KEVIN COSTNER ON HOPES FOR ‘HORIZON 1-4’, CRAIG ‘LONGMIRE’ JOHNSON ON HIS NEWEST NOVELLA, 'GUNSMOKE' AUCTION, PLUS AUSSIE WESTERN SERIES ‘TERRITORY’, UPCOMING ‘FRONTIER CRUCIBLE’!

 

KEVIN COSTNER ON ‘HORIZON’

“I love what I do. I feel privileged to be able to do it. It has been a struggle, but it was a struggle for my crew too. Just to give you an example, I shot Dances with Wolves in 106 days. And Horizon, the first one, is arguably as big as that, if not bigger. We shot it in 52 days. No one stopped working. No one was late. [Everyone] was ready.” -- Kevin Costner

 

On Tuesday night, November 12^th, at the Angelika Theatre in New York’s West Village, Horizon, an American Saga, Chapter One, was screened for an audience of mostly members of various film guilds. Afterwards, star, director and co-writer Kevin Costner took to the stage with actress Ella Hunt, and Mara Webster of In Creative Company. Mara interviewed Kevin and Ella about making Horizon, and the following quotes from Kevin Costner are in answer to Mara’s questions.

Ella Hunt, Kevin Costner, Mara Webster

For those who have not yet seen Horizon, Chapter One, the title is the name of a town-to-be which an unscrupulous and thus-far unseen businessman has promoted as heaven-on-Earth to many would-be pioneers. Costner, who doesn’t appear for the first hour, plays Hayes Ellison, a horse trader who inadvertently gets thrust into a feud. Ella Hunt plays Juliette Chesney, a privileged Englishwoman travelling by wagon-train with her artist husband, both of them woefully unprepared for the trip, and clueless as to what’s expected of them. Costner’s and Hunt’s characters do not meet in Chapter One, but doubtless will in Chapter Two.

Mara Webster began by pointing out that Costner had been trying to put together Horizon since 1988, and wondered how having a 35-year gestation period affected the project. (Note: I spoke to Kevin Costner in 2019 for True West – here’s the link: https://truewestmagazine.com/article/kevin-costner/ -- an updated version of my interview is in my book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made and the People Who Made Them -- and we had discussed Horizon, a project that he wanted to make: “I have a Western that I really want to make; I just can’t find the rich guys that want to make it—an epic Western.”)
“Well, I was certainly ready to make it. I wasn't sure I'd find somebody like Ella. And I'm not sure Ella was born when I started thinking about this thing (note: Ella Hunt was born in 1998). It's an unusual story about Ella. It hasn't happened to me very often -- it happened to me once in Dances with Wolves. Robert Pastorelli (note: Candice Bergen’s useless apartment maintenance man from Murphy Brown) came in to read a part. And he came in spats, he had his bowling shirt on, and his gold ‘goomba’ stuff. And the part I had picked out for him -- I just looked at him -- he started reading and I said, ‘Robert, just stop for a second.’ I took his sides out of his hand. There was another (role), this dirty teamster, and I handed him those sides, and he made history with it. He was such an incredible actor. (Note: Pastorelli died in 2004, at age 49.) And when I first met Ella, she was going to read for the daughter (of a pioneer family), and I didn't take the sides out of her hand, but I made a switch right there, that she would play this incredible character, that we would be asking to do so much. She just has this incredible beauty and youngness about her. But there's some incredible maturity about her too.”

Tom Payne and Ella Hunt

“I thought he was joking,” Hunt responded. “And then was incredibly flattered, and daunted, as Juliette is a character who is very tested over the course of these films… I think one of the very special things about Kevin as a director is…the belief that he invests in all of the people around him. I'm so grateful that you looked at me and thought that I could do that. And now, because of Juliette, I've gone on to do things that I wouldn't have allowed myself to. I've just played Gilda Radner (note: in the new film, Saturday Night).”

In answer to Webster’s question about how Costner chooses when to shoot closely, intimately, and when to “see the impact of the landscape,” he replied, “Well, we did go to places that still exist in America. It's if you're willing to get out of chasing a rebate. For me, that was important, to have these landscapes that went on forever. But you know, we're not making a travelogue. And eventually it boils down to what is the story, and it shrinks down. And when someone can dominate the horizon, this giant landscape, you have to find scenes that are so intimate to set against it. And so we created scenes where my actors swallow this horizon. They're so strong that you forget about how far the country goes. You realize the pain and what they're going through. I like to think of the Western as our Shakespeare. This is not a series of ‘yeps’ and ‘nopes’. It was a Victorian age and people did have the ability to express themselves really beautifully. You have Danny Houston giving us a speech, which I equate to James Earl Jones' speech in Field of Dreams, Danny explaining Manifest Destiny. And you get someone like Ella, who shows the most intimate moment of a woman who is just tired of being dirty, and just the feel of water. And when you watch her perform that moment, and look in that mirror, (you) also understand how cold that night was. You know, that scene has as much place for me in a Western as a gunfight. It had to be there.”

