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.

‘HATEFUL 8’ READING REVIEWED, NOVEL ‘SHOTGUN’ REVIEWED, PLUS TCM FEST PT.2!

TARANTINO’S ‘THE HATEFUL EIGHT’ – THE STAGED READING

By Andrew Ferrell

(Note: I don’t think I’ve ever run an article by another writer before, but Andrew Ferrell, a friend of the Round-up, attended the event last night, and generously wrote this report.) 

Quentin Tarantino’s would-be next feature, The Hateful Eight, made its no-screen debut Saturday night at the Ace Hotel (formerly the United Artists Theater) in downtown Los Angeles as part of LACMA’s popular series of live readings of feature screenplays. The staged reading of what writer/director Tarantino himself described as a first draft, which was very publicly put on ice a few months ago following an internet leak, brought in a full house of QT fans at $100 - $200 a seat (the outrageous prices being part of a fundraiser for LACMA and Film Independent’s year-long programming).

Tarantino directing - photo from Thompson on Hollywood

As soon as the reading was announced in early April, the big draw, apart from the first legal opportunity for a select few to sample Tarantino’s latest western, became the mystery of who would be cast to participate in this one-time-only, never to be streamed or recorded performance. And what a cast it was, labeled the “Tarantino Superstars” by their perpetually excited ringleader, filled with a dozen famous faces and welcome character actors (plus the filmmaker himself, reading directions), each of whom having already worked with
Tarantino at least once before: Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Amber Tamblyn, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Denis Menochet, James Parks, James Remar, Zoe Bell and Dana Gourrier. The applause for the cast reveal alone would have been enough to cover most performances for an entire evening, but the reading itself kept the audience alternately cackling, cheering, applauding, and occasionally gasping throughout the whopping three and a half-hour runtime, which did include a very brief intermission.


The plot in a nutshell can be described as sort of a Western take on Reservoir Dogs, with the movie’s familiar single-setting, traitor-in-our midst set up being transported to post-Civil War Wyoming. This time, the criminals holed up in a warehouse after a botched heist are substituted for bounty hunters and various unsavory characters waiting out a terrible blizzard inside a cramped stagecoach stop. The setting becomes even more claustrophobic as the characters’ previous connections and ulterior motives are revealed, all the while exacerbated further by the lingering wounds of the Civil War and its outcome. In the event that everyone else does get a chance to experience The Hateful Eight for themselves in one way or another, to say anything more would be to give away the many twists and shifting alliances. This being a Quentin Tarantino script, however, it spoils nothing to say that this boils over into copious amounts of profanity and bloodshed before the storm is over.



Tarantino, dressed in VERY colorful modern cowboy getup and constantly clutching an old iron coffee pot (an important prop, as it would turn out), made some opening remarks reminding the audience of the script’s rough draft status and that the cast had about three days to rehearse. “We’re okay. We’re pretty good,” he half-joked. The performance and its staging remained pretty loose throughout the night, with most of the cast casually dressed and clutching their scripts, sitting in chairs roughly positioned to correspond with the imagined blocking of the scenes. During the more exciting moments and fights, the actors would get out of their chairs and move around a little. Once a few characters died, the very game thespians playing them fell
dramatically out of their chairs and remained on the floor for the duration of the show.


The only hiccups came with the occasional flubbed line (totally understandable, under the circumstances) and the occasional call from the jittery but authoritative Tarantino to re-do a certain bit. Thereading provided a rare glimpse of what it must be like on his sets, with the director occasionally breaking the fourth wall to joke with his old friends in the cast or chastise them for going off script and attempting to “co-write” (his words). If there was ever any doubt that he considers himself God on the set, this performance proved that every single syllable in a Tarantino script is there for a reason, and when giving direction the man knows exactly what he wants. Still, one of the most human and amusing moments of the night came when Tarantino leapt into the middle of a scene and excitedly whispered a new idea in Samuel L. Jackson’s ear. “He’s directing!” the actor quipped to the audience, which was met with wild applause.



Even without much to look at on stage, the words on the page provided a clear visual of how this would play as a movie. Tarantino’s uniquely conversational approach to descriptive writing, as well as his wildly enthusiastic and energetic delivery, painted a mental picture of every shot he had planned, from the opening images of a six-horse coach outracing the snow to the description of the room where most of the story takes place to the comically brutal violence that comes later. The words “in glorious 70-millimeter Super Scope” became the running joke of the evening. As for the expected historical and pop culture references, they flew by so quickly that they were hard to keep up with, though it’s safe to say that no character name is an accident. Samuel L. Jackson’s character, the former Union soldier Marquis Warren, seems to nakedly reference Rawhide and Gunsmoke writer Charles Marquis Warren (thanks to Henry for pointing that one out!), for instance.


As with all past Tarantino projects, casting is everything, and if this exact cast were transposed into the feature film version with a bit more rehearsal, hardly a critic or movie fan would be likely to complain. Not only did the evening provide a fun reunion for Tarantino alum from throughout his career, but they all seemed to legitimately have great fun with their characters and with each other, even while saying and doing some pretty terrible things. Kurt Russell affected his best John Wayne as the bounty hunter John Ruth while Jackson delivered one particularly filthy monologue with devilish glee as the aforementioned Warren. It was a treat to see Tim Roth and Michael Madsen playing off each other again, albeit as very different characters. Recent Oscar-nominee Bruce Dern, playing a former Confederate general, had few words to say, but gave them such quiet gravity and solemnity that one can see why the director apparently tailor-made the role just for him. Among the younger cast members, Amber Tamblyn really held her own as Daisy Domergue, the prisoner around whom most of the intrigue centers, and Walton Goggins provided a great deal of comic relief as Chris Mannix, another former Confederate and self-proclaimed Sheriff-elect. The entire cast proved that their charisma was not restricted to on-camera performing, as is sadly sometimes the case.


As for the lingering questions hovering over this project, Tarantino declared that he is already at work on later drafts, which would seem to pretty clearly indicate that this project is not dead, in spite of his earlier statements and the ongoing lawsuit with Gawker over linking to the stolen, unfinished script. The presence of Harvey and Bob Weinstein at the performance also suggest that, if this wasn’t the master plan all along, somewhere along the way this reading of a “dead” project became an unprecedentedly public workshop on the way to resuming pre-production.


The other question one might have after seeing the script acted out in its entirety is whether or not the produced film would make for a worthy addition to the Western genre or to the vaunted Tarantino canon. While it’s obviously hard to say and all still very hypothetical, the initial impression is that it’s about as much of a Western as Django Unchained. The setting is a bit more traditional than the previous film’s mostly Southern locales, and The Hateful Eight’s details regarding the hardships of frontier travel are more specific and pronounced than the more mythic qualities of Django. Still, this story lacks the sweep, scope and sensitive subject matter that made its predecessor such an “event”.

At least for the time being, it wouldn’t be unfair to call this minor Tarantino, something more in line with Reservoir Dogs or Death Proof, both stripped-down genre exercises elevated by the voice of their author. And even if it’s smaller, it’s by no means tighter, since the performance started at eight o’clock and let out a little before midnight. This dry run of The Hateful Eight consistently entertains, but its characters still require further definition. The broad strokes are there, but one can feel jokes still waiting to be found, and the emotional core is a little elusive. Tarantino continues to play with the juicier topics of the time period, such as race, gender and post-war attitudes, but it feels like he hasn’t quite yet found what it is he wants to say about them. The script, like many of Tarantino’s past works, is divided into chapters, with the final chapter already having been scrapped by the director, who has promised that any future version will end differently. That is probably for the best, as the ending we saw performed, while certainly exciting, might ring a little similar to past successes and thematically hollow or without a greater purpose, which can be somewhat applied to the script as a whole.


Having said all that, if Tarantino is still tinkering, and if he’s as hyper-aware of audience reactions as he seemed last night, there’s still hope. The lengthy standing ovation at the end may have been the encouragement he needs to whip this thing into shape. The guy remains incapable of making anything less than interesting, and his growing enthusiasm for all things Western can only be a good thing for the genre’s standing in Hollywood. Even in its current compromised, unproduced form, The Hateful Eight still makes an impression. And if, worst-case scenario, the movie still doesn’t make it to screens, Tarantino’s already got a hit play on his hands.

SHOTGUN by C. Courtney Joyner – A Western Novel Review

The paperback cover

C. Courtney Joyner’s first novel, SHOTGUN, has just been nominated for a Peacemaker Award as Best First Novel by the Western Fictioneers.  It will be published in June by Thorndike Press in a large-print, hardcover edition, retailing for $28.  What’s so unusual about this is that Pinnacle Books published it as a mass-market paperback in December of 2013 for $6.99.  This is the cinema equivalent of releasing a movie direct-to-video, and then opening it in theatres a few months later – it’s the opposite of the way these things are done, and it speaks volumes of the high hopes the publishing world has for SHOTGUN, which is surely the first of a series. 

Though this is Joyner’s first novel, he is no stranger to storytelling, with more than two dozen movies – some writing and some directing – to his credit.  And in a very cinematic, very visual opening, we meet the protagonist, former Civil War surgeon Dr. John Bishop.  One ‘Major’ Beaudine and his men want the half million dollars in gold they know Bishop has.  Beaudine was the cellmate of Bishop’s illiterate brother, and before brother Devlin swung, Beaudine ‘helped’ him by writing letters for him; letters that betrayed the Bishop brothers’ secret – although John swears there is no secret and no gold.  

Stopping at nothing to gain the knowledge he demands, the Major takes off most of the surgeon’s arm.  And that’s almost charitable, compared to what he does to Dr. Bishop’s wife and child.   When he recovers, the doctor has a shotgun mounted to the stump of his arm, and goes in search Major Beaudine, even as Beaudine and others are in search of the elusive gold.  The doctor is helped in his quest by a beautiful Cheyenne named White Fox.

The hardcover cover

The storytelling is unorthodox: instead of a chronological tale from a single point-of-view, it jumps from the major to the doctor, to the other characters, and forward and back in time, as needed.  You’ll learn everything you need to know, but not always in the order you’d expect.  You’ll understand White Fox’s loyalty to Dr. Bishop eventually, but for a while you’ll just have to accept it.  You’ll meet the blind officer Creed, hunting the doctor with as much determination as any seeing man, and sometimes leading the one-eyed and toothless.  You’ll meet a red-hooded band of renegades whose loyalties are not easily discerned.  You’ll be as happy as I was that the ending of the book is open-ended.  There will be more SHOTGUN stories.  There had better be.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FEST 2014 -- PART 2

The 5^th Annual Turner Classic Movies Classic Movie Festival – usually abbreviated to TCM Classic Movie Festival began on Thursday night, April 10^th, with a Red Carpet procession in front of the fabled Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the screening of a restored OKAHOMA!, attended by star Shirley Jones and many others – if you missed my coverage of the Red Carpet, you can read it HERE .

           As soon as the Red Carpet ended, I raced across Hollywood Boulevard to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, headquarters for the TCM Fest.  After quite a few stairs and turns I made my way to poolside, where several of the screenings were to take place.  They would be screening AMERICAN GRAFFITI after the sun set, and while we waited, a Wolman Jack impersonator spun platters for a jitterbugging dance troupe.  By 7:30, dark had descended, and Ben Mankiewicz introduced stars Candy Clark, Paul LeMat and Bo Hopkins who, despite having done the movie forty-one years ago, all looked great.  Ben noted, “I’m going to start with Bo, because Candy, it was your first film, and Paul, it was your first.  But Bo, you made a film before.  It’s a film some people here are familiar with.  Tell the people what it was.”

            “Well, my first screen appearance was with Bill Holden, Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine in THE WILD BUNCH.”  Hoots, cheers and applause! 

            “What were the similarities between George Lucas and Sam Peckinpah?

            “Night.  And day.”  Among the interesting revelations during that conversation: Harrison Ford talked George Lucas into letting him wear a cowboy hat in the film, so he wouldn’t have to cut his hair – it was a small role, and he was afraid that if he got his hair cut for the period, 1962, it would be too short for any other jobs he might get.  Candy Clark revealed that Richard Dreyfus had broken up with his girlfriend just before they started, and spent much of his time between scenes crying in his trailer – that’s why his eyes look so bloodshot throughout the film.  Paul LeMat admitted that at one point he picked up Dreyfus and threw him into a pool.  Unfortunately, he threw him into the shallow end, and his head smashed on the bottom of the pool.  The boys didn’t wear any make-up in the film, except Dreyfus, whose goose-egg-sized swelling had to be hidden. 

Candy Clark and Bo Hopkins

photo by Stephanie Keenan

            Candy Clark, then 25, was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, was up against 14 year old Linda Blair for THE EXORCIST, and they both lost to 9 year old Tatum O’Neal for PAPER MOON, who also defeated Sylvia Sidney for SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS, and Madeline Khan for PAPER MOON.  But the biggest indignity of all?  When the nominations are being read, and the five actresses faces are shown, they zoomed in on someone other than Candy Clark!  I watched as much as I dared of AMERICAN GRAFFITI – now I’m going to have to rent it! – then hurried over to the Chinese Theatre Multiplex, beside the big Chinese Theatre, and got on line for JOHNNY GUITAR.  It was introduced by film historian Michael Schlesinger, who revealed that we would be seeing the very first theatrical showing of the DCP, the digital restoration.  “JOHNNY GUITAR was shot in Trucolor, a misnomer if there ever was one.  It was Republic’s in-house color process, and if there was one word to best describe it, it would be ‘ghastly.’”  I always thought it ironic that a studio that majored in westerns would come up with a color process that couldn’t reproduce green – as in grass and trees – at all.  I remember Roy Roger’s TRAIL OF ROBIN HOOD, about Christmas tree rustlers, was shot in Trucolor, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would steal grey Christmas trees – they were obviously dead!  On the other hand, it reproduced reds beautifully, which is  why Republic made so many films with beautiful redheads like Maureen O’Hara and Adrian Booth in the 1950s.  Paramount acquired the Republic library, and with greens added to the pallet, we were about to see a movie that, as far as color goes, was being seen as it was meant to look, for the very first time.

A show of hands revealed that about 60% of the audience had never seen the film before, and presumably had no idea of what they were in for.  As Schlesinger explained, this is a movie that works on many levels.  Number one, it’s a western, with horses, guns, stagecoach robberies, and manly men like Ward Bond, Sterling Hayden and Scott Brady.  Number two, it’s also a feminist film, in that while all the manly men are off to one side, “… Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge are doing all of the heavy lifting.”  And some would say that it’s a sub-rosa lesbian film, saying that while Mercedes hates Joan because she incorrectly thinks Joan loves Scott Brady, the undercurrent feels like they’re approaching BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN territory.  “Number three, this movie has a rabid gay following.  It’s ALL ABOUT EVE GOES WEST to them.

            “Number four, it’s a not-too-thinly-disguised attack on McCarthyism.”  Though the script is credited to Philip Yordan, he was acting as a front for blacklisted writer Ben Maddow.  And leading the posse in their frequent rushes to judgment is Ward Bond, the most virulently anti-communist actor in Hollywood.  Schlesinger claims that by 1957, Ward Bond had pissed off so many people that he was nearly unemployable, which is why he was thrilled to get then WAGON TRAIN.  With twenty screen credits – admittedly many TV – between 1954 and 1957, the ‘unemployable’ notion may be wishful thinking on Schlesinger’s part. 

            Joan Crawford bought the novel by Roy Chanslor, sold it and herself as a package to Republic, and hired Nicholas Ray, hot from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, to direct.  It was not always a happy set.  Joan had chosen McCambridge as ‘the other woman,’ to make sure that was role was played by someone less attractive than herself, “…which she was, but she was also a better actress than Joan, and stole every scene she was in.”  Sterling Hayden was not a fan of Joan’s, and after making the movie, famously said, “There’s not enough money in Hollywood to make me do another movie with Joan Crawford.  And I like money.”   But tense sets can produce good movies, and JOHNNY GUITAR, for all its oddness is certainly entertaining. 

            On Friday morning there were two events of interest to western fans, the screening of STAGECOACH, introduced by author Nancy Schoenberger, and the dedication ceremony for the Charlton Heston commemorative stamp. 

            At 6 p.m., PAPER MOON was shown.  Star Ryan O’Neal was to provide the introduction, but he flaked (the only no-show of the entire event).  Ben Mankiewicz pinch-hit for O’Neal, revealing that PAPER MOON was originally slated to be directed not by Peter Bogdanovich, but by John Huston, with Paul Newman in the Ryan O’Neal role, and Newman’s daughter, Nell Potts, in Tatum O’Neal’s Oscar-winner role of Addie Pray.  Ben was as eager to hear what Ryan would have said about the project, and working with his daughter, since he was very enthusiastic at the time, but there have been problems between them since.  Here’s what director Peter Bogdanovich has said: “Working with Tatum O’Neal was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.”  It’s a wonderful movie. 

            As soon as PAPER MOON ended, many of us bolted to get on line for a movie made the next year, 1974, with three of the same cast-members: Madeline Kahn, John Hillerman, and Burton Gilliam – in PAPER MOON he’s the hotel clerk with the big-toothed grin that gets sent up to Madeline Kahn’s room.  That movie was 1974’s BLAZING SADDLES, which was shown in the giant Chinese Theatre, with director, co-writer and star Mel Brooks attending.  The newly renovated – but not ruined – Chinese Theatre is the largest IMAX theatre in the world, with 932 seats, and 932 of us were waiting outside the theatre, up the stairs to the Hollywood and Highland shopping center beside it, and around and around he walkways.  We got in, and there was not an empty seat in the house.  I’ll tell you all about it next week, in part 3 of my TCM Festival coverage. 

In the meantime, here’s Maureen O’Hara talking to Robert Osborne before the screening of HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY.

DON’T MISS THE SANTA CLARITA COWBOY FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND!

Just five more days until the big event, Saturday and Sunday, April 26^th & 27^th at Melody Ranch!   Since there is a film currently in production at the Ranch (everyone’s being pretty mysterious about what film it is), a small part of the Western street will not be available for strolling, but access to other areas has been expanded, and some venues will be in new locales – I know for instance that the OutWest Buckaroo Book Store will be in a large tent that will actually give them more room for author events than they’ve had in the past.  Good news for me, as I’ll be moderating a couple of authors’ panels.  On Saturday from 1:30 to 2, the topic is THE WEST IMAGINED, and I’ll be talking with Western novelists Edward M. Erdelac, author of COYOTE’S TRAIL; Jim Christina, author of THE DARK ANGEL; and C. Courtney Joyner, author of SHOTGUN.

Author Peter Sherayko

And on Sunday, from 1:30 to 2, the topic is THE WEST LIVED, and I’ll be talking to non-fiction writers Jerry Nickle, great-grandson of the Sundance Kid; JR Sanders, author of SOME GAVE ALL; and Peter Sherayko, author of TOMBSTONE – THE GUNS AND GEAR. 

Also on Saturday at 12:30, and Sunday at 2:30, I’ll be chatting with Miles Swarthout, who wrote the screenplay for THE SHOOTIST from his father Glendon Swarthout’s novel.  Miles is also involved with the upcoming movie THE HOMESMAN, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, from a novel by Glendon Swarthout.  You can learn all about the events at the Buckaroo Book Shop by going HERE.  

You can learn all about the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival HERE 

ROB WORD’S ‘WILD BUNCH LUNCH’ AT THE AUTRY A ROUSING SUCCESS!

Those of us attending the third-Wednesday-of-the-month Cowboy Lunch @ The Autry had a wonderful time listening to great Peckinpah stories from Bo Hopkins, L.Q. Jones, stunt ace Gary Combs, and WILD BUNCH costumer-turned Peckinpah producer and co-writer Gordon Dawson – that’s Dawson wearing the cross he made for Strother Martin to wear in THE WILD BUNCH.  I never noticed Jesus had been replaced by a bullet! Much more coming soon to the Round-up!

THAT’S A WRAP!

Hope you have a great week!  With six or seven authors to talk to at the Santa Clarita Cowboy Fest, I’ve got a ton of reading to do between now and next weekend!

Happy Trails,

Henry

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