JACK ELLIOTT, WILD WEST CHRONICLES’S BAT MASTERSON, TALKS SEASON 6, PLUS BIRTHDAYS & MORE!

 

Jack Elliott as Bat Masterson in Wild West Chronicles

Photo by Morgan Weistling, courtesy INSP

Updated July2, 2026

Updaed July 5, 2026

Season 6 of INSP’s Wild West Chronicles is just about in the can – or on the chip, or whatever we should be calling it now. The series examines the lives of real-life westerners, from legends to the undeservedly obscure, through the eyes of lawman-turned-reporter Bat Masterson. He’s portrayed by Jack Elliott, and the show is exciting, entertaining and factually informative without being overtly educational. In other words, you’ll have fun, and you’ll probably learn something without intending to. 

With each episode built around a new character, Jack Elliott’s performance as Bat is the glue that holds the show together. Beyond his notable resemblance to the real man, Elliot is engaging, amusing, and brings an understated gravitas to the role: without showing off, you buy him as lawman you wouldn’t want to cross. About a week ago, I visited him on the Wild West Chronicles set, in a Western movie town near Chatsworth, and asked him how many times he’d portrayed Bat Masterson so far.

Bat (Jack Elliott) pounds the keys instead of the street

as he segues from lawman to journalist

(Courtest INSP)

 

Jack Elliott: I think this one we're shooting today is 63. By the end of the season we'll have 65.

Henry Parke: When you started in that role, did you think you still be playing him, six years and six seasons later?

Jack Elliott: No. Honestly, with the way most productions go, when we shot the pilot, I was thinking, this will probably be the last I hear or see of this character, and these people. Then when we got picked up, it was kind of a shocker, and then we just kept getting picked up. So every season you kind of think it might be the last one.

Jack Elliott between takes

(photo by Parke)

Henry Parke: Because in this business, usually it is.

Jack Elliott: <laugh>. Mostly it is, yeah. Gary (Tarpinian), our E.P. (Executive Producer) is really good about the statistics of how many shows go from season one to a season two, and it just drops progressively as each season goes by. It's a fraction of a percent of shows that even go to a season two, let alone a season six.

Henry Parke: Which raises the question of why does this one keep going on? Why has Wild West Chronicles not gone away, or jumped the shark?

Jack Elliott: For me it's just the fact that there's so many stories from the Old West. There's so many great characters, and moments that we can pull from. Even though it was like a 30-year period that the Old West was going on, so much happened, so much expansion in the United States. So many different big characters were alive. So I think just being able to pull from so many different places has kept it going. And then also the fans; people love this show. I get fan mail from Northern Ireland, from all over the world. One of my favorites was a gentleman in his twenties, and he wrote, I just wanna thank you. This show is what my grandparents and I bond over every week. We meet up on Thursday nights, we'll make dinner. We sit down and we watch Wild West Chronicles. So thank you for giving us a reason to get together. <laugh>. I think it kind of resonates with people. I also think the West, especially the true stories, that is our legacy as Americans. We haven't been around that long. So to have something that we can all kind of pull from, it resonates with people.

Director Michael Ojeda watching a take 

from the "video Village"

(Photo by Parke)

Henry Parke: When people recognize you, are there particular episodes that they want to talk about?

Jack Elliott: People love Doc Susie (Dr. Susan Anderson) which, as you know, is what, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman was based on. Different episodes resonate with different people. A good friend of mine, a pen pal when I was a kid, became an elementary school teacher in New Orleans. She teaches history, and Wild West Chronicles has become a part of their curriculum. She said that a lot of the kids were blown away. Some black kids in her class had no idea there were black cowboys. So just kind of expanding people's world and what the West actually looked like, which is a lot of different folks.

Dr. Susie (Nicole Tompkins) treats an ailing Bat 

(Jack Elliott) in Dr. Susan Anderson: Frontier Medicine Woman

(courtesy INSP)

Henry Parke: Are people surprised that Bat Masterson is a real person?

Jack Elliott: Very much so. Because the life he lived was so epic, if you really dive into it, which I have. He was a renaissance man in the true sense of the word. He kept reinventing himself, kept trying different things. And I think that's kind of inspirational to people. It's almost too big for life. Some people can't believe, like you'd be a cowboy, and a lawman and all of these things for 40 years, and then move to New York, live on Broadway, write stories and hang out with Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's a little hard for people to believe.

Henry Parke: He's bigger than life.

Jack Elliott: Truly.

The real Bat Masterson

(Courtesy True West)

Henry Parke: As you've gone along, delving into Bat Masterson's life, what sort of things have influenced how you play him? What things have you picked up that widen your knowledge of him?