Asked how he gave familiar genre elements a deeper context, Costner replied, “Well, I tried to break with Westerns because I don't like a lot of Westerns; most of them aren't very good. And the black-and-whites that we grew up with, they were so simple, they were a mainstay of our televisions, our theater. But they often were too simple for me. The black hat, the white hat, the way people dressed. But the thing that stood out for me, what had been missing almost in every way -- and it took a while for it to dawn on me -- is every western has a town. But they're not like mushrooms: they didn't just come up. There was a terrible struggle that took place. And it took place from sea to shining sea. Every inch of that land was fought for, was contested. Where our great cities exist, (there) were (already) people. They know where the good places were to live. And we did too, and we kind of wiped them out. But that was not ever talked about in any Westerns: the towns always exist. And I started wondering, what would it be like to see the beginning of something? There was nothing there, there was a (new) group of people that had found a level of equilibrium that made peace with the (native) people to such a degree that they were getting along. [As the film begins,] the first image is a surveyor stick that goes into an ant hill. And we disrupted their way of life. And what you'll see when you see all four -- and I hope that you do -- is you'll see the struggle: this town burns and is rebuilt and burns and rebuilt, and finally there's a tipping point in the West. And it was just simply numbers. They (the natives) never stood a chance. But I also don't want to be embarrassed about the ingenuity and the bravery and the spontaneity and the courage that it took for people to cross that Mississippi and go there. It's not a land in Disneyland; it was contested, it was real. The country was founded in the East, but its character was really formed in the West with this constant battle.

Tom Payne, Ella Hunt, Kevin Costner 

“I think we've had enough of heroes having buffoons to knock down. When you face formidable people, it makes for a more interesting movie. When you believe in the behavior -- it's not really possible for one guy to beat up everybody in the bar. Everybody assumes that everybody could ride a horse, or fix a wagon, or make a fire. If you stick with the reality, there can be a lot of drama in the West, and a lot of danger. Something that I gravitated to when I was little, was when I saw children in a movie being able to survive in an adult world; I leaned into the movie more. But when children were stupid in movies, where directors or writing made them stupid, I leaned away. And I think that with all our CGI, with all our great effects that we have to build our movies up, when we don't invest in character, in behavior, those things aren't any good to us. When we see ourselves is when our greatest joy happens in the theater.

“I do like to make these movies, and when I started writing this with Jon (Baird) in 1988, it's safe to say that no one really wanted to make it. And in 2003, the studio wouldn't make it for 5 million more dollars. And I was distressed about that. I went on to make other movies, but I couldn't leave this one behind. And I was so mad that they didn't understand the first one, that I decided to write four more. (The audience laughs.) And everybody goes, oh yeah, that's Kevin! Jon and I, we started writing, and again, I wasn't writing to please anybody, I was trying to please myself because I think that's my best chance at pleasing you.

“I do love horses running fast. I do love the mountains and rivers that never end. And I do love the gunfight if it's orchestrated correctly. But what surprised me was when I looked up or looked down, with Jon Baird, who I am completely indebted to, was that every story had women running right down the middle. So here I had these Big Four Cowboy Movies, and women almost dominate -- and Ella dominates Chapter Two.  I just found that I couldn't tell the story that I was trying to, without making women dominant. It was a surprise to me. I don't know if fate was just moving my hand. I go, ‘Not another woman! Come on! Where's the gun fight?’ But I loved how their struggle fit so perfectly in the West. I'm proudest of the script, that Jon Baird allowed these actors to feast on with myself.”

An audience member asked if all four parts of Horizon are written. “They're all written, so this is not a case of ‘we don't know where it's going.’ We know exactly where it's going. I don't know why four movies is what's in my head, but that's what it is. And so I will push the rock uphill to find the money to do this. So that one day you'll have these four, and I hope this is a Treasure Island on your bookshelf of electronic films. I hope you have it to show your friends, to revisit it and see the details, see the nuances and choices that these actors made because it was really extraordinary acting going on in an American Western. There's a notion that things are easy for me. I guess maybe they are, if I do the things that people want me to do, and it's not that I am a contrary person. I'm not even an avant garde person for crying out loud. I make movies with horses and campfires, but I do it with an edge. It's not always in vogue. But I'm so happy to be able to do it. And I won't rest until I'm done. And I will figure it out. If I can't find that billionaire, I will look to myself like I did on One and Two. But there will be four.”

