto her ranch and murder her father, mother and kid brother for their horses.

Sara Canning

The story jumps forward a dozen years and Hannah (Sarah Canning of VAMPIRE DIARIES), a girl of twenty or so is now, remarkably, a successful bounty-hunter working out of Dodge City, well-respected for her preference to bring her quarry back alive, though the bounty is the same, upright or horizontal.  She chose Dodge as a base of operations reasoning that sooner or later, every bad man in the West will pass through town.  While taking other bounties, she’s systematically been tracking down and turning in the men who slaughtered her family.  

Of course it’s only a matter of time before the remaining members of that old gang realize what’s going on, and determine to track her down and do to her what they’ve already done to her kin.  Hannah has some friends in her corner, but circumstances conspire to make them unavailable when they are most needed (can you hear Tex Ritter singing, “Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’”?).  Although Hannah is a fictional character, most of her friends are real, and many were actual denizens of Dodge City.  She’s in a romantic triangle with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and her gal-pal is none other than Stagecoach Mary, the first woman to drive a stagecoach for the U.S. Postal Service, and the first black woman ever to drive a stage. 

Her closest relationship, with her surrogate-father, provides the most satisfying and touching moments in the film.  Isom Dart is played with simple sincerity by Danny Glover.  Dart was also a real man, known as The Black Fox, who played on both sides of the law.  He worked as a bounty hunter, and in HANNAH’S LAW he raised the orphaned girl and taught her his trade.  When the bad men can’t get to Hannah, they smoke her out by going after Dart.

Danny Glover as Isom Dart

With a female character playing a traditionally male Western role, this sort of story all too often becomes either stridently political (“We gals can do anything those stinky old men can!  Cowgirl power!”) or exploitative (“I’ve got a pair of 38s, and I’m not talking about my guns!”).  But HANNAH’S LAW plays her as a believable woman who is haunted by her childhood, who succeeds, sometimes in spite of herself, with a little help from her friends. Sara Canning is convincing as the insecure but determined tracker.  She fits well into the period, and is attractive without seeming to be made up.

Kimberly Elise, as Stagecoach Mary, though padded, may seem a little physically slight to handle the reins of a stagecoach, but her performance triumphs.  She’s also been un-prettified: in reality she’s quite a stunner.

Kimberly Elise as Stagecoach Mary

As to her beaus, Ryan Kennedy’s Doc Holliday is clearly influenced by Val Kilmer’s, but he plays the dentist with a greater sadness and much-hidden kindness that makes the role his own.  He has a knack for delivering a brief line with the understated strength of a soliloquy.  Conversely, Greyston Holt’s Wyatt Earp is not reminiscent of any previous portrayal.   

Of course, a good heroine must have strong villains to play off of, and Hannah has a few.  As the head of the gang, John Pyper-Fergusen, whose Western credits go back to UNFORGIVEN and BRISCO COUNTY JR., plays McMurphy with a smiling  heartlessness.  Brendan Fletcher, as competing bounty hunter and McMurphy’s point-man Zechariah Stitch, is more direct, but not more pleasant.  A pleasant surprise is Billy Zane as charming Mr. Lockwood, the cattle-king of Dodge, who wants nothing to interrupt the ‘serenity’ of the town, as it might scare money away.

Greyston Holt, Sara Canning, Ryan Kennedy

John Fasano’s script draws characters that are completely identifiable to current viewers without sacrificing their historical context.  He has taken a premise that in most hands would lead to a very traditional revenge melodrama, and turned it into something just as logical, but much more unexpected.  His dialog plays naturally, whether it’s a father talking to his daughter, an awkward couple on their first date, or a bandit trying to coax details from a simple-minded informant.  (You can read an interview with Mr. Fasano elsewhere in today’s Round-up).

Director Rachel Talalay, who made her bones with horror films like FREDDY’S NIGHTMARE and quirky comedies like TANK GIRL, handles the drama, bits of humor, romance with skill, and handles the action well, especially the extended block-by-block shootout at the end. 

While HANNAH’S LAW comes to a satisfying conclusion, the next step in Hannah’s life is unmistakable.  I’d be very surprised if we didn’t hear HANNAH’S LAW 2 announced in the near future.

