Ron Maxwell directing new recruits
‘COPPERHEAD’, the new Civil War film from ‘GETTYSBURG’
and ‘GODS AND GENERALS’ director Ron Maxwell, opens on Friday, June 28th,
at select theatres around the country.
It will open wider depending on its reception in its first week, so if you are interested in seeing it, and
in seeing other serious historical dramas, I urge you to make a point to catch
it right away. You can learn more about COPPERHEAD HERE.
RON MAXWELL INTERVIEW – Part One
Henry Parke and Ron Maxwell
Moviegoers in general, and Round-up readers in
particular, are likely most familiar with writer-director Ron Maxwell from his
previous two Civil War masterpieces, GETTYSBURG and GODS AND GENERALS, both
based on novels by Michael Shaara – the film GETTYSBURG is actually based on
Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize Winning novel THE KILLER ANGELS. But before he took on the War Between The States,
Maxwell had directed a wide and varied group of films. SEA MARKS (1976) was a
two-character TV movie based on a play by Gardner McKay. VERNA:USO GIRL (1978), an episode of PBS
GREAT PERFORMANCES, based on a Paul Gallico story, starring Sissy Spacek, won
supporting actor Howard deSilva an Emmy, and a best director nomination for
Maxwell. Next came LITTLE DARLINGS
(1980), featuring Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol as summer-campers in a race
to lose their virginity; THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA (1981), a
drama based on the country hit of the same title; KIDCO (1984), a comedy about
kids in the fertilizer business; PARENT TRAP 2 (1986), a reworking of the
Disney hit, again with Haley Mills in two roles; and a documentary, IN THE LAND
OF POETS (1987). For some weeks, Maxwell
has been traveling around the country previewing his new Civil War drama,
COPPERHEAD. He was kind enough to meet
with me before his Santa Monica preview, to discuss his newest film, as well as
GETTYSBURG and GODS AND GENERALS, and future plans that include a Western!
HENRY: Did you always intend your Civil War films to
be a trilogy?
RON MAXWELL: Well, the third part of the trilogy is
THE LAST FULL MEASURE, which we haven’t yet done, and perhaps will never
do. Like the first two, it’s another movie
that is in the epic form, it’s going to be a long movie; it’s huge battle
scenes. It’s got all the other elements the
other two have of the epic, and that is an entirely different kind of movie
than COPPERHEAD. COPPERHEAD is more in
the realm of traditional story-telling, within two hours. So in that sense it’s more like what most
movies smell and feel like. The other
two are huge departures, and they have more to do with the epic form, where you
have Abel Gance’s film (NAPOLEON), D. W.
Griffith, you think of the theatric form, it’s its own genre, and it predates
cinema. It’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (a
series of four heroic Richard Wagner operas), it’s Milton; it’s a different
tradition. COPPERHEAD, it’s fair to say,
is in my Civil War anthology, but not my trilogy, because THE LAST FULL MEASURE
would deliver the third part. But certainly
a third movie in the Civil War. And it’s
added up to dedicating a huge part of my life invested in making movies about
that part of history.
HENRY: I was
wondering if you’d decided to space the films ten years apart, or if that’s
just how it worked out.
RON MAXWELL:
It’s just how it worked out, because these things are not easy to set
up, to finance. There certainly is time
involved in research, in writing a screenplay, for sure – you don’t rush into
these kinds of movies. But the bulk of
the time between the movies is setting up the financing, because I’ve been
forty years making movies, and thirty of those have been in Hollywood. And I’ve yet to see or hear of any weekly
meeting at a studio when the executive in charge says, “Does anyone have a
Civil War movie we can do?” (laughs)
HENRY: (laughs) I specialize in Westerns, so I know
exactly what you mean. Now you’re
another NYU guy, right?
RON MAXWELL:
Yup. I graduated NYU School of
Film & Television in 1970, with my MFA.
My class (included) Jeremy Kagan, Martha Coolidge, a few others – a
pretty neat bunch of people.
HENRY: Why is the Civil War such an important
subject to you?
RON MAXWELL: The first connection from a movie-making point
of view came with THE KILLER ANGELS, because I read that book in ’78 and I just
connected with it as a great story, great literature, great characters, that
happened to be about the Civil War. If
it was about a different war I probably would have connected to it as well,
because I was responding to a piece of literature and a story that I felt
called to tell; people that I felt very compelled and interested about as a filmmaker. Having said that, back up. From the time of my childhood, my daddy took
my younger brother and I to historical sites.
I grew up in northern New Jersey, so where we would go on weekends and
family trips were places that were Colonial history, French & Indian War,
American Revolution. We visited Ft. Ticonderoga,
Ft. William Henry, Saratoga, and this informed my childhood. As soon as I could read I was reading about
Nathan Hale and Ethan Allan and Robert Rogers – I grew up with this stuff. And I walked on the places and I sat on the
canons. It was a wonderful
childhood. I was a Boy Scout, overnight
camping and all that stuff. And so I
grew up really steeped in and enjoying American history. And then when I got older I took in European
history as well. So that by the time I
read THE KILLER ANGELS in my late twenties, I had already read the works that
those of my generation should have read by then, which were Bruce Catton and
Shelby Foote – that generation of historians.
I was predisposed to subject matter taking place during the Civil War,
but I didn’t visit my first Civil War battlefield until after I’d optioned the
book, which might have been in ’80. I lived in Manhattan at the time, and I drove
down to Gettysburg for my first-ever visit to a Civil War Battlefield. And Michael Shaara, who wrote the book, flew
his own little plane, landed it at the grassy little landing strip at
Gettysburg, and we spent three days together.
And he walked me through the battlefield, as he wrote about it in THE
KILLER ANGELS: day one, day two, day three.
I had one of the best guides you could ever have to experience your
first Civil War battlefield.
HENRY: How
did you like Tom Berrenger, your Lt. Gen. Longstreet’s performance in HATFIELDS
& MCCOYS?
RON MAXWELL:
I didn’t see it, because I was filming.
That came out last summer, and I was
in Canada making COPPERHEAD; otherwise I would have seen it. I heard it was wonderful.
Martin Sheen as Lee in GETTYSBURG
HENRY: With
GETTYSBURG, you popularized the use of Civil War reenactors, instead of
standard issue extras in standard issue Western Costume uniforms, to play the
battle scenes. It really revolutionized
the look of war movies in general, and Civil War movies in particular. Why did you do it? What were the advantages?
RON MAXWELL:
Well, when I started on GETTYSBURG, anybody that works in the movie
business knows, the first thing your confronted in is what is the upside potential,
and what is the downside risk. You can
apply that to almost any business, but those are the terms you hear in the
movie business. So for the upside
potential, most people, when they play that game, mean “Get me Brad Pitt,” or
“Get me Steven Speilberg.” Because
unless you get those big names, it’s hard to even guess the upside potential of
anything. As we know repeatedly, little
films can suddenly do big business, anything can happen – you’re in a very
volatile area. That’s part of the
excitement of the business. The downside
risk, that’s something to address as a filmmaker. When I looked at the Battle
of Gettysburg, the only point to make a movie like this is to show the scale,
otherwise don’t do THE KILLER ANGELS – do something else. Find a short story by Ambrose Bierce. Like OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE is one of
my favorite short films, and you can do that with ten people. But because it was the Battle of Gettysburg,
and the expectation of people is you’ve got to have Pickett’s Charge. If you
don’t, you’re going to get hounded out of the business, and maybe hounded out
of the country. So you know you have to
deliver scale. At the time we started
this, shooting in the United States seemed like an absolute impossibility. Before CGI became CGI, nobody was making movies like that in North America anymore;
nobody. The last ones that were made like
that shut the studios down, like
CLEOPATRA in the ‘60s, and even that was made in Italy. With that many extras and that many costumes
and that many people to support, you’re in the D.W. Griffith world, the C.B.
DeMille world. This was in 1980 when the
process started, and I was looking at Eastern Europe. That’s
where Dino DiLaurentis did WATERLOO with Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer. Because you could get the Red Army. It’s sort of ironic, because here we are doing
an archetypical American story, and you have to go to the Soviet Union in the
height of the Cold War to make it! I
didn’t get to the Soviet Union, but I did go, in the ‘80s, to Hungary and
Poland, to set up working with their armies which were, as we know, variations
on the Red Army. And you could sort of
rent an army. You still had to
manufacture the costumes and all that stuff, but your costs would come down if
you could shoot in Eastern Europe, and people were doing it, especially cavalry
scenes. So as I was investigating that, what
was happening in the late ‘70s and late ‘80s was the burgeoning ‘Reenactor
Movement.’ It started with a few
thousand, and grew to tens of thousands.