An audience member asked Costner how he made period films seem so contemporary. “Well, I think that in every generation we have abusive people. We have peeping toms -- we had them on the wagon train. So I can blend the same difficulties that we have in life and bring them right into the frontier. We have the sociopath; we have acts of kindness. There were guns and there was alcohol and a lot of times there weren't very many women. People were angry. And you run into a person that's just killed somebody and there's a bloodlust. (Note: the following refers to a scene where he’s going up a hill to see the prostitute Marigold, played by Abbey Lee, and is stalked and goaded by gunman Jamie Bower playing Caleb Sykes.) Jamie Bower, who walked up that hill with me – that actor's amazing. So we have a gun fight -- I’m not trying to reinvent the Western. But what I was really interested in was the walk up the hill; that this was a bully, and we've all encountered them in school and at work. And this was somebody that was coming out of a blood lust. He had just killed someone. He'd just been humiliated by his brother. And that was just as interesting to me. A studio might say, ‘Just get to the gunfight for crying out loud, Kevin!’ And I'm in love with the walk. I think I'm always going to be in love with the walk.”

Jamie Bower and Kevin Costner

An audience member notes the industry’s lack of interest in passion projects, and asks Costner where his wellspring of determination and hope comes from. “I just believe. I believe in story so much. I believe I have a secret in my pocket, and I just can't wait to share it). The only thing that's disappointing to me is I can't be you, and see this for the very first time like you just saw it: I wanted people to make a movie like this for me. But I can't lose my enthusiasm. No one can break me, break my spirit. I do get down, do wonder how I'm going to go on, but I love my actors. I just love that I found my Yellow Brick Road a long time ago, when I didn't figure to have any future. I got D’s and F’s in high school, where you're supposed to at least be kind of good.

“I found myself. And to be here in front of you, to be able to share what I love with people who share and have a passion that runs so deep, it's so personal, every detail. And I hope that you see them, (the Horizon films) and you revisit them the same way. When I watched Wizard of Oz, I didn't know the horses change color. I should have, because there's the line, ‘A horse of a different color.’ Every time I watch that, I see something new. And that's what I want from my movies. My movies. They have to be more than just an opening weekend. They have to be a lifetime.”

 

CRAIG ‘LONGMIRE’ JOHNSON JOINS ‘RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER’ TO DISCUSS HIS NEWEST NOVELLA, ‘TOOTH AND CLAW’

On the first Thursday of every month, I have the pleasure of being ‘in the limelight,’ joining hosts Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell on their weekly Rendezvous with a Writer podcast, where I present the month’s news in the world of film and TV Westerns, and take part in their interview with a guest writer. On November 7th, that guest was Longmire creator Craig Johnson, who was announcing the publication of his newest novella, Tooth and Claw. This story takes Longmire and Henry Standing Bear back to the Vietnam War years, and their adventures in Alaska among polar bears and bad men. The link below will bring you to the podcast: 

https://www.facebook.com/bobbi.j.bell/videos/8753051584737954

 

AUSSIE WESTERN SERIES ‘TERRITORY’ ON NETFLIX

Robert Taylor, Sam Corlett

Actor Robert Taylor, who starred as the title character on the phenomenally popular Longmire, has two series this year. He plays Jackson Gibbs, a continuing character on NCIS: Origins, and for Netflix, he stars as Colin Lawson, the patriarch of the Lawson family, who are 5^th generation owners of the largest cattle-station in Australia. (Note: what Americans call ranches, Australians call stations.) It’s stated in the first of six episodes that it’s the size of Belgium, which I suspect is roughly the size of Yellowstone. In the opener, the son that Colin has been grooming to take over the family business meets an ugly fate, and the others scramble to take his position. I found the first episode gripping, and will definitely watch more.    

JANET ARNESS DISCUSSES JULIEN’S ‘GUNSMOKE’ AUCTION

On November 15^th, Julien’s held a Western-themed, largely Gunsmoke auction in the Hollywood Museum, former home of Max Factor glamour empire. There were 568 lots up for bids, 230 from the estate of TV’s Matt Dillon, James Arness. I had the pleasure of discussing the auction before the fact with Jim’s widow, Janet Arness, for an article for the INSP blog. Here is the link: https://www.insp.com/blog/what-janet-arness-thinks-of-the-gunsmoke-auction/

Incidentally, I’m writing another INSP follow-up article on how the auction turned out.

 

THOMAS JANE, ARMIE HAMMER TO STAR IN ‘FRONTIER CRUCIBLE’

Thomas Jane from Murder at Yellowstone City

Johnny Depp and an un-masked Lone Ranger, Armie Hammer

Shooting in Monument Valley and Prescott, Arizona beginning this month, Frontier Crucible will be rolling camera under the direction of Travis Mills, who gained attention when he made good on his audacious pledge to make 12 Westerns in 12 months – during Covid, no less! In the post-Civil War drama set in Arizona Territory, Myles Clohessy is an ex-soldier who throws in with outlaws lead by Jane, and a couple, Mary Stickley and Ed Brown, to fight against common enemies. The role for Hammer, the screen’s most recent Lone Ranger, was not specified. Also in the cast is Eddie Spears. Producer Dallas Sonnier pitched the project as Reservoir Dogs meets Bone Tomahawk, and he in fact produced Bone Tomahawk, as well as 2022’s Terror on the Prairie. (Click HERE to read about my visit to the Bone Tomahawk set, and my interview with Dallas Sonnier https://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2015/10/bone-tomahawk-review-interviews-plus.html )

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Please check out the new November/December issue of True West Magazine, featuring my article celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Sam Peckinpah’s classic, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid – I was fortunate enough to interview Peckinpah’s assistant Katy Haber, film editor and historian Paul Seydor, and one of the movie’s last living stars – although he’s the first one killed onscreen – Charles Martin Smith. And the next Round-up will feature my interview with Michael Feifer on the eve of directing his 8^th Western!

Much obliged,

Henry C. Parke

All Original Contents Copyright November 2024 by Parke – All Rights Reserved

 

Get-TV ADDS ‘TALL MAN’, ‘WHISPERING SMITH’, ‘LAREDO’ TO SATURDAY SHOWDOWN! PLUS ‘BONE TOMAHAWK’, ‘WESTERN RELIGION’, OPEN THIS WEEK!

Get-TV ADDS ‘TALL MAN’, ‘WHISPERING SMITH’, ‘LAREDO’ TO SATURDAY SHOWDOWN! 

A TALK WITH get-TV PROGRAMMER JEFF MEIER

Audie Murphy in WHISPERING SMITH

Get-TV, a SONY antenna movie network, or digi-net, has doubled-down on their Saturday Western series offerings.  In September they premiered NICHOLS, HONDO, and A MAN CALLED SHENANDOAH (you can read my coverage HERE.)

On Saturday, October 3^rd, they added three more Western series to their schedule: THE TALL MAN (1960-1962), WHISPERING SMITH (1961) and LAREDO (1965-1967).  While LAREDO played on Encore Westerns a few years ago, the other two have rarely been seen since their brief initial runs.  All are from Universal Studios. 

THE TALL MAN tells stories about Billy the Kid (Clu Gulager) and Pat Garrett (Barry Sullivan) when they were still friends (you can read some of Clu’s memories of the series – and a lot of other memories – HERE .) .   In WHISPERING SMITH, Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier of the Second World War, takes on the role of the railroad detective popularized by Alan Ladd in the 1948 Paramount feature of the same title.  Based on the Frank Spearman novel, four earlier WHISPERING SMITH films was made starting in 1916, with the character variously portrayed by H.B. Warner, J. P. McGowan and George O’Brien.  In the series, Guy Mitchell plays Smith’s right hand, George Romack.  LAREDO, sort of a GUNGA DIN out west, is the story of three Texas Rangers, played by Peter Brown, William Smith, and Neville Brand (also one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War II), plus Robert Wolders in season two (read my interview with star Robert Wolders HERE ), and their long-suffering captain, played by Philip Carey.  

Earlier this week I had the chance to talk with Jeff Meier, get-TV’s Senior Vice President of Programming, about all of the exciting recent additions to the get-TV line-up. 

Audie Murphy and Guy Mitchell in

WHISPERING SMITH

Q: Most of the talk about ‘cord-cutters’, dropping satellite or cable service, is about people who decide to get all of their TV from the internet.  But there’s a whole other kind of cord-cutter, folks who are switching from cable back to antenna TV, and Sony’s Get-TV is a big part of that.  Why do you think it’s happening?

A: Well, the technology in the last few years has enabled the birth of a whole new group of channels, and that technology allows all the local (channels) to have the capacity to air three or four digital channels in addition to their regular feed.  Because there were already many millions of people who were just getting their television through the antenna, it created a market for these channels to develop, and it feeds upon itself.  Once you have another dozen channels available over the air, it makes people feel comfortable about using that as their main way to get entertainment.   

Q: How long have you been on the air?

A: get-TV’s been on the air since February of 2014.  So it’s been a little over a year and a half. 

Q:  I would classify you as a classic movie channel.  Initially, what audience were you aiming for? 

A:  We were looking for a classic movie audience.  We had looked at the landscape of digi-channels that had already launched, and it felt like there was a hole in the market for a classic movie channel.  And we were working at the Sony lot, and it’s something that I felt we could do really well.  We had always thought of the possibility of adding series to the channel, being generally classic across both TV and movies.  Now we’re at the beginning stages of adding some series to the mix.

Q:  Who watches – is it a rural or city audience, older or younger?

A:  Interestingly enough, our demographic information is not too extensive.  We gather a lot of our understanding of our audience by both social media, and by who writes to us.  I would imagine that our demographic is on the older side of the TV demographic.  It’s no surprise that when you’re airing classic TV and movies, the people who are most interested in that are people who experienced some of that content when they were growing up.  I wouldn’t make a guess as to whether we’re more rural or urban.  We’re carried in all of the top twenty-five markets, so we’ve got a lot of coverage in major cities.  By default, the most rural of places don’t get these stations because there’s not a local channel to carry our feed.

Q: Thus far you’ve drawn your content primarily – maybe exclusively – from the Columbia Pictures library, owned by SONY.  And you’ve had a particular focus on Westerns, both As and Bs.  Why?

A:  There’s such a passionate audience for Westerns.  When you look around the dial, whatever channels air westerns, they always get a tremendous audience.  So I knew there was a hunger there.  And I knew we had the potential to explore some Westerns that don’t get seen as often.  Since the very beginning of the channel we’ve been airing the Durango Kid movies, the Tim McCoys.  And those movies are a little bit on the older side, so they’re not the every-day fare of most of the channels that are airing Western content.  It felt like we could offer something new to an audience that was really hungry.  And that’s proven to be the case; we get a lot of great response about all of the Westerns that we air.

Q: How should viewers communicate with you, if they want to get in touch to say they’re enjoying something?

A: If you go to the get-TV website, on the bottom of the home page, there’s a section called ‘contact us.’  You can get in touch that way, if you want to reach us directly.  And on Facebook you can go to the get-TV page, like us there, and join that community – we have a very strong social media community, and we’re always looking to see what people say there.  And you can also engage with other viewers about the channel, and share your opinion.

Q: You’ve introduced an exciting new Saturday Line-up, Saturday Showdown, featuring NICHOLS, HONDO and A MAN CALLED SHENANDOAH.  And now you’re adding three more: LAREDO, THE TALL MAN, and WHISPERING SMITH.  Why did you choose these particular shows?

A:  I had both an overall goal and some specific goals.  I’m really interested in the whole area of how popular culture gets passed down from generation to generation.  It often seems like only a few big hits ever make it through the clutter.  Whether that’s a few big Beatles songs that make it through the clutter of music, or whether it’s things like BONANAZA and GUNSMOKE – they’ve made it through the clutter of Westerns, and they’ll be here forever; and those are great.  But there’s a lot of other really good stuff out there, and nobody’s let it see the light of day.  And I really think that there’s a lot of rabid interest, particularly in the Western content arena, and I thought that (viewers) deserved to have a few more options.

Then with each of the specific shows, there were different things that sold me on them.  In some cases it was star power: you can’t go wrong with James Garner in almost anything he does – he’s just wonderful.  So NICHOLS was important to me for that reason.  Others of the shows, because these are the first series we’re putting on the air after being primarily a movie channel, I wanted to have connection to movies.  HONDO is based off a movie; WHISPERING SMITH is based off a movie.  And WHISPERING SMITH stars Audie Murphy, who has been in a ton of movies, so I liked that connection.

Q: I suspect you’re going to be introducing Audie Murphy to a lot of people, because although he was a very big star in his day, his movies are very rarely shown.

A:  We’ve actually had some experience with Audie Murphy, because at one of the other channels we work on here at Sony, The Sony Movie Channel, we’ve aired a bunch of Audie Murphy movies, and they do really, really well for us, so I already knew he had that potential.  Frankly I hadn’t known he’d done a series, and when I discovered that he had, I crossed my fingers that it would look good, that we could get the materials, that we thought it would be a good hit for the channel.  And we were really happy that we could get it.  I was really interested in LAREDO because there are not that many Westerns series in color from those later years of the Western.  It’s important to me to have a mix of black and white and color on the channel, and this series has a sense of humor, and was well-regarded.  For all of the series we looked through information on-line that fans had written.  And we watched them and we tried to figure out which held up over time, and these all made the cut.  It’s an interesting mix, and it’s one that we expect in the future to be folding new series in on.  Viewers, if they have some particular favorites, they can use that contact information.  We’d love to hear their ideas of what they’d like to see, that they haven’t seen in a long time.

Clu Gulager, center, Barry Sullivan, right,

in THE TALL MAN

Q: What in particular attracted you to THE TALL MAN?

A: What I liked about TALL MAN was it’s Billy the Kid and sheriff Pat Garrett.  And even though it’s a series people have forgotten about, they’re iconic Western characters that people can still tap into now.  It provides an entry point that isn’t obscure, and allows Western fans of today to have a context with which to watch the show.   It’s a different take on that relationship.  And on A MAN CALLED SHENANDOAH, Robert Horton is from WAGON TRAIN, so he’s an established Western star.  This show didn’t fit a lot of my other parameters: it wasn’t based on a movie, it wasn’t in color, it wasn’t with a movie star.  But we watched it, and we just thought it felt like such a quintessential Western story that we couldn’t not try it out.  It also has a lot of great guest stars, and a great creative pedigree, and felt like it would be a fun show to watch.

Q: Does the smaller number of episodes in these series concern you?

LAREDO stars William Smith, Peter Brown,

and Neville Brand

A: No actually.  Because we’re airing our Saturday Showdown once a week, having a smaller number of episodes is fine.  If we were trying to air these episodes Monday through Friday for two years running, then I think they’d burn out pretty quickly.  But in the context of how we’re using them, I think they’ll be just fine.  And we hope to refresh the line-up and mix it up from time to time, too, so I think it’s just the right number of episodes.

Q: With adding these series, with adding THE JUDY GARLAND SHOW and THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW, are you redefining get-TV away from being a ‘movie channel’?

A: I think we are trying to redefine it a little, to be a channel that runs classics, and the classics can be classic movies or TV, but in no way are we going away from the core of being a classic movie channel.  Later this month we’re working with the Bogart Film Festival in Florida.  We’re always trying to figure out some classic movies we could help preserve, or premiere again.  And that remains very important to us.  We just wanted to add the extra elements and see how it goes.

Q: Did you grow up watching westerns?  Did you have favorites as a kid?

A: I’m probably too young for the core era of the Western.  I very specifically remember watching BRET MAVERICK, which was a sequel to MAVERICK, probably in the early ‘80s, with my father, who was always a James Garner fan – I remember that very vividly.  And we also watched a year-long mini-series called CENTENNIAL (1978-79), based off of the James Michener book.  I would say that was my first really big experience with an epic Western, and I thought that was a phenomenal show.  But like I was telling somebody yesterday, I’m from the LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE era of Michael Landon, not the BONANZA era of Michael Landon.

Q:  The kinder, gentler Landon.  What are your favorite western features?

A:  Oh gosh, it’s too hard for me to pick.  The most famous, classic ones, I fall in line with those:  HIGH NOON, SHANE, some of the big John Wayne ones.  Not an atypical general fan kind of point of view.   I have people here on my team who help us program all this, who are more specialists in Westerns than I am.

Q: What was your first job in television?

A:  I was an assistant in the scheduling department at Comedy Central before it was Comedy Central, when it was Comedy Channel in New York. 

Q: Are you a New Yorker?  I’m a Brooklyn boy myself.

A: I actually grew up in southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia.

Q: Anything else I should know?

A:  We’ll have more shows on the way, and more movies on the way.  And I hope people keep on watching, and let us know what they like.

Here’s the Saturday Showdown line-up:

Noon - THE TALL MAN

12:40 p.m. - WHISPERING SMITH

1:20 p.m.  – A MAN CALLED SHENANDOAH

2 & 3:15 p.m. – LAREDO

4:30 p.m. – HONDO

5:45 p.m. – NICHOLS

You’ll notice that the half-hour shows are in 40-minute slots, and the hour shows are in 75 minute slots.  That’s because the episodes are being show with commercials, but uncut.

‘BONE TOMAHAWK’ PLAYS TUES 10/6 AT HOLLYWOOD EGYPTIAN!

As part of the Beyond Fest the much-anticipated new Western with horror overtones (if you consider cannibalism horrible), BONE TOMAHAWK, written and directed by Craig Zahler, and starring Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, Sean Young, Matthew Fox and many other notables, will play at 7:30 pm at Hollywood’s famed Egyptian Theatre.  Director Zahler and star Matthew Fox will attend.  For more information, go HERE.  

On October 23^rd, the limited national release will begin. 

‘WESTERN RELIGION’ CONVERTS HOLLYWOOD OCT. 10-15!

WESTERN RELIGION, James O’Briens’s exuberant Western fable about a gathering of high-rollers for a legendary poker tournament, kicks off its national release with a private red-carpet opening on Friday, Oct. 9^th, followed by six days of screenings at the Arena Cinema in Hollywood, at 1625 North Las Palmas Ave., 90028.  It will also play dates in Austin, Iowa City and New York City.  Go HERE to buy tickets.   .  Go HERE  to read my review, and interview with James O’Brien.  Go HERE here to read about my on-set adventures: 

TED TURNER BUYS ‘DANCES WITH WOLVES’ RANCH!

Thanks to author and ‘Dances With Wolves’ soldier Bill Markley for passing this on to me!  Recently I wrote that the historic TRIPLE U RANCH, location for much of ‘Wolves’ was up for sale.  Good news: it has been bought by the man who created Turner Classic Movies, Ted Turner.  Details HERE.  

THAT’S A WRAP!

Angie Dickinson & John Wayne in RIO BRAVO

I’ll be at the openings for BONE TOMAHAWK and WESTERN RELIGION this week, and report back.  And hopefully I’ll have part two of my SILVER SPURS coverage in the next Round-up.  And speaking of the Spurs, Wednesday was the 84^th birthday of Angie Dickinson.  At the Spurs I had the chance to interview the talented and beautiful actress about her work on GUNSMOKE, RIO BRAVO and her other Westerns, and she could not have been more charming and funny.

And Monday was the 81^st birthday of Brigitte Bardot, a fine actress and eye-popping delight in VIVA MARIA, SHALAKO and FRENCHIE KING, and a lifelong advocate for the protection of animals!

And Friday would have been the birthday of the great singing cowboy, actor, filmmaker, sports lover, visionary Gene Autry!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright October 2015 by Parke – All Rights Reserved

UPDATE! NEW ‘HELL ON WHEELS’, ‘GUNSLINGERS’ REVIEWS, PLUS FIRST LOOK 'ARDOR'; ‘WESTWORLD’, ‘HATEFUL 8’ UPDATES!

UPDATED 7-14-2015 -- SEE 'ARDOR' STORY!

HELL ON WHEELS Season Five – A TV Review

Looks like a cold day in Hell!

On Saturday, July 18^th, AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS returns for its fifth, and sadly final, season.  There will be seven episodes this summer, and then the final seven will air sometime in 2016.  The first episode of the new season, CHINATOWN, written by Jami O’Brien and directed by David Straiton, welcomes back Cullen Bohannan (Anson Mount), who has switched his allegiance from the Union Pacific Railroad to the Central Pacific, in the race to complete the Transcontinental Railroad.  The episode begins with a dream, and then takes off with a bang – literally – when Cullen, leading a crew blasting their way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, gets more of a charge than he bargained for.

When the series first began, Cullen’s motivation was revenge for the killing of his wife and child.  He has a new wife and child now, and what drives him is the need to find them.  He has a new obstacle to his work, in that much of the crew is Chinese, and communication is difficult.  Moreover, while he’d had no problems working with his largely Irish and freed slave crews, they had leaders – Psalms, Elam Ferguson – who, while sometimes adversarial, were often helpful, and looked out for their people.  Cullen now faces a sinister new menace in the suave Chang (Byron Mann), the Chinese-American jobber who provides the Chinese labor for the railroad, and is in a struggle for power with Cullen. 

While season four had a high mortality rate among favorite characters, Cullen’s previous antagonists are back, from Southern Pacific Railroad chief Doc Durant (Colm Meany) to the Scandinavian you love to hate, Swede (Christopher Heyerdahl).  If the opener seems a bit choppy, it’s because so many story-lines need to be re-started, and new ones introduced.  With CHINATOWN (“Forget it, Jake”), HELL ON WHEELS season five is off to a promising and exciting start.  And for anyone who doesn’t remember just where last season ended, on Saturday AMC will be showing all of season four as a lead-in to HELL ON WHEELS season five.        

GUNSLINGERS Season Two – A TV Review

The docudrama series GUNSLINGERS returns to AHC – The American Heroes Channel – on Sunday, July 19^th, for a second season outlining the lives of famous badmen and good.  As with most post-Ken Burns documentaries, the format is predictable: a mix of narration, historic photos, expert commentary, and reenactments.  While this setup has becoming overly familiar, GUNSLINGERS added two variations which make it considerably more enjoyable and involving than most of the genre.  First, the leads in the cast of the reenactments are actors as well as reenactors.   In addition to knowing how to ride and shoot convincingly, overall they give credible movie-quality performances, often working with a higher level of script, direction, and production values. 

Second, each story is narrated by the central character.  Although the telling does not include an awareness that they are telling the story of their own demise, there is an amusingly arrogant, “Here’s the nonsense they said about me, and here’s the truth,” attitude to the proceedings.  It’s hard to know how factual and how fanciful the self-awareness is.  Some legends, like Tom Horn and Bat Masterson, wrote extensively (and often self-servingly) about their lives, but most did not.  But even if what went on in the heads of these men is largely guesswork, it’s based on fairly solid history, as opposed to the recent Bill O’Reilly fiasco, LEGENDS AND LIES, which interviewed some of the same experts, but then used discredited history and made embarrassing errors. 

The second season opens with BUTCH CASSIDY – THE PERFECT CRIMINAL, revealing a man much more akin to the Paul Newman/BUTCH CASSIDAY AND THE SUNDANCE KID version than the William Holden/WILD BUNCH take.  The telling is entertaining, the action is extensive, and the cinematic approach underscores both the similarities and differences between the movie version and the admittedly cloudy historical record.  Ample time is spent on the different theories of Butch’s demise – whether he and Sundance died in South America or made it back home – and family interviews and scientific details give it a satisfying legitimacy. 

The other five episodes of the season will be SETH BULLOCK – SHERIFF OF DEADWOOD (Timothy Olyphant’s character from the DEADWOOD series), BAT MASTERSON – DEFENDER OF DODGE, BASS REEVES – THE REAL LONE RANGER, BILL DOOLIN & THE OKLAHOMBRES, and DEACON JIM MILLIER – THE PIOUS ASSASSIN.  DEADWOOD fans will want to catch THE SETH BULLOCK episode in particular, as Robin Weigert, who played Calamity Jane in the series, and DEADWOOD creator David Milch are among the commentators.    

If you’d like a preview of GUNSLINGERS, three episodes from season one, Tom Horn, Wild Bill Hickok, and Billy the Kid, will be shown earlier in the day.

EXCLUSIVE TO THE ROUND-UP!  FIRST LOOK AT ‘ARDOR’: ARGENTINEAN WESTERN OPENS IN THEATRES & VOD FRIDAY JULY 17^TH!

Pablo Fendrik wrote and directed this tale of mercenaries who kill farmers and claim their land, until a mysterious man emerges from the Rainforest to save the kidnapped daughter of a farmer! The film stars Alice Braga (ELYSIUM) as the daughter, and Gael Garcia Bernal (Che Guevara in THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES) as the avenger.  Read my review in next week’s Round-up! 

WEDNESDAY’S ‘WORD ON WESTERNS’ HONORS WORTHY WOMEN OF THE WEST! 

At noon on Wednesday, July 15^th, The Autry’s Crossroads West Café is the place to be for Rob Word’s A Word on Westerns, where a delicious lunch is followed by an engaging discussion of a Western movie topic led by filmmaker and historian Rob Word, with guests who know the industry first-hand.  I’m not going to post a tentative guest list until I get the okay from Rob – already some expected guests had to drop out because of schedule conflicts or health concerns.  But Rob always gets an excellent panel built around an interesting topic, in this case, Women of the West.  Incidentally, the program is free, but the lunch is not, unless you can trick someone into picking up your tab.  By the way, as these events have gotten more and more popular, attendees have begun to arrive earlier and earlier to assure having a seat.  As a result, the rumor is that the doors will close at noon – so get there early!    

As a teaser, here is a great woman of the West, Jacqueline Scott, at a previous Word on Westerns luncheon, talking about working with Henry Fonda and James Stewart. 

JOHN BERGSTROM ON ‘WRITER’S BLOCK’ THURSDAY

Hosts Jim Christina and Bobbi Bell will be joined by Western singer/songwriter John Bergstrom Thursday night at 8.  A native Angelino, John, whose 4^th album is entitled BUTTERFIELD STAGE, performs a mix of traditional and original songs, with such intriguing titles as Throw Down The Box, Latchkey Cowboy, Red Rocks of Sedona, and St. Francis Dam, the last referring to the dam that collapsed and killed about 500 (again I say, “Forget it Jake.  It’s Chinatown!).  You can learn more about John (to help think up call-in questions) HERE.   You can listen to the show live (at ‘Listen Live 2’) HERE,  And listen to this or any previous programs on podcast HERE. 

REDBIRD’S CHILDREN OF MANY COLORS INTERTRIBAL POWWOW JULY 17-19!

Next weekend, Moorpark College will play host to an annual intertribal powwow that brings together many tribes, including native people from Alaska, Hawaii, the First Nations People of Canada, and Central and South America. All are welcome to the powwow, which is part  ceremony and part social, and is both a meeting place and a market place.  Most importantly, it’s a place where youngsters can learn from the wisdom and experience of their elders.  Among the many activities offered are singing, dancing, honoring ceremonies, arts, crafts and food booths, other nonprofit associations, tipis, story tellers, flint knapping, traditional craft demonstrations, and many opportunities throughout the weekend for people to experience the intertribal circle.

Friday night features an open flute contest, and Saturday is the Powwow Princess Contest.  It’s an outdoor, family friendly event, and a $2 per vehicle contribution is suggested.  You can learn much more HERE.  Moorpark College is at 7075 Campus Road, Moorpark, CA 93021, in Ventura County.    

ENNIO MORRICONE TO SCORE TARANTINO’S ‘HATEFUL 8’!

According to DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD, HATEFUL 8 director Quentin Tarantino revealed at COMICON today that Ennio Morricone, five-time Oscar-nominated composer, and winner of an Honorary Career Oscar, will score the new Western, his first original Western score in four decades!  Follow this link to a DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD interview at Comicon with Tarantino HERE.  : 

FIRST PEEK AT ‘WESTWORLD’!

The subject of the Comicon panel was the series PERSON OF INTEREST, but HBO producer surprised the assembled with a trailer from the upcoming miniseries WESTWORLD, based on the Michael Crichton/Saul David 1973 film about vacationers who indulge their fantasies with human-like robots in ‘safe’ environments.  That man in the black hat is Ed Harris, taking on the role Yul Brynner played, of a robot who develops a mind of his own.  WESTWORLD should start airing sometime in 2016. 

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

The August TRUE WEST should be on the newsstands soon.  My column this month, A Quarter-Century Tribute, celebrates the 25^th anniversary of DANCES WITH WOLVES!  I also review the movie YELLOW ROCK.  

Have a great week, and I’ll see you next weekend!

Happy Trails,

Henry,

All Original Contents Copyright July 2015 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved