'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

‘REBEL’ CREATOR ANDREW J. FENADY

Andrew J. Fenady is a writer and producer who will not stop working.  On Saturday night, when I offered him a draft of this article for his comments, he asked me to FAX it to his office, as he’ll be going in to work at 9:00 a.m. – on Sunday!  When I asked him what he’d been up to, he said he’d just sent 73,000 words of his new western novel, DESTINY MADE THEM BROTHERS, to his publisher, Kensington.  He told me it’s about three great men who cross paths: U.S. Grant, George Armstrong Custer, and Johnny Yuma – the character he created for Nick Adams 53 years ago for THE REBEL.

A.J. Fenady, Nick Adams, Irvin Kershner

A. J. Fenady has been creating exciting and thought-provoking entertainment for the small screen, big screen, stage and page since he started as a self-described ‘stooge’ on the documentary series CONFIDENTIAL FILE in 1953.  He went on to create, write and produce THE REBEL, to rescue and revamp BRANDED, to adapt John Wayne’s movie HONDO into a TV series, and to write and produce the Duke in CHISUM.  And the movies he’s made for theatres and TV include RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE, BLACK NOON, THE MAN WITH BOGART’S FACE, THE HANGED MAN, TERROR IN THE WAX MUSEUM, and many more.  I was grateful that he took some time off to talk to me about his career for the Round-up.

Andrew:  I just fired up my favorite cigar, Romeo Y Julietta Cedro #1, so fire away.

Henry: That’s Cuban, isn’t it?

A: No, no.  It’s Cuban seed, but Dominican Republic.  I’ll tell you, those Cubans are so damned strong.  When we were shooting up in Canada, the prop me gave me a box of Cuban cigars.  After I smoked a few of those damned lung-cloggers I said, “Go back to the station and get some American cigars: these things are killing me!”

H: What were you shooting in Canada?

A: We shot a lot of things there.  The first thing was a two-hour TV movie with Bob Hope and Don Ameche, A MASTERPIECE OF MURDER.  It’s the only TV movie that Bob Hope ever did, and it did very, very well, and Don Ameche was just a wonderful man to work with.  And after that we did YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.  We also did THE SEA WOLF with Charles Bronson up there.

H: Did you always love westerns?

A: Yes.  When I was a young fellow I had an old broom, and I sawed the end off, and I would ride around the neighborhood.  And that stick was Tony, and I was Tom Mix.  So it goes back to that.  And in those days there were two tiers of Western movies, of western stars.  The Saturday matinees and the serials – there were people like Bob Steele and Buck Jones and Hoot Gibson and Ken Maynard.  And then on Sunday – well, at first John Wayne was in the lower tier, but then he graduated with STAGECOACH.  And then there were people like Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea and the Duke.  So we had the 60 minute cheapies, and we also had things like THE PLAINSMAN, and UNION PACIFIC to go to on Sundays.  There was a movie theatre in Toledo called THE REX, and the admission price was a nickel.  And I went there one day and put down my nickel, and she said, “Ten cents.”  And I said, “What?!”  I was shocked, shocked, as Claude Rains would say.  Twice as much money to see the same damned picture. 

H: You’ve had a very extensive career as both a writer and a producer.  Which do you think of yourself as, primarily?

A: You know, I am what they call a hyphenate.  A hyphenate wears two hats.  The old saying is two heads are better than one, but that’s only true when one head knows what the hell the other one is doing.  But the billing is writer-producer because of the saying, first comes the word.  Well, that’s really not true either.  First comes the idea.  Words come from ideas, not ideas from words, so you’ve got to have some kind of a concept or some kind of a character.  And for many years I had the advantage of being the writer, which means you might as well be living up in a cave, cloistered, and putting down your thoughts.  Then, when you become a producer you pick up the phone and say, “Let’s get together.”  And forty-seven guys come in and say, “What, chief?  What what what what?”  When I felt kind of cramped (as a writer), then I got to be the producer and we were in the wide open spaces.  

H: You’ve done movies and TV shows in a wide range of genres, but more westerns and crime stories than anything else.  Why do you think you focused there?

A: I’ll tell you.  I really started out in this business with Paul Coates’ CONFIDENTIAL FILE.  I started out sort of as a stooge, then did some parts in the documentaries.  Then I started giving them some ideas, and making outlines of what we were going to shoot.  A lot of it dealt with crime, with dope, counterfeiting, and used car rackets – I mean, we exposed every racket in the world except tennis racquets.  So crime was sort of my beginning and my background in documentaries.  And the first feature that we did, STAKEOUT ON DOPE STREET (1958) was about three kids who find a quarter of a million dollars worth of heroin, and they don’t even know what it is.  So the mob is after them, the cops are after them, and other kids are after them.  But the switch to Westerns was because as a kid I was interested in Westerns – who the Hell wasn’t?  We all had those six shooters and caps, and Westerns were the rage on television. 

H: How did you get together with Nick Adams?

A: I got the rights to THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK, and we had it all set up.  Niven Bush and I were going to co-write the screenplay, Irvin Kershner was going to direct it – this was after we’d done some pretty good things.  And Paul Newman said he wanted to play it.  Well, I get a letter from Nick Adams saying, ‘Look Mr. Fenady.  I know you’ve got Paul Newman, but if anything should happen to him, I should play Eddie Slovik.  Eddie Slovik was Polish – I’m Polish.  Eddie Slovik was from Detroit – I’m from Detroit.’  The Polish part was true, the Detroit part wasn’t, but it didn’t matter.  He said, ‘Can I buy you lunch? I’d like to meet you.’  I said okay, fine.  We had lunch, and I paid for it.  But then he kept pestering me.  He’d come over and say, ‘Listen, do me a series – I want to do a series.’  I said, ‘Well Nick, what do you want to do?’  He said, ‘I do a great Jimmy Cagney.  Something like a JOHNNY COME LATELY.’  I said no.  He said, ‘How about something like Cary Grant on GUNGA DIN?’  No, no no.  Well, eight of the top ten shows on television were westerns, at the time.  GUNSMOKE and HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL and all of those.  I said to him and Kershner, ‘Boys, if we’re gonna do a television series, we’re gonna do a Western.’  So I sat down and wrote the damned thing.  We took it to Dick Powell, who was a friend of mine; we were going to do a feature once.  And he’d said, if you ever want to do television, let me have a look at it first.  He looked at the script for THE REBEL and said, ‘We’ll do this on ZANE GREY THEATRE next year as a pilot, like we did WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE,’ and a couple of the other things that he sold.  Great!  Now this goes back to how we got involved with Goodson Todman Productions.  While I was preparing a feature at Paramount, Kershner did a PHILIP MARLOWE (episode) – that was the first project they had that wasn’t a quiz show.  They only did thirteen episodes.  We were pretty hot – our names were in the paper all the time.  And a fellow that worked there, a vice president, Harris Katleman, who is still around, said, ‘Do you and your partner have any westerns?  We’d like to do a Western.’  And Kershner said, ‘Well, we do, but we’re going to do it with Dick Powell.’  (Katleman) called me.  I said THE REBEL’s already promised to Dick Powell, but take a look at it, and if you like it, I’ll write another one for you.  So he read it, called me back and said, ‘How much would it cost to shoot this picture?’  I didn’t know how much.  I grabbed a figure and said, fifty thousand dollars.  He called me back and said Mark and Bill will put up fifty thousand up front: fifty-fifty.  We’re partners if you want to do THE REBEL, and we’ll do it now.  I said, we can’t.  He said, I don’t think Dick Powell would stand in your way.  Why don’t you go see him?  Dick Powell said, God bless you, go ahead and do it.  Who the Hell knows what’s going to happen between now and next year.  Give ‘em Hell.  So that’s how the association with Goodson Todman came about.   We shot the damned thing in four days, and the irony is that at ABC there was only one half-hour left.  And it was between a Four Star pilot (Dick Powell’s company) that they did with Michael Ansara, and THE REBEL, and THE REBEL beat out the other pilot.  And the first one to call was Dick Powell, and he said, hey, we’ve got a lot of pilots.  You only had one.  I’m glad that it turned out this way.  And after this if you want to see me any time the door’s wide open. 

H: Now Irvin Kershner is quite a director.  All of the serious STAR WARS people always say that THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is the great Star Wars movie.  What was he like as a guy?    

A: Well, Kershner and I were like brothers – we lived together for years when we were doing CONFIDENTIAL FILE.  We were joined at the hip and in other places. (laughs)  So we truly got along.  Now Kershner always had kind of a hesitation at the beginning of each day.  All he needed was a, ‘Come on Kershner!’  A kick in the ass, really.  And once he got going it was in a fury.  He was terrific.  But when you ask, what kind of a director was he?  Well, he was a silent picture director.  Because CONFIDENTIAL FILE was silent.  We did 150 episodes, and we only had dialogue in about five of them.  So it was a silent picture technique.  The story was told in pictures, but when someone spoke, it meant something.  That’s the way that we worked. 

H: Very interesting.  I’ve never been able to find any CONFIDENTIAL FILE episodes. 

A: Well, they’re around.  We did one on capitol punishment.  He and I and a fellow named Gene Petersen – that was the entire staff – we went up to San Quentin, and I’m the only one who sat in one of those two chairs in the gas chamber, got strapped in, and got up and walked out.  I played the part and wrote the narration and produced the damned thing.  You can’t find that kind of experience today.  You can’t buy it.  One day we do that and the next week we do the John Tracy Clinic, or we do blind children, and then we do homosexuals; so in 150 episodes we did every kind of picture that was imaginable. 

H: Getting back to Nick Adams, did he really co-create the REBEL?

A: Oh, that’s another story.   He read the thing and he said, ‘Let’s say that we co-created this.’  And I didn’t care. Hell, I figured I was going to go on and do a lot of other things.  If this helps the kid out, that’s okay.  If you look at him, he wasn’t a leading man.  But put him in that damned costume and he’s suddenly a leading man; and he was a talented fellow, and he was the most cooperative kind of a star you’d ever want.  Just a prime example is, we’d shoot a day out on location, out in Thousand Oaks, or Vasquez Rocks, and Nick bought a house out there in the Valley.  We’d have a stretch-out, be on the way over there, and he would (meet us) in a gas station, already be in his outfit, be standing there waiting for us, and this is sometimes in the bitter cold of December, January.  We’d slow down the stretch-out, he’d hop in and – zoom -- out we’d go, do the day’s work, and on the way back we’d dump him off at the same place.  There weren’t many guys like that around.  There weren’t then, and there aren’t now.  Another thing about Nick was, if we were running behind, I’d save his close-ups and not shoot ‘em, and say, ‘Nick, we’ll do this later.’  And sometime later on, two or three episodes after that, when we were ahead, I’d say okay Nick, we’re going to do all your close-ups from all the shows.  He’d say, ‘Okay, who are you?’  I’d read the lines offstage.  ‘I’m Agnes Moorehead.’  He’d take a look at the script – ‘I remember that one.  Let’s go.’  And we would shoot the close-ups for that one.  Then we’d shoot the close-ups for Carradine, or whoever the Hell else that we weren’t able to get.  That’s the kind of a guy he was, too. 

H: It’s so sad, he died so young.  Do you think he would have gone on to be a big leading man?

A: Well, I don’t know about the leading man part.  But I think that he was the kind of a guy that, as he grew older, he would settle into more character parts, and be very comfortable doing that.  So I think he had a future.  No doubt about it in my mind. 

H: The character of Johnny Yuma is a Confederate veteran with ambitions to be a writer, which is not the goal of your standard western hero.  How much of Johnny Yuma was Andrew Fenady?

A: I didn’t tell this to Nick until the second season.  I said, ‘Nick, you know what we’re doing, don’t you?’  “Yeah, yeah – we’re doing THE REBEL.’  I said, ‘Nick, we’re doing Jack London.  We’re doing a story of a young man who had a limited education, who had fought a war, only not with guns and with bullets, but against poverty.  He wanted to be a writer, and he realized that you couldn’t write it unless you lived it.  So he did everything he wrote about.  He was a sailor, he was a miner, he was a farmer, he was a fighter, and this was my inspiration for THE REBEL; it was Jack London.’  And how much of that is Fenady?  Well, I don’t know, maybe 90% is Jack London, or maybe fifty fifty, half Jack London and half Fenady.

H: Now you couldn’t write them all yourself.  Who were the best writers you were working with? 

Nick Adams with Strother Martin 

A: The best writers I ever worked with – are you ready? – were Emily Bronte, Jack London, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett.  I once said to my son, who is a writer, ‘My boy, if you’re ever going to get a collaborator, get a dead one.  They’re the best kind.  They don’t give you any damned trouble at all.’  It’s true that a lot of the stuff that I did is based on classics.  RIDERS TO MOON ROCK, that’s a western version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS.  THERE CAME A STRANGER is really a western version of DOUBLE INDEMNITY.  There are only so many plots – some people say there are nine plots, other people say there are seven, some say there’s only one plot.  Somebody loses something.  That’s the plot.  Or vice versa – somebody finds something, like John Steinbeck’s PEARL.  So never mind the plot, give me a character; give me somebody that people are interested in.  What about this guy?  Here’s a guy who has his face changed to look like Humphrey Bogart.  That’s interesting – what’s he gonna do?  What’s on his mind?  You’ve got to have somebody that people are interested in.  Bill Goldman (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID), who’s a damned good writer, just kept saying ‘Structure, structure.’  Well, he’s wrong: it’s the character and conflict that makes for an interesting story.  And I always had characters that were interesting, conflict, something that was almost impossible to do.  Something that the odds were against you. 