Jack Elliott as Bat

(photo by Morgan Weistling, courtesy INSP)

Jack Elliott: When I grew up, one of the things my dad and I bonded over was Westerns; we watched a lot of Western movies. So I definitely draw from that: it's in my genes at this point, the knowledge. As an actor, if you've got a body of material available, which Bat does, you just kind of go through it and take as much as you can. And little pieces will pop out. Like, oh, he was all about the truth. Oh, he really had a great moral compass. Just little things like that you kind of pull from and put in your tool bag as an actor. And then also, as an actor going into this, I was thinking, Bat is the through-line of this show. How am I gonna keep it interesting? How am I gonna be somebody that people are willing to come back to every week and watch? It's not like, oh, here's this guy again. It's like, oh yeah, here's that crazy uncle telling stories I can't wait to hear. You know? So for me, a big part of it is is that had to be somebody that people could relate to, that people found interesting and they looked forward to seeing.

Henry Parke: How about keeping it interesting for yourself, season after season?

Jack Elliott: For me, it has been very interesting, as an actor, to be able to sit with it, with him, for this long. It's like putting on a pair of boots. It's riding a bike again. It really has become part of my DNA. As an actor, I don't think you can separate yourself from the characters fully. I think your life informs the character as much as the character's life informs the character. So I definitely find myself having a little less tolerance for baloney, <laugh> a little more like ‘just the facts, ma'am,’ in my daily life. So I definitely, as the human being, Jack Elliott, I have pulled from Bat, inadvertently. But it's been such a gift. It's been really cool to get to know him. I've grown with Bat over the years.

Henry Parke: Over the years, as you have gotten to know him, have you had much input into the scripts?

An intense scene from Marhsal Garfias Faces the Mob, 

written by Jack Elliott

(Courtesy of INSP)

Jack Elliott: Yeah, actually I wrote a spec script just off the cuff a couple years ago. Because there was a character that I wanted to see portrayed in the show. And we didn't end up using that script, but it gave them an inkling that I knew what I was doing writing-wise, so they offered me a writing gig on season four. I got to actually do my research on John Wesley Harden, and then write an entire episode. I've written two now, but that's about as much input as you can ask for.

Henry Parke: You had pointed out to me that every episode you have a different guest star you're working with. Do you have any favorites?

From Doc Susie's Oath, Nicole Tompkins in her wedding gown

(Courtesy INSP)

Jack Elliott: You know, as a good father, you can't have any favorites, wink, wink, <laugh>. But Nicole Tompkins, who plays Doc Susie, is one of my favorites. She's been back for two or three episodes now. You know, good acting in a good scene is like sparring, like you're throwing a couple punches, they're throwing a couple punches. So to get to play with somebody like Nicole is always an absolute joy, especially when they come back multiple times. There's been quite a few actors that have come in and just kind of blown everybody's minds. Like, okay, this person is the character, and those always just make the best scenes to shoot, so much fun, because then you find little nuances in the scene. They're comfortable, they're killing it. They know their character, and then you can play with it within the scene and find nuances that you didn't even know were there.

Henry Parke: Anything interesting coming up in the near future?

Jack Elliott: Well, I'm always pulling and hoping for a season seven, and from the get-go, they've talked about a Bat Masterson movie. I keep prodding them with that.

The date for the beginning of season 6 of Wild West Chronicles has not yet been announced, so keep reading the Round-up for updates!

JUNE BIRTHDAYS!

I've had the privilege of interviewing three Western film icons who celebrated birthdays in June. Here are the links to read them. 

HAPPY 91^ST BIRTHDAY MONTE MARKHAM!

Here’s my interview with him from the Lone Pine Film Festival!https://henryswesternroundup.blogspot.com/2025/06/happy-90th-birthday-monte-markham-heres.html 

HAPPY 86^TH BIRTHDAY TO MARIETTE HARTLEY!

Here's my True West interview with her!

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/hartley-of-the-west/

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON WOULD’VE TURNED 90!

Here’s my True West tribute to the Rhodes Scholar-turned music and movie legend, and my interview with him on the set of his final Western, HICKOK. That’s where I also shot the picture of him and his wife, Lisa Marie Meyers.  

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/kris-kristofferson-a-texan-at-oxford/

UPDATED 7-2-2026

MY RECENT RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER APPEARANCES

On the first Thursday of every month, I have the pleasure of joining Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell on their weekly Rendezvous with a Writer radio program and podcast, for LA Talk Radio. They interview writers every week, with a special emphasis on Western writers, especially when I’m along. Here are links to my most recent appearances.

To hear and see about Bank Robber Henry Starr by Mark Archuleta, click the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/live/t8boskGzAww?si=OAVLrxqDlInKcuV1  

To hear and see about They Kill People by Kirk Ellis, click the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/live/vZ18j385-yE?si=-2_7efkHIZoort5s                       

On Thursday, July 2^nd, I was a guest once again for Bobbi Jean and Jim, and my frequent collaborator C. Courtney Joyner, with Cindy Mitchum, to discuss Them Ornery Mitchum Boys, a book about the lives of brother actors Robert Mitchum and John Mitchum, written by John, and re-published by his daughter, Cindy.  To see and hear the conversation, click the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/live/fKMXnrHoNSk

And for a change of pace, next Thursday I’ll be joining Bobbi Jean and Jim to talk with actress and author Kathryn Leigh Scott, who springboarded to stardom on the delightfully eerie 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows. We’ll be discussing her newest book, Dark Shadows Legacy, The Official 60^th Anniversary Book!

AND THAT'S A WRAP!

Please check out the July/August 2026 issue of True West! The cover story by Stuart Rosebrook is When Willie and Waylon Saved Our Country, and my film column, Willie and the Outlaws, takes a look at the Western movies that Waylon and Willie and Kris and Johnny made.

Much obliged,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright June 2026 by Henry C. Parke. All Rights Reserved. Not to be used for A.I. Training.

FRONTIER CRUCIBLE – CHATS WITH THE STAR, DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER OF THE YEAR’S BEST WESTERN, PLUS INSP’S ‘WILD WEST CHRONICLES’ SEASON 5 STARTS WEDNESDAY MARCH 4, AND MORE!

 

‘WILD WEST CHRONICLES’ SEASON 5 STARTS MARCH 4!

Season 5 trailer

Bobbi Slaski as James Masterson, Jack Elliott as Bat

photo by MorningStar Entertainment
 

This Wednesday on INSP, Bat Masterson once-again holsters his gun and draws his fountain-pen for 5^th season of Wild West Chronicles. Lasting this long is no small achievement. As series Producer Gary Tarpinian puts it, “In an era in which getting a second season is tantamount to a small miracle, I have to pinch myself that we are really delivering a fifth season of this scripted, anthology series that presents the greatest true stories and characters of the Old West.” (Read my season one interview with series Producers Gary Tarpinian and Craig Miller HERE).

Lisa Eve as Little Britches, photo by Morgan Weistling

Brooke Lyne as Cattle Annie, photo by Morgan Weistling

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, they took the fact that Bat Masterson later in life became a New York newspaper reporter, chronicling the Old West, and used it as a jumping-off point. In each episode, Masterson, portrayed by Jack Elliott (read my interview with him HERE),   travels back to the West to interview witnesses or surviving participants in important, though not always famous, historical events. These are entertaining historical dramas, not docudramas with clunky reenactments and talking heads, and while writers have to invent dialogue, they hew as close to the knowable history as possible – sometimes to the writers’ disappointment. And while historical series endlessly recycle over-exposed legends like Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, Wild West Chronicles focuses on fascinating but less well-known figures. This season’s opener is about Bat’s less-famous brother James, and subsequent episodes are about Henry Garfias, Phoenix’s first City Marshall, and the two teenaged girls who ran off to join Bill Doolin’s gang.

Josh Feinman as Bill Doolin sure reminds me of Richard Boone

in Have Gun Will Travel, photo by Morgan Weistling

Jack Elliott’s portrayal of the cane-wielding lawman, whom he very-much resembles, produces a lot of fan-mail, often comparing him favorably to Gene Barry’s portrayal from the 1958 TV series.    

MAKING FRONTIER CRUCIBLE – PRODUCER, DIRECTOR & STAR

As I opined in my True West, Best of the West article in the January/February 2026 issue, Frontier Crucible is the best Western feature released in 2025. It’s available through Prime Video and AppleTV. The premise is simple: in 1870s Arizona, Maj. O’Rourke (William H. Macy) convinces Merrick Beckford (Myles Clohessy), a soldier-turned-cowboy, to cross Apache country, to attempt to deliver desperately-needed medicine to an isolated town. En route Beckford encounters survivors of an Apache attack: three unsavory men (Thomas Jane, Armie Hammer, Ryan Masson), a beautiful woman (Mary Stickley), and her wounded husband (Eli Brown).  Beckford can’t abandon them, he can’t trust them, and he can’t delay his mission. It’s based on the novel Desert Stake-Out by prolific pulp author Harry Whittington. ‘Based on’ is putting it mildly, as the following interviews will explain.

It's a tough, stripped-down, sophisticated, suspenseful, and very arid Western, with strong, smart characters in conflict, which recalls the collaborations of Delmer Daves and Glenn Ford, Anthony Mann and James Stewart, and especially Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott.

In the past I’ve interviewed producer Dallas Sonnier, director Travis Mills, and star Thomas Jane on other Western films, and had the opportunity to interview all three on this collaboration.

DALLAS SONNIER – PRODUCER

Dallas Sonnier is a very busy guy, and has been for a long time. When we first spoke, it was in 2015, on the set of his and Craig Zahler’s grounding-breaking “Horror Western” Bone Tomahawk (you can read that article HERE.  ) That was Dallas’ 19^th feature. Since then he’s produced 20 more movies, including Brawl in Cell Block 99, Dragged Across Concrete, Terror on the Prairie, and a half-dozen TV series. His 2019 film VFW, starring Stephen Lang, Fred Williamson and Martin Kove, is a reworking of Rio Bravo, set in a Veterans of Foreign Wars post. When we spoke in October, and I asked if he was busy, he happily replied, “I'm having an embarrassment of riches right now. We've got Muzzle: City of Wolves, the Aaron Ekhart sequel, coming out in a couple of weeks. Then Frontier Crucible December 5^th, and we have The Pendragon Cycle coming out in January.” The Arthurian Pendragon miniseries, along with a number of his recent films, is produced with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire +, and that’s where you need to go to stream it “We're in Los Angeles prepping a movie right now. And the John Rambo prequel is shooting in Thailand in the New Year. So it has just been absolutely bananas.”     

HENRY PARKE: I really enjoyed Terror on The Prairie without realizing it was your picture.

DALLAS SONNIER: In 2020 COVID hit, and I sold Fangoria (note: the horror movie magazine). I was getting attacked by a bunch of people internally and externally who were just so mad at me for being an outspoken conservative. Politics got crazy. And I don't even care about politics when it comes to movies; I just like making movies. So I get a phone call from The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's company. And I ended up selling them Run Hide Fight. I brought them Gina Carano to make the Terror movie. And we have a big King Arthur-style series; all kinds of great stuff.

HENRY PARKE: I’ll bet Daily Wire is very excited, that it's going to bring a lot of new people to them.

DALLAS SONNIER: Yes, absolutely. They need a big series, a great anchor series for them, like House of Cards was for Netflix, like Game of Thrones was for HBO.

HENRY PARKE: How did Frontier Crucible come about?

DALLAS SONNIER: S. Craig Zahler, he's a massive fan of the novelist, Harry Whittington. Probably six years ago, before COVID, he brought the book to me and he was like, this is perfect for your sort of modest budget; thoughtful, minimal locations, but great movie-star roles. You should totally convert the book to a script and shoot it. You don't need to change anything; it's all there. It's even the right length. Zahler is obviously a genius. And so I did it: I got the rights to the book, we converted it to a Final Draft file (note: screenplay software) and made the movie. There literally is no screenwriter on the movie. It's the craziest thing. I was in Budapest, then in Italy, working on the Pendragon series, and I had built up a friendship with Travis Mills over Terror on the Prairie and other movies that he helped me on. He just worked his ass off on Pendragon: he really was the ‘boots on the ground’ producer. He shot second unit, all kinds of great stuff.  <laugh> He acts in the series! And so I was like, “Yo, we gotta find a movie for you.” And at the same time, on the same set, we were really impressed by this young actor named Myles Clohessy. We just thought, this is Clint Eastwood in the ‘60s, in the Sergio Leone movies. I'm always trying to kill multiple birds with one stone, so I said, okay, I've got this project. I want to make Miles a movie star. I want to give Travis a real awesome script to direct: let's put all this together. Me and a buddy, Preston Poulter, put the money together. Then I brought on all my producers, Amanda (Presmyk) and Lily (Campbell) and David (Guglielmo) and Travis. And it was just awesome. We ended up making the movie in Prescott, Arizona. Of course, the beginning of the movie is in Monument Valley; and that's how it came together. It was just such an awesome, independently spirited movie.

HENRY PARKE: It's funny you were saying that Myles Clohessy is your new Clint Eastwood. I was thinking more Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea.

Myles Clohessey and Mary Stickley

DALLAS SONNIER: Well, yes. I mean, obviously in your world and my world, the world of the Ranown Westerns, and (Budd) Boetticher -- what an idol for us! The Randolph Scott sort of tale. Zahler and I talked about those movies a lot. Travis has seen all of them. He's a massive fan of the Boetticher films, so those were incredible influences on us.

HENRY PARKE: Mary Stickley, who's your female lead. I have not seen before, and I thought she was very strong.

DALLAS SONNIER: Yes. She was an absolute discovery by our casting director, David Guglielmo. And the real fear was she's got a thick Australian accent. We cast her over Zoom, and it was very unique. But we wanted someone who visually is so arresting that when Myles, as Beckford, sees her for the first time, his whole world is shook. You know, in our modern, stupid, over-feminized society, we've gotten so far away from feminine beauty; we really wanted someone who was physically beautiful, and we didn't want to apologize for that.

HENRY PARKE: Well, you sure found her, but she's also a really solid actress. Until I looked her up on IMDb, I would never have guessed that she was Australian.

DALLAS SONNIER: That was 90% of the prep work with her.

HENRY PARKE: I loved the manner of her dialogue. Not stilted exactly, but very formal.

DALLAS SONNIER: No, stilted is absolutely a positive word for us. It separates. The very specific cadence, the speech patterns, it lets you immerse yourself in a past time period, and you're not reminded of modern speech. That was a very specific design of ours.

HENRY PARKE: Right. And formal is perfectly appropriate for her entrance into this world, which she obviously does not belong in. I thought that was really effective. Were you at all concerned about her and Miles, being the two least known people in the film, carrying it?

Eli Brown and Mary Stickley

DALLAS SONNIER: That of course comes up all the time, especially when you're talking to agents and managers and casting; (you have) major movie stars in the other roles, and they're like, ‘Who's this guy? Who's this girl? I've never heard of her before.’ I have a unique approach to casting; I call it the reverse bell curve. I like to cast absolute unknowns or real movie stars. You either want to be able to bring a movie forward with a total discovery, like in the case of Isabel May in Run Hide Fight, for example: what a discovery! And then surround them with amazing movie stars. (Note: In 1883, Isabel May played Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s daughter, Elsa Dutton, and walked away with the miniseries.) In Run Hide Fight, it was Thomas Jane and Radha Mitchell and Treat Williams. Or like Dragged Across Concrete, we got Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn and Don Johnson; really stack the cast as much as possible. But even in Dragged Across Concrete, you know, Tory Kittles is the lead of the movie. So it's a fascinating approach. But yes, there was a lot of, oh my gosh, who? And I think it's great. I think Mary and Myles will both go on to be massive stars. And of course, David (Guglielmo) and Travis (Mills) deserve all the credit for casting Mary. And we all deserve all the credit for backing Miles and finding this starring role for him. So in the end, I think they're gonna be huge stars and we'll be real proud having made this movie with them so early in their careers.

HENRY PARKE: I loved Thomas Jane and Armie Hammer playing so against their usual roles.

DALLAS SONNIER: Thomas and I are very close friends. We got to know each other on Run Hide Fight. I could never do what he does, and vice versa, so we're really complimentary in that sense. He was my first phone call on this, and he was a huge Harry Whittington fan already. But you know, he normally would be playing the lead. To play the heavy, I think it was pretty fun for him. And he worked very closely with Travis, and Jeff Dawn, our amazing hair and makeup department head and partner on almost every movie at this point. They worked really hard on the mustache and the gaunt look. He brings a unique speech pattern to it, and that was all TJ's inner working and prep work. We knew we wanted Armie, so David dm’d a mutual friend of Armie, and said the producer of Bone Tomahawk has an offer for Armie. And the friend said, we love Bone Tomahawk! Send us the offer! In 48 hours we had the deal done, and we're thrilled to be his return to acting. Cancel culture is a horrible thing, and I'm proud to be at the forefront of fighting back against it. And I can't wait to work with him again.

HENRY PARKE: I'm assuming you had an unlimited budget and months to shoot.

DALLAS SONNIER: We did not <laugh>, we did not <laugh>. We shot the movie in basically four weeks, give or take, 20 days. We did all of the scenes in Prescott, Arizona, and at the very end we shot the William H. Macy scene up in Monument Valley. The tribal communities up there were so amazing to us. That's an unbelievable thing to do, for us Western fans, considering like The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and all. It's just unreal to be standing there, and then to add a movie camera. My gosh, what an amazing core memory.

William H. Macy with co-star, Monument Valley

HENRY PARKE:  What are the advantages of having a lean budget and a tight shooting schedule?

DALLAS SONNIER: There are, honestly none. <laugh>. Don't let anyone tell you that it made everyone come together. No, it's just miserable <laugh>. I'm teasing. It’s like the scene in The Alamo where Col. Travis draws the sword and the line in the sand and says, if you step across this line, you're in till the finish, till death, and if you wanna leave, leave now. When you have a very modest budget picture, and working with me is an acquired taste <laugh>. You draw that line in the sand, the people that come over the line and work with you on the movie are family for life. They're in the trenches with you, and they want to make something they can be really be proud of. And so that's it's really; budget and limitations are a dividing line to separate the wheat from the chaff, you know?

HENRY PARKE: Looking back on the film, I thought there was not a single interior.

DALLAS SONNIER: Yeah, <laugh>, there was in the book. The William H. Macy scene does take place in an office, and that's the one creative liberty. When we decided to shoot in Arizona, I said, guys, we gotta just move that scene to Monument Valley. Working with Macy was amazing. That scene was shot on the last day. We picked him up from the Phoenix Airport, drove him up to Monument Valley. He carries a ukulele with him everywhere he goes. So on the drive up, he was playing funny songs. And then on the set in between takes, he was singing for the cast and crew. I mean, what an amazing guy. He came in and just nailed the scene. Just working with an absolute acting legend in a setting that is so iconic for Westerns, and all the people we grew up loving and have such reverence for. It felt like we were amongst the gods, you know what I mean? It was just a wonderful feeling. And when it was all over that night, we went and had a drink together, and then we drove home the next morning, and that was it. And it was over <laugh>, and it's like, oh, man, I could have lived there <laugh>!

TRAVIS MILLS – DIRECTOR

William H. Macy and Travis Mills

I first met Ecuador-born, Arizona-based filmmaker Travis Mills when he was working with British Punk/Western filmmaker and film historian Alex Cox on Tombstone Rashomon in 2017. Mills made his mark on the film industry when he succeeded with his audacious self-challenge, directing 12 Westerns in 12 months.  Alex Cox, and his new Western, Dead Souls, will be the focus of the March Round-up.

Henry Parke: I was just talking to Alex Cox about when you were helping him with casting on Tombstone Rashomon.

Travis Mills: Yeah, it was back in 2016, and I did everything from producing to casting to scooping up the horse poop in the streets of Old Tucson.

Henry Parke: And now you've already directed more Western features than probably anyone else alive. Why did you want to do this one in particular?

Travis Mills: Well, I did the 12 Westerns in 12 months in 2020. Made a couple Westerns before and after that. And Dallas Sonnier, the producer of this one, showed me the script of Frontier Crucible back in 2021. One of the best westerns I've read: kind of a newer, violent version of The Tall T; wonderful characters, rich dialogue. When he first showed me the script, someone else would've directed it. He just wanted my help producing it because of my experience with Westerns. Then eventually I earned Dallas's trust and he said, “This is a project that you should really direct.” And I thought well, I'm gonna take everything that I've learned from these 15 other Westerns that I've made and put it into one film, and try to make the best Western that I've ever made with the most resources I've ever had.

Henry Parke: You did a hell of a job. It brings back the sort of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea Westerns, but with a harder edge.

Travis Mills: That’s great to hear.

Henry Parke: Dallas told me that before Frontier Crucible, you were also a great help on Terror on The Prairie.

Travis Mills: Yeah, that was another one where I was the quote unquote Swiss Army knife. <laugh>. They brought me in to produce because I'd made all these Westerns. That was the first movie I made with Dallas. He says, this guy knows the genre, bring him to Montana. And they learned that I can do a lot of things; I performed the movie's biggest stunts. I played a character and even shot our B camera for three of the four weeks. So I did about everything you can do.

Henry Parke: Were you familiar with author Harry Whittington before this?

Travis Mills: I was not. I learned about him when I first read the script.

Henry Parke: What particularly appealed to you about the Frontier Crucible story?

Travis Mills: I think that a lot of modern westerns have lost the plot in terms of what really makes a Western. Everybody's focused on the aesthetics: the cowboy hats, the horses, the gunfights and all that. But they don't understand the thematic importance of the genre. The idea of moral codes, competing moral codes. And when you go back to the Budd Boetticher films -- The Tall T, Ride Lonesome -- that's what it's all about. You've got the hero who's got his moral code, you've got the villain who has his, those are clashing, and that's what it's all about. I thought this script did that well in a way that most modern Westerns don't. It had a hero who is sticking to his code the way that Randolph Scott would've. And you have a villain who isn't pure evil, he just has his understanding of the world and his code to stick by. And that's what makes it really interesting.

Henry Parke: With your 12 westerns in 12 months, you were working with actors who had not yet made their mark in the industry. Was this your first time directing stars? How did you like it?

Travis Mills: I directed a non-Western with stars in 2015, a movie with Tom Sizemore and Peter Bogdanovich called Durant Never Closes. And I haven't since. It was wonderful to work with Thomas Jane and Armie Hammer and William H. Macy. Thomas Jane is one of those actors that the collaboration is definitely iron sharpens iron. He's challenging me on what the scene is, I'm challenging him, and you get something better every time because of that. Armie Hammer, honestly, is my favorite actor that I've ever worked with. Wonderful guy, super sweet, very smart, adaptable to anything that I threw his way, would incorporate all of my ideas, and be up for trying anything. I would work with him again in a heartbeat. And of course, William H. Macy is a legend, and being able to shoot with him in Monument Valley was the ultimate honor.

Armie Hammer in his first Western since The Lone Ranger

Henry Parke: How did making a dozen westerns in a year help with Frontier Crucible?

Travis Mills: When you make a movie, inevitably you make mistakes. And I’ve always been one to say, I'm not gonna sit there and try to make one perfect film. I'm gonna be a working filmmaker, and learn from these mistakes as I go. And working in the genre so much. I got to see the weaknesses in writing and performances. How to work with horses, how to work with guns, how to shoot action sequences. I put myself through Western Bootcamp <laugh>, and just applied all of those things. Not to mention, when you make all those films, you meet the armorer that you wanna work with, the horse people you like, the wagon people you like. You develop not just a stock company of actors, but a stock company of crew that you can bring to Frontier Crucible. One of the reasons we shot in Arizona is because I told Dallas, this is where I have my base of resources.

Henry Parke: Speaking of Arizona, how did you like your locations?

Travis Mills: Unbelievable location. It does not sound hard to find a water-hole in the desert, but it's actually turns out that it's not an easy location to find. And some of our options were in National Forests, National Parks, with a lot of red tape to get permission. I lucked out finding our spot in Prescott, Arizona and Watson Lake. I was using Google Maps, looking at a different location, stumbled upon Watson Lake, scouted it in Prescott with the wonderful Film Commissioner, Samara Rice there. And if I had known about Prescot, and some of the locations around Prescott, years ago, I probably would've made all of my westerns there, because you can shoot scenes where it looks like you're in the middle of nowhere, but in fact, you're 10 minutes from Chick-fil-A. So it's the ideal place to be making a Western movie and not be out in the middle of nowhere.

Henry Parke: Were you concerned that your two leads will not be familiar faces to the audience?

Travis Mills: I think there's something wonderful about working with fresh faces. Because when we see people we've seen time and time again, they bring such a history with them, which can be a benefit. But also you're sitting there watching Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise or whoever, and thinking about who they are off-screen and all their other roles. Whereas here we have Myles Clohessey and Mary Stickley, and this is gonna be most audience members’ first time ever watching them. I think that they will see them as Merrick Beckford and Valerie, and be able to lose themselves in the performances. Myles does such a wonderful job of carrying the film. I know at an early test screening, people who were completely unfamiliar with him said he has very much a Clint Eastwood vibe, and that was wonderful to hear.

Henry Parke: Would you like a longer shooting schedule on your next feature, or do you prefer having a lean budget and a tight schedule?

Travis Mills: <laugh> I think every filmmaker would like a longer shooting schedule, but I pride myself in being able to shoot a script like this, which was a fairly long script, 120 pages, in 18 days. Again, that comes from my history in the micro-budget world and being very efficient with coverage and keeping things moving along. So sure, I will take more days of shooting anytime anyone will give it to me. But the bigger the crew, the harder it is to move quickly, because there’re lots of elements that you have to get in motion and keep in motion.

Henry Parke: Any favorite memories of the shoot?

Travis Mills: Two things. I can't say enough about how important prep is. I was fortunate to spend three weeks of prep with our director of photography, Maxime Alexandre. Wonderful man who I worked with in Europe before this. And those three weeks is what led to our success on the project. Because we were on location every single day talking through the shots. That time, being in the environment, soaking up the world, creating the visual style of the film, and then eating a lot of hamburgers, was probably my favorite memory. One other story. On our final day in Prescott, we filmed the entire fight scene that happens at the end, the climax of the movie, in one day. As usual, we were running out of light, and we got what is the final scene, the final two, three shots of the film and the last bit of light that could possibly be in the sky. And it's gorgeous. But those little moments where you realize, if we had moved a minute or two slower, then we might not have gotten it; this is nerve-wracking, but also there's a feeling of victory when you get it all in the can.

THOMAS JANE - ACTOR

Don't mess with Thomas Jane!
 

Thomas Jane needs, as they say, no introduction, having been a busy actor since the early ‘90s with roles in Face/Off, Boogie Nights, Thin Red Line, then a leading man in films as varied as The Velocity of Gary, Deep Blue Sea, The Punisher, and so many more.

Henry Parke: I really enjoyed your performance in Frontier Crucible, and it was such fun to see you play someone so unlike your usual heroic characters. How did you like playing someone so charming, but ultimately the bad guy?

Thomas Jane: This is, for me, an homage to all the wonderful character actors that worked throughout the fifties and sixties, that would come in and play these western archetypes that I so enjoyed as a youth. So it was really fun to slip into the role. The part is really well-written. Also I’m a big Harry Whittington fan. There's another book he wrote, Ticket to Hell, and I actually have adapted that into a screenplay, and I'm hoping that we can get that going one day. We have a little rights issue right now, but the combination of Whittington and the throwback Western story that this script follows were turn-ons for me.

Henry Parke: My favorite of your lines, because I thought it summed up your character so well, was, “As long as I'm alive, I'm going to explore every option.”

Thomas Jane: Yeah, that's pretty much the guy <laugh>.

Henry Parke: It was also interesting to see you playing a character older than yourself. The mustache really helped. How did you approach it?

Thomas Jane: The obstacle is my ego. Getting over the fact that I'm gonna age myself up on screen. And I did a great job! You know, people lived a rougher life. They aged quicker, they died quicker, and that was definitely part of the character. The hard-scrabble kind of guys that survived into older age had to be extremely tough. So part of wearing the mask of that character, that helped me get into the spirit of the thing, was aging myself up. Not only physically, but internally as well. I had a lot of fun playing the part.

Henry Parke: Was it a physically difficult shoot?

Thomas Jane: We shot in Arizona in October. The days warmed up, sometimes into the seventies, so the weather was perfect, the light was great. You get that fall sun that's lower in the sky. Shooting was a bit difficult for the night stuff; we were freezing our butts off out there, but that's just part of the gig. And I enjoyed the exterior of it all. You know, character-wise and just getting into the story, it really helps when you've got real rocks and dirt <laugh> under your feet. We didn't have sets to build. It was just a bunch of characters outdoors, which I also was attracted to. I like those kinds of stories, where it takes place over one period of time. I also like characters that don't change costumes. You can take a jacket off, you can take your hat off, but what you see is what you get. I'm always attracted to characters like that.

Henry Parke: Your director, Travis Mills, has probably directed more westerns than anyone else alive at the moment. What is he like to work with?

Thomas Jane: He certainly loves the genre, which is a prerequisite for doing a good Western: you gotta know the genre. And he knows it like the back of his hand. He gave me a couple of Westerns to watch, the names escape me, but there's one with Robert Ryan, terrific little Western. The homework on these things is always fun.

Henry Parke: With the actors clustered around the wagon for most of the film, it was very much an ensemble piece. You lock horns with Armie Hammer. How do you like working with him?

Thomas Jane: I gotta tell you, he's wonderfully astute. He is very well educated and has a spark of life that is very charismatic. He's a good dude. He's done a lot of work on himself, as we all should. I had a wonderful experience with Hammer.

Henry Parke: I was not familiar with Ryan Masson, who played your son, but I thought he was very effective and I really liked your relationship.

Thomas Jane: He was great, a young actor who fell right into it. I thought he was perfect for my son. I look forward to seeing more from that kid.

Henry Parke: Is it true that all of you did your own stunts?

Thomas Jane: We sure did. We had tussling and fighting and falling -- all the fun stuff that you get to do in a Western, and we're on hard ground. With the weather being crisp, you've got to limber up, and I didn't quite limber up enough one day, and I messed my shoulder up for quite a while. You always get little souvenirs from these type of things.

Henry Parke: Any favorite memories from the making of the film?

Thomas Jane: You know, I'm not a morning person; never have been. My clock is set in reverse, so that makes me allergic to sunrises. But on this film, you're getting there before dawn, and you're quitting when you run out of light. And the crisp Arizona air and the gorgeous surroundings woke me up every day. And that was a real joy, to participate in the lovely rhythm of the mornings, which I am not particularly used to. So that was a novel experience that I enjoyed very much.

Henry Parke: What keeps you coming back to the Western genre?

Thomas Jane: I have a love of the genre, and I'm just so happy that we're still making them. The Western has gone through fallow periods, but also rich periods. And I'd love to see a serious revival. What we need is a really strong Western; I haven't seen one since Unforgiven, to be honest. What we need is a great one, and then we'll have another period where we can spend a little bit more money making them. Most of them have become lower budget affairs, which is fine; we don't need a lot of money to make a great Western, which is also appealing. The essence of the Western is the conflict between the individual freedom of man versus the constraints and rules and laws of civilization. You can find that thread in most Westerns. That's a central theme that I'm attracted to, that I come back to over and over.

GOODBYE TO THE BOBBYS, DUVALL AND CARRADINE

We’ve recently lost two Western film legends, Robert Duvall at 95, and Robert Carradine at 71. Duvall I interviewed at some length, and he was fascinating man, and a great talent, and gave me wonderful, candid answers to my questions about his work. Below are links to the two articles I wrote about him for True West, the first an interview, the second a look at his Western film career. I’m currently writing a third, focusing on the making of Lonesome Dove.

The Godfather of Westerns

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/the-godfather-of-westerns-2/

Robert Duvall – A Western Career

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/robert-duvall-a-western-career/

Me and Bobby Carradine after a Lone Pine parade

I not only had the opportunity to interview Bobby Carradine, I got to spend time with him socially at luncheons and film festivals. He had a great sense of humor and simply could not have been a nicer guy, easy-going but out-going, always letting you know he was glad to see you. Below is a link to my True West interview with him which, like the Robert Duvall interview, is featured in my book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made and the People Who Made Them. Also below is a link to my INSP article about The Cowboys 50^th anniversary, for which I interviewed Robert Carradine.

Robert Carradine – Born to the West

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/born-to-the-west/

50^th Anniversary of The Cowboys – Where Are They Now?

https://www.insp.com/stories/the-cowboys-1972-50th-anniversary-cast-where-are-they-now/

 

RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER

On my February appearance on the show, I joined hosts Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell in discussing The Undiscovered Country with its author, the respected western historian and True West writer Paul Andrew Hutton. Here are the links.

To listen: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-kwd42-1a41b82

To listen and see our happy, smiling faces: https://www.facebook.com/rendezvouswithawriter/videos/4397616237229104

MY RECENT INSP ARTICLES

Zane Grey and the Western Movie

https://www.insp.com/stories/zane-grey-and-the-western-movie/

Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey – Two Western Titans

https://www.insp.com/stories/louis-lamour-and-zane-grey-two-western-titans/

TRUE WEST MAGAZINE

Please check out our January/February Annual Best of the West Issue! Here’s the link to my article: https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/western-movies-a-year-of-westerns-on-hold/

…AND THAT’S A WRAP!

Don’t forget that Season 5 of Old West Chronicles begins on INSP Wednesday night, March 4th! And Thursday night, March 5^th, join me and hosts Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Bell for Rendezvous with a Writer on L.A. Talk Radio, where our guests will be True West President and Executive Editor Bob Boze Bell, and True West Editor at Large and Western Writers of America Vice President Stuart Rosebrook!

Happy Trails, Henry

All Original Contents Copyright February 2026 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

Not to be used for training A.I.