JOHN FASANO INTERVIEW

“Television mostly sucks, because we’ve lost our moral compass.  And the thing which you get in Westerns, unless it’s something like ONE-EYED JACKS, is a strong moral compass.  When I wake up on Saturday mornings, they show ten RIFLEMANS in a row, starting at five o’clock in the morning.  And I watch them all, even though I have them all on DVD.  Because I marvel at the fact that, in half an hour, they can have a story with a beginning, middle and end, and have a moral to it.” 

John Fasano as Marshal Deger

HANNAH’S LAW writer and executive producer John Fasano has been a busy man ever since the mid 1980s, with a half-dozen directing credits, twenty for producing, and eighteen for writing.  Never pigeonholed as to genre, he’s worked in horror, mystery, action of all kinds, and westerns. He wrote THE HUNLEY, about the famous Confederate submarine, and the LEGEND OF BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.  HANNAH’S LAW is in fact his fourth Western.  I started out asking him about his first Western. 

H: An on-line list of your credits included a passing reference that you’d done script doctoring on TOMBSTONE.  Which in my circle is like casually mentioning that you did a draft of the New Testament. 

JOHN: (laughs) Thank you.  That’s the script that, when I get to Heaven, Saint Peter says, “He wrote JUDGE DREDD?”  And I say, “No, no – look just before that.”  And he says, “He wrote TOMBSTONE?  Come on in.”  That’s the film that’ll get me into heaven, because everyone I’ve ever met not only saw it; they bought it. 

H: Yes, and we keep buying new editions as the formats change.       

JOHN:  And you know, Disney totally did not believe in that movie.  When people say, what was the best experience you had on a movie, there are two.  There’s THE HUNCHBACK (1997), because they shot my script, and didn’t even let me rewrite it, which will never happen.  And TOMBSTONE, because I was there every day, and it was like a war.  Every night, Kurt (Russell) and Val (Kilmer) would come to my room, and we’d talk about what was to be shot the next day.  They’d pace back and forth, and chain smoke, and talk about all the stuff, and while we were all talking, it would always hit me, what should be in that scene.  Kevin (Jarre’s) script was really long, and so a lot of what I would do is I would take bits, take character moments from other scenes, and try to figure out how to make a new scene out of it.  Then I’d read it to them, and they’d say, ‘That’s it!’ and that’s what we’d shoot the next day.  Every day I was on the set, and every night I had two hotel rooms, one to sleep in, and one to write in.  And those guys shot all day, had dinner, then came to my room, and were there for hours and hours.  It was like the most fun on a set.  Ever.

H: How did you end up being the guy who took over when writer-director Kevin Jarre was fired?

JOHN: I was writing DIE HARD: WITH A VENGEANCE for Cinergi, and I was in the hallway, and George Cosmatos was developing something called THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY, which they shot after TOMBSTONE, with Charlie Sheen.  We were standing in the hallway – we had never met before.  He’s like, ‘I’m a big fan of yours,’ and I said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours.’    And I’m not kidding, literally we’re saying, ‘We should work together sometime,’ and the door of (Cinergi President) Andy Vanja’s office opens.  He says, “You, you: come here.  You’re directing TOMBSTONE; you’re writing it.”  So we left his office in Santa Monica, went to the airport, where he had his own G5, and we flew right to Arizona.  And as everyone knew, Kevin Jarre had just been fired that morning.  We walked in and they said, ‘This one’s going to write the script, and this one’s going to direct it.’  And everybody just wanted to kill us.  The A.D. (assistant director) said, ‘I can cut this script down myself.’  But it’s such a great story; if you just cut chunks out of it, whole characters are going to disappear.  What I did was, with every character in the piece – like with Bill Paxton -- I go to him, I said, ‘You’re in six scenes.  But you can only be in three scenes.  So tell me what’s in these three scenes, that I’m going to cut, that made you want to do the movie.’  And I put that moment into one of the other scenes.  I did that for everybody.  Except for Sam Elliot, who would not, who insisted that his part be verbatim exactly as originally written.  And if I tried to change it he said that he would f*ck&n’ kill me.  So he’s the only one whose scenes are exactly as Kevin wrote.  And of course, he’s the only one that went and did an interview and said, “They ruined my part!”  Another classy moment from TOMBSTONE. 