H: THE REBEL was your first series as a creator and producer.  And you made 79 half hours in two seasons, which would be four or five seasons now.  The pace must have been grueling.  How did you get it all done?

A: Well, I’ll tell you how: because I was young, ambitious and ignorant.  (laughs) That was the whole thing.  The first 26 years that Mary Frances and I were married I never took a day off including Saturdays and Sundays, until we did THE MAN WITH BOGART’S FACE, and they sent us to Cannes.  And I said, ‘Mary Frances, we’ve been doing this all wrong!’  Listen, in those days it was easier.  You could talk to somebody who had some authority.  You know, these days it’s all corporate.  No one person can take the credit or will take the blame.  When we did THE YOUNG CAPTIVES, I wrote a script, we went over to see D. A. Doran at Paramount, and he could greenlight any picture up to $250,000.  Well he liked the script, and he said, ‘Boys, how much can you make this for?’  I said, ‘D.A., we’re going to make this one for $215,000.’  He said, ‘Shoot it!’  Well, you can’t get that kind of a go-ahead today. 

H: Where was THE REBEL shot? 

A: We shot it in three days.  We were in profit right from the first day.  We got $40,000 for each episode the first year.  And I made ‘em for 38, 39 thousand dollars.  And every once in a while I would do what I called a DESPERATE HOURS or a PETRIFIED FOREST, an episode that only took place in one place.  Some of them went down to $29,000.  But what we would do is we would shoot one day on location.  Vasquez Rocks, and a lot in Thousand Oaks.  And the second day we would shoot on the lot; the (western) street at Paramount.  The third day we would do the interiors, whether it was someone’s house, or a shack, or a hotel or a jail.  A sheriff’s office.  So that was really the formula: first day out, second day on the street, and the third day interiors. 

H: I know you used some other western towns, because I’ve seen still of you shooting in Corriganville.

A: Oh, well that was where the pilot was shot.  Wonderful place.  And also we shot out at Fort Apache that (John) Ford built.  We shot the third episode I wrote out there; it was called YELLOW HAIR. 

H: In THE REBEL and later in BRANDED you attracted a remarkably high level of actors, who didn’t usually do half-hour episodics.  John Carradine, John Ireland, Joan Leslie.

A: Well, what my plan was, I didn’t want to pay people a lot of money.  But on the third episode, I rewrote this thing; it was a strong woman’s part.  And I sent it over to Agnes Moorehead.  Now I knew her slightly.  And everybody said, ‘Jesus Christ, she wants more money than we really should pay anybody.  Andy, why are you paying her so much money?’  I said, ‘I’ll tell you why.  Because if Agnes Moorehead does a REBEL, I can’t think of many actors who would turn it down.’  I could always say, ‘Agnes Moorhead did it, fellows.  Now here’s how much money we’ve got.  You want to do it?’  And I would say 99% of the time the actor wanted to do it.  Of course the scripts were good, too. 

Agnes Moorhead

H:  They sure were.  And the one with Aggie was particularly good. 

A: Yeah, Bob Steele was in that, too. 

H: Who were your favorite actors that you worked with in guest roles?

A: On THE REBEL?  Well, John Carradine of course.  We got to be very good friends.  He was in the pilot.  I’ll tell you about that.  Stallmaster-Lister were so-called doing the casting, and when I wrote the pilot, I said, ‘Look, I wrote this part for John Carradine,’ though I’d never worked with him.  They said, ‘Ahh, you don’t want him.  We’ve had some bad experiences with him, and he’s done those horror movies, and blah blah blah.’  So finally they convince me; J. Pat O’Malley was going to play that part.  He’s good, but he’s not John Carradine.  Well, the good Lord or an angel must have been looking over my shoulder, because I get a call from O’Malley, and he says, ‘I know I’ve got a contract, and I’ll honor it, but I’ve got a chance to do a feature.  Could you excuse me from this?’  And I said, ‘You bet.’  I called Stallmaster-Lister and said, ‘Get me John Carradine, and I don’t want to hear any buts.  This was meant to be.’  So he did that, and after that we did a dozen things together.  And a real pro, always prepared, just a gentleman.  You know I went to his funeral, and Harry Townes, the actor -- he was in the pilot for THE YANK, and I used him in BRANDED and several other things.  And I go to the funeral, it’s an Episcopal Church in Hollywood, and who is the priest but Harry Townes.  And he performed the ceremony.

RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE

H: I have the feeling that Michael Rennie must have been a favorite, because it’s so unusual to see him in any Westerns but yours. 

A: That’s right.  We got Michael Rennie to do that (BRANDED), and we became not real friends, but we had respect for each other.  And then, when RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE came along, I thought Michael Rennie, and he did the part and was very, very good.  Another pro. 

H: Were there any actors that you wanted to work with that you didn’t get?

Chuck Connors in RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE

A: Not there.  But I’ve never worked with James Garner, and I would have loved to do something with him.  And Clint Eastwood and Clint Walker.  As a matter of fact, I may as well tell you this now; when I got RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE and wrote the script, I wrote it for Clint Walker.  Because (the character) was supposed to be a big, strong fellow.  And I like Clint; we were pals.  Never worked together.  And I took it to Joe Levine, the sonuvabitch.  And he said, ‘Great, we’ll do it.  You’ve got a deal.’  Then he calls me up and says, ‘I don’t want to do it with Clint Walker.  You might as well do it with King Kong.’  So that fell apart.  But in the meanwhile, I did BRANDED, and Chuck Connors, who is a terrific actor, is also a thief.  One day I had a script for RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE – it was called NIGHT OF THE TIGER then – on my desk, and it was missing.  And I said to my secretary, ‘Erika, did you take that script?’  ‘I didn’t take it.’  Well in walks Chuck Connors a couple of hours later.  He slams the script on the desk and said, ‘Goddamnit, I’ve got to do this picture!’             

COMING SOON – PART TWO, featuring A.J. Fenady’s memories of BRANDED, HONDO, and John Wayne!

TOMBSTONE CAST REUNION IN DALLAS, MAY 4-6

It’s about the last place you’d expect to have a TOMBSTONE reunion, but when you think about it, it makes sense.  Dallas' TEXAS FRIGHTMARE WEEKEND, to be held at the Hyatt Regency at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, is a gathering of horror movie stars and their fans, but there is a lot of crossover from genre to genre, and Signing Convention Agent Scott Ray had three clients attending who were, in addition to being in horror flicks, all TOMBSTONE cast-members.  Dana Wheeler-Nicholson plays Wyatt’s opium-addicted wife Mattie Earp; Joanna Pacula is Doc Holliday’s paramour Kate; and the great Buck Taylor plays Turkey Creek Jack Johnson – Buck has never done an autograph show before, so getting him is something of a coup.  In addition, also attending will be Michael Rooker, who plays Sherman McMasters, and Michael Biehn – unforgettable as Johnny Ringo.  Although the details aren’t set yet, there’s sure to be autographs, photo opportunities, and a panel discussion. 

Dana Wheeler-Nicholson

Joanna Pacula

Scott Ray tells me that he hoped to get in a few other TOMBSTONE names, but the event managers were very strict, and only approved those with legit horror bona fides.   I’m hoping it’s a big success – if it is, Scott is already talking about getting more TOMBSTONERS together for a California show. 

Buck Taylor

Michael Rooker

Among the non-TOMBSTONE attendees who will be of interest to Western fans are Ernest Borgnine, Kim Darby, Michael Madsen, Piper Laurie (okay, maybe she hasn’t done a Western, but she’s a great actress) and author Michael Druxman.  For more info, go HERE. 

Michael Biehn

‘GOOD FOR NOTHING’ LOOKS MIGHTY GOOD!

A tip of the Stetson to Leonard Maltin for recommending, on his REELZ show, this New Zealand Western that’s just opened on the East Coast.  Starring newcomers Cohen Holloway and Inge Rademeyer, the Kiwi Western is directed by first-timer Mike Wallis, and the trailer looks great. Strangely, there is no writer credited either on the official website, or the IMDB listing.

I’ll be getting more details about when the rest of us can see GOOD FOR NOTHING, but in the meantime, check out the trailer.

LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES WRAPS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN VS. ZOMBIES has wrapped in Savannah, Georgia, and the folks at Asylum are hard at work preparing it for its May 29^th direct-to-video release, not quite a month before the release-date for the much larger-budgeted ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER.  Written and directed by Richard Schenkman, who first made a splash with THE POMPATUS OF LOVE, the picture stars Bill Oberst Jr., a popular movie villain who will be portraying the Great Emancipator. 

The Asylum takes pride in slick-looking productions, and the glimpses in the teaser-trailer look good.  I’m including the trailer, but I warn you that it is a zombie movie, after all, and pretty bloody.

That's all for right now! 

Happy trails,

Henry

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