‘TURQUOISE FEVER’ PREMIERE, PLUS ‘MORRICONE IN HIS OWN WORDS’, LONE RANGER 75TH ANNI., NEW FOX WESTERN SERIES, ‘OLD TOWN ROAD’, AND MORE!

TURQUOISE FEVER premiered on the INSP network this past Wednesday. The weekly reality series follows the fortunes and follies of the Nevada-based turquoise-mining Otteson clan. The first show was about trying to satisfy the blue-stone needs of a big-time buyer and jewelry designer from Japan, who is very influential in the jewelry markets throughout Asia.  If you missed this one, don’t worry, because there will be other chances. Besides, in a way, episode 2, which airs this Wednesday night, August 21^st, is just as good a place to start, as it really focuses on the family, and how the Ottesons became a ‘Blue Gold’ powerhouse.

It all started in 1958, when the family moved en masse from Colorado to Nevada, and patriarch Lynn Otteson staked his first claim. His sons Dean, Danny and Tommy worked with him, and soon there were wives and sons and in-laws in the mix.  Dean would become the patriarch, and during this show’s six-year gestation period, he would pass away, pledging his brothers not only to continue mining, but to take care of his widow, and family matriarch, Donna.

Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the show with one of the younger members of the Otteson turquoise-mining family, Danny’s 22-year-old son, and already a veteran miner, Tristan. He’s both the historian and scientist of the family, and he started out by giving me a verbal sketch of the history of turquoise mining, and the Otteson’s involvement with it.

Tristan: Turquoise in the southwestern United States has been mined since way before any white people got here. The Native American mines in the New Mexico region of Cerrillos are some of the oldest turquoise mines in the entire world. But as for the Ottesons, we got into the mining business about three generations before me. Grandpa Lynn's father, Christian Vern Otteson, had worked a little bit at the Lick Skillet Mine in, Manassa, Colorado in the very early 20th Century. He fought in World War I, and passed away when my grandpa was only three years old. With their father gone, my grandpa would work all sorts of jobs to support his family. His uncle Pete King owned Lick Skillet Mine and (Lynn), worked there. Then, when he was about 18, Pete told him to come out and mine one of his claims in Nevada, the Cloverdale, Nevada Blue Gem Mine; it's now called the Easter Blue Mine, and we mine it still. This was around the mid-1940s, and he really started to fall in love with turquoise.  So he moved his very young family from Colorado straight out to Nevada. I think it was 1958 that they moved out to Nevada permanently. They lived in Haybag Johnson's chicken coop, and from there my grandpa was able to work various mines around Cloverdale. Finally my grandpa was able to put a four-year lease on Lone Mountain Turquoise Mine, which is one of the most famous turquoise mines in the entire world today.

They barely scraped up enough money to get a little tiny mixer, that he would haul all the way out to that mine. They’d bring water in big metal milk containers, and they had this little tub that was about three-foot-wide, that the family would bathe in, and they’d run the dumps that the other miners had mined out. And when they could fill the bottom of that tub full of turquoise nuggets, they’d load everybody up, drive down to New Mexico to sell it to the Zunis. And not only for money. They would trade it for clothes, groceries, saddles, guns, blankets, anything they could get of value. My grandma would always tell my grandpa, “You can't eat a saddle. Come back with money or food.’ Sometimes they were able to sell a whole bunch of nuggets, and put $3000 or $4,000 in their pocket.  Sometimes they only came back with a saddle or two or a blanket.”

From there, my grandpa was able to build up his own operation. He got in with a whole lot of different people over the years where they would front equipment, and he had the mining knowledge. It never seemed like my grandpa got a fair shake out of those deals, but eventually he traded a silver claim he had in eastern Nevada for the Pilot Mountain Turquoise Mines.

Tristan Otteson

.

Henry: Have you ever considered a profession other than turquoise mining?

Tristan:  Personally? I really haven't. In high school, we all dream of being a different thing. But when it came down to it, I had gone out to the turquoise mines with my dad, my older brothers, since I was real little and I couldn't really imagine doing anything else.

Henry: Except for the DeBeers diamond family in South Africa, I can't think of another family that has so dominated the mining of a single mineral.

Tristan:  You can see them literally everywhere. The Royston Turquoise, that's one of the world-famous mines that we mined. Just recently there was a story on Jason Mamoa, Aquaman. He came out with a big Indian squash necklace, and said he felt like the native American, Mr. T. That was Royston Turquoise in that squash.

Fire in the hole!

Henry: I know there're many different grades and types of turquoise.  Can you give me a sense of the range of value?

Tristan:  We generally sell our turquoise by carat weight.  To put it in perspective, gold's at $1400 per ounce, right around eight or $9 a carat. Our turquoise ranges anywhere from one to $2 a carat for the not as rare stuff, all the way up to $80 to $100 per carat for really special stuff. So turquoise it can be worth 10 times its weight in gold.

Henry: Do you ever have trouble with claim jumpers?

Tristan:  Yuh. Over the years, there's been a lot of times when people come out on our claims, and try to scoop up the vein you're digging on. And with the way the turquoise is, if you don't know how to get it out of the ground, if you see a vein sticking out of the wall and try to go at it with a hammer, you're just going to destroy it. We've had it where you show up to work the next day and your vein is just a whole bunch of chips on the ground.

Henry: Of course, it's not like gold; you can't reform it. It's just gone.

Tristan:  Exactly it. They could have just destroyed a $40,000 pocket of Turquoise and not even know it.

Henry:  I was fascinated to learn how popular turquoise is in Asia. How much of the turquoise business is outside of the U.S., and what other countries are involved?

Donna shows a buyer from Japan their best stones.

Tristan:  In the United States, they want the unique stone. But in other countries, that hasn't caught on except for Japan, that romanticizes Native American jewelry. In other countries, straight blue stones is what they look for. So there's huge turquoise mines in China, over in Egypt, and in Iran. It's kind of a pattern; the high desert places around the world all have turquoise mines. They call it Persian turquoise and Egyptian turquoise; it's really beautiful stuff, along with the Chinese. And they more or less dominate the markets outside of the United States, except for those like the Japanese market that focuses on Native American jewelry.

Henry: When you're prospecting for gold, you look for quartz because they're found together. What sort of indicators do you have when you're looking for Turquoise?

Tristan:  There's two different kinds of formations. What you’re looking for is mineralized ground with iron outcroppings or a black chert (note: chert is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of quartz crystals).  And there’s a kind of a tan rock, dominated mostly by quartz, but not the kind of crystal quartz that you think of. My dad has walked literally thousands of miles, prospecting for turquoise, and tried to teach me and Lane how to read the differences in the minerals.

Henry: What is the process that makes turquoise form?

Lonely out there!

Tristan:  Well, this is still largely up for debate. Pretty much the only thing people can really agree on is it's an aluminum copper phosphate. Water goes through the ground, through the cracks, and where the right kind of phosphates are. There's debate on whether the water was going down through the rocks or up through the rocks.

Henry: Do we know how long it takes for turquoise to form?

Tristan:  They tested some turquoise down in Arizona and dated it to over 10 million years old. And other people have theories that puts it clear back to the Mesozoic era.

Henry: I get the impression that turquoise is getting harder to find. Do you have any sense of when turquoise will be mined out?

Tristan:  That's speculation, but the huge producing mines don't exist anymore. I would put a shelf life on the southwest and American turquoise to maybe 150, 200 years until it could literally be all dug up. Turquoise forms in two different ways;  it's either in veins, through the rocks, or it can get into a clay and actually make nuggets of turquoise where it formed and bubbled up.

Don't drop it!

Henry: I know your son is just a baby, but when he grows up, would you want your son to follow in your footsteps in the turquoise mining business?

Tristan:   If he wants to mine turquoise, he should. The thing is, it's hard. It's not easy if you weren't brought up in mining turquoise. Honestly, the biggest future in our business are the children that we have that come out to the mines with us, that are constantly learning from us. So I would kind of expect them to mine turquoise. But if they don't want to, that's cool too.

Henry: What is the most important thing to know about turquoise mining?

Tristan: The most important thing about a turquoise mining is appreciating the stones that you're digging up, and appreciating the ground that they come from, and having a good reason to dig them up, which is for your family.

A BOOK REVIEW:

ENNIO MORRICONE IN HIS OWN WORDS – IN CONVERSATION WITH ALESSANDRO DE ROSA, Translated from the Italian by MAURIZIO CORBELLA

Oxford University Press – Hardcover -- $34.95

First let me go on record as saying that I am not a musician, and I have three years of guitar lessons to prove it.  But I love music, and I love movie soundtracks. The first soundtrack I ever owned was Monty Norman’s score to DR. NO. I was eight years old, and I begged for it, not because of the music, but because there was a photo of a nearly nude Ursula Andress on the back of the cover. But I listened to the music while I stared at the picture, and I became fascinated.

At NYU Film School I got turned on to Ennio Morricone by fellow student and later screenwriter, the late Ric Menello (TWO LOVERS, THE IMMIGRANT). He made me buy an Italian import album, I, WESTERN, a collection of music from a fistful of Morricone Westerns, and I was hooked.

So, I love film music, I know a fair bit about it, but like the guy who doesn’t want the magic trick ruined by being told how it was done, I am an audience member, not an insider.  All of this is my roundabout way of saying that I absolutely loved reading ENNIO MORRICONE IN HIS OWN WORDS, and I probably understood about 10% of it.

The book represents a year of discussions between fellow-composers De Rosa and Morricone, and De Rosa’s encyclopedic knowledge of the maestro’s work makes him a perfect interviewer. If you aren’t signed up for Spotify yet, you’ll want to be, because there is an official cut list, and there are frequent music cues throughout the book, to give voice to the music they are discussing.

You’ll learn about the start of Morricone’s musical career, as a trumpet sideman filling in for his father during World War II.  You’ll learn about his classical education, ‘paying his dues’ in radio, and his early scores, including a pair of Spaghetti Westerns he scored before being approached by Sergio Leone for THE MAGNIFICENT STRANGER (later FISTFUL OF DOLLARS).  Much space is appropriately devoted to the Morricone/Leone collaborations, and Morricone describes both the inspirations and the frustrations – as when Leone used a piece from Dimitri Tiomkin’s RIO BRAVO score on a temporary music track, then fell in love with it and didn’t want to part with it. He did eventually – he had to part with the recording, or with Ennio.  

His other Euro-Western collaborations are not dealt with in similar depth – directors Sergio Sollima (three Westerns together) and Sergio Corbucci (seven Westerns together), each receive just a single reference, but as Corbucci’s was in a list of directors who did not get involved with the scoring, that may be why.

Morricone has much more to say about his work with Brian De Palma, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Carpenter, Terence Malick, and many others. As an audience member, I was thrilled at the insights, and surprised at how much I learned. I can only imagine how much more I would have learned, had I been a musician.

‘LONE RANGER’ 70^TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION SEPT. 17 – WORD ON WESTERNS AT THE AUTRY!

It was on September 15^th, 1949, that Clayton Moore first tied on the black mask, mounted the great horse Silver, and thundered into TV history as THE LONE RANGER!  On Tuesday, September 17^th, join us at 11 a.m. at the Wells Fargo Theatre at The Autry to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of television’s first Western series, and one of the most beloved.  It’s too early to post a guest attendee list just yet, but Clayton’s daughter, Dawn Moore, is taking part, and Rob Word always gets wonderful guests for his events.  I’ll have more details as the event gets closer.  In the meantime, here’s a link to my interview with Dawn Moore: http://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2014/09/daughter-remembers-clayton-lone-ranger.html

Dawn and Clayton Moore

FOX BUYS ‘GO WEST’ FROM ‘WESTWORLD’ PRODUCER BRIDGET CARPENTER

GO WEST, a pre-Civil War Western that follows the trek of a diverse group of adventurers heading to California for gold and freedom, has been given a script commitment, as a co-production of Fox Entertainment and CBS.  Writer/Producer Bridget Carpenter shared an Emmy nomination for her work on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, as well as WGA nominations for her work on LIGHTS, and for season one of WESTWORLD. She was also Exec Producer on 2014’s dark contempo American Indian series RED ROAD.

ACTOR/SCREENWRITER/DIRECTOR PETER FONDA DIES AT 79

“Westerns are our way of exploring our own mythology.”

                                                                                    Peter Fonda

The movies’ counter-culture Captain America has died of lung cancer at age 79.  Nominated for an Oscar for ULEE’S GOLD, the son of Oscar-winning screen legend Henry Fonda, and kid brother of double Oscar-winner Jane Fonda, Peter charted his own path. Not always pleased with his mainstream Hollywood films – in a Playboy interview he referred to his 1963 film TAMMY AND THE DOCTOR as TAMMY AND THE SHMUCKFACE – he starred for edgier independent filmmakers like Roger Corman in films like THE WILD ANGELS. Working both in front of and behind the camera, he not only co-starred in 1969’s earth-shaking EASY RIDER, he also wrote and produced it.

Although he didn’t star in a lot of Westerns – his earliest appearances include a WAGON TRAIN and an unsold HIGH NOON pilot where he played Will Kane Jr. – two of the three films he directed were Westerns.  In 1971’s poetic tragedy, THE HIRED HAND, Fonda and frequent collaborator Warren Oates play cowboy drifters who split up when Fonda goes back to abandoned wife Verna Bloom. But obligations force them back together. With strong performances, a wise script by Alan Sharp, stunning photography by Vilmos Zsigmond, and very creative visuals, editing and score, HIRED HAND was an artistic triumph for Fonda.

In his second, 1979’s much more light-hearted WANDA NEVADA, Fonda is a modern-day gold prospector who wins 13-year-old Brooke Shields in a poker game.  For Fonda, who described his relationship with his father as, “fraught,” one of the great thrills of that production was the chance to direct Henry Fonda, and to afterwards receive a letter from him about the experience. “It was a five-page letter.  And at the end, ‘In my forty-one years of making motion pictures, I have never seen a crew so devoted to the director.  You are a very good director.  And please remember me for your company.’  Now a company is a word we normally use in stage.  But in John Ford’s time, he carried a (stock) company of actors with him from one film to the next.  Ward Bond was one of them.  John Carradine was another.  Great characters that he would have as his company.  And the fact that my dad wanted to be part of my company… How cool is that?”

Fonda’s later acting career would get a considerable boost after his strong supporting role in 2007’s 3:10 TO YUMA. Fred Olen Ray, who was making AMERICAN BANDITS: FRANK AND JESSE JAMES, told me, “He was somebody we were really looking forward to having, because he’s very iconic. We had made the deal, I had spoken to him in France, and coming back on the plane, he fell on the jet-way. He busted his jaw open, and he had to have stitches. And (his people) were saying, he can’t be there on this day, and he could probably be ready in a week.

And that’s a week after the movie shoot had ended. So we thought, let’s not get ourselves caught in a tough spot here. Let’s go ahead and film these scenes anyway with a different actor. And a few days later, after the movie had wrapped, we heard, ‘Okay, Peter Fonda’s ready!’ So we shot the scenes over again with (Peter Fonda), and those are what we used in the movie.” 

Ron Maxwell enjoyed directing Fonda in the Civil War home-front drama COPPERHEAD. “Oh, he’s a lot of fun; he’s an icon.  There’s one scene where he meets Abner, and they speak about the issues that are dividing the town.  And that first shot, when you first see him, is an exact replica, to every detail, to his father playing YOUNG MISTER LINCOLN in John Ford’s 1939 film.   The only difference is that film was in black and white, and ours is color.  After we finished filming that scene, Peter looked up in the sky and said, ‘Dad, I hope you’re proud of me.’”  There is little doubt about that.

OLD TOWN ROAD BOOSTS WRANGLER JEANS SALES!

When, in the song-of-the-summer, OLD TOWN ROAD, Lil Nas X intoned that timeless lyric, “Wrangler on my booty,” the sales of the long-time denim favorite sky-rocketed. It’s kind of the reverse of when the 1934 equivalent of Lil Nas X, Clark Gable, in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, removed his shirt to reveal no undershirt: sales of the undergarment plummeted. Scott Baxter, honcho of Wrangler’s parent company, Kontoor Brands, says they didn’t see it coming.  "We knew nothing about it, and then it just took off.  It's introduced Wrangler to a more diverse group of folks, and that's where we want to be as a brand." Which is why Wrangler is partnering with Lil Nas X on a line of t-shirts (apparently not learning the Clark Gable lesson).

I don’t quite get the popularity of OLD TOWN ROAD myself. I have nothing against it – I love the opening western stuff, I love Chris Rock in anything, and the contemporary stuff is at worst innocuous, and sometimes amusing, but the song just seems repetitive; it doesn’t grow after the first few bars, and just peters out.

Actually, the big fashion-effect I was expecting this summer is related to ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and the swoon heard ‘round the world when Brad Pitt took off his shirt. If only they could sell that like they can sell a pair of Wranglers. But then, they couldn’t figure out how to sell it in Gable’s day either.

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Please check out the September TRUE WEST MAGAZINE, on newsstands now, featuring my article, STAGECOACH – THE LEGEND AT 80!

Speaking of which, I was amazed recently to look at Henry’s Western Round-up – I write it, but I don’t read it that often – and realize that I hadn’t put up links to any of my True West articles in about a year! There are about twenty new ones now, and I’ll update the links to my movie reviews very soon.  I don’t understand why the size of the type on these links keeps changing – the Rifleman one is huge, and others are tiny – but at least they work!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright August 2019 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

TWO BIG WESTERNS FOR CHRISTMAS, PLUS BIG GENE AUTRY GIVEAWAY, NEW FONDA/SORBO OATER, GLENN FORD WEST FEST, WE LOSE CHRIS & PIERRE

2 BIG WESTERNS – THE REVENANT & HATEFUL 8 – TO OPEN CHRISTMAS DAY!

We’re getting a wonderful pair of gifts in our stocking this December 25th: two big Westerns opening on Christmas Day!  The last time this happened, Tom Mix was going up against William S. Hart (don’t do research – I’m making it up!)!  THE REVENANT, starring Leo DiCaprio and Thomas Hardy, is the true story of Hugh Glass, a mountain man who was mauled by a bear and left for dead.  It’s written and helmed by Mexican-born Alejandro Gonzalez Inarruti, who swept the Oscars this year, winning Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay for BIRDMAN.  A previous version of the Hugh Glass story, MAN IN THE WILDERNESS (1971), starred Richard Harris and John Huston, directed by Richard Sarafian from Jack DeWitt’s script. 

While REVENANT had long been heralded as a Yuletide release, just this Friday the Weinstein Company announced that Quentin Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL 8, will also open on December 25^th.  Featuring a huge cast of Tarantino favorites – Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Walter Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, et al – it’s an all-star ‘bunch-of-people-caught-in-a-snowstorm’ Western.  The writer/director cheerfully revealed that his inspiration was the sort of BONANZA/BIG VALLEY/HIGH CHAPARRAL episodes that would happen mid-season when budgets were tight, and plots would be crafted around a bunch of people caught in a small place.  In spite of those close quarters, the Christmas premiere will be exclusively in 70 mm – the largest 70 mm opening in at least two decades!  It’s been said that Tarantino’s determination to release the movie on actual film, in 70 mm, is what lead Kodak to reverse their decision to shut down their film-stock production entirely.  HATEFUL 8 will broaden its release to crummy new digital theatres on January 8^th. 

I’M IN THE NEW ‘TRUE WEST’ PANCHO VILLA ISSUE!

I’m very proud that my first article as TRUE WEST MAGAZINE’s new Film Editor is in the July ‘All Pancho Villa Issue’, which has just come out.  No surprise, my piece is about the best and worst of the movies about Villa.  Buy several copies today! 

GENE AUTRY FANS!  ENTER THIS GREAT FREE GIVEAWAY!

Gene Autry Entertainment wants to get a verification check-mark on its Youtube channel, and increase their Google + numbers, and they’re giving away THREE great collections of Gene Autry merchandise and collectibles to do it!  Each collection contains DVDs, CDs, books, scarves – each is worth well over a C-note – and to enter to win one, all you have to do is click HERE to subscribe to the Official Gene Autry Youtube Channel, then come back and click HERE to be a Google + follower!  Everyone who does so will be automatically entered to win !  Do it soon – the giveaway ends on June 19^th!

GLENN FORD WESTERNS AND CUSTER FLICKS AT THE NEW BEVERLY!

June is a great month for Westerns at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema!  Sunday and Monday, June 14^th & 15^th , a rarely seen pair of Westerns about Custer will screen, THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (1941), starring Errol Flynn as Custer, with Olivia DeHavilland, directed by Raoul Walsh; and CUSTER OF THE WEST (1967), starring Robert Shaw as Custer, with Mary Ure and Ty Hardin, and directed by Robert Siodmak. (That latter film was shot in Spain at the height of the spaghetti western Renaissance, and Ty Hardin told me some very interesting stuff about the making of the film – including what director was fired the first day.  Read that interview HERE )  

On Wednesday and Thursday, June 17^th & 18^th see Glenn Ford in Edna Ferber’s CIMARRON (1960), starring Glenn Ford, directed by Anthony Mann.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday, Jne 24^th & 25^th, catch the Glenn Ford double bill THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE (1956), and the original Elmore Leonard’s 3:10 TO YUMA (1957), directed by Delmer Daves, and co-starring Van Heflin.  Then Sunday, June 28^th through Saturday, July 4^th, you have a full week to catch Sergio Leone’s masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  Get all the details HERE.

JOIN ‘COPS & COWBOYS’ JULY 18^TH AT LEONIS ADOBE!

After the tremendous success of last year’s event, the annual ‘Cops & Cowboys’ fundraiser for The Mid-Valley Community Police Council will again be held at the historic Leonis Adobe Museum in Calabasas, CA.  Built in 1844 as the home to a Basque farmer and his bride, daughter of a Chumash Chief, the Adobe is one of the oldest existing buildings in Southern California, and the C&C is a wonderful time to visit it!  You can learn about ranch life, bid at the regular and silent auctions, play blackjack and poker, have a few drinks in the saloon, enjoy barbecue, country music, line dancing, and more!  Tickets are $150 each ($50 if you’re in the LAPD), and there are opportunities for sponsorship, buying tables, and buying space in the program.  To learn more, please call 818-994-4661, FAX 818-994-6181, email info@theproperimageevents.com or visit http://www.midvalleypolicecouncil.org/event/cops-cowboys-july-18th-2015/ .

SOLIMA’S ‘BIG GUNDOWN’ INTRO’D BY JOE DANTE JUNE 18 AT LINWOOD DUNN

As part of their THIS IS WIDESCREEN series, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will screen Sergio Solima’s THE BIG GUNDOWN, starring Lee Van Cleef, Thursday, June 18^th, at the Linwood Dunn Theatre in the Mary Pickford Center, 1313 Vine Street, Hollywood, CA 90028.  (Note, this is the Hollywood venue, not the Academy headquarters in Beverly Hills).  It’s a very unusual, well-told story, with lawman-turned-politician Van Cleef on the hunt for a degenerate criminal (Tomas Milian) who may be not as bad as the men who want him dead.  This is the new restoration from Grindhouse Releasing which Courtney Joyner and I got to see when we were doing audio commentary for their BluRay release, and it looks spectacular.  The ticket price range is from $3 to $5, and you can learn more about the film, and order tickets HERE  

If you’d like to buy the fabulous 4-disc set from Grindhouse, including a CD of the brilliant Ennio Morricone soundtrack, go HERE .

Also featured with THE BIG GUNDOWN at the Linwood Dunn is the martial arts film DRAGON INN (1967), written and directed by King Hu.

FONDA & SORBO STAR IN ‘JESSE JAMES: LAWMAN’

Based on history you may have missed, outlaw Jesse James pins on a badge, working for a lawman who figures you need the help of a bad man to catch a very bad man in JESSE JAMES: LAWMAN, coming soon from Barnholtz Entertainment (read my interview with producer Barry Barnholtz HERE ) .  Starring Andrew Galligan as Jesse, he’s joined by Peter Fonda as the mayor, and Kevin Sorbo as J. Frank Dalton.  Director Bret Kelly and screenwriter Janet Hetherington collaborated last year on another Western, THE LAST OUTLAW.     

FAREWELL PIERRE BRICE AND CHRISTOPHER LEE

One day apart, we lost two of the true icons of International film.   On June 6^th, Pierre Brice passed away at age 86.  Though French, he gained undying fame in German cinema playing a fictional American, Winnetou, the Apache Chief created by the father of the German Western, Karl May.  Starting in 1962 with THE TREASURE OF SILVER LAKE, Brice would play the role eleven times in the original series of films, often opposite American and British stars like Lex Barker, Herbert Lom, Stewart Granger, and Rod Cameron, and indelibly etched his persona as the heroic, dignified and stunningly handsome chief upon the consciousness of non-English-speaking cinema.  He played many other characters, including Zorro twice, but he will always be Winnetou to his loyal fans. 

On June 7^th, Christopher Lee passed away at the age of 93.  To a younger audience he was Count Dooku in the STAR WARS films, or Saruman in the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, but to us grown-ups he will always be Dracula, a role he first played in 1958’s HORROR OF DRACULA.  For Hammer and other studios he would play every conceivable horror-related character; Fu Manchu five times, and he had the unique distinction of playing Sherlock Holmes twice, as well as his brother Mycroft, and Henry Baskerville.  His imposing form, chiseled features, and deadly stare, combined with his inherent dignity and sense of humor, made all of his screen work a delight, sometimes the only thing worth watching in his films.  For those of you with an interest in astrology, someone on Facebook noted that he and Vincent Price shared the same birthday, May 27^th, and Peter Cushing’s birthday was May 26^th.  Not known for a lot of Western roles, he was very effective as the gunsmith in HANNIE CAULDER (1971), and played a Grand Duke opposite James Arness in the HOW THE WEST WAS WON TV series.  On Monday, June 22^nd, TCM will air eight of Lee’s finest films.  Both men shall be sorely missed around the world. 

THAT’S A WRAP!

TEXAS RISING ends today (or next week if you, like me, DVR almost everything you watch).  Let me know what you think of the conclusion (not that I’ll read it for a week), and tell me if you’re enjoying STRANGE EMPIRE so far.  And who’s been watching Hallmark’s WHEN CALLS THE HEART?  One of the downsides of having so many channels is that you lose track of stuff on channels you don’t regularly watch.  How far are we into season two?  Have a great week!

Happy Trails,

Henry

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

CIVIL WAR COMES TO SANTA CLARITA, PLUS MORE TCM FONDA-ON-FONDA, NEW ‘DJANGO’ MINI-SERIES!

CIVIL WAR COMES TO SANTA CLARITA APRIL 18-19!

In addition to the previously announced musical, literary, eating and shopping-related events happening at the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival this coming weekend, something new has been added!  Marking the 150^th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War, for the first time the Festival will include living history encampments, plus at 12:45 and 3:15 on both days, Heritage Junction will be transformed into a Civil War battleground!  These events are peopled by dedicated history buffs, and will immerse you in that time in a way no book or movie ever could – it’s a wonderful way to introduce kids and adults to the history of the Civil War and the American West!      

And you can test your stamina on the mechanical bull, and your skill at hatchet-throwing, archery, and fast-draw laser tag! For a rundown on all of the musical events, go HERE . For my rundown of all the separate-ticket events, go HERE

Once again I’ll have the pleasure of moderating several of the panels and conducting interviews at the Buckaroo Book Shop, starting Saturday at high noon for a talk with author and screenwriter Miles Swarthout, about THE SHOOTIST, THE LAST SHOOTIST, and THE HOMESMAN.  At 2 pm I’ll discuss Unsung Heroes of Film: The Hollywood Stunt Horse, with Karen Ross, senior consultant at the American Humane Society’s Film & TV Unit, authors Petrine Day Mitchum and Audria Pavia, Gene Autry Entertainment president Karla Buhlman.  

Saturday at three I’ll be talking with novelists and screenwriters Miles Swarthout, C. Courtney Joyner, Stephen Lodge and Dale Jackson about their adventures adapting novels into screenplays and screenplays into novels.  At 5 pm I’ll be chatting with Karla Buhlman, President of Gene Autry Entertainment, about the legacy of America's Favorite Singing Cowboy, Gene Autry. 

On Sunday I only have one panel, Name That Horse – Famous Horses and Their Pards, featuring Karla Buhlman and authors Petrine Day Mitchum and Audria Pavia. 

There will be many other interesting panels both days -- for an official schedule of all of the events happening at the Buckaroo Book Shop, go HERE.  Every book mentioned or shown will be available at the Buckaroo Book Shop, And they can all be purchased right now from OutWest -- just click the link at the top left of the page!  

I’m particularly excited that the Buckaroo Book Shop will be located in the cluster of historic buildings called Heritage Junction, in the Pardee House, which was built in 1890, and was used as a film location by Tom Mix, John Ford and Harry Carey among many others.  Other structures at the Junction include the Newhall Ranch House, Saugus Train Station featuring the Mogul Engine, Mitchell Adobe, Edison House, Kingsburry House, Callahan Schoolhouse, and the Ramona Chapel.   

For all of the specifics of the entire Santa Clarita Cowboy Fest, visit  http://cowboyfestival.org/http://cowboyfestival.org/

THE TCM FEST PART 2: MORE WITH PETER FONDA

We think of Peter Fonda as a film actor, but he has worked extensively on stage as well; one of his first successes, in college, was the James Stewart role in HARVEY.  “I was listening to Chris Plummer and Julie Andrews talk about this last night, what it is to share with an audience.  I liked starting my career out, as my dad did, on stage, because it’s a much more defined area of acting.  Film acting is totally different.  One thing I’ve taught to students in colleges, if they are actors, and want to know about stage acting, I tell them this, if you catch this, and let it bleed out to all the other things you do on stage, this is the key:  if you’re supposed to cry, and then the audience cries, you have to be very, very tender with the timing.  Because if you drop a tear first, the audience will let you cry for them.  But if you wait until you hear the first sniffle, the first catch in somebody’s the throat somewhere in the audience, and then drop a tear, the audience goes Niagara.  In movies, it can be helped by editing.  But if you’re on stage, and you want them to laugh, don’t laugh first, don’t cry first.” 

Interviewer Scott Eyman, author of PRINT THE LEGEND – THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN FORD, and JOHN WAYNE – THE LIFE AND LEGEND, noted that Peter’s and Henry’s relationship had been ‘fraught,’ but said that by the time Hank passed, they were ‘very tight’.  What changed their relationship?   Peter replied, “Well, I got to direct him, and act with him (in WANDA NEVADA) – which he thought was totally nuts.  Brooke Shields, me and dad.  I hired my dad.  It was funny, I called him on the phone and asked him, if he’d be able to work with me for one day, and I could only pay him fifteen-hundred bucks.   He said, ‘Is it a good part?’  Yuh, I’ll send you the sides.  ‘Sides, you’ll send me the sides?  You don’t know what sides are!’  Now I do, if you recall me on the road, feeding your cue lines to you from sides. 

That's bearded Hank with Peter and Brooke

“He came and worked with me, and the experience was remarkable.  I don’t have enough time to tell you all of the beautiful details, and how it started to crumble.  He hated the beard, and I don’t blame him, but he didn’t hear me when I said it was a fairy tale, and it didn’t need to be a real beard.  I say Dad, you’re supposed to be chewing tobacco in the scene, and you’re not well, and I’ve got this little bag of ground up licorice.  And he absolutely adored this stuff, and the camera doesn’t know it’s not tobacco.  No, it’s my dad, the perfectionist, the realist.  (He) took out a bag of Red Man Chewing Tobacco.  Don’t take this the wrong way; he said, ‘Bill Cosby gave me this!’ You’re too sick to chew tobacco, and I’ve got this all ready for you.  ‘No.’ I knew when the no meant no further talk.  I popped the licorice in my mouth, got over him, and started to drool the licorice into his beard.  I got a little spirits of mineral oil on it – ‘Close your eyes, Dad!’  Whew -- threw dust into his beard.  ‘You’re ready for your close-up now – see you on-set!’ Went ouside, and Michael Butler, the cameraman said, ‘Wow!  How do you do that?’  I said, ‘First time, I never did it before.  But I was the director, what the heck.’  

“He did the job for me, and three weeks later, I got a letter from him in Page, Arizona. And it was hot.  I was glad Dad didn’t die of the heat; but I knew Dad was dying.   And he wrote me this fabulous letter – perhaps the fifth that he had ever written me.  And it was that he felt bad about the beard, and he wouldn’t blame me if I cut it out of the film, but it would have been such a gas – his phrase.  Here comes the hard part to tell.  It was a five page letter.  And at the end, ‘In my forty-one years of making motion pictures, I have never seen a crew so devoted to the director.  You are a very good director.  And please remember me for your company.’  Now a company is a word we normally use in stage.  But in John Ford’s time, he carried a (stock) company of actors with him from one film to the next.  Ward Bond was one of them.  John Carradine was another.   Great characters.  Walter Brennan.  Great characters that he would have as his company.  And the fact that my dad wanted to be part of my company… How cool is that?”

Peter and Scott Eyman talked about the films they re-watched in preparation for this interview.  Fonda recalled, “I had to watch THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, and THE GRAPES OF WRATH, of course.  And then I blew it on the red carpet last night.  They asked me what my favorite film was, and I said DUCK SOUP.  I should have said BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.  I should have said EMPIRE OF THE SUN, a great film by Steven Speilberg.  Of course, Groucho loved EASY RIDER.” 

Scott Eyman asked, “When you look at your dad’s work today, one actor to another, what do you see?”

Warren Oates and Peter Fonda in THE HIRED HAND

Peter replied, “I watch his timing.  I watch how his eyes move or don’t.  And I’ve learned that, when you’re in close-up, eye movement can really be disturbing on a big screen.  And I can see, and I always watched him on-stage, he had this tension in his fingers like this (his arms straight down, his fingers drumming on his leg).  He knew how to do hands-down performances day-in and day-out.  There’s a reason I call them hands-down performances. He didn’t have to do this (Peter makes a bunch of hand-gestures).  You just have your hands at your sides, and say the lines, and say them with such fullness and conviction that the audience understands them without any added movements.  I was watching one of my favorite Westerns - and I blew it again on the red carpet.  They asked me what my favorite Western was, and I said (laughs) THE HIRED HAND (which Peter Fonda directed and stars in).  And when my dad finally saw that, by the way, he was thoroughly pleased.  ‘That’s my kind of Western,’ he said.  I couldn’t ask for a better compliment.  But now I see it (the hands) in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, he’s doing that again, and it doesn’t distract me from the story, from the character.  He is Wyatt Earp.  I believe, and I knew Ward Bond very well, I knew John Wayne, I knew all these guys.  I knew them all, I believe all their characters.  And Victor Mature was so incredible in that film.  It was his best performance.  I don’t know how many of you have seen that film.  It was his finest performance, and he did it for John Ford.  And I’m so thrilled to be able to say that about another actor, even though this talk is called Fonda on Fonda.”

Some questions were taken from the audience.  One man asked if, in making EASY RIDER, Peter Fonda was making references to two of his father’s films, GRAPES OF WRATH, and MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.  “You’re going across-country, but in opposite direction from GRAPES; your scene in the commune is a lot like the WPA camp; your character is names ‘Wyatt’.  The end of EASY RIDER is a bit like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Or am I all wet?”

EASY RIDER

Fonda replied, “You’re not wet; it was unconscious, but thank you, that’s a great compliment.  When I was first writing that, the concept I came up with was two guys -- not one hundred Hell Angels riding to a Hell’s Angels funeral -- which had been WILD ANGELS, because I had been told no more motorcycles-sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll movies.  As I started writing EASY RIDERS, the first thing that came to my mind was riding through John Ford’s west.  We were going to ride east, as an homage to Herman Hesse’s JOURNEY TO THE EAST.  I didn’t expect the audience to go – “Wow!  That’s Herman Hesse’s JOURNEY TO THE EAST!’  We would have blown it if that happened – I did want to say that line again.   And then watching a couple of shots from CLEMENTINE, and looking at that one rock that Hopper and I would shoot at in the background when we entered Monument Valley, where CLEMENTINE was shot.  Of course, there’s never been a town in Monument Valley except the ones that John Ford dropped there.  Tombstone certainly isn’t there.  But there’s Tombstone.  A town that has a road and buildings.  Not on the other side of the road.  There’s a church being built on the other side of the road. And in this one-sided town you had three bars, one Shakespearean actor doing a play; John Ford was a genius.  And he helped my dad get past THE MAGNIFICENT’S DOPEs and THE IMMORTAL SERGEANTs,  and get to THE GRAPES OF WRATH, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN.  I think Ford released him to do that.”

Another guest asked Peter to comment about his father’s performance in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  “I would love to, in fact.  He was not so sure about working with (Sergio) Leone.  He came in with brown contact lenses.  And Leone flips, because he had hired my dad for his blue eyes.  If you’ve ever seen spaghetti westerns, all of those Italians have really blue eyes.  So Sergio Leone flipped out, but that’s my father.  He would go to those extremes.  So there he is, and (in his first scene) he’s identified.  ‘What are you gonna do with the kid, Frank?’  ‘Well, now that you’ve named me.’  And he shoots the kid in the stomach.   This is the first time my dad had ever done anything like that in any film.  He did some noir films that people don’t know about.  He shot the shit out of the Clantons in CLEMENTINE, but this is a kid – and gut-shooting a kid?  The audience freaked out, because there was Hank Fonda shooting a kid in the stomach.  But because of Sergio and my dad, and the other actors, they just kept the story going.  To take it a little further, I was in Almeria, Spain, to direct a commercial for Citroen cars, and I got my daughter in it, and we would go by the big house from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST – it’s still there.  And so on the wrap day, which was a week later, I had taken all these pieces of paper together, and written on them ‘ONCE UPON A TIME IN MY LIFE’.  And I got everybody together, start up the camera, run and get in the shot, we all hold up the sign, and I wanted to show it to myself and to my family.  Dad was already gone, but I thought, this is so fff-so-bloody cool.  But I thought it was a very interesting Western.  Very different from the greatness of Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, or OX-BOW INCIDENT, or some of the others, but it was very interesting, very entertaining.  I liked it a lot.”

Henry Fonda in once upon a time in the west

The third and, probably, final installment of my coverage of the TCM Fest will include highlights from film introductions by Katherine Quinn, the widow of Anthony Quinn; Oscar winner Christopher Plummer, speaking at the THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING screening about director John Huston and star Sean Connery; and Oscar-winning special effects men Craig Barton and Ben Burtt on the making of GUNGA DIN. 

‘DJANGO’ AND ‘SUSPIRIA’ BOTH TO BE REMADE AS EURO TV-SERIES!

French TV producer ATLANTIQUE PRODUCIONS and Italian indie CATTLEYA will co-produce a pair of series based on the classic Sergio Corbucci spaghetti western that helped ignite the genre, and the hypnotic Dario Argento horror film – and Argento is aboard as artistic advisor!  Each has received orders for twelve fifty-minute episodes.  No more info yet, except that they will be shopped at Cannes next week, at the MIP TV Market!

AND THAT’S A WRAP!

With the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival coming this weekend, I don’t know what I’ll be able to manage for next week’s Round-up.  Did anyone catch the premiere of LEGENDS & LIES – THE REAL WEST, from Bill O’Reilly, on Fox News?  The few minutes I caught looked good, certainly well-produced, but I had to finish writing the Round-up.  Let me know what you thought of it.  One criticism I’ve heard is that it covers the usual suspects – Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Davy Crockett – yet again, but on a news network, I’m hoping it’ll reach a wider audience.  If you’re reading the Round-up, you don’t need to be convinced that Western history is fascinating.  Hopefully this will round up some strays for us, maybe start a stampede, along with TURN, which reTURNs for season two tomorrow.  Still a moronic title that tells you nothing – what’s wrong with the book’s title, WASHINGTON’S SPIES? 

Have a great week, and hope to see you at the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival!

Happy Trails,

Henry

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