H: Shortly after George Cosmatos died, Kurt Russell said that he actually directed TOMBSTONE.

JOHN FASANO: What’s hilarious about that is George was my friend.  He died, horribly, because of bad Canadian medical treatment.  He was one of the most well-read people in the business; he had a huge collection of first editions of Poe and Dickens manuscripts.  He had a tumor in his head, and we, his friends, were like, ‘Listen, come to the Jules Stein Eye Center at UCLA and have it done.’  And he said, ‘No, it’s free up here in Canada.’  He went in; they cut his optic nerve and made him blind.  And he couldn’t see any of the things he’d collected his whole life; movie posters and prints.  He went into assisted living and wasted away and died.  And then Kurt does this interview where he says, ‘Well, I made a deal with George that I wouldn’t reveal until he was dead that I really directed the movie.’  And all I could think was, when did you make that deal with him?  Because he didn’t know that he was going to die young. 

When Peter Sherayko did the second edition of his book, TOMBSTONE: THE GUNS AND GEAR, (Sherayko, in addition to playing Texas Jack Vermillion, supplied the guns, saddles and Buckaroos) which was after Kurt had said this, I wrote an introduction for the book, where I talked about how the shoot really went.  Because I was there the whole time, from the time they fired Kevin to the time that it was done.  The thing that annoyed me, aside from taking credit from George, is that Kurt really did keep that movie together.  Because it could have fallen apart, when they fired the director.  The crew wanted to walk; the actors wanted to walk.  And Kurt was supportive of George being the director.  I was there every day, and George was directing the movie.    And whenever I had to rewrite a scene, Kurt would ask me to take line away from (his character) Wyatt Earp, and give it to other characters.  Kurt didn’t want it to be ‘The Wyatt Earp Show,’ he really wanted it to be an ensemble piece.  I had so much respect for him, up to the second that he said he really directed the movie.  Because now I have to deal with people coming up to me and saying, ‘Have you ever seen the Kurt Russell Director’s Cut of the movie?’  It just sets me off my nut. 

H: How did WYATT EARP and TOMBSTONE end up being made at the same time?

JOHN: When we were doing TOMBSTONE, we were so aware of WYATT EARP, because everyone thought WYATT EARP was going to kick our ass.  (John) Milius would call me up and say, “WYATT EARP is gonna kick your ass!” because of having Costner in it.  But they didn’t have as good a script as we had.  Kevin Jarre went to Kevin Costner first, when TOMBSTONE was at Universal, and said, ‘Do you want to play Wyatt Earp?’  And Costner said, ‘Yes,’ and told Kevin Reynolds, ‘I’ve just read a great script; I’m going to play Wyatt Earp.’  And Reynolds said, ‘Don’t do that one.  I’m developing Wyatt Earp as a mini-series.  Let’s make that into a movie.’  So that’s when Universal put TOMBSTONE into turnaround (dropped their option) and said, ‘Well, they’ve already got the star and the script.  They’re going to beat us.’  And Kevin Jarre had been screwed on DRACULA.  He had been working on a very accurate (to the book) script, and somebody mentioned it to Coppola, and they got theirs out first.  He wrote TOMBSTONE completely in secret, because it’s in public domain, and he doesn’t want anybody to steal it.  And what the Hell – the first actor he talks to steals it.  So then he went to Cinergi, and everyone thinks they said, ‘Go get Kurt Russell.’  Because Kurt Russell’s son is named Wyatt.  But actually Andy Vanja said, “Can you get Val Kilmer to be in it?”  Val Kilmer was cast first as Doc Holliday.  And that’s how it went to Cinergi.  And I’ve got to say, Powers Boothe is still my friend.  Jason Priestly, Michael Rooker, Billy Zane.  Peter Sherayko was my friend before that.  A lot of people who worked on TOMBSTONE – because it almost fell apart -- everybody felt like we were a family.  Michael Biehn’s done three movies with me; Billy Zane’s done three movies with me; Michael Rooker’s done another movie with me.  I spoke to Powers Boothe, just before he went off to do HATFIELDS & MCCOYS, because I wanted him to be in HANNAH’S LAW.  And he said, “I’ll do what ever you want.  I’ll always come to do a movie for you.”  That made me feel good; that’s because of TOMBSTONE, and all of us surviving that. 

H: Tell me about THE LEGEND OF BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.

Butch and Sundance

JOHN:  That was done as a two-hour pilot for NBC, and then they said no one likes Westerns, and sold it to CBS, who then put it on SHOWTIME.  And it’s a great little picture.  We shot half in Canada and half at Veluzat Ranch.  Because there’s no Mexico in Canada.  And while we were up there we had nice weather, and snow, and it looks like an epic.  You shoot for three weeks; you make a picture that looks like it was made in two different countries, over a year.  That’s what excites me; to be able to do that.  And we had a wonderful time on this one. 

H: On IMDB there are a lot of nice comments BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, and there’s also a lot of nice comments about THE HUNLEY; what a fascinating story that is.  How did that one come about?

Fasano on the BUTCH set

JOHN: I had just done THE HUNCHBACK, and they loved it.  And that was back before anyone had TNT, so not everyone saw it.  And Ted Turner went to the head of TNT and said, ‘Look, the story of the Hunley is my favorite story of the Civil War.  Because it’s not about racism and slavery.  It’s one of the few heroic stories of the South where it doesn’t have any bad connotation connected with it.  I want to do the Hunley.  And I want these guys who just did THE HUNCHBACK for us to do it.’  That’s how I got the job.  I’d heard about the first submersible used in war, but I hadn’t really studied it.  And I realized this is why it’s such a great story: because everyone who gets on this boat realizes they’re going to die.  And they still get on it.  And that’s heroism.  They don’t get on it because they’re going to get a pardon from prison – all that stuff was bandied about.  And when we showed that movie, I brought my father-in-law, who had been in the Navy, and my step-father-in-law had been on a submarine, and they both wept at the end of that movie.  The original script, which they didn’t shoot – the director re-wrote it a little bit – but my original script, people who’ve read it consider it one of the best things I ever wrote.  Every time we went to a commercial, I gave it a new heading, as if it was a chapter of a book.  You have to write TV movies in acts, because of commercial breaks.  I was very pleased with what I did for the Hunley.

H: HANNAH’S LAW is the most beautifully shot Hallmark picture I’ve ever seen.

JOHN: Thank you.  I think it’s the best Western they’ve ever done.  Just my opinion.  Here’s the thing.  Producer Mike Ogiens and I, we wanted to shoot it in L.A.  We wanted to shoot it at Big Sky Ranch, shoot it at Melody Ranch.  But you just can’t shoot in L.A. because of the union costs.  And it’s so frustrating, because you know there are so many great actors who would roll out of bed and go over to Melody Ranch, just to do a day for you.  You can’t fly them to Canada.  And the first thing the budget wants to do is to push you into a corner where you have one person from America and everybody else is local, from Alberta (Canada), where we shot it.  And Mike Ogiens, who was the producer on THE LAZARUS MAN TV show, and the YOUNG RIDERS TV show, loved this project.  And someone would say, ‘In the budget we have money for four bad guys,’ and he’d say, ‘But there are twelve bad guys!’  And he would fight them every day on the budget, in preparation for the movie.  And instead of getting a guy for one day who lived in town, I asked Billy Zane to do it, and he did it.  We wanted it to better than you would normally get at our budget and our schedule.  And one of the things that helped was getting Danny Glover, getting Kimberly Elise.  Everyone that we wanted, someone told us they’d never do it, and I said, well let them read the script.  Because when is Kimberly Elise getting offered to play Stagecoach Mary?  Which is a historical character; one of the few black women that did anything cool in the old west.  And she did a great job – she actually drives the stagecoach in the show. 

Earp and Hannah

H: Which is very impressive, because you can tell it’s her, and she’s not big.

JOHN: No, but she’s got some arms on her.  Danny Glover, they thought he would never do it, but I said, please let him read it.  And he loved it, because it’s a very thoughtful role. 

H: My favorite scenes of the film are between Sara Canning as Hannah, and Danny Glover.  It’s charming stuff, really heart-felt.

JOHN: It’s not about going to Canada.  John-Pyper Ferguson is in everything; he’s in huge shows down here.  Cameron Bancroft – when they remade LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, he has the Michael Landon role; he came down for one scene, to play her father.  Ryan Kennedy, who played Doc Holliday, he did a screen test on his own, where he got himself made-up like Doc Holliday.  He’s wanted to play Doc Holliday since he saw TOMBSTONE as a kid.  He was offered something on THE BORGIAS, but he said, ‘I want to play Doc Holliday.’  And he fought for it.  People wanted to be in this movie, and it’s a testament to my script, and a testament to Mike Ogiens.  And on top of that, instead of just being handed a local TV director, I wanted to use Rachel Talalay, because I grew up with her, when she started doing pictures like FREDDY’S DEAD and GHOST IN THE MACHINE and TANK GIRL at New Line.  Then she moved to England with her husband and did WIND IN THE WILLOWS and all of these great TV series over there.  And she would not ever get offered a western.  You know if you’re a guy director, and you live in Alberta, you’ll always get offered a Western.  So she gave 110%, she really did.  And that shows up on the screen.  I’ve been involved with a lot of films.  I don’t like to make them unless we do it like this.  I don’t like to make the ones that just get cranked out.  Because what’s the point of that? 

Doc

H: Hannah Beaumont is a girl who sees her parents murdered, and when she grows up she tracks down the killers.  This sounds like a standard revenge plot, but you didn’t go that way.  Why did you write Hannah as a bounty hunter who hates to kill?

JOHN:  There were a lot more scenes of her and Danny Glover, of him raising her, that we didn’t have time to shoot.  But one of the reasons I did that was all of the other revenge TV Westerns; they go out and kill them.  And she will kill, but what she’s there for is justice, and the reason she picked Dodge City is she knows that eventually every bad man in the West will come through there.  And the reason for that list she’s keeping, of the guys that were there, is because she really wants to get to the main guy, the guy who actually shot her parents.  The others guys were just part of the gang.  They clearly deserve to die, but she believes in justice.  That’s why Wyatt Earp likes her.  Because she’s not just a cold-blooded killer.  And once you meet Sara, she couldn’t play that anyway.  She’s too sweet. 

H:  She comes off tough.  She is convincing.

JOHN:  She’s an excellent actress.  A lot of women wanted to play that role, American and Canadian.  We lucked out that she was Canadian, because there are all these rules about how much you pay the Canadians, and how much you pay the Americans.  She really pulled it off.  One of my favorite movies is HANG ‘EM HIGH.  He wants justice for these guys (who lynched him).  He wants to see them tried and hung.  And he only kills them if they resist.  Because he’d prefer to see them get justice, because that’s what they tried to deny him.  I always liked that movie.  So this story has a little bit of HANG ‘EM HIGH thrown in there as well.  I was going to movies in the ‘70s.  So I didn’t see MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and RED RIVER and THE SEARCHERS until I was older and they were re-shown.  What I was seeing was what was currently on television – BONANZA and GUNSMOKE, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL repeats.  And in the movie theatre I was seeing SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF, and the later John Wayne movies; BIG JAKE is one of my favorite movies, THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER.  Those are not considered the classics.  But those are the movies that I saw first in the theatre, and I think the movies you saw first in the theatre have the most effect on your taste in movies. 

H:  We grew up on all the same Westerns; all those great Burt Kennedy pictures.

JOHN:  And Billy Fraker, who shot TOMBSTONE, had worked with Burt Kennedy, and Billy had directed THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER, and MONTE WALSH.  He shot PAINT YOUR WAGON.  And it was an incredible thrill to be on the set with him, as you can imagine.  So we had a lot of fun talking about the stuff that he had done.  One of the tragedies of Kevin Jarre, who passed away, God bless him.  He had this incredible cast.  And with Billy Fraker there he had this connection to a director who understood Westerns, and he fought them.  And ended up being fired.  Kevin was friends with Sherayko, and I knew him, through Milius.  And I was sad because I considered that I was keeping his movie from being ruined, by rewriting it instead of just letting them do it.  But he never talked to me again. 

H: A lot of your characters are real – Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday.  But Hannah is not.

JOHN: II wanted to combine history, because she’s a created character.  I wanted to do a woman protagonist, but not one where she was going to wear an outfit with her boobs out, trashy.  Not the BAD GIRLS version. 

H: Why did you choose to particularly focus on Isom Dart and Stagecoach Mary, who most people have never heard of? 

JOHN: One of the things I’ve tried to do in my career is hire black actors.  Because usually when you do a movie like this, the second you go to Canada, the talent pool is mostly white, and the movies end up being mostly white.  Even characters that would have been black people in that situation.  And I wanted to do, individually over the years, movies about Stagecoach Mary and movies about Isom Dart.  And my friend Rick Hacker, who’s one of the writers for AMERICAN RIFLEMAN about old guns, he’s got a brother-in-law who’s written The Ballad of Isom Dart.  I heard that years ago, and I thought that was a great character who had never been in a movie before, and honestly, I thought I could get Danny Glover to play it.  Because who should raise Hannah?  She’s a girl in the old west.  When you think about it, when she gets to town, why don’t they kill her?  Why don’t they rape her?  Because her friend is the shotgun-toting woman.  In other words, the women who would be victimized in real-life old west towns have become friends.  And have each other.  And the two actresses, they loved that.  They loved that their characters were historical, but that also they cared about each other.  That they knew that they were out of place there, and they only had each other to protect themselves.  It was a ball.  I loved the way it came out.  We didn’t have any reshoots.  We didn’t have any stock footage, and I say that because on a lot of these, they’re like, ‘We’ll get shots of the flames.’  We shot all of that when we made the movie, and I think that makes a big difference.  Because I’ve been on movies where we got stock footage from Africa, and it cuts pretty well.  But it’s shot with a different camera, a different kind of film stock, and I just look at it, and ugh, it’s not perfect. 

H:  In THE LEGEND OF BUTCH AND SUNDANCE you played the blacksmith.  In HANNAH’S LAW you play Marshal Deger; the most despicable of real characters in the story, and you saved it for yourself.

JOHN:  I didn’t expect to play that at all.  The director just said to the producer, ‘John could play this part.’  And I actually gained weight, and grew a terrible mustache for it.  So hopefully people won’t recognize me.  I though Marshal Deger would be (played by) an actor, but there were actually two more scenes in the script, with Deger; one we shot and one we didn’t, that were cut out of the movie.  One was after the Sara Canning scene with Billy Zane, when they were on the roof.  Deger came out and said, “Don’t let anybody help her.”  And Billy Zane said, “That’s what I said to her,” which kind of undercuts it, so I said, let’s cut it out.  And they’re like, ‘You’re cutting your own scene!’  The scene after that, where there all in the bar talking about it.  And I come in and I tell her, ‘Lockwood wants to see you.’  That’s the scene where then everyone knows I work for Lockwood.   And we were just a couple of minutes too long, and that was one of the things that got cut out.  But I was in there plenty.  The first scene I was really sick, and have a stuffy nose.  And I had to do that stuffy-nose voice the whole time. 

The editor, Bridget Durnford, did a great job cutting it; Charles Sydnor who did the music – you know the guy who plays the harmonica in there is Tommy Morgan, who played the harmonica in SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF, HIGH NOON, HANG ‘EM HIGH!  Every American-Made Clint Eastwood Western, he’s the harmonica player.  The point is, all Charles Sydnor’s music in HANNAH is live; it’s not digital.  They went into a recording studio with a piano and drums, and Tommy Morgan and his harmonica, and I watched them record the music, and it was amazing.  To have Danny Glover from SILVERADO, to have Billy Zane from TOMBSTONE, and to have me from my whatever.  To have all these people together, it just was amazing.  I hate to say it was a labor of love, but it was a labor of love, because everyone involved, all the Canadian producers, all the American producers, SONY, Hallmark, wanted it to be good.

H: I really think there is so much resistance to doing westerns that any one that gets made is by definition a labor of love. 

JOHN:  Every movie is a miracle.  When I sold my first script, my business manager said, ‘Save your money, because you’ll never sell another one.’  And you’ve looked me up on IMDB.  One or two movies are made every year, since I started doing this.  Some are big movies; some are TV movies, whatever.  It’s not numbers like Fred Olen Ray, who does sixteen movies a year, but they’re all studio and network pictures, and I’m very proud of that.  And the fact that I’ve gotten to do four Westerns, when every time people have said they don’t want to do Westerns.  I’ve been talking about doing some of those Tom Selleck Westerns.  Maybe I will. I’m a young lad; I’ve got another twenty years before I’m forced to retire.  And you should go write something, and we’ll go shoot it at Peter’s house.  One of the things my friends have done is, go up to Peter’s house.  Go up to the land he owns.  Go up to Melody Ranch, go to Veluzat Ranch; figure out what we have, and write it to shoot there.  Go out to Simi Valley and see what they’ve got there at Big Sky Ranch.  That’s where they shot LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, and it’s like 20,000 acres.  There’s very few buildings out there.  Just a couple from the show, but it’s mostly rolling acres, and it’s just the other side of the mountains from the 118 and civilization, but you’d never know it.  When you’re there you can look 360 degrees and see what Simi Valley must have looked like in 1865. 

H: Like the Paramount Ranch in Agoura.  You can’t believe it took you only fifteen minutes to get there. 

JOHN:  We actually scouted to shoot HANNAH there.  They told us they wanted to shoot in Alberta, and that’s where we shot BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, in their big, more modern Western town.  They sent us pictures, and the pictures were dreadful.  They always shoot them from too far away, and the buildings look tiny.  We shot there, and it looked like a real city.  But if we had to make our decision from the pictures they emailed us, we’d never have gone there.  But when we went up there we saw how physically beautiful it was.  This is where they built the town for UNFORGIVEN, but they took it down.  They shot the LONESOME DOVE TV series there.  That city was built by our production designer, Doug Blackie. 

H: The resolution of HANNAH’S LAW is kind of open-ended.  Are you working on HANNAH’S LAW 2?

JOHN: I’ve almost completely written HANNAH’S LAW 2.  And HANNAH’S LAW 3 I’ve got the outline written.  Because my intention was to do three of these movies. 

H: What’s next for you?

JOHN:  I’ve got THE 11^TH VICTIM, which is the murder mystery written by Nancy Grace, which I wrote the television script for.  We start shooting in two weeks in Vancouver.  And I’m doing SNIPER 5, because I did SNIPER 4 – I’m writing that now.  And I’m doing a movie of the video game of SAINTS’ ROW.  It’s one of those video-games where you drive around killing people in your neighborhood.  And I’m finally getting a miniseries off the ground, of a movie I started writing twenty years ago, called SHATTERHAND AND WINNETOU.  Originally I was writing it for Paramount, when Rick Schroder was going to be Shatterhand, and I have gone through ten or twenty people over the years, who told me they have the rights to it.  I had just finished, on my own, a spec script of it, and sent it off to the Cannes Film Festival with some producers I know, and just heard that while they were there, Louis Constantine announced that they’ve hired the guy who wrote DANCES WITH WOLVES to write a big movie of WINNETOU.  But that actually excited some of the investors, because mine would be done first, because it’s already done, already written.  I just hope we make it, because then that would be what, five Westerns?  And I’ve got to do at least five more before I pass away. 

If people want to see westerns on television, they have to watch them.  Because all these guys care about is what the numbers are.  And every year I come in with Western scripts.  I have two or three more that I want to do.  Peter wants to do different ones, wants to do some of yours.  We always have these ideas for Westerns, and the first thing we hear is, ‘No one is interested in Westerns,’ and it becomes that fight of finding someone who is. 

Well pardners, I hope that'll do for now.  It's almost 3 a.m., and I have to be up at six!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All original contents copyright June 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved