‘ELKHORN’ SEASON 2 RED CARPET –
TR’S TRIUMPHANT HOMECOMING!
On Saturday, September 27th,
at 6:30 p.m., the entire population –and then some -- of Medora, North Dakota
turned out to welcome favorite son Theodore Roosevelt back to the Badlands, the
frontier outpost that played such a part in developing the man who would become
our 26th President. In Roosevelt’s own words, “I would never have
been President but for my experiences in North Dakota.”
Elkhorn, the INSP series, begins in 1884,
the time TR spent in the Badlands at his two ranches, the Elkhorn and the
Maltese Cross, so it seems fitting that the series should hold its second
season premiere in Medora. I’d had the pleasure of visiting the set for some of
the filming of season one – you can read my interview with series star Mason
Beals HERE -- and I was delighted to be invited to cover the events in Medora for True
West Magazine.
Just as surely as Teddy is the
protagonist of the tale, French cattle baron the Marquis de Morès and his bride
Medora, are the antagonists. I asked Ashton Solecki, who plays Medora, how it
feels to attend a red carpet in a town that’s named after her. “Wow! To say
it's surreal is an understatement. To be named Medora in the city of Medora,
whose children -- many children here are also named Medora! I've met many fans of
the show. It's an honor. Happy to be here!”
I asked Ashton what was her favorite thing she’d done during her visit. “Definitely visiting the Chateau,” the actual, still-standing mansion where Medora and the Marquis lived. “Our guides were so kind, so gracious, so knowledgeable. Obviously, I was already a super-fan of Medora, being that I play her, but I got to learn so much more about Medora. For example, I found out that on one bear hunt alone, Medora shot three bears, and she faced down a bear that was charging right at her calmly, coolly, collectedly. The coolest thing was being in their house with her things everywhere, and feeling their love -- it's next level. Honestly, meeting all the locals here, that's been really great because it's one thing to play a role on tv, but to understand how important this person is to the locals and to the history of the area, that was really transformational.” Then, looking into the crowd, she exclaimed, “Oh, my grandma's over there! She's so cute!”
I asked Mason Beals, who plays TR,
if this was his first time on a red carpet for his own show. “100%, yes. It's
incredible. This is so much fun. Seeing everyone so excited, it just fills my
heart. We've been doing this show for a few years now, and to see real love and
support in person is just, it makes every hour of work worth it, you know?”
When I asked him what was the most
interesting thing he’d seen so far, he agreed with Ashton. “The Marquis'
chateau we just saw today; just to see how preserved it is, and that he called
that ‘a cabin’! And how huge it was – it just says everything you need to know
about him. We had such great guides, and it gave me a lot of perspective on the
Marquis. This town knows a lot about Teddy Roosevelt, but to learn even more
about the Marquis is just great.” I asked if what he had learned made him like
the Marquis more or less. “I actually have more sympathy for him. Definitely. I
think that he tried really hard; he had a lot to prove and he was unlucky in
those endeavors. He wasn't probably the greatest human being on earth, but I have
a little bit more sympathy for the villain after this.”
Matt Wiggans plays William
Merrifield, a tough man who already lives in Medora, and wises up not only the
future President, but his Maine-born associates, on the ways of the West. Matt
had visited the location of TR’s Elkhorn cabin, now gone save for the massive
rocks of the foundation, which outline where it once stood. “We shoot the show just
north of Los Angeles, in a place called Acton, and I was pretty amazed at how
close the sets come to the real thing. But what's been magical is to go out and
experience the actual locations. The Elkhorn cabin isn't there anymore, but you
can visualize it there. And what Theodore Roosevelt was experiencing in that
solitude, that was so imperative in his life, it was goosebump-inducing.
“I spent a lot of my childhood in
Spearfish, in Brookings, South Dakota. I played hockey in North Dakota. But this
is my first time in Medera, and my wife and I are already super-excited to come
back for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I warn
people that when I go to historical places or museums, just prepare for hours,
because I like to read everything. I love history. This is not just a premiere,
it's an experience: <laugh>, it's The Teddy Roosevelt Experience! Understanding
how real it is to people -- Eli (Elijah Mahar), who plays Sewell, and I were
talking yesterday about how this just makes you want to be better, just step it
up even more.”
One of the startling elements of
the Elkhorn story is the youth of the people involved: when Roosevelt and the
Marquis first clashed in 1884, they were both 26. Newspaper editors in Westerns
tend to be Edmond O’Brien or Thomas Mitchell, usually portly drunks in their
50s. Sam Schweikert, who portrays editor Arthur Packard, couldn’t be less like
that cliché. As Sam points out, “Arthur Packard was 22 years old when he came
out and opened up the Badlands Cow Boy, which is amazing, to be that
young and to have that sense of wherewithal to say: I'm gonna go to a place
that is lawless and scary, and help spread the word. And given that we're here
in this flourishing town of Medora today, I think Arthur had a lot of foresight.”
Next on the red carpet was Elijah Mahar, who plays William Sewall, one of two friends TR sends for from Maine to help build his cabin. Elijah notes, “I grew up in a small town in Washington, a logging, dairy, farming town.” Logging? Does he have the kind of experience his character has? “I have not chopped down trees. I've sawed down trees with a chainsaw, and I have chopped them into logs.” And while he isn’t from Maine, “My wife, her family, have a house in Maine. So we go there every summer for a few weeks. And Sewell’s house is still there. I go see the house, I called the number, left a message saying, Hey, my name's Eli. I'm on a show called Elkhorn. I play Bill Sewell, the man who built your house. I'd love to come see it. Within minutes, there was a message from the woman, who's Bill Sewell's great-granddaughter! She was so excited. ‘I'm a huge fan of the show!’ The next day, my wife and I spent a couple hours there. It was kinda like coming here. I got to be in his bedroom, sit at his desk, saw his bassinet from when he was a baby. It was a great experience. When it's a real person you’re playing, you feel like you have to kind of honor them.”
William Sewell spends some time in
the first season pining for his wife, Mary, whom he has left back in Maine. In
season 2, he gets his wish, rejoined by his wife in the person of Brittany
Joyner, who is a fiery redhead in reality, but a brunette as Mary. Looking at
the premiere’s turnout, far more than Medera’s population of 160, she gushed, “This
is fantastic! I can't believe that all these people showed up just for little
old us -- I'm so glad! It's a really, really cute town, lovely people, lovely
food and coffee and experiences. But getting to see the threshold stones of
Elkhorn, that has such a close memory for me of filming, and our entire series
hinging around this location. The Chateau de Mores was wonderful. It really
gave us a good glimpse of how differently they were living than Teddy was, in
his rustic cabin in the middle of the woods.” Architecture is not just of
passing interest to Brittany. “I spent
the summer in France, doing carpentry on a medieval castle, so I'm recovering
from that.”
Jeff DuJardin plays the Marquis, a
Frenchman, of course. Jeff was born somewhat closer, “In the smallest state, in
Providence, Rhode Island. I was the very last person who was cast in the
project. And part of it might have been, someone who could do a French accent,
but maybe not too French.” The rumor is, they auditioned some French
actors, whose accents were too thick, and some Americans, of the Pepe le Pew
school. “I got an email from my agent. ‘Can you put yourself on tape for this
role? You have to do a French accent.’ My mother spoke it fluently. I would
hear her on the phone growing up, speaking to my grandmother, so I knew what
the French accent was supposed to sound like. So I recorded this audition, and
heard back a few days later that they really loved it, and they wanted me to do
a chemistry read with Mason. And the rest is history.”
Soon it was time for everyone to find seats in Medora’s Old Town Hall Theater for the screening of Elkhorn, season 2, episode 1, A Fine Welcome. The audience loved the show, cheered every star’s entrance, and on the big screen it was striking how beautifully the series is photographed. A second screening would be held to accommodate the overflow crowd. Historian, entertainer and TR impersonator Joe Wiegand had emceed on the red carpet. Inside, the hosting duties were handled by Elkhorn producer Gary Tarpinian, who introduced North Dakota First Lady Kjersti Armstrong, people from various foundations and organizations who had helped with event, the executives of the INSP Channel, and the cast members who took the stage for a spirited Q & A, which is available tonight on the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library’s Youtube page, and below.
When series star Mason Beals spoke
about how welcoming the town was, and how “incredibly beautiful it is out here.
Driving in from Dickinson, passing all those canyons, it's just mind-blowing,”
Brittany Joyner commented, “I'm actually 100% shocked you didn't say breakfast
sandwiches. They have not stopped talking about them!” The cast took a deep,
rhapsodic dive into the merits of the spectacular food available at the
C-Store.
From the audience, Rolf Sletten, author
of Roosevelt’s Ranches, and one of the great movers and shakers in making
Medora a hub of Roosevelt history, raised his hand. “I wanted to tell you (that)
those breakfast sandwiches are made by a woman named Robin Griffin. And Robin
Griffin is Margaret Robert's great-great granddaughter. And Margaret Roberts
was TR's nearest neighbor at the Maltese Cross Ranch.” In Medora, yesterday,
today and tomorrow, Teddy Roosevelt history runs deep!
Season 2 of Elkhorn will premiere tonight, October 2nd, at 9pm Eastern time – check your local listings – and will continue Thursdays at 9. If you want to catch up on season 1 – and you should – it’s streaming on Prime and Tubi and Plex.
RUSTLERS’ RHAPSODY
Kino Lorber – BluRay $29.95
Since you obviously read Henry’s
Western Round-up, I know you’re going to love a lot about Rustler’s Rhapsody –
maybe even the whole thing. But your friends may not, if they haven’t got the
background. Writer and director Hugh Wilson, had already more than proven
himself as a comedy writer, creating WKRP In Cincinnati, and as a comedy
director: his first time at bat was the low-cost, hugely profitable, and
grossly funny Police Academy, which spawned a 7-film franchise. Perhaps that’s why he was given a free hand
for his next production, writing and directing Rustlers’ Rhapsody. It’s
the sort of film that, under normal studio procedures, would never have been
green-lighted, not because it wasn’t good, but because most studio execs would
never have enough Western movie knowledge to get the jokes. When Blazing Saddles was made 11 years
earlier, Westerns in theatres and on TV were so ubiquitous that viewers
couldn’t help knowing all that was required. But Rustlers’ Rhapsody is specifically
a sweet celebration of B-Westerns which likely went over the heads of its 1985
audience, and would certainly go farther over the heads of an average audience
today.
Tom Berenger, who in 1979 had
played Butch Cassidy in the prequel Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, stars
as Rex O’Herlihan, not a singing-cowboy B-Western movie actor, mind you,
but a singing-cowboy B-Western movie character. A lot of the humor comes
from the similarity of so many B’s – Rex wistfully notes that he can see the
future, because the future is always the same: every town he enters has the
same stores and sheriff’s office, interchangeable schoolmarms and henchmen. He
has a fabulous wardrobe but we have no idea where he carries it. He diligently
practices shooting guns out of bad guys’ hands – he wouldn’t think to shoot at
a person, nor would they be able to shoot him. It’s all begins in exciting,
chasing-the-stagecoach-robbers black and white, but a narrator wonders what
would happen if Rex had moved from the B’s of the ‘30s and ‘40s to the Westerns
of ‘today,’ and guess what: suddenly we are in widescreen Technicolor, and the
bad guys are shooting awful close!
The problem is, we never quite
learn which ‘today’ they mean – ‘today’ doesn’t seem a whole lot grittier than
1960s TV – certainly not Peckinpah ‘today’. It’s sort of like if Mark Twain
wrote A Connecticut Yankee in Somewhere Other Than Contemporary Connecticut.
If you don’t know he’s in King Arthur’s Court, you don’t know what to base the
gags on. It’s well-worth seeing, and lots of the jokes are very clever but a
lot are just not focused enough to pay off.
G.W. Bailey – Lt. Harris from the Police
Academy films – is Peter, the town drunk and prototypical sidekick-to-be,
who takes naive Rex under his wing. Rex’s kindness is endearing when he lies to
Peter, assuring him that, while everything and everyone else is the same going from
town-to-town, he’s never met anyone like Peter before.
Berenger plays it as straight and as straight-arrow as he should, with Marilu Henner and Sela Ward both lovely to look at and very funny. Patrick Wayne plays a good-guy who is as good as Rex, and their interplay is great fun. Andy Griffith, as the wealthy cattle baron is under-utilized, because his part was drastically cut: he was supposed to be a gay cattle baron, but 1985 audiences weren’t ready for that. Incredibly, it’s shot in Almeria, Spain – Fernando Rey is included for some funny nods to Spaghetti Westerns – but looks more American than European.
EDEN – A Film by Ron Howard
Currently streaming on Prime for
$19.95
(Note: I realize that Eden is not a
Western, but it’s a pioneering story, about people moving away from
civilization, so I say, close enough!)
The fact that it’s based on the
truth notwithstanding, the premise of Eden, the very dark new film
directed by Ron Howard and co-written by him with Noah Pink, could have been a
wonderful comedy: post-World War I, a pompous German philosopher and his lover
move to an unpopulated island in the Galapagos Archipelago, to be completely alone,
to work out a plan to save humanity. And when word of his plan spreads – making
them among the first media stars -- true-believers flock to join him, making
his work impossible. I feel like re-writing it for Charlie Chase, or Clifton
Webb!
We are immediately sympathetic to
Jude Law as Ritter, the philosophoid who, despite his pomposity, is trying to
accomplish something important, along with Dore, played by Vanessa Kirby, who
won’t even let her MS derail her. Without warning they are joined by the
unwanted, unprepared and destitute Wittmer family – Margaret (Sydney Sweeney),
Heinz (Daniel Bruhl) and young son Harry (Jonathan Tittel). They’re about as
welcome as Blondie, Dagwood, and a tubercular Baby Dumpling. No sooner are they
settled than the arrogant “Baroness”, played by Ana de Armas, arrives with her
entourage of 3 lovers, and her lunatic plan to build an exclusive hotel on the
island’s shore. You have an inkling of
what’s coming, as the opening titles tell us that it is a true story, as told
by the survivors.
While not a popular theme in recent
years, stories of “civilized” people alone on jungle islands have been the
subjects of several memorable films: various versions of The Island of Dr.
Moreau, The Most Dangerous Game, Lord of the Flies, Swiss Family Robinson – even
comedies like The Tuttles of Tahiti. In fact, this group of castaways is
the subject of a fascinating 2013 documentary, The Galapagos Affair: Satan
Came to Eden, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, from directors Daniel
Geller and Dayna Goldfine. Incredibly, it’s full of footage of the actual
islanders, as newsreel companies and narrative filmmakers visited them. There
is even a brief dramatic film starring the Baroness!
The ultimate flaw of Ron Howard’s film is that there is no one to care about. Unlike all of the fictional jungle films I’ve mentioned, there is no likable character – our sympathy for Ritter quickly dissipates. The irony is that you don’t like anyone in The Galapagos Affair either, but you don’t lose patience with that film because it’s a documentary, and the appeal is intellectual. We’ve all watched true crime stories where the victims are as hateful as the killers, but the truth, sympathetic or not, keeps our interest. But our interest in drama is not intellectual but largely emotional: we want to root for someone. The closest we come to caring is about young Harry Wittmer, and there is a promising moment between him and the Baroness, when she’s befriending him, and we immediately distrust her motives. But the set-up is never paid off. Instead, the plot becomes an uninvolving scorecard of who gets killed in what order.
In spite of this, Ron Howard’s
direction is excellent. Jude Law’s character’s deterioration, his transition
from pretentious philanthropist to psychotic fascist, is Oscar-worthy wonderful.
I wanted to choke de Armas’ Baroness, but I found her fascinating. Eden
is beautifully photographed by Mathias Herndl, particularly the strangely
ominous cutaways to the animal life on the island. We don’t see a single
Galapagos Tortoise, but in fact, filming is not permitted on the islands, so it
was shot in Australia.
The most powerful sequence by far is
Sydney Sweeney’s character giving birth while her cabin is being burglarized,
and then being attacked by blood-smelling dogs! That had me not only on the
edge of my seat, but gnawing on my knuckles.
AND THAT’S A WRAP!
Please check out the
September/October True West, featuring my article, A Century of Disenrollment,
and my interview with author Anne Hillerman. And here’s the link to my newest
INSP blog, What TV and Movies Get Right and Wrong About Cowboys.
Much obliged,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright
October 2025 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