I was tracking that, and I was going to reenactments, and what you’d see
at reenactments was people who took it very seriously. There was nothing generic and, like you said
correctly when you were talking about the costume houses that had done war movies in the past; they spent a lot
of time on the costumes for the leads, they have the best costume designers in
the world. But the background would be
generic grey or generic blue. The
difference was here, every single reenactor was portraying a specific soldier. They knew the private that they were doing,
or the corporal they were doing; they knew their name, and what battle they
were killed at, or whether they survived.
So as a result their uniforms were meticulously put together. They’re known as living historians. They went to all that research and homework
which no film crew would ever have time to do.
And they looked right, because they had the face hair, they had the
mustaches, they had the eyeglasses. So,
you multiply this by 100 people or 200 people.
Now think of the cost savings – you’re not having to build those
uniforms anymore. And the more
sophisticated reenactors, they would do what you know as galvanize; which means
they could go both ways, they could do a Confederate impression – they call it
impressions – and they could do a Federal impression. They could do an officer; they could do a
private. Or they could do a Tennessee regiment;
they could do a Massachusetts regiment.
And then, they also had the flags – just so authentic: they’d done all
the research. The cannons! Five or six guys, mostly blue-collar guys –
you’d find the occasional doctor or dentist or businessman, but mostly
blue-collar guys – working nine to five at a job. They’d pool their savings and manufacture
these cannons! These were thousands of
dollars! Real cannons, on carriages,
that could really fire munitions! Could
you imagine if a movie company had started to manufacture, to make this stuff? Forget it!
So on GETTYSBURG, a couple of things happened. 1989, the Berlin Wall fell – goodbye to that option. Their whole film industry collapsed a few
years later. After I made GETTYSBURG I
was in Bucharest, I was in Sofia. And I
met accomplished filmmakers, DPs, directors, writers, department heads that
were driving cabs, who were shining shoes.
They were reduced to beggary, in the first years after the Wall fell,
because everything collapsed; (the film industry) was completely state
funded. It was a sad thing to see. Thankfully that industry has rebounded. But the other thing, the coincidence of that
collapsing, was that the reenactment movement was growing, so that’s why we
really did something. So that’s what we
did, and you’re quite right, there had been little videos made with reenactors
before, but never a major motion picture.
The one movie that used them before us was GLORY. GLORY was made in ’89; our movie was filmed
in the summer of ’92. They used
reenactors. They went to the 125th
Anniversary of Gettysburg – we’re actually coming up on the 150th –
and they filmed it. But they put their
cameras on the outside, and they captured.
So the Antietam sequence at the beginning of GLORY, that’s from that 125th
reenactment. They sat on the outside
with long lenses, and they were able to get some very good footage. And they augmented it with some tighter work
with their actors. What we did that was
innovative is we built the reenactors in from the get-go. So we didn’t go to a reenactment; we used
thousands and thousands of reenactors.
We scheduled them in. We choreographed them to do exactly what we
wanted, and we decided the camera moves, through them, over them, around
them. That was innovative; we were the
first big film to use reenactors that way.
And without the reenactors – I’ve said this a million times – there’s no
GETTYSBURG, and there’s no GODS AND GENERALS.
They were an essential pillar to making those movies, so you could see
the scale. You’d have the camera back,
but also, you could move the camera in from a long shot to an extreme close-up,
and you’re still in the 1860s. The big
difference, from my point of view, between the two movies, was on the first
movie, we didn’t have the heart, and the chutzpah, to turn anybody away. We thought, these are volunteers. We gave them three meals a day, gave them
fodder for their horses, gave them a place to put their tents, but they were
still volunteers, and we didn’t have the heart to say, ‘You can’t
participate.’ And so we accepted people
who were overweight, and too old. And we
tried to put them in the background as much as we could, but it was a problem
for us, constantly. And the ADs
(assistant directors) were trying to keep them in the back, keep the younger,
leaner ones up-front. On GODS AND
GENERALS we said look, we’re making a movie here, and we’re just going to be
really strict about this. We had a much
more stringent recruitment process, so nobody on GODS AND GENERALS was older
than thirty. Everybody looked like they
were a real Civil War soldier. They were
young; they were lean. And that, in
terms of using the reenactors, was the big difference in the two movies.
HENRY: Now,
while KILLER ANGELS and GODS AND GENERALS were current or recent best-sellers at
the time that you made the films, COPPERHEAD, by Harold Frederic, was pretty
obscure, being a best-seller in 1893.
How did you come upon it, and how long were you aware of it?
RON MAXWELL:
I read THE COPPERHEAD sometime after the release of GODS AND
GENERALS. I’m always looking for Civil
War fiction, and I’ve got what’s got to be one of the best collections around;
I’ve been collecting for a long time.
And most of it’s out of print, but you can get it now, thanks to the
internet, and second-hand bookstores.
You can get out-of-prints works now much easier than you could have even
ten, fifteen years ago. And I’ve had
friends at different universities – David Madden, recently retired head of the English
department at LSU. He’s written
extensively about Civil War fiction, essays and articles. He was a great guide for me, to find books I
didn’t know to look for. And there is a
lot there that is out of print, really worth discovering. It’s like all the arts. Every now and then I come across a piece of
literature, or a poet, or a piece of music, an opera that I’ve never heard
before, and I think, how did I miss this?
This outstanding work. But it’s
because we can’t have it all on our radar all the time. And things fall in and out of fashion. Harold Frederic is a very interesting writer. In Edmund Wilson’s book, PATRIOTIC GORE, that
was published sometime in the 1960s, which is a very important work, because
he’s writing literary criticism of a hundred years of Civil War fiction. And he singles out COPPERHEAD in that book as
a singular work, unlike anything else written about the Civil War. It’s unlike it because it’s about the North,
about dissenters in the North, ‘copperheads’, if you will. And he writes with great authenticity about
middle-of-the-19th-century rural America, and through his eyes you
can see that part of the world in the same way that, through the eyes of
Charles Dickens you can see Victorian England, without reading any other
histories, just through the eyes of the fiction writer.
Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain in GODS AND GENERALS
HENRY: And
see it, really, more clearly through the fiction than you could through
history.
RON MAXWELL:
Absolutely; because he’s writing characters. He’s also writing dialogue that he
heard. There’s a line, for instance, one
of many, when Esther is handing the ear of corn to Jimmy, and she says, “It’s tougher
than Pharaoh’s heart.” If I spent the
rest of my life, I wouldn’t come up with that line. That was from Harold Frederic, and he must
have heard it. He must have heard it in
a community saturated with Biblical references, from cradle to grave. So 90% of the dialogue, give or take, is from
the book. The other 10% Bill Kaufman
wrote while turning it into a screenplay.
But Frederic is a wonderful author, and he had two moments: his own
moment when it was published. He was a
very successful writer, and he made a good living at it; he was popular in his
own time. Then he fell into obscurity in
the anti-war years. Then he was
rediscovered by Edmund Wilson, and you can see at that time there was slight
rebirth in recognition – he was back in print.
Then he fell back into obscurity again until now. We’re reissuing the COPPERHEAD novel. We had to re-set the type because the one
that’s currently available is very difficult to read – there are typos and grammatical
errors. So we re-set the type, and
published in the same book, at the same time the movie comes out, is the
screenplay.
HENRY:
COPPERHEAD is a set in Utica, New York, about two families torn apart by
the Civil War. Several characters go to
war, with dramatic results, but the war never reaches the town, and is never
shown. Was it a difficult choice, to
keep the physical war out of the film entirely?
RON MAXWELL: Yes.
Of course, it’s not in the book, but you’re quite right; we had
discussions. Should we have a flash-back
or a flash-forward, or cut to where Jeff is?
All the boys leave, and as they come back, we learn that they were all
caught up in the Battle of Antietam. Some come back wounded; some don’t come
back at all. And we know through the
testimony of (the survivors), who was shot and killed. We discussed it. We thought, why go there? Because the movie is about the village in the
North. It’s about their not
knowing. They don’t have an omniscient
eye. They don’t have CNN. They only know it, and they only knew it at
the time, from newspapers, and people coming back. So let’s keep it really where they live. It’s about Abner; it’s about Jee; it’s about
the families, the mothers and fathers.
So when those people in Watkins’s store, when (soldiers) first come
back, they’re listening to every word, and that’s when they hear what happened
to (the boys from the town). It’s more
effective, more dramatic, more emotional.
And later on, when (another soldier) talks about his experiences, it’s
not in the book, but we put that in the blacksmith’s shop, so we have an excuse
to have the bellows and smoke, and the hammering that then becomes gunfire, to
at least atmospherically make it feel like battle.
HENRY: Billy
Campbell as Abner Beech is a very unusual hero for a movie. He’s branded a copperhead because he lives in
the North, but opposes going to war over cessation. He’s politically incorrect both in his day
and ours. His scathing comments about
Lincoln, and his belief that ending slavery is not a good enough reason for one
group of Americans to go to war against another. Did you consider softening his stance to make
him more likable and PC?
RON MAXWELL: The only thing we did, and anyone who
reads the novel will see it, is dispensed with the ‘n-word.’ We just don’t need that, and we can portray
this authentically without offending people.
But other than that we portray him honestly as he was. He is on a spectrum of people who were generically
called copperheads. It’s like today we call
people conservatives, we call people liberals.
That’s a pretty broad label to put on people, considering how different
we all are from one another. Copperhead
was a term of derision, a contemptuous term used by pro-war Republicans against
anyone who disagreed with the war effort. But within those people who disagree you get
people who were racist then, and racist now, and they could care less what
happened to the black man. But then
along that spectrum you had people like Abner Beech, who was absolutely against
slavery, pro-Union, but just did not think that this was the solution. As he articulates in the film, sometimes you
can take a bad situation, even an intolerable situation, and make it
worse. We’re having this debate now
about Syria. There’s a massacre going on
there. But if we go in there with the
U.S. Army, and bombs and airplanes, how do we know we’re not going to make it
even worse? So these kinds of questions
are always with us, they’re ethical dilemmas.
But the feedback we’ve gotten from audiences so far – we’ve had twelve
or thirteen public screenings – enjoy the fact that it’s a film that presents
ethical, moral dilemmas, where it’s not easy to sort it out. Because it wasn’t then and, guess what: it
isn’t now. Now I have to share with you,
because I know what you write about. I
am planning to do a Western. It’s called
BELLE STARR; it’s based on the extraordinary book by Speer Morgan, that was
published in ’79. I had it set up in ’79
and ’80 at United Artists. And they were going to do it, and then HEAVEN’S
GATE came out, and my Western, and every other Western collapsed. That’s how long I’ve been going to do
it. But we have a new script; it was
co-written by Alan Geoffrion, who wrote BROKEN TRAIL. We’ll see how well we do at the box office
with COPPERHEAD. If we do well, there’s
a good chance that BELLE STARR will be made next summer.
HENRY: I’ve enjoyed
your wide range of films, including LITTLE DARLINGS. Now this might sound to some like an
out-of-left-field reference, but many of your non-Civil War films – PARENT TRAP
2, KIDCO – have focused on young people making a transition to adulthood and
independence, which is a central theme of COPPERHEAD.
RON MAXWELL: You’re the first one to bring this out,
and it’s very true. Thank you for the question,
because people that were invested in this film are young, and again, as in the
earlier question you asked about the former movies, they were preoccupied with
officers. They went to West Point, they
were veterans together. They were
relatively highly educated, for their age.
But the guys who fought the war, and died in huge numbers, were boys,
what we would consider boys, under twenty years old. So it was very important that we cast this
picture young. And the actors are young. Lucy Boynton turned eighteen just before we
started filming – which was good, we didn’t need to have a social worker on the
set, and a teacher. So we cast it young,
because that’s the truth, that’s the true image of the war. I love stories with young people. We had in our marketing meeting, we forget,
we tend to think that people who are interested in the Civil War, in American
history are a quote – unquote, older audience.
But this movie is about young kids, so we keep on saying, in our
marketing efforts, don’t neglect the young audience. The young audience can connect with this movie
just as much as an older audience.
We weren’t actually done at this point, but Ron
Maxwell’s people had to hurry him to a screening in Santa Monica. He promised to call me, to answer the rest of
my questions, and two days later, en route to a screening in Atlanta, he
did. I’ll have part two of this
interview in the Round-up very soon.
‘COPPERHEAD’ REVIEW
After a map shows the relative positions of Virginia
and New York, and the voice of a lad we’ll come to know as Jimmy suggests what
the Civil War, already a year old, will do to his home, we see six boys
strolling down a green country lane.
It’s so idyllic, their exuberance, their all-so-different hats that each
thinks makes him an individual, that you can’t help thinking of Huck and Tom in
Hannibal, though these boys are a shade older.
Their discussion of the war is fanciful and childish. And yet they are the very age – and some will
be the very boys – who will cause, and be victims of, the carnage that ravaged
America in the War Between the States.
If you, like I, are a fan of writer-director Ron
Maxwell’s two Civil War epics, GETTYSBURG and GODS AND GENERALS, then
COPPERHEAD is decidedly not the movie
you would expect to conclude his war-between-the-states trilogy. And while Maxwell intends indeed to make it
a trilogy – read my accompanying interview with Maxwell – this is not that
film. Those films are about military
officers, professional soldiers. This is
a film about privates; at worst, about cannon fodder, the world and the homes
and families that produced them. The
war, in fact, is never seen, though it is a perpetual off-screen presence whose
effects upon a remote community in upstate New York are the core of the
story. Harold Frederic wrote the novel
in 1893, basing it on the memories of his youth in Utica, New York, during the
Civil War.
Abner Beech & family in church
Because it is the parents who produce these lads, it
is also the story of the title character, Abner Beech (Billy Campbell), a
dairyman and lumberman who sides neither with the Union nor the
Confederacy. While he has no love of
slavery, he is more concerned that President Lincoln is ordering Americans to
fight Americans, a demand he believes to be unconstitutional. For this, Abner Beech is labeled a ‘copperhead,’
the pejorative the anti-slavery Republicans used to describe Democrats who
would rather negotiate a quick peace with seceding southern states than end
slavery and preserve the Union. It is
also the story of Jee Hagadom (Angus McFayden), a barrel-maker, crushed after
the death of his wife, his life taking on new meaning with his abolitionist obsession.
Fonda, Maxwell, Campbell
But mostly it is the story of the callow youth, and
most of us can see ourselves, to our chagrin, in either the ones who blindly
parrot their parents’ political beliefs without understanding them, or those
who arbitrarily reject those beliefs as a sign of their independence. And some of us can see ourselves in
both. Abner has a son, Jeff (Casey
Brown) a bright and likable fellow, smitten with Hagadom’s daughter, schoolmarm
Esther (Lucy Boynton), and he maddens his father by spouting Hagadom’s
opinions. Abner suspects Hagadom is
directly responsible for the growing hostility the community is showing to him,
sabotaging his ability to make a living, so he’s not open to his son’s often
sensible comments.
Esther is having things no easier – her father has
told her it would kill him if she married Jeff.
Her brother Ni (Augustus Prew), who has no wish to be a soldier, is crushed
to be a disappointment to his father.
Jeff’s parents have raised an orphan, Jimmy (Josh Cruddas), nearly as a
son, and he, too, is torn between loyalty to his adopted family, and his desire
to think for himself.
Some looking for adventure, some to impress a girl, some
in a fit of pique, the boys go off to war, and Abner and his family are not
only minus a son, but soon become the stand-in victims of a populace that wants
to get their hands on their Southern enemies, but cannot. The rising level of abuse and cruelty,
inevitably reaching its brutal, destructive crescendo, is as upsetting as it is
familiar, because times may change, but human nature does not.
Peter Fonda
All of the international cast is strong, but worthy
of particular note is Peter Fonda, in a low-key performance as the blacksmith, sounding
board for Abner and others, who has strong opinions, but a rarely encountered open
mind as well. COPPERHEAD is about the
effects of war, and the people who fight wars, but it is not about war
itself. You won’t get that rush of
thrill and terror, because the battles never reach the screen, since they don’t
reach the town, though the often shattered remnants of the war do come
back. COPPERHEAD is a thoughtful,
well-made, involving film that raises difficult issues without presenting
facile conclusions. There is much food
for discussion here. My one criticism is
that the tone is at times overbearingly solemn, in a way that, combined with a sometimes
perfect but sometimes somber score, grinds all action to a halt. A house-fire that promises some excitement is
drawn into slow-motion at a time when you desperately want things speeded
up. But for all the darkness, it is a
hopeful, inspiring story that will transport you to a world you’ve only read or
dreamed about, populated by people you know all too well.
SONY MOVIE CHANNEL CELEBRATES WESTERNS IN JULY WITH MARATHONS
AND ‘BACK IN THE SADDLE’ SWEEPSTAKES
The Sony Movie Channel regularly features
Westerns in their line-up, but they’re pulling out the big guns in July. For the first week of the month, every night
will include a western double-feature, every Wednesday night will be all
westerns, and July 7th and July 28th will be all-day
Western marathons!
In addition to the Western
films, Sony Movie Channel is
providing one lucky winner the chance to experience what it is like living the
cowboy way with its “Sony Movie Channel Back in the Saddle Sweepstakes.” One
grand prize winner of the sweepstakes will enjoy a trip for two to Lost Valley
Ranch in Colorado. The winner will get to experience the western lifestyle for
3 days and 2 nights at the dude ranch, plus airfare to Denver and $500 cash for
incidentals. Also, six weekly first place prize packages will be awarded, where
winners will receive a pack of Western movies and a pack of limited edition SMC
hot sauces. The sweepstakes has started, \ and ends July 31, 2013 at 11:59PM
Pacific Time. To enter, go to https://www.facebook.com/SonyMovieChannel
or www.SonyMovieChannel.com.
See Official Rules for complete details.
It’s an interesting mix of sagebrush sagas, from
1948 to the 21st Century. Among
the Westerns they’ll be featuring are Audie Murphy in ARIZONA RAIDERS and 40
GUNS TO APACHE PASS; Randolph Scott in A LAWLESS STREET and DECISION AT SUNDOWN;
Gary Cooper in THEY CAME TO CORDURA; Tom
Sellick and Sam Elliot in THE SHADOW RIDERS; Robert Duvall in BROKEN TRAIL; Brad
Pitt in LEGENDS OF THE FALL; Matt Damon in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES; West Studi in
GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND; Glenn Ford in JUBAL; George Montgomery in THE
PATHFINDER and BATTLE OF ROGUE RIVER; Van Heflin in GUNMAN’S WALK; Fred
MacMurray in FACE OF A FUGITIVE; Robert Young in RELENTLESS; and James Garner
as Wyatt Earp opposite Bruce Willis as Tom Mix in SUNSET. Visit HERE for details.
HALLMARK’S CANADIAN-SET WESTERN SERIES TO BE SHOT IN
COLORADO!
How’s this for a switch? Hallmark’s new Western series, WHEN CALLS THE
HEART, (read my March 25 article here: http://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2013/03/hallmark-greenlights-when-calls-heart.html)
based on the
best-selling CANADIAN WEST book series by Janette Oke, set in 1910, involves the romance between a
school-teacher and a Royal Canadian Mountie, and will be shot not in Canada,
but in and around Telluride, Colorado. Colorado Governor Hickenlooper and Hallmark
President Bill Abbott made the joint announcement, noting that it’s the first
TV series shot in the area since FATHER DOWLING MYSTERIES in 1991!
The series will have a extended pilot premiere on
October 5th, with three-time Emmy winner Jean Smart, and Lori Loughlin,
the series proper beginning in January 2014, starring Erin Krakow (“Army Wives”
“Castle”) and Daniel Lissing (“Last Resort”) in the romantic leads, and it’s
not yet determined if Smart and Loughlin will be returning.
Based on the best-selling CANADIAN WEST book series by Janette Oke,
set in 1910, it’s the story of
Elizabeth Thatcher, a cultured teacher who, with misgivings, gives up her
comfortable city life to become a teacher in a prairie town on the western
frontier. She’s determined to prove her independence to her doubting
family, and her doubting self. She’s helped in part by drawing
inspiration from a late Aunt’s secret diary. It seems the Aunt had a
similar adventure, and similarly had a romance with a Royal Canadian Mountie.
Author
Janette Oke and the Hallmark Channel have had a long and successful partnership
since 2003, when they first adapted her book LOVE COMES SOFTLY. It’s
led to a dozen titles from the series since then, most or all of them westerns,
many with LOVE’S (ADJECTIVE) (NOUN) titles. The WHEN CALLS THE HEART
movie was written and directed by Michael Landon,
Jr.
THE WRAP-UP
That's all for this Round-up. Sorry it's so late, coming on a Thursday instead of the previous Sunday -- I've received emails from friends who were afraid that something had happened to me! The fact is, my wife and I had our first chance to get out of L.A. in two years, and we grabbed it. And I cheerfully left the computer behind!
I should be back on schedule with the next Round-up on Sunday!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright June 2013 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved
