‘AMERICAN WEST’ PRODUCERS SPEAK! PLUS ‘BONE TOMAHAWK’ CRAIG ZAHLER ON NEW WESTERN, 2ND GEN LEONE WESTERN!

‘THE AMERICAN WEST’ PRODUCERS SPEAK

I hope that, even as you watch each new episode of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS, dreading the series’ imminent finale, you are staying tuned afterwards for the fascinating THE AMERICAN WEST, the documentary series executive produced by Robert Redford.  Focusing on the brief but tumultuous period between the end of the Civil War and the start of a new century, the series happily has a different plan of attack from the many entertaining but oftentimes repetitive docudrama series of the last several years.

The two men with boots on the ground for AMERICAN WEST are producers Stephen David and Tim W. Kelly.  Their previous history-based miniseries work together has included THE MEN WHO BUILT AMERICA (2012) about the great industrialists, THE MAKING OF THE MOB: NEW YORK (2015), the historical drama SONS OF LIBERTY (2015), and many others.  They’ve earned many Emmy nominations and other laurels for their work, and Tim won an Emmy for his sound work on SONS.  I had the chance to preview the first two episodes of AMERICAN WEST, and to talk with Stephen and Tim. 

HENRY: You’ve done both documentaries, and recently historical dramas like SONS OF LIBERTY, and experimental thrillers like REDRUM. What’s the most satisfying?

STEPHEN: I personally enjoy these big historical miniseries.  I like the fact that we get to learn, that when people are watching they get to see something they thought they knew, in a different way.   Our goal is to try and get more into what the truth is instead of the myth, or what we may have learned in school.  Because of the internet, and the way information flows now, I think people know that the mythologies that we learned in school don’t necessarily feel right; feel real.  There’s a much more human side behind all of this.  People do things because of their own desires, their own egos, and inadvertently it has a huge effect.  I love to delve into the psychology behind them.

TIM: It’s interesting now, with social media, you can watch live as the show’s happening , and (follow) on Twitter.  You see people reacting to the show, and it’s happening in real-time – it’s almost instant reviews.  It’s really interesting when you see teenagers Tweeting about history.  There’s something satisfying, to open this up to a younger audience, as well as the older audiences that are already interested in history.  In a society that can be very (busy) on their smartphones, to see them getting into history is sort of a cool thing.

HENRY: There have been a number of Western documentary series since the mid 90s, most of them focusing on the same less-than-a-dozen individuals.  Did you worry that they were overexposed?  That there was nothing new to say about them?

STEPHEN:  I’ve seen stuff where each character has an individual episode.  But what we were trying to show was that each of these people were living simultaneously, and had a cause-and- effect relationship on each other and the country.  I think the key to our show is, what this person did led to this, led to this.  The Little Big Horn led to the election of 1876 – you see how one thing causes another thing to happen.

HENRY: Which is very clear.  Because your premise, if I’m not misstating it, is that what we think of as the history of the American West is really all an outgrowth of President Grant’s attempts to unify a post-Civil War U.S., and fight a two-front war.

TIM:  That’s one of the jumping-off points to how the whole migration happened.  It played such a big role.  I think that a lot of these (other shows) look at the single story, and we’ve been able to look at the bigger picture of the whole country, and see how all of these different outlaws and politicians, and these legends of the west, all the roles that they played came together to cause the settling of the west that we have today.   

HENRY: What was the genesis of THE AMERICAN WEST?

STEPHEN:  We wanted to do something about all these names we knew something about.  And we found that they all lived and were big characters within a twenty-year time period, and it all came out of the Civil War.  At the end of the Civil War, the West became sort of a healing ground, and a lot of the people who had nothing to go back to, went west.     But many people who went out there were like the P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) survivors of the Civil War, a generation of men that grew up in extreme violence.  (It was) a unique period in American history where you have people who had learned to solve their problems through violence; you had a short but ultra-violent time.  We just found that fascinating, that that existed.

HENRY: It puts a whole different focus on what we think of as outlaws.

STEPHEN: What’s interesting about that time period, about the world in general, is that the people with money decide what the laws are.  And you really see that there, but I guess it always has been that way, and still is.  What we see when we talk about outlaws is that the line is very grey.  Who is an outlaw and who is the law can change overnight; we certainly see it with Wyatt Earp.

HENRY: You focus on a half-dozen iconic people like Custer, Crazy Horse, Jesse James.  Was it a tough weeding our process?  Is there anyone you regret leaving out?

STEPHEN:   If we could have kept going, I definitely would have had Butch Cassidy in there.  It’s an amazing story, and he grew up in this west that we’re talking about.  But by the time he was really becoming an outlaw, the West had been closed.  In 1890, they declared the frontier was closed: every piece of land had been claimed.  Our first year of research and outlines, Butch was connected; but we ended up having to take him out. 

HENRY: What is Robert Redford’s involvement?

STEPHEN: He is an executive producer.  He came in when we sold it; you also see him throughout the show, as an expert.  He is probably the most knowledgeable person we ever met about the West.  He knows a lot. 

HENRY: Obviously he played Liver-Eating Johnson and The Sundance Kid, but I didn’t know he was a real student of Western history.

TIM:  He’s lived in Utah the last thirty years, and he is extremely passionate about the West.  Back in the seventies he rode the whole outlaw trail, and did a book about it, with photos, and writing the history of it.  (Note: THE OUTLAW TRAIL – A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME, by Robert Redford and Jonathan Blair, was published in 1978)  I think when he got into those roles, he got infatuated with the times, and the beauty of the west, and the characters.  He’s very passionate about the whole subject, about the Native Americans and their relationship to the land.  It’s something that he is extremely interested in, and cares a lot about.

STEPHEN: When he was making BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, he actually met people who had helped them out as they were riding across the country, trying to get away.  They hid them, and got them fresh horses.

HENRY: That’s remarkable.  You forget what a young country we are.  But when you think that movie was made in 1969, those wild days weren’t all that long ago. Your commentary seems evenly split between historians and cowboy actors.  How did you assemble your stellar cast?  Did having Robert Redford help a little?

STEPHEN: (chuckles) I think his name helped.  We got lucky that these people wanted to do commentary.  And it was interesting because a lot of times you get celebrities, and they may not really know, and you give them kind of general comments.  But these people really knew their history.  We found that as they prepared for whatever historical roles they were playing, they did a lot of research.

HENRY: That’s nice.  So you didn’t have to give, say, Kiefer Sutherland a script and tell him, this is what Jesse James was like?

TIM:  Kiefer was one of the more knowledgeable – we were amazed at how much he knew about all these characters and the stories.  I think from when he did his role in YOUNG GUNS (1988), he studied all these guys.

HENRY: Did anyone else stand out as knowledgeable?

TIM:  There’s Redford; Tom Sellick was great – he really knew his stuff.

STEPHEN:  I think what was really interesting about Tom Sellick was he really knew the big picture.  He knew how each of these smaller things affected the bigger picture.  You have to know a good deal about the subject to see all the relationships. 

HENRY: Your reenactments are a step above what we’re used to seeing.  The production values are great – it looks like a big-budget feature.  What is the casting process like? 

STEPHEN: We do film this like a movie.  We’ve done quite a few; we were the first to do the genre on a big scale, with THE MEN WHO BUILT AMERICA.  So we’re practiced, we use the same crews; we have a system of filming.  It feels like a drama, and you get into these characters.  We don’t want it to feel like a reenactment.  We just want the whole thing to feel emotional; have the archive and the voice-over and the drama all feel seamless.  I watch documentaries – and there are great documentaries – but a lot of times I’m washed over with a lot of information.  Our idea was, if the information added to the character’s stake, then you cared more about the information.  So when we’re looking at what information is in the show, and what is not, it really has to do with, does this move the character’s story forward?

HENRY: Just as you would do in a drama.

STEPHEN: Right. 

HENRY: Have you ever considered casting familiar actors?

STEPHEN: (laughs) If it was in the budget.

TIM: Even with MEN WHO BUILT AMERICA, about the industrial revolution, you know the names of these people, but there’s very few pictures.  So you don’t necessarily know what they look like.  So we try to make the (actors) look as much like them (as possible).  If we succeed, the people will just associate that actor; they have no other preconception.  They become that character.  That’s the hope. 

HENRY: Where was the series shot?  How long a shooting schedule was it?

TIM: We shot in West Virginia and in Utah; we had a split shoot.

STEPHEN: We had a shoot of sixty days.  To make it a little more complicated, we actually shoot with two crews simultaneously for thirty days.

HENRY: What obstacles did the production face?

TIM: One thing that was very important to us was handling the Native American story in a respectful way, and telling the real story.  I felt like it hadn’t been done.  So we wanted to make sure we got people who spoke Lakota, people who could channel the energy of these legendary characters like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.  It was an obstacle, but we ended up with an amazing cast of guys. 

STEPHEN:  We wanted to tell the full story; that they weren’t just victims.

HENRY:  Any favorite memories from the production?

TIM: One of the most exciting days was when we were doing Little Big Horn and the lead-up to it.  Obviously it was a horrible war.  But you get all those horses out there, and we had cameras and monitors set up in the ATVs, and we’re just tearing through these fields in the ATVs alongside horses that are at a full gallop – it was pretty exhilarating, pretty fun to get out there with the toys and get those amazing shots.

HENRY: Speaking of the equipment, what did you shoot with? 

TIM: We shot on the Arri Amira.

HENRY: Is there a moment you’re particularly proud of?

TIM: To me, one of the most fun scenes, is what they call ‘the big killing’.  It’s when Billy the Kid and his gang are tracked down to a house, and the local mayor, who is after him, brings in the government.  They bring in Gatling guns, and they have a huge shootout with Billy the Kid in this house – bullets are ripping through the house.  His whole crew gets killed, and he somehow escapes unscathed.  It’s an intense shootout scene that’s pretty fun to watch.

HENRY: The violence is more unflinching than it would have been in the past: when a character is shot in the chest, you can see his heart pumping out the blood from the wound.  When Jesse James shoots a man in the face, the back of his head explodes against the wall behind him.  Why so graphic?

TIM: I think the reality is this was a very violent time.  The amount of people who died in that war was mind-boggling; that’s what led to this violent time, and that’s what these guys were – they were violent.  A lot of them were murderers.  It’s the reality.  Not every scene we do in the show is that violent, but those moments, it’s impactful when you see that.  It is brutal, but it’s showing the impact of the war, and all that violence on them.

HENRY: I’ve only seen the first two episodes, so I don’t know where the story goes.  Does the story enter the 20^th century? 

STEPHEN: We take it to the end of the frontier, when the West is closed.

TIM: There is sort of a coda that takes place in the 1920s – I guess it would be a spoiler if I gave it away. 

HENRY: Are you planning on a sequel?

STEPHEN: I think we’ve gone to the end of the West.  When we start, we essentially have a North and South that go as far west as the Mississippi River, and beyond that you just have land.  By the end of this you have an America that’s from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that is all one America, and you see how that all happened in 25 years; and we think that is the story. 

TIM: In the last episode there’s a map that starts as we began the show, and it fills in where the people have all settled. You see the states start to fill in, and it’s pretty amazing to see the change that happened in that time period, to see that happen very quickly in front of you on the map.

HENRY:  Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

STEPHEN: As you get into episodes 3, 4 and 5, you feel this cause and effect that is very much like the election we’re going through right now.  The election of 1876 is very much like this election, and everything that is leading up to it.  There’s a divided country, there’s racism, there was a recent financial collapse caused by mass corruption.  There are rigged elections, there are political machines.  I think people are going to look at this and say, things haven’t change much in 140 years.

HENRY: They should be running this on CNN.  What’s next?

STEPHEN: We have MAKING OF THE MOB: CHICAGO coming on AMC. 

You can read my article on THE AMERICAN WEST in the August issue of TRUE WEST.

RIDLEY SCOTT TO HELM CRAIG ZAHLER’S ‘WRAITHS OF THE BROKEN LAND’

Craig Zahler

Back when we spoke on the set of BONE TOMAHAWK, writer/director S. Craig Zahler told me that much of the attention he’d gotten in Hollywood was due to his Western novel WRAITHS OF THE BROKEN LAND.  Now it’s been announced that WRAITHS will reach the big screen under the guidance of director Ridley Scott and scripter Drew Goddard, who collaborated on last year’s hugely popular THE MARTIAN. 

While I knew Craig had his hands full, prepping a pair of movies, PUPPET MASTER and BRAWL, I wondered how he felt about someone else doing the lensing of WRAITHS.  It turns out he’s even busier than I thought.  He told the Round-up, “I just finished my fourth script of 2016 – two of which are 179 page monsters – while prepping both those other movies and a third one to be announced.  The only way something as complicated, nasty, and challenging as WRAITHS OF THE BROKEN LAND gets made in Hollywood is by having well established people stand behind it, and Drew Goddard and Ridley Scott are two such people.  This director has the resources and visual acumen to get this giant western spectacle on the screen, and this writer has told me that he intends to retain the characters, violence, and moral complexity of the book in his script while making it fit that medium.  Goddard is a fan on the novel and has been instrumental in moving this whole thing forward from day one, and I am hopeful that he and Scott will inexorably push their oater agendum.”

THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEONES TO PRODUCE ‘COLT’ SERIES

The series star is in the center

According to The Variety, back in 1987, the great Sergio Leone got together with his writers Sergio Donati, (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, DUCK YOU SUCKER), and Fulvio Morsella (FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST), and began crafting a story around The Man With No Name’s pistol from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.  The idea was that, like WINCHESTER ’73, the sidearm would pass through many hands, each with a story. 

Alas, it never happened.  But now, long after the maestro’s passing, his daughter Raffaella Leone and son Andrea Leone, who together run Leone Film Group, are in pre-production for a six-episode (to begin) series.  It will be directed by GOMORRAH director Stefano Sollima, son of writer director Sergio Sollima (FACE TO FACE, THE BIG GUNDOWN).

THAT’S A WRAP!

I had a few video reviews I was going to include, but I’m going to have to stop it there.  I’m still catching up on a week and a half lost to jury duty, and I have an audio commentary to do tomorrow, so I’ll sign off now to prepare.  By the way, the jury duty was very interesting, and if you have the time I’d recommend not trying to squirm out of it when they call you.

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright June 2016 by Henry C. Parke - All Rights Reserved

'SWEETWATER' OPENS OCT 11 - REVIEWED AND INTERVIEWED!

SWEETWATER – a Movie Review

SWEETWATER, a beautifully produced western directed by Logan Miller and co-written by him and his brother Noah, opens with a mysterious, babbling figure, in the person of Ed Harris as Jackson, in a breathtaking New Mexico desert, dancing and making apparently religious incantations to the rising sun.  Next we see Jason Isaacs as Prophet Josiah, amidst a phalanx of  huge and oddly menacing white crosses, performing his own off-center-of-Christian ceremonies.  These men represent the opposing forces that will butt heads over a murder and, in so doing, tear asunder the lives of January Jones and Eduardo Noriega as Sarah and Miguel Ramirez, a young married couple struggling to farm a future from the sun-blasted desert of New Mexico.  They haven’t a snowball’s chance in Hell.   

To put it mildly, the deck is stacked against the couple.  We quickly gather that the young beauty is a former whore in a town where she used to ply her trade.  Her husband Miguel is an eternal optimist, forever giving people the benefit of the doubt, but his generosity is wasted on people who see in him nothing but a dirty Mexican.  Their paltry savings are stolen by the local banker.  The local merchant is far more interested in voyeuristically pursuing Sarah than in doing business with them.  When Prophet Josiah’s sheep eat their crops, and they suspect he’s killed their dog, the local sheriff is not even indifferent.  He’s contemptuous. 

 

Eduardo Noriega and Jason Isaacs

And Prophet Josiah who, with his flock, was run out of Utah, soon sets his sights on beautiful Sarah.  Prophet Josiah is the man with the money and the power in this Hellish region, and has the willing support of all the local businessmen and government.  At the same time, Sheriff Jackson has come to town to investigate the disappearance of two men, relatives of the Governor, whom we have seen Prophet Josiah murder for trespassing. 

This is the grim world of the town of Sweetwater.  Brad Shield, a 2^nd unit cinematographer on many big movies, has a wonderful eye for simultaneously capturing the full-hued beauty and stark barren ugliness of the New Mexico desert.  And the stunning but not over-glamorized loveliness of January Jones, who shoulders much of the forward momentum of the story. 

Logan Miller directs with a precision and confidence that mirrors his strongest characters.  Nothing is arbitrary in the telling.  He is blessed with several strong actors, and skilled at drawing performances from them, and he has an impressive control of camera movement.  There is almost a hypnotic sense of menace to the scene where Miguel is threatened by a pair of men who circle him, one on foot moving clockwise, the other on horseback moving counter-clockwise.  It could have easily been overplayed, but it is all the more frightening because it seems natural, as does Miguel’s distraction.  Another scene, a hunt through the maze of a sheep pen, is particularly intense. 

January Jones

Jason Isaacs, who first impressed as the sadistic Col. Tavington in THE PATRIOT, and continued hatefully as Lucius Malfoy in the HARRY POTTER movies, is excellent as the sanctimonious hypocrite Prophet Josiah.  You watch him, knowing that you’d never follow him, but others would. 

January Jones, famous as Betty Francis, later Betty Draper in MAD MEN, compels your interest and sympathy by the strength of her character, and determination against tremendous odds.  She embodies the pioneer spirit.  And rather than modernizing the story to make it ‘relatable’, it stays in period, and portrays the desperation of a lone woman searching a vast land for her missing husband.  There is no phone, no police, no APB, no tracking a cell signal.  Pregnant, alone and searching, she must still plow the land or see the crops die.  She doesn’t have a sidekick to share her thoughts with, so much of her performance is facial and physical, and while she is helped by the occasional camera crane-shot showing the enormity of her challenge, the credit for the performance must go to her.    

Ed Harris and a corpse

But the fun starts whenever Ed Harris appears on the scene.  As Cornelius Jackson, with dapper suit and shoulder-length scarecrow hair, he’s part mystic, part detective and part loony.  At times he plays it so broad it’s like he’s channeling Malcolm McDowell from CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  But it’s sheer pleasure to watch him and Prophet Josiah face each other, especially the dinner scene where Jackson demonstrates his contempt for the religious leader. 

SWEETWATER is a beautifully made Western, with a compelling plot, gripping action, strong performances, beautifully filmed and edited.  It is an ‘R’ for a reason.  In addition to some beautiful nudity on the part of Miss Jones, there is male nudity only a masochist would enjoy, apparent masturbation, sexual cruelty, and some rough language.

I do have some quibbles with moments that seem contrived.  For no apparent reason, a man presents a woman with a parasol, so that she’ll later be able to jab him in the eye with it.  Two men dig up a well-hidden body for the apparent purpose of being discovered doing it.  A character says some revoltingly crude remarks just before being killed, as if to let us know that he’s no loss: believe me, we already knew.  And just once in a while, I’d like to see a movie where a religious character is neither a hypocrite nor crazy. 

SWEETWATER opens in theatres on Friday, October 11.  It’s available on VOD right now.

An Interview with ANDREW MCKENZIE, the man who created SWEETWATER

Andrew McKenzie

I think if a writer had any idea how long it would take, and how difficult it would be, to get almost any movie made, he’d never even type FADE IN.  Once you write your screenplay, if you’re lucky enough to have anyone interested in making you’re movie, the number of drafts, the number of changes asked for, the number of people who have input but disagree with each other about those changes – it’s mind-numbing. 

But incredibly, sometimes movies do get made, and they often make the writer proud, even though the finished product is often far from the writer’s original vision.  SWEETWATER is a movie that would make any writer proud.  It is the brainchild of New Zealand-born Andrew McKenzie, and many a Western fan will guess at a major influence on his writing based on the title; Sweetwater is the town that McBain is trying to create out of the desert, by sheer force of will, in Sergio Leone’s masterwork, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  Kind of the way writers create reality out of paper by sheer force of will.

The screenplay is credited to Noah and Logan Miller.  The story is by Andrew McKenzie.  Here is his story of how the story of SWEETWATER came to be.

HENRY PARKE: I notice you’re from New Zealand.  Did you grow up with western movies and TV shows?

ANDREW MCKENZIE: I grew up in a small town in New Zealand.  I now call Melbourne, Australia home.  New Zealand was isolated.  We had two televisions channels, so a very limited choice in what to watch.  The video store would only get one copy of a film and I recall that whenever we went to get a movie, something like EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, it’d be out, so we’d end up getting what was left, and there seemed to be a big population of Bud Spencer/Terence Hill films and Spaghetti Westerns.  I related to Leone’s films in particular because they were very visual, about characters in isolation, struggling to survive.  Probably relates to my childhood as well – I was more of an individual making my own rules rather than following everyone else.

HENRY: What westerns, western stars, western filmmakers, impressed you growing up?  What are your favorite western movies?  Who influenced your work?

ANDREW: The Spaghetti Westerns first and foremost.  ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is my all-time favorite.  Strong visual storytelling throughout and a dry, laconic wit that suits me perfectly.  I love the black comedy, the poetry of violence.  I generally feel alienated by American westerns, aside from Peckinpah.  I’m cynical about the mythic structure and prefer the true grit of a character rather than an archetype.  The day I discovered THE WILD BUNCH though, my life changed.  Peckinpah is the master storyteller.  My favorite Peckinpah quote is that he didn’t make Westerns, he made stories about men on horseback, and that shone through for me in watching THE WILD BUNCH.  Here was a story about people, individual people, and not a cardboard cut-out.  There were no good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats; everyone wore shades of gray. 

HENRY: In watching the excellent New Zealand-lensed western GOOD FOR NOTHING, I was struck by how convincingly New Zealand stands in for the American West.  Do you think there is a sort of kinship between the rural elements of the two countries, a similar sort of spirit to the people?

ANDREW: Both New Zealand and Australia have the Colonial spirit of migration, but it is also influenced by the environment in which they settle.  Migrants to New Zealand may have had issues clearing the land, but the weather and climate meant that they didn’t have to fight as hard to survive. Australia, on the other hand, is arguably more like the frontier, and that in my opinion has formed part of the Australian character, hard and rugged.  Whereas New Zealanders are inherently insecure and don’t strive to challenge.  They’d rather play safe and conservative.  I have to admit I haven’t seen GOOD FOR NOTHING.  I think if you want a sense and feel of things, look at THE PROPOSITION, because it creates itself into a universe, like Leone’s work is poetry of violence, and that’s where I like to sit my work as well.

HENRY: The title SWEETWATER is clearly a nod to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, as the name of the town Brett McBain is planning to build.  Was that the genesis of your story for SWEETWATER?

ANDREW: Yes, very clearly.  I had to explain the reference at Sundance because nobody understood the context.  In the screenplay there is a reference to the town being named Sweetwater, but they didn’t shoot it.  I wrote SWEETWATER after I tried to get two of my other Western screenplays up and off the ground.  I wanted to write a small intimate story that subverted all the genre conventions with the intention of directing it myself.  The screenplay was originally set in New Zealand – hence the antagonist being a sheep farmer, but they left that in without context for the film.  It was funny explaining to the cast at Sundance that that is why he was a sheep farmer, and then it all made sense.  Apparently they had trouble finding enough sheep in New Mexico and even had to bring in some goats to fill out the herd.  SWEETWATER was also a ‘thank you’ and tribute to my friendship with Sergio Donati and I thought it was a perfect story because both stories had strong female protagonists.

HENRY: How did you come to know Sergio Donati, who wrote the screenplay for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST with Sergio Leone?

ANDREW: I was doing my Masters in Creative Writing, and my case study was ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  I was a member of a few web boards for Spaghetti Westerns, and Sergio had posted somewhere at one stage.  I made contact and said I’m a writer doing my masters, and we became friends from there.  He is a legendary man, modest and humble, yet ever supportive.

HENRY: What was your working relationship with Donati?  Did he have input on SWEETWATER?

ANDREW: It wasn’t so much a formal working relationship; we would just casually talk via email.  In terms of SWEETWATER, I sent him the draft when it was finished and he read it and said he liked it.  That endorsement meant a lot. 

HENRY: Were you more influenced by American Westerns or Euro Westerns in general, and with SWEETWATER in particular?

ANDREW: Definitely the Euro.  I meld everything up into a poetry of violence; there are harsh undertones but there is also humor.  That’s one of the things I learned from Donati’s writing, like the gag at the end of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, counting up the bounties.  I love weaving characters and dialogue.  The other big influences on me would be Peckinpah and THE WILD BUNCH, and David Milch’s DEADWOOD.  Milch’s dialogue gave me breathing space to trust in my creative voice.  When TRUE GRIT came out I again felt validated.

HENRY: How long did you spend writing SWEETWATER, and how many drafts?

ANDREW: Oh, that is a long and complicated story.  It went through a variety of producers and drafts.  I can’t even recall how many – probably I’m too scared to remember.  At one stage when I changed producers I reverted back to my favorite earlier draft, and that was the one that got picked up. 

HENRY: Westerns are such a tough genre to get made.  What’s special to you about the form that made you want to do one?

ANDREW: See I don’t think I write ‘Westerns’, or ‘Oaters’. I’m more like Peckinpah in that it is about the character and the story.  I will take the genre conventions and subvert them and will seldom adhere to them, but for me it is first and foremost about character.  I love the notion of characters in isolation.  I hate cell phones.  I love putting characters into situations and having them forced to get themselves out of it.  The ‘Western’ is the perfect environment for that.  There is no cavalry, there is no rescue.  You have to get yourself out of this situation, and that is what makes it emotionally engaging for the audience.  SWEETWATER was a simple story about a farmer’s wife whose husband disappears one night.  She is led by the town to believe that he has abandoned her.  When she discovers his body, then she must rise up above all the conflict.  Yes, she goes on the vengeance trail, but it is all told from the character’s perspective rather than the plot.   

HENRY: How did you link up with the filmmakers?

ANDREW: A good friend of mine, David Eggby, who is a cinematographer, was going to shoot SWEETWATER for me when I was directing.  He had shot a film called IRONCLAD for the producers and gave them the screenplay.  That was at the time that TRUE GRIT had just come out.  They picked up the option and things gathered momentum from there.  The directors came on board because they had a working relationship with Ed Harris.  The original producers and I stepped away from the production and things proceeded from there.

HENRY:  What do you think of the finished film of SWEETWATER? 

ANDREW: This part is tricky to respond to.  I’ll be honest: I spent five years of my life attached to SWEETWATER, with the majority of those attached to direct.  I guess I can be diplomatic and say that the filmmakers had a completely different vision to how I would have directed the film, but hey, that’s their prerogative.  There are glimpses of it in the final film, but not enough to give me satisfaction.

HENRY: Were you pleased with the casting?  January Jones, Ed Harris, Jason Isaacs,  Eduardo Noriega?

ANDREW: Yes, I thought the casting was outstanding.  I ended up spending most of my time at Sundance hanging out with Jason Isaacs.  We have become good friends.  I’m currently developing a television series for him. 

HENRY: While the core of the story is the same, there are many changes.  The movie’s Prophet Josiah is combined from your characters of Cole and Reverend Matthew.  An ethnic subplot was added by casting Eduardo Noriega as Sarah’s husband.  Another ethnic element, the American Indian characters, were removed.  The sheriff, a relatively minor character in your story, as portrayed by Ed Harris in the film, is almost as important as your female lead, Sarah.  What changes do you most regret?

ANDREW: I think the most regret I have is that so much screen time was taken away from the character of Sarah.  It truly was supposed to be her story throughout.  Here she was in this crazy world.  She was a normal farmer’s wife in my script, an innocent of sorts.  The first act set her up as supportive of her husband, but you didn’t know that she’s going to have the strength to carry the story through.  In the second act, originally when she discovers the body, she goes on a pilgrimage to the church to have him buried.  She tries to make sense of things before she goes on the vengeance trail.  There were a lot of layers and threads that would have made the narrative more emotionally engaging, but hey, I’m biased.

HENRY: What have you written since SWEETWATER?

ANDREW: I’ve been extremely busy.  I have another screenplay, CANVASTOWN, which I’ll call a period drama.  It is set in Victoria, Australia in 1851, about a small mining community.  I’m working on directing that.  I’ve completed another couple of spec feature screenplays and have two television series pilots in development, including the one with Jason Isaacs.  The writer’s life is always busy, creating new material.  I do have a western TV series that I’d like to see go one day.  It’s titled THE BLACK RIDERS and is inspired by the poetry of Stephen Crane.

Many thanks to Tom Betts, who writes the delightful and informative WESTERNS...ALLITALIANA! 

site for suggesting this interview, and for introducing me to Andrew.

THAT’S A WRAP!

Can’t believe HELL ON WHEELS is over for another season!  And don’t send me any comments about the ending just yet – I’m still four episodes behind!  Try and catch SWEETWATER this week.  You’ll be entertained and impressed.  Next week, among other things, I’ll have a review of a group of thought-to-be-lost American silent films that were found in a New Zealand archive, and preserved.

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright October 2013 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

INTERVIEW WITH JULIE ADAMS, UNIVERSAL’S QUEEN OF THE WEST, AT 3-D EXPO!

Van Heflin & Julie Adams in WINGS OF THE HAWK

Conducted September 7^th, 2013

For Hollywood, the 1950s and 60s were the era of the blonde bombshell.  But it was also a time of some striking brunettes, and few made a more lasting impression than the lady whose long black tresses and white one-piece swimsuit made her Fay Wray to THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, Julie Adams. 

But Julie Adams was much more than catnip to a 3D lizard; a stunning beauty with a sultry voice that could portray sincerity or scheming, she always portrayed intelligence.  She was the thinking man’s western beauty, and her characters were rarely the type who just reloaded while her man fired out of the cabin window.  In at least fifteen Western features and dozens of Western TV episodes, she played the sort of strong three-dimensional women that previously only Barbara Stanwyck got to play – and sometimes she played them with Barbara Stanwyck!

And speaking of three-dimensional characters, she starred in two 3D movies, both of which are being featured in the WORLD 3D FILM EXPO III, which opened on Friday night at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, and will run for ten days.  CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON played on Saturday night, and on this Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm, WINGS OF THE HAWK will be shown.  This Budd Beotticher-directed classic is rarely seen in any version, and it’s been years since it played in 3D.   Miss Adams, who stars with Van Heflin in the film, will attend, and take part in a Q&A.  She will also be signing her autobiography, THE LUCKY SOUTHERN STAR – REFLECTIONS FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, which I will be reviewing here shortly.  In it she discusses, along with CREATURE, and her other films, all of her Western movies, and many of her TV appearances.

After some parts in early live TV, and before she became a contract star at Universal, she cut her celluloid teeth working in Westerns for the small independent, Lippert Pictures.  She graciously spent an hour talking to me until she had to rush off for her BLACK LAGOON screening.     

HENRY PARKE:  Miss Adams, it’s great to talk to you.  I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, and oddly enough, I like your westerns even more than I like THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.

JULIE ADAMS: Well that’s great, because I love doing westerns.  I loved seeing western movies when I was a kid, so my dream came true, and I actually got to act in westerns, and ride those beautiful horses. 

HENRY:  Before you started acting in them, what westerns did you like in particular?

JULIE:  I loved them all.  I went to Saturday westerns mostly, with different stars, but I was more in love with the horses than the actors.  I loved the stories, I loved the outdoors.  I just loved it all.

HENRY:  As far as I know, the first western you did was with Don ‘Red’ Barry, THE DALTON GANG, in 1949. 

JULIE:  You’re absolutely right.

HENRY:  Don Barry’s always been a personal favorite of mine.  What was he like to work with?

JULIE:  I loved to work with him; he was wonderful.  A very nice fellow, extremely polished in the western genre. 

HENRY:  You did a half dozen Westerns for an independent company, Lippert Pictures, in 1950.  I understand that they were shot simultaneously, with the same casts.  They’d do the saloon scenes for all six films, then the ranch house scenes for all six, and so forth. That must have been a crash course in acting.

JULIE:  Well, it was exciting.  Because we did six or seven westerns in just five weeks.  So it was exciting, and it was extremely concentrated.  It was great training for me, because you didn’t have time to think about things too much; just went and did it! (laughs)  I went out and took some riding lessons before I started.  Within the western genre, the horses that are trained for westerns are so easy to ride; you can guide them, and they respond to anything you do, whichever way you want to go.  Horses can really make you look good. 

HENRY: In 1952 you were under contract to Universal Pictures, and you starred with Jimmy Stewart in one of the legendary Stewart and director Anthony Mann collaborations, BEND OF THE RIVER.  Which was quite a substantial step up from Lippert.  What was Anthony Mann like to work with?

James Stewart and Julie in BEND OF THE RIVER

JULIE:  Anthony Mann was really a wonderful director.  He knew what he was doing, and he knew what he wanted, and he made you feel very secure.  You had a good man at the head of the chain.  Everything he directed you to do made sense.  He really knew the western genre so well.  I was very happy working with him; I loved doing BEND OF THE RIVER, and of course to work with James Stewart was great. 

HENRY:  The first action in the film is your character, Laura, getting shot with an arrow.  Which was really unexpected – you don’t usually shoot the beautiful people early; you shoot the little guys.  Laura is so tough and resourceful – much more than you expect western women of that movie era to be. 

JULIE:  I loved that, because I had done some of the Lippert westerns where the women were more – well, the guys were just looking after them.  I loved that she was that active, and could take care of herself.

HENRY:  Almost twenty years after that you were again starring with James Stewart in THE JIMMY STEWART SHOW. 

JULIE:  Oh yes!  Well, my idea of heaven was going to work with Jimmy Stewart every day for six months.  He was a wonderful actor and a wonderful man.  A charming person, very easy to work with and just so good at what he did.  He was a wonderful screen actor, or course.  I enjoyed it enormously.

HENRY:  How did you like Jay C. Flippen, who played your father? 

JULIE:  Jay was a great guy – funny and fun and great to work with. 

HENRY:  In real life, would you have had a hard time choosing between Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy?

JULIE:  (laughs)  Fortunately I never had to make that decision. 

HENRY:  HORIZONS WEST was the first of three exceptional westerns you starred in for Budd Boetticher, followed by MAN FROM THE ALAMO, and a film featured in the current 3D expo, WINGS OF THE HAWK.  Boetticher frequently used his male stars again and again, but not his leading ladies.  I’m wondering, what made you different, that he used you so often?

JULIE:  I don’t know; I guess he just thought that I fit into the Westerns very well.  And also, in one of them I did a great deal of riding.  I think he was impressed that I could do that.  We got along very well, very well indeed.  And I love to work, so we had a good time, and it was exciting.

Shades of LAURA -- Julie with her portrait

in HORIZONS WEST

HENRY:  In HORIZONS WEST, you’re married to despicable Raymond Burr. 

JULIE: (laughs) He was really a lovely man!

HENRY:  As with Jimmy Stewart, you later worked with him frequently on PERRY MASON. 

Julie guesting with Raymond Burr on PERRY MASON

JULIE:  I worked with him on IRONSIDES, too.  He was also with me on the USO Tour of Korea.  He was just wonderful.  I still get a lot of mail about THE CASE OF THE DEADLY VERDICT, the case that Perry Mason lost.  I was supposed to go to the electric chair, but they finally solved it at the last minute, so I didn’t have to get executed.  It’s a very popular episode in law schools – they all love that one! 

HENRY:  Like Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher was one of the giants of the Western.

JULIE:  Boetticher was fun to work with, because he was so into the action of it all, to make things exciting.  In other Westerns they’d take more time for the plot, and other things, but Boetticher loved the action, and I enjoyed that too.  He was a very good director for westerns, because he knew how to keep it going; keep it all moving.  You slow down, and people, viewers, drop out. 

HENRY:  In WINGS OF THE HAWK, how did you like playing a Mexican Revolutionary? 

JULIE:  I loved it!  (laughs) Only thing I didn’t like  was going to make-up and getting that black greasepaint put in my hair every day.  Bud Westmore did my make-up, and Joan St. Oegger did my hair.  The two heads of the department really fixed me up for that role.  So they wouldn’t have to dye my hair, she put black greasepaint in the edges of my hair, and pinned it back, and on top I had two black switches, so it looked like I had a lot of hair.  They were very very good in make-up and hair in Universal.  I loved the character, and I had a great outfit to wear – the clothes were great – and I got to go out with a wrangler.  At Universal they had wranglers to help people out.  And I rode Pie, the horse that James Stewart always rode; I got a great horse to ride.  I went on every day for three weeks.  And I learned to do running dismounts and all sorts of things on the horse.   So I had a great time. 

HENRY:  I believe that was your first 3D movie – there’re not too many people who have, like you, done more than one.  What challenges did the 3D process present? 

JULIE:  It was all up to the camera people.  As far as acting went, I felt comfortable because we played the scenes as always.  All the 3D problems had nothing to do with me; that was there problem, to make the 3D work.  But I enjoyed it as I enjoyed everything.

HENRY:  How did you like working with Van Heflin?

JULIE:  What a wonderful actor Van Heflin was – I loved working with him.  He was a charming man, and just a fine actor.  So I loved playing scenes with him; I liked him as a person. 

HENRY:  How did you like working with Glenn Ford in THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO? 

Julie and Glenn Ford in MAN FROM THE ALAMO

JULIE:  Once again, a real pro, and very good.  He was not, I don’t know, quite as loose and charming as some of the other actors.  But very good at his job, and I enjoyed working with him.  He was very good in the picture. 

HENRY:  You co-starred six times with Rock Hudson, four of them westerns.  How did you like working with him?

JULIE:  Rock Hudson was a pal, a great friend.  We worked together in BEND OF THE RIVER, where Rock and Lori Nelson and I were the young people, and after that there was such a big audience reaction that they put Rock and me together in THE LAWLESS BREED as the stars. 

HENRY:  With Rock as John Wesley Hardin. 

Rock Hudson and Julie in THE LAWLESS BREED

JULIE:  I had great fun playing a dancehall girl.  I got to have sort of a drop-shoulder thing, and I was serving up drinks at the bar to men, and that was fun.

HENRY:  Universal seemed very careful to give you really good wardrobes all the time.  Your clothes are just so striking.

JULIE:  For that we have to give credit to the Universal people, to Rosemary Odell, who designed most of the clothes – and they made them right up in wardrobe.  They did a great job; that wonderful department.  They made sketches of the costumes, that were submitted to the producer and the director and me, and then they were custom-made. 

HENRY: Hugh O’Brien had supporting roles in three of your westerns before WYATT EARP made him a star.  Did he seem to have star-potential back then?

JULIE:  In those days, we never thought about that exactly, when we were working.  I wasn’t a big star in it: I was the girl in it, and Hugh always did his job well, and later I was delighted when he got a show of his own.  Hugh O’Brien actually was with us at the MAN FROM THE ALAMO screening at The Egyptian back in February.  He’s got a good part in ALAMO; he’s a good actor. 

Julie's pinned with a flaming arrow in

THE STAND AT APACHE RIVER

HENRY:  After CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, you started branching out into many other kinds of stories that were not Westerns.  Were you glad to get out of a rut?

JULIE:  Because I grew up as a kid loving westerns, I never felt that I was in a rut when I was in a Western; I felt very much at home, and had a good time doing it.  But I was also delighted to expand my genre, to work in other kinds of films, with other kinds of actors.  I just plain love to work.

HENRY: In the fifties and sixties you guest-starred on many western series – CHEYENNE, MAVERICK YANCY DERRINGER, BONANZA, BIG VALLEY, THE RIFLEMAN, THE VIRGINIAN.  Were any particularly memorable? 

JULIE:  The three that really stand out are Nora, in THE RIFLEMAN, where I play a mysterious woman from McCain’s – that’s Chuck Connors – past.  There was The Courtship episode of BONANZA, where I’m engaged to Hoss briefly, before they find out I’ve got a gambling addiction.  I had scenes with each of the BONANZA stars, interrogating me.  They didn’t want me to marry Hoss and gamble away the Ponderosa! Then there’s The Emperor of Rice episode of THE BIG VALLEY.  I’ve got a showdown with Barbara Stanwyck, in a basement fire, coming through the smoke.  I was pushing Barbara Stanwyck around.  Those three kind of helped me break out of that ‘good girl’ image at I had in the Universal westerns. 

HENRY:  How did you like Chuck Connors?

JULIE:  I liked him a lot; very good at his job, and a really nice fellow.

HENRY:  Aside from those three, were there any western TV shows that were particular favorites?

JULIE:  I did two MAVERICKs with Jack Kelly that were fun. 

HENRY:  Was the pace of TV production a lot faster than feature work?

JULIE:  Well, of course, but there was really not a lot of difference, because I prepared the same way all the time.  I tried to get the character as fully developed as I could, whoever she was.  And so I’d just kind of take it in stride. 

HENRY:  In 1959 you starred opposite Joel McCrea playing Bat Masterson in THE GUNFIGHT AT 

DODGE CITY.  What was McCrea like to work with?

JULIE:  I can only say it was absolutely wonderful, because he was such a pro at what he was doing.  So you could completely relax, and just play your part.  He was very much at home in the western genre, and he was so good.  I guess I just loved to work, and I was very lucky I worked with so many good people.  Joel McCrea was the real McCoy – he was just what you saw on the screen.  Very handsome, and fun to work with.  I met his grandson, Wyatt McCrea, in Arizona this past March.  A very sweet guy who loves westerns, too. 

Julie with Elvis in TICKLE ME

HENRY:  I understand you did a movie with Elvis.

JULIE:  TICKLE ME.  I run a dude ranch, and he works at the dude ranch.  It’s like the boss and the secretary: I called him into my office and chased him around the desk.  What a delightful young man.

WORLD 3D FILM EXPO III CONTINUES AT THE EGYPTIAN

The festival of 3D movies which began on Friday night with John Wayne in HONDO will continue through next Sunday night – ten days and nights of things flying at you from the screen!  Of particular interest to Western fans is TAZA – SON OF COCHISE, on Wednesday, at 4:15 pm.  This Douglas Sirk – directed western stars Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, and Rex Reason. 

And of course, on Friday, at 3:30 pm, WINGS OF THE HAWK, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Van Heflin and Julie Adams will screen – and Julie Adams will be there to answer questions, and sign her book – see details in the interview above.    To see a complete schedule for the Expo, go HERE.

‘FISTFUL OF DOLLARS’ SATURDAY SEPT. 14^TH AT THE AUTRY

As part of the Autry’s ‘What is a Western?’ series, the film that rejuvenated an aging and ailing genre, Sergio Leone’s ‘A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS’ will screen at 1:30 pm.  While in much of Europe, the original ‘DJANGO’ was the more celebrated, it is impossible to overstate the influence of ‘FISTFUL’, and the Man in Black trilogy as a whole, on American and European Western films.  There is virtually no Western film to come after, including the work of Sam Peckinpah  and Don Seigal, that was not measurably affected by Leone.  Incidentally, on October 12^th, they’ll screen ‘FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE’, and on November 2^nd, ‘THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.’  While you’re at the Autry, check out the IMAGINATION GALLERY, with many artifacts on display relating to Leone, Clint Eastwood, and their films.

AND THAT’S A WRAP

That’s it for this weekend’s Round-up.  If you’re in L.A. this week, I urge you to check out the 3D Expo, and FISTFUL at the Autry.  The chance to see movies the way they are meant to be seen, on a big screen, with a 35mm print, are getting more and more rare.  Don’t pass ‘em up!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright September 2013 by Henry C. Parke – All Right Reserved