VIRGINIAN ON SATURDAY, DEAD MEN COMING SOON

 

AUTRY & INSP CELEBRATE ‘THE VIRGINIAN’S’ 50^TH ANNIVERSARY!

 

On Saturday, September 22^nd, the Autry will mark the landmark television series’ half century with a day and night of activities.  Simultaneously, the INSP network will present a marathon of episodes, to welcome the series to its regular Saddle-Up Saturday programming.  The series was a landmark for many reasons.  The first non-anthology series to run 90 minutes, it was essentially a whole movie every week.

 

Happily, many of the stars of the series will be attending the Autry event, including James Drury, who played the title character of The Virginian (his character had no other name), in all 249 episodes.  Also attending will be Clu Gulager (Emmett Ryker), Randy Boone (Randy Benton), Gary Clarke (Steve Hill), Sara Lane (Elizabeth Grainger), Diane Roter (Jennifer Sommers), Roberta Shore (Betsy Garth), and Don Quine (Stacey Grainger).

 

James Drury

 

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., THE VIRGINIAN stars will be signing autographs in the lobby (I assume on a rotating schedule, and they charge for this). 

There will be screenings of episodes in the Wells Fargo Theatre, and at 1 p.m., the stars will take part in a panel discussion, moderated by the Western Clippings website author Boyd Magers.

From 2 to 4 in the Autry Cafe, Stuart Nisbet, the bartender in the series, will present ‘Saloon Stories From Bart the Bartender.’   

And from 5 to 9 p.m. in the Heritage Court there will be a chuck-wagon dinner with the cast (this even is sold out).  To learn more about the event at the Autry, go HERE.

INSP will begin their marathon at ten a.m. western time, with THE EXECUTIONERS, the first episode of the first season.

Incidentally, THE VIRGINIAN is, of course, based on the novel by Owen Wister, published in 1902, and which has been filmed at least five times, starting with Cecil B. DeMille’s 1914 film, starring Dustin Farnum.  It was filmed again in 1923 starring Kenneth Harlan, and the first talkie version was in 1929, with Victor Fleming directing  star Gary Cooper.  It was done again in 1946, starring Joel McCrea, and a TV movie version, starring Bill Pullman, in 2000. 

If you’ve only seen the series, you’d be surprised to read the novel, and learn that Trampas, Doug McClure’s character, and close pal of the Virginian, is his deadly enemy in all of the other versions, my favorite being Brian Donleavy opposite Joel McCrea.  And if you read the book, then watch HIGH NOON, also with Gary Cooper, you’ll be struck by the fact that, despite its claims of being based on the story THE TIN STAR, the movie is largely plagiarized from the last few chapters of THE VIRGINIAN. 

 

SPEAKING FOR THE DEAD (MEN – THE SERIES) – An interview with director Royston Innes

 

To see the DEAD MEN: THE SERIES TRAILER, go HERE.

 

On Wednesday, September 26^th, the first two episodes of a new Western web series will premiere on the internet.  It’s entitled DEAD MEN – THE SERIES, and if you click on the link above, and watch the trailer, you will have seen as much as I have.  But while 2 ½ minutes can’t tell you everything, it can tell you this: it looks like a real movie.  Unlike most of the made-for-the-web western and pseudo western programming I’ve seen, it isn’t green-screened, it isn’t CGI’d, and it doesn’t have any zombies.  It’s clearly shot on real locations, with professional camerawork and costuming and art direction.

 

It’s the brain-child of a pair of men, Australian co-creator and director Royston Innes, and Texan Iraqi War vet co-creator, producer and co-star Ric Maddox.  It’s the story of a man named Roy Struthers and his family, a Civil War and Indian Wars veteran who left the battlefield owning precious little until a small piece of land in the Arizona Territory turned out to hold an immensely valuable gold vein.  Needless to say, there are folks willing to do whatever it takes to steal the claim away from the Struthers family. 

When I spoke to director Royston Innes, he told me how the project came to be, and what he and Ric Maddox envision for its future. 

ROYSTON: The time is right for westerns, although my next project is a film noir.  For me, it’s not so much about the Western; it’s more what’s behind it.  I go to films these days, and there’s just no real men.  I’m Australian, so you grow up with a certain ruggedness.  Every child has moments when you come home from a fight, and you’ve gotten mangled.  And your dad says, “Well, you did good.”  There’s something a little tougher.  But you find with so many actors these days, they come out to L.A., and they get ‘into the program.’  And slowly but surely they become part off the machine, and they lose what was so interesting about them.  Know what I mean?

 

HENRY: Yes, it sorts of vacuums the personality out of them.

R: Yes it does.  And I believe it’s because they think there is something further ahead of them, almost like an idea of who they should be.  It’s all created by fear.  So when we decided to go to Arizona to shoot, it was really important to me to get real cowboys.  And my strength, because in my youth I was very devoted to acting, and I studied with the very best in the world – I spent two years studying with Mike Nichols.  I went to the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and I sought out the best teachers around.  I was very happy to finish it at the time I came out to L.A., I quit.  What I really like to do is (work with), I wouldn’t say unknown actors, but with people who just aren’t actors.  But what they are is they’re character.  For example, the gentleman who plays Virgil (friend of Roy Struthers), Brent Rock, you would have seen him in the trailer –

H: He reminded me of a younger Sam Elliot.

 

Brent Rock

 

R: He is; he’s got the presence -- he’s on-screen, and he electrifies.  And he’s a real cowboy, a real horseman who lives in Tombstone, Arizona.  He’s on his horse every day; he does it for a living.  That’s who I want in my films: real men.  Because of the, as you say, the vacuum of personality that happens, you have to go and search these people out.  And I want to give them the opportunity.  Because if you cast right, and they trust in you, and they believe in you, and I do my job, you’re going to get a better performance than any actor could give you. 

 

H: That’s very interesting, that you’ve devoted so much time to your study of acting, and concluded that you don’t need professional actors. 

 

R: Well, yes and no.  It takes time.  I have another picture I’m doing next year, a semi-western very similar to LEGENDS OF THE FALL, shooting in Canada.  And I have an unknown in the lead role.  And it’s going to take time.  Vulnerabilities in untrained actors, they take more time.  But when you have someone, in this case a Virgil, who is a leading-man cowboy, you just have to get him to get out of the way of himself.  Because it’s already there; he already has the grit in his fingernails.  It’s one of those things that bug me, in westerns in particular, is they’re too bloody clean.  At a time that was so rough and tumble – I want to see the sweat!  Back in the pioneering days of the Wild West, water was as expensive as a dollar a glass.  You could drink liquor for cheaper.  It does something to the way they look, the way they smell, the way they sweat.  And authenticity is very very important to me.

 

H: I understand you grew up, in Australia, watching an awful lot of movies.

 

R: I was obsessed with film.  I’d watch three movies a day, every day.  Obviously you had to go to school, but every waking moment I could, I watched.  I was a bit of a shut-in child, really, I was very anti-social.  I’d go to the video store each and every day, and in the ten-minute walk it took me, I’d audio-taped movies, and I listened to them on my Walkman.  They’d become such a huge part of my life that even when I wasn’t watching them, I was listening to them.  SCENT OF A WOMAN had a huge impact on me.  Because it had a standard first act.  And you think you know where it’s going, then suddenly they pack for New York.  It’s electrifying; and I don’t know what it was, but it sparked something in me.  I didn’t actually fall in love with acting until I saw a man named Daniel Day Lewis in a film called MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE.  I was 11 or 12, and it had a real impact on me.  And not long after I saw him in MY LEFT FOOT.   I didn’t know acting could be like that.  And that is what I aspired to.  And it took me away from my real love, which is film, and I eventually found my way back.  Life has a funny way, in retrospect, of showing you, ‘see, this is where I was leading you all along.’ 

 

H: Any particular western filmmakers have an impact on you?

R: You know who had a big impact on me?  It was about ten seconds, in a film by Jim Jarmusch called DEAD MAN.  It’s a fantastic film; it’s one where you can almost sense the sweat and the grime.  There’s a scene when he’s coming into town, and it’s his point of view, what he’s seeing through the carriage door.  And it’s so dangerous, it almost feels unlivable, and pioneering, and there are no rules.   That moment had a massive impact on me.  Is there a western director who’s had a massive impact on me?  No.  It’s more about authenticity, and celebrating the real man. 

H: How did you and Ric Maddox get together?

R: I directed Ric in a play, here in Los Angeles.  Ric had been in the armed forces in Iraq, and this was a play about Iraq, and I chose him specifically and another fellow who had just come back, and they were amazing.  Ric and I struck up a friendship, and we were talking one day about business, and what films he’d seen recently.  And gotten a bit nostalgic about certain actors, like the Yul Brynners, the John Waynes, and where have these men gone?  We live in an amazing time where there’s no excuse now for anyone not to pick up a camera and create something.  There’s so much available.  So on that idea, of the real man, and there’s no better genre (for that) than the western, we started to create something.  We kind of inspired each other, and one would write, wouldn’t it be great if this would happen?  And it turned into a series that I’m really proud of.  Each episode is ended with a little twist. 

 

H: Did you always see DEAD MEN as a web series, or did you see it as a feature, and figure out how to break it down? 

 

R: I was enticed to the web because it was still underground.  It still hadn’t laid its roots yet.  I wanted to come along and shock them.  I really think that this is going to be one of the premiere quality pieces on the web.  We put a lot of effort and a lot of energy and a lot of money to make it that good, so it could be real entertainment, and it’s for the web.  Eventually the web and web series are going to be the norm, and people will get most of their content there, just right now people don’t know how that’s going to happen.  And if I could say that DEAD MEN contributed to that, I’d be very very happy.

 

Ric Maddox

 

H: How long is each episode?

R: From seven to ten and a half minutes.  We’re premièring the first two episodes on Wednesday, September 26^th.  I’m not going to give anything away, but the first episode sets up where things are going, and I just wanted to give people a little bit of a taste of the speed and the action that they can expect with episodes. 

 

It has a genuine viciousness to it.  There’s a lot of knife fights, and a lot of spilled blood.  Eventually we’re going to get this done in all the different languages, so people can enjoy it.  Westerns are huge in Asia and France and Germany. 

 

H: I’m very aware of that because the Round-up is read everywhere around the globe.

 

R: Well, tell them that they can expect it to be translated into German, French, Japanese and hopefully Cantonese as well. 

 

H: I’ve heard that you’re planning to do five seasons of DEAD MEN.

 

R: Yeah.  It’s funny, we’re getting a lot of heat from this trailer, and because it’s taking web series where they haven’t been before; we’re getting a lot of heat from distributors who want to turn it into something else, something bigger.  Maybe a TV show.  I’m going to all these meetings.

 

Aiming low

 

H: You wouldn’t object to that, would you?

 

R: (laughs) Are you kidding?  Given a bigger budget, this could be amazing.   We already have episodes through season two planned out, and it’s going to take it to a different level – I wish that I could tell you what’s going to happen.  We have it all planned out – guaranteed five seasons.  And if TV picked it up I’d be so happy!  I’m particularly a fan of TV shows where it doesn’t stay in the typical three or four locations.  Almost like an on-going movie. 

 

H: Speaking of locations, how did you like shooting in Arizona? 

 

R: Loved it.  It’s my people.  I love communities.  I moved from Australia to New York when I was nineteen.  I love communities and eventually, my films are going to be more of the inspirational film type.     When you’re walking through Tombstone…some of my actors really got into it.  One of them, he plays Billy Walters, every day after shooting he loved to walk the planks of Tombstone, still in his costume, and it gave him a real thrill.  If you’re going to shoot a western you should shoot it in Arizona, because this is where it all happened.  When I was an actor, I did a war film called THE GREAT RAID (2005), and we did an eleven-day boot camp, and nothing could have been better to get us into the mind-set, what it felt like to be a soldier during World War II.  I would love to have done a western boot-camp for these guys, in Arizona.  It would shock their system in a way that nothing else can.

 

H: I’ve been talking to some actors in the new LONE RANGER movie, and they had a crash course, and they absolutely loved it. 

R: Going back to Arizona, Ric had shot a film there before, called MATTY, and when he told me about the people in Arizona, it just felt right.  We made a half dozen trips up there, scouting locations, and our budget, while big for a web series, is rather small.  And when people understood what we were trying to do, for the western, they opened up their homes to us; they opened up their land to us.  Amazing group of people called the Bell Boys, they have a livestock company, and they helped us with all the horses and the cattle, for next to nothing.  Amazing individuals –friendships that I will keep.  Couldn’t find a better place to shoot than Arizona – now I’ve just got to get those damned tax credits. 

 

(We talked a bit about the perils of the tax credit money that states provide to encourage filming, particularly that director Daniel Adams is in prison for inflating his expenses to get bigger tax credits – read last week’s BIG VALLEY article for details.)

 

R: I grew up with strong principles, and I was taught to hold on to your principles at all costs.  And it’s a daily struggle.  Part of it is believing in a higher force, and that you’re answerable.   That’s one thing I loved about Arizona is I’m a straight-shooter; I’m dealing with straight-shooters. 

 

H: How long a shoot was it?

 

R: It was a decent one; it was close to a month.  (laughs) And it was a tough one, Henry.  Low-budget; everyone doing everything.  Putting the scarves in the ice water, and putting it around my camera-operator’s neck so he doesn’t pass out.  We were there in June, We’d put ourselves in a position where we had to come back for something, and our locations were rough.  We had a thirty-minute four-by-four ride down to these locations.  Someone put a porta-loo down there, and that was it.  If the car went down, you were in trouble!  But again, no place better to get real vista shots.  We didn’t have all those luxuries, and at lunchtime we didn’t even always have shade.  But we came together as a unit, and it was a helluvah experience for an up-and-coming director like myself. 

 

H: Who is your cinematographer? 

 

R:  I actually had two D.P.s.  Bruce Logan, who shot the original TRON, and was involved with the original STAR WARS and 2001.  And Paul Hudson, he has a place called Lizardland Studios in Phoenix.   We shot on the Red One and the Scarlet.

Director Innes, D.P. Hudson

 

H: It’s been so long since I talked to anyone who actually shot film.

 

R: I’d love to shoot film.  There’s just a couple of things; when I’d be taking takes, in the back of my mind I’d be thinking of the cost.  I want to get the best performance, the best take, and sometimes that takes ten or fifteen takes. 

 

H: As you said, there’s really no excuse to not go out and make a movie, now that the changes in technology have brought the prices down. 

 

R: There’s no excuse not to be the master of your own creation right now.  If you’re not creating your own reality right now, you’re being a little lazy, to be blunt. 

 

H: What do you think of recent westerns?

 

R: TRUE GRIT was wonderful – I’m a huge fan of the Coen brothers.  And they’re writing – they’re in my top five.  They have an amazing D.P. in Roger Deakins, who gets them exactly what they want, and they take care of the rest.  3:10 TO YUMA was fantastic, and a real inspiration to me.  I still love the original 3:10.   You know, I take it back (about not being influenced by western directors); there are certain things I love from those old westerns.  I was recently watching Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and I just love the starting.  I’m doing an homage to that; where they’re waiting in the station for the train to come, for (Charles) Bronson to get off the train.  There’s just that little vignette, the water tapping on the cowboy-hat brim -- it’s just brilliant!  And they don’t take that kind of time anymore.  They’re all in a rush, and that’s what he did so damned well.   He was amazing.  He was a man’s man.

 

H: And as you say, there are so few actors that you can take seriously as a man.

 

R: And that’s why there are so many cuts.  Because the camera doesn’t lie.  And if you’re comfortable in your own skin, and comfortable as the man that you are, the camera can stay on you for that much longer.  We need to be on the lookout for more of those kinds of actors. 

 

To learn more about DEAD MEN: THE SERIES, visit their website HERE. 

 

CHEYENNE WARRIOR II, HAWK -- Screenplay reviews

 

There’s a saying among magicians that if you know a hundred ways to control a selected card, but only one way to produce it, you know one card trick; but if you only know one way to control a card, but a hundred ways to produce it, you know a hundred tricks.

In some ways screenwriting – in fact any kind of writing – is like performing magic.  While there are a limited number of plots, there are infinite ways to tell them.  As Alexander Pope said, you should write, “…what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”

Michael B. Druxman proved his abilities as a story-teller with his screenplay to CHEYENNE WARRIOR (1994), which I have described here as not only the best micro-budget western I’ve ever seen, but also one of the best Westerns of the last twenty years.  The movie, directed by Mark Griffiths, is one of the most successful that Roger Corman has ever produced.  It’s combination of solid western qualities, plotting and believable romance has generated a considerable international following and fan base. 

Not surprisingly, Druxman immediately set to work plotting the sequel.  Unfortunately, Corman, who owned the characters in the story, was not convinced a sequel was warranted.  When Corman couldn’t be convinced, Druxman rewrote the sequel to make the characters similar, but not the same, with an eye towards making it with the same leads, Pato Hoffman and Kelly Preston.  Sadly this did not produce a movie, but it did produce a very fine script, entitled SARAH GOLDENHAIR.  Thinking it some of his finest work, Druxman took the very unusual step of publishing this unfilmed screenplay.

Well, no follow-up to CHEYENNE WARRIOR has happened yet, but Michael Druxman has revealed the further machinations involved in the attempt, with the publishing of his new book, CHEYENNE WARRIOR II / HAWK.  You see, Roger Corman eventually came around and hired Druxman to write a sequel after all, and he wrote CHEYENNE WARRIOR II.  Upon reading it, Corman felt certain changes were necessary, in order to give the film a stronger female lead – ironic considering he had grave doubts about the original CHEYENNE WARRIOR because Kelly Preston’s part was so prominent.  

The second draft became HAWK, and as Corman was getting ready to put it into production, Canadian tax-shelter problems stalled and eventually killed the project.  Druxman has printed both drafts of the screenplay in one volume, providing readers, and especially writers, with the rare opportunity to compare different versions of what is substantially the same story. 

The similarities are obvious: both versions, as well as SARAH GOLDEN HAIR, revolve around the infamous Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.  Many of the characters are the same.  The differences are often more subtle: a white man is caught by Cheyenne poaching rabbits on their land.  In one version, the action is seen from the white man’s perspective; in the other, from the Indians’.  A Scandinavian couple are father and daughter in one version, and husband and wife in the other.  Then there are the major changes: Rose, a ‘Calamity Jane’ sort of character, is one of the two leads in one version, and doesn’t exist in the other.

CHEYENNE WARRIOR II / HAWK is a terrific read, and one of them would make a terrific film (and one would make a good film).  Michael Druxman’s character, Soars Like a Hawk, usually just called Hawk, was one of the great strengths of the original film, and he’s a great strength here, because he is a ‘noble’ Indian, but not of the incredibly stoic, humorless sort. 

Over the years, I’ve always warned beginning screenwriters to make a script the absolute best that they can before showing it to a potential buyer, since it’s nearly impossible to get them to read another draft: you get one shot.  Here you can compare two different versions of the same story, and see which you prefer.  I have a strong opinion as to my favorite, but ironically, I believe the other version is the more commercial. 

Reading CHEYENNE WARRIOR II / HAWK, whether you’re a fan of the original CHEYENNE WARRIOR, and wanted to know what happened to those characters, or whether you want to deepen your understanding of the screenwriting process by comparing the two different versions, offers a unique opportunity for the reader that should not be passed up.  If you’d like to read my interview with Michael Druxman, and  my review of CHEYENNE WARRIOR, go HERE. For my review of the SARAH GOLDEN HAIR screenplay, go HERE. To purchase CHEYENNE WARRIOR ll /HAWK, or any of his other published screenplays, contact Michael B. Druxman at druxy@ix.netcom.com or PMB142, 6425 S. IH-35, Suite 150, Austin, Texas 78744.    

 

KIRK DOUGLAS ATTENDS ‘LONELY ARE THE BRAVE’ AT EGYPTIAN WEDNESDAY NIGHT!

 

Just found out that on Wednesday, September 19^th (tomorrow) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Kirk Douglas will be appearing before the movie, at 7:30.  Details HERE.

SEE ‘NOW THEY CALL HIM SACRAMENTO’ ON THE BIG SCREEN!

 

If you’re going to be in Portland, Oregon on Sunday, September 23^rd, run, don’t walk, to the Mission Theatre to see NOW THEY CALL HIM SACRAMENTO (1972).  This rarely seen and quite amusing Spaghetti Western comedy is a fake ‘Trinity’ film, with Michael Forest playing the Terence Hill role, and Fred Harrison as Bud Spenser.  And Michael Forest, famous for STAR TREK, and various Spaghetti Westerns and Roger Corman movies, will attend!  Also, Roger Browne, the English voice for Terence Hill, and former president of the E.L.D.A. (English Language Dubbers Association) will attend.  To learn more, go HERE.  To read my review of SACRAMENTO, and to contact video distributor Dorado Films, go HERE.

Okay, that’s gotta be it for this week’s Round-up!  Sorry for delaying this until Tuesday night. 

Next week I’ll tell you about a Cowboy Church you can attend, a partial staging of the RAMONA pageant at the very place where the book was written, and more!

 

Happy Trails,

 

Henry

 

All Original Contents Copyright September 2012 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

 

 

‘BIG VALLEY’ DELAYED BY DIRECTOR’S LEGAL NIGHTMARE

Longtime Rounders know that the Round-up has been cheer-leading for the BIG VALLEY feature ever since it was announced back in 2010.  We’ve followed through cast changes – from Susan Sarandon to Jessica Lange in Barbara Stanwyck’s role as matriarch Victoria Barkley.  We gleefully reported when Lee Majors, Heath from the original series, was cast to play his own father, Tom Barkley, in the feature --  in fact, the Round-up post entitled HEATH’S REVENGE is by-far the most-read post in Round-up history (read it HERE.) 

 

Barkley home in the feature

A cast was assembled, cameras rolled, and a large portion of the script (I don’t know how much) was shot.  Then production shut down, and getting further information proved impossible for months.  The problem, it turns out, was with director and co-writer Daniel Adams.  Among his previous credits, he wrote and directed THE GOLDEN BOYS (2008), starring David Carradine, Rip Torn and Bruce Dern, and THE LIGHTKEEPERS (2009), starring Richard Dreyfus, Bruce Dern, Julie Harris and Blythe Danner, both filmed in Massachusetts.  As an incentive to filmmakers, that state offers a 25% tax credit for payroll and other filmmaking costs.  Adams has been tried and convicted of overstating his expenses, as a result receiving an overpayment of $4,377,000.  For example, he claimed to have paid Richard Dreyfus $2.5 million for his role in LIGHTKEEPERS, when the actual fee was $400,000.  Adams has been sentenced to 2 to 3 years in prison, plus ten years probation, plus restitution of the nearly four and a half million dollars. 

 

Director Daniel Adams

 

Kate Edelman Johnson is not only the movie’s producer, her father, Louis F. Edelman, co-created the original series with A. I. Bezzerides.  Not up for a full interview at this time, she told me, “We have been delayed.  I’m trying to work things out as this is a project that needs to be produced.  It’s a bit premature to discuss anything right now, but rest assured, I will let you know the moment things are back on track and it’s full steam ahead.  Believe me, this is a labor of love for me, and a way to honor the memories of two people who I dearly loved – my father and Barbara Stanwyck.”   

 

Set construction

 

The new film’s cast includes Sara Paxton in Linda Evans’ role of Audra Barkley, Jason Alan Smith in the late Peter Breck’s role of Nick Barkley, and Travis Fimmel in Lee Major’s role of Heath.  Stephen Moyer of TRUE BLOOD fame was announced in the late Richard Long’s role as Jarrod Barkley, but now no one is listed for that part.  Also in the cast are Richard Dreyfus and Bruce Dern, who both guested on the original series.  Dreyfus plays the real-life banker and railroad magnate Charles Crocker.

 

Barkley monogram on the gate

 

Other actors of note in the cast are Aidan Quinn, John Savage, and western icon Buck Taylor.  Until the feature is completed, you can get your Barkley Family fix by watching the original BIG VALLEY series daily on INSP and on ME-TV.

 

ACADEMY VOTES HONORARY AWARD TO STUNT ACE HAL NEEDHAM

 

Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed from SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT

 

Hal Needham, whose stunt credits go back to THE SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS (1957), and include 310 features, 4500 TV episodes and 56 broken bones, will receive an award recognizing a career of calculated risk-taking.  Western credits include HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL; HOW THE WEST WAS WON; LARAMIE; LITTLE BIG MAN; CHISUM; THE WAR WAGON, and others too numerous to list here.  Long associated with Burt Reynolds, with whom he worked on GUNSMOKE episodes, 100 RIFLES, and THE MAN WHO LOVED CAT DANCING, Burt gave Needham a chance to direct, with the SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and CANNONBALL RUN franchises, and HOOPER.  Needham has directed 20 features to date.  He also won a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy in 1986 for the Shotmaker Elite camera- car and crane, allowing greater freedom shooting action sequences.  He also is a co-founder of Stunts Unlimited.

 

WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA on the Direct-to-DVD Trail

 

I was flattered to be interviewed by C. Courtney Joyner for the August issue of ROUNDUP MAGAZINE (not my Round-up, you understand), the official publication of the Western Writers of America.  The subject was one that Rounders know is dear to my heart, Direct-to-DVD Westerns.

 

 

 

LIVE EVENTS:

 

HENRY DARROW – MANOLITO OF THE ‘HIGH CHAPARRAL’ – AT THE AUTRY

 

Saturday, September 15^th, at one p.m., Henry Darrow, who delighted audiences as Manolito on THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, will be at the Autry to take part in the Latin Heritage Month celebration, and to discuss, and sign, his new autobiography, HENRY DARROW – LIGHTNING IN THE BOTTLE, written with Jan Pippins. 

 

In addition to other Latin Heritage-themed activities, starting at 11 a.m., episodes of HIGH CHAPARRAL and the 1990s ZORRO series, all starring Mr. Darrow, will be screened in the Wells Fargo Theatre.

 

‘HIGH CHAPARRAL’ MARATHON ON INSP

 

And speaking of Manolito and ‘THE HIGH CHAPARRAL’, also on Saturday, September 15^th, after years of absence from television, INSP welcomes ‘HIGH CHAPARRAL’ back with a marathon, after which it will become part of their regular SADDLE-UP SATURDAY lineup. 

 

SCREENINGS:

 

EASTWOOD AT THE AERO SANTA MONICA

 

The American Cinemateque at the Aero is featuring several Clint Eastwood Westerns in September.  On Monday, Sept. 10^th it’s a 20^th anniversary screening of UNFORGIVEN; and on Tuesday, Sept. 25^th it’s TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARAH, directed by Don Siegal, with an amusing score by Ennio Morricone. 

‘THE GREAT SILENCE’ AT CINEFAMILY 

 

SUNDAY 9/9 -- TUESDAY 9/11, The Cinefamily, aka THE SILENT MOVIE, will play the only extant 35mm print of THE GREAT SILENCE, directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Klaus Kinski and Jean-Louis Trintignant! Perfect for a silent theatre, since Jean-Louis's character is deaf. Fascinating spaghetti western!

 

‘ARIZONA’ WITH JEAN ARTHUR AND WILLIAM HOLDEN AT UCLA

 

A restored 35mm print of ‘ARIZONA’ (Columbia 1940) will screen on Sunday, September 16, 2012, 7 p.m. in the Billy Wilder Theatre in the Armand Hammer Museum.  Part of a retrospective on Jean Arthur’s career, this story about a gutsy pioneer woman who sets her hat for an on-the-move cowboy is a delight in its own right, and has great added historical importance for western-movie lovers.  The sets that were constructed for this film, a few miles outside of Tucson, were the beginning of the Western movie-town of Old Tucson, home to over three hundred western movies and TV shows, from RIO BRAVO to WINCHESTER 73 to JOE KIDD to TOMBSTONE to THE HIGH CHAPARRAL.

Directed by Wesley Ruggles from a script by Claude Binyon, from Clarence Budington Kelland’s story, the cast includes Warren William, Porter Hall, and western stalwarts like Edgar Buchanan, Iron Eyes Cody and Kermit Maynard.  It was the first production job, as an uncredited assistant director, for Earl Bellamy, who would direct dozens of films, but become famous for directing over 1,600 TV episodes.  He also directed SPEEDTRAP, the first movie I wrote.  It’s a double feature, the second film being TOO MANY HUSBANDS (1940), a screwball comedy by the same writer and director, based on a play by Somerset Maugham, co-starring Miss Arthur with Fred MacMurray and Melvin Douglas.

 

That’s a wrap for today’s Round-up!

 

Next week I’ll have my interview with Royston Innes, director of the soon-to-premier internet Western series DEAD MEN.  I’ll also have my review of the two published scripts for CHEYENNE WARRIOR II, and an upcoming RAMONA event held on the rancho where the story was conceived and written.

 

Happy trails,

 

Henry

 

All Original Contents Copyright September 2012 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved.

 

GIVING 'HEATHENS' A VOICE!

INTERVIEW WITH ‘HEATHENS AND THIEVES’ WRITER AND CO-DIRECTOR JOHN DOUGLAS SINCLAIR

When I ran my review of HEATHENS AND THIEVES in the beginning of July, (to read it, go HERE) I was discussing a movie that few people had as yet any chance to see.  Since then, this Western Noir has been playing in festivals and garnering awards:

Special Jury Award and Best Actress Award for Gwendoline Yeo at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival.

Outstanding Dramatic Feature at the Sacramento International Film Fest.

Audience Favorite Award at the Downtown Film Festival, Los Angeles.

Best Western at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival.

Audience Choice for Best Feature at the Sacramento Music & Film Festival.

Coming up on Friday, September 21^st, HEATHENS AND THIEVES will screen at the New Jersey Film Festival.  In fact, this Saturday, September 8^th, it’s the Closing Night film of the Rome International Film Festival – and while that may be in Rome, Georgia, the movie is getting an international reputation:  on Friday, October 12^th it will screen in Spain, at the Almeria Western Film Festival, along with other Round-up favorites LEGEND OF HELL’S GATE and YELLOW ROCK.

And in October and November, HEATHENS AND THIEVES will become available in DVD and VOD – I’ll have the exact dates very soon.   The film was made by OROFINO, a production company consisting of writer/co-director John Douglas Sinclair, co-director Megan Peterson, producer Peter Scott, and director of photography Pyongson Yim. 

HENRY: You wrote it, but you co-directed it.  Most co-directors these days have the same last name, whether it’s Coen or Singleton.  How did you two come together, and what is it like co-directing?

JOHN: The way we came together was, we and the director of photography, Pyongson Yim, had been friends for a number of years.  We had all been working in ‘the industry’ in various ways.  But none of us doing what we’d set out to do in the first place, which was getting features made. 

H: What had you and Megan been doing prior to this?

J: Well, I had been writing.  I won the Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy for screenwriting, so I had been working on trying to get my own stuff made.  I hadn’t been successful in selling or making it myself, and Megan and Pyongson had both been working a lot in reality television, doing some really interesting DISCOVERY and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC shows, but also less interesting reality shows.  Megan was field producing, and Pyongson was shooting.  Most people get into this business with either narrative features or TV in their heart, and so you have to remind yourself, hey, if we don’t do it, we’ll never get it done.  So we kind of put ourselves to it, and started telling everyone that we were going to make a movie, and realized, oh my God, now we’re on the hook; we’ve got to do it.

We realized that, between the three of us, we had the ability to do this.  The way it started actually was that Megan and Pyongson had been talking about doing a film, but I’m more of a writer than they are.  So I mentioned maybe I could come up with a script, and Megan said, “Well, we have to do a western.”  I’m like, “Why a western?”  Because I’d never written a western.  But it was because Megan’s family lived up north in Etna, California, surrounded by friends who have ranches and old properties and horses and things, and she said, “I can bring a lot of that to it.” 

H: I was struck by how many horses you see in one shot.  Because with westerns today, sometimes you say, ‘Isn’t that the same horse the other guy was riding?’ 

J: Exactly!  We were so lucky!  When I heard we were going to get twenty-five or thirty horses, I said, “Well, I’ve got to write a stampede into this.”  I really wrote around the location and the resources – what we had.  Of course I threw some challenges into the script that we weren’t really prepared for, like the explosion. 

H: That was huge!  I that that was going to take out all the buildings on the farm! 

J:  It took out all the windows in the actual set house that we used, even though we had boarded them up.  I grew up like anyone, loving westerns, but I didn’t have any particular special knowledge of them.  Rather than go back and watch a bunch, I said, well, let’s just see what comes out.  What’s in my subconscious; what kind of western would I like to see.  We always knew we wanted it informed by a sense of noir, not a hyper-stylized noir, but we loved the sense of playing with some shadows, playing with some moral ambiguity, and a femme fatale at the center.  I wanted everyone to have a real motive, nobody just to be a villain entirely, which I always respected about UNFORGIVEN: that was always one of my favorite Westerns.  Everyone has a reason for being the way they are, even if they’re a little misguided.  So that’s how we came together.  And as far as co-directing, we spent a lot of time in pre-production just making sure we were on the same page on everything, and also with Pyongson, our D.P.  The three of us really worked the story together so that by the time we got on the set, we were able to make decisions without always consulting with each other.  For the hard stuff, we would always hash it out.  But a lot of times, Megan would rush off and help establish a lighting mood with the D.P. while I was walking the characters through the next scene.  We stepped in wherever we were needed. 

H: You rarely run into a female D.P.

J: Yes, it’s rare, and not only is she a woman; she’s a Korean woman, which is not super-common.  I felt from the beginning that no one but Pyongson could have shot this movie; she’s such a rising talent, has a unique vision.

H: Visually, it has a DESPERATE HOURS kind of a feel, where a great deal of it is taking place on one night, in one place, so what the interior looks like is hugely important.  There was a tendency in westerns, in the late 60s and 70s to bounce-light everything, and it was always too bright.  And after that it got terribly murky and dark.  She did a beautiful job of using shadow, but not making everyone pitch black, making the lighting seem motivated. 

J:  Thank you.  One of the things she was up against was, we shot it on the Red One camera, and it was kind of experimental because none of us had used that camera before.  She wanted to use that noir shadow thing, but she didn’t want to lose detail by not lighting enough.  And so she was walking an interesting line there, to have enough to play with on post production.  And I should say that the four of us, we raised the funding ourselves, so that between the four of us we would have complete creative control, and live or die by our own sword, instead of someone else’s.  So the four of us brought together whatever talents we could.

H: Tell me about that huge explosion.

J: Steven Riley is the guy who was responsible for setting that all up.  He is one of our executive producers, he and David Poole.  Steven’s the pyrotechnics and special effects coordinator in the last eight or ten Clint Eastwood movies.  He claims that for GRAN TORINO, he’s the only man who’s ever shot Clint Eastwood dead in a movie.  He’s done SPIDER MAN, he’s done PEARL HARBOR, he was the head guy on the train crash in SUPER 8.  We were so lucky to get this guy.  Basically he was in a point in his career where he was doing this for years – his first movie was PETE’S DRAGON, back in the 70s.  And he said, I want to learn the producing side a little bit.  He came on as executive producer.  His son Ryan Riley became the special effects coordinator, with his father kind of overseeing, and together they brought up their 46 foot trailer with everything you could ever want, and we really couldn’t have done it without them setting up the explosion.  They even brought out the guy who was responsible for overseeing pyrotechnics in TITANIC for the day, and he helped oversee as well, because it was super-dangerous apparently. 

And when we’re ready to do the explosion, he calls the local volunteer fire, to arrange for a permit for the day.  And they said, what day of the week are you planning top do this?  Tuesday.  They said, oh, we’re off that day.  Go ahead: do whatever you want.  Half the town came out and watched.  We had warned them because we didn’t want any unpleasant surprises.  This is one of those dream situations where you’re bringing up a village of people from Hollywood, and then combining them with a village of locals who came together – the locals were our extras, they were our carpenters, they were our horse wranglers.  Both sides learning from each other; they’re learning the movie business, and we’re learning all about ranch living. 

H: You shot it all in Etna California?

J: Yes, almost all in Etna and the surrounding valley.  It’s 11 ½ hours north of Los Angeles, you’re maybe an hour and a half from the Oregon border. The reason we chose that setting is because we had access to it.  But it inspired us too.  Because so many westerns have been made on the dry, dusty plains, that kind of New Mexico feel. There are some, but not as many that take advantage of that forest-y feel.

H: You’ve got the green west; not the tan.

J: Exactly.  And because I knew we were doing it there, I thought, what is unique about that area, when I was trying to think what kind of western.  I thought that the Chinese element is something that’s been really overlooked.  In DEADWOOD you have that element.  But when I was researching, I could only find one American western that singled out a Chinese woman as a major character, and that was A THOUAND PIECES OF GOLD, with a young Chris Cooper in it, back in the 80’s.  I don’t think it’s ever even made it to DVD.  It’s not a very well-known movie.

H:   It certainly isn’t.  There was the AMC miniseries, BROKEN TRAIL, and of course you have the lady from BROKEN TRAIL, Gwendoline Yeo. 

J:  When I saw BROKEN TRAIL I thought, my God, she’d be perfect!  And she really wanted to do it, she loved the character,.  But she said, ‘My agent has warned me, if you do this, don’t make it like BROKEN TRAIL.  Make sure that they let you look prettier.  More made up.”  Because in BROKEN TRAIL she was out on the road and had no make-up on. 

H: I hadn’t thought of it before, but in a way her character is very much a parallel character to Claudia Cardinale’s in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

J: Yes, very much so, but I hadn’t thought of that either. That isn’t what I modeled her on, but I’m sure that was buried in my psyche.  I love those Sergio Leone’s – those are my favorite westerns.  Along with UNFORGIVEN, and some of the earlier Clint Eastwood ones, JOSEY WALES.  Those are the kind of westerns that I really love. 

H:  As you said, you weren’t setting out to make westerns initially.  Did you watch westerns very much as a kid?

J: I was aware of westerns.  I remember seeing some John Waynes, the original TRUE GRIT, as a kid.  I think it would be hard to grow up in this country and not be aware of westerns; they’re in our psyche.  But at the same time I never was particularly drawn to them.  When I saw GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and UNFORGIVEN, that opened my eyes – I wasn’t aware of this kind of western earlier, and that’s what excited me.  My manager jokes that anytime anyone asks what genre I’m into, he’s like, ‘Pick a day.’  I just finished writing, for another director a script for hire, an independent documentary.  There’s a lot of recreations and things, so it’s very narrative, and I’d never done that before either.  That’s what I love, to pick up a challenge; there’s a story for every genre’.

H: Do you see yourself primarily as a writer or a director?

J: I really feel like I want to write and direct, both.  Writing has been the base of my career; I’ve always been a writer, trying to sell scripts for other people to do.  But once I got a taste of directing – I started off with some shorts, separately, as did Megan, but when we did this feature I realized: this is the reward!  All the pain of writing – this is the fun part, going out there with an army of talented people!  We had a production designer and art director who really just excelled in finding authentic stuff from that time period and making it feel real.  And our costumer – she had done a lot of independent film before; she’d done CHUCK AND BUCK and REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES.  And that’s what brought her onto our set; she was looking for a western because it was the one thing she hadn’t done, and she wanted to try her hand at it.  I have to say, all of us up on that set, surrounded by mountains and horses and guns and everything!  It really brings out the six-year-old kid in everybody, to do a western – even if they didn’t know they were western fans at heart. 

H: How long a shooting schedule did you have?

J: We had a unique case.  We shot it in two parts, over about two weeks in the spring, then took the summer off, to raise more money, because we knew we didn’t have enough money to shoot the whole thing.  So we took a real risk in saying, let’s shoot about a third of the movie, and we’ll cut the footage into a trailer, and try to excite more interest to bring everyone back together.  So we came back in the fall and shot for close to a month; five or six weeks shooting (altogether). 

H: What sort of scenes did you shoot in those first two weeks, to raise the rest of the budget?

J:  We shot almost entirely interiors.  We realized that the weather was going to change vastly from spring to fall, so if we shot outdoor scenes, they would look very different (and not match).  And the only exterior scene in the movie that we shot that first spring period was a nighttime shot, because no matter what the weather, it will look like night.  It’s when he’s sneaking out of the bunkhouse with his boots off. 

H: What was your budget?

J: We’re really not supposed to say.  If we hadn’t gotten so much from people giving their time, their services, their resources, I would say it would be a two to four million dollar movie, if we had to pay for everything.  The explosion alone would have been a good portion of a million, probably, if Warner Brothers had done it. 

H: The production is very impressive.  You really feel like it’s all on the screen.

J: That’s why we ran out of money so often.  Like when we finished in the fall, we had to raise money to do post (production), because we wanted to do it right; we didn’t want to short-change what was on the screen.  We were so lucky to have so many good people.  And Don Swayze, Patrick’s brother, became such a great force on set; I think he gave just a riveting performance. 

H: He was terrific.  I love that he was a villain that doesn’t think of himself as a villain.  And I think it’s a tribute to your writing; I’m sure what appealed to these actors so much is that everyone is playing a really solid character. 

J: On a practical level, too, when you’re doing a small independent movie, you don’t have a lot of money to throw at actors.  You want good actors, and the only other way to get them is if they feel like these are really meaty roles to play.  It’s not what I set out thinking, but in retrospect that’s really important, I think, not to overlook the practical side of filmmaking.  When I started on the story I knew that we would be limited, that we wouldn’t have a cast of hundreds.  We’re not going to have a big town like DEADWOOD or anything like that.  So I realized that every character becomes more important, because you have so few.  I first thought, what kind of western do I like?  And I thought THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.  Well, what’s that about?  It’s about three guys after the same thing.  That’s the whole story in a way.  And if you stick to something simple like that, then each of their motives – it’s less about plotting and more about who they are and how they collide with each other.

H: It’s like the MALTESE FALCOLN isn’t about the falcon; it’s about all the people who want to get it. 

J: Like the gold or the falcon, it really doesn’t matter: it’s about the people, and what they’re willing to give up, or do to each other. 

H: How did you get your cast together?

J: We cast over a period of, like, six to nine months.  We saw tons of people.  Some of the small characters, Pearl, the blonde in the saloon, and the deputy, Joel Barry and Cecelie Bull, they were friends of mine and Megan’s, and I wrote those parts with them in mind.  Everyone else came in various ways.  For Gwendoline, we had a friend who had acting classes with her, so he sent her the script, and she was cool enough to come to an audition.  And she was responsible for bringing us Don Swayze and Boyuen, who plays her husband in the movie.  Again, she had had acting classes with them in the past.  The moment she saw the Col. Sherman Rutherford role, she’s like, I know the perfect guy for this.  Don came in and auditioned with Gwendoline, and he’s throwing her against the wall, and they’re beating up on each other, falling on the floor, and I’m like oh my God, these two are perfect together. 

When we were shooting in the spring, Don’s brother was dying.  And he was really just filled with rage and sadness and fury, so he said he kept himself sane by pouring it into that character, just letting it go.  Every night he was on the phone with his brother, and hoping that Patrick wasn’t going to die when he was up there, and Patrick kept telling him, you’re doing the right thing, this is a good role for you.  Patrick didn’t die until the shoot was over, so Don, thankfully, was able to be with him. 

H: Andrew Simpson, the male lead, is interesting because he has virtually no credits.  But he’s very good; he’s someone the camera really likes. 

J: He’s doing a web series now, but we get to say he’s our discovery, because he hadn’t done much.  When we were looking at guys for the lead, I realized, and Megan realized that the great western leading men of the 1960s, like Clint and Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson – those guy were real men, and you could believe that they had killed people, you know?  Or they could live for a week in the forest.  Whereas it’s hard to find leading men of that age-range now that feel like that.  Even when you look at the big Hollywood movies now, they’re all too pretty. 

H:  Pretty and soft.

J: Yeah!  We don’t want an Orlando Bloom, someone like that.  When we met Andy, at first we weren’t sure what we thought of him; he came to read for Moses, the man in black.  Then we saw him and said, why don’t you read for the lead.  We tried him against Gwendoline, and again, of all the guys we put against her in the audition, (he was) the only one that seemed really able to handle her.  He felt to me like he was tough, but also had that wounded element to him, like a prize-fighter, who’s had some rough knocks in his life.  And we felt he had the right presence, so let’s see if he can carry this feature. 

This isn’t explicit in the movie, but in my mind, this story was, you have your archetypal ‘man with no name,’ but how did the guy become that guy?  Where did he come from?  And in a way, Andy’s character, Saul, I feel is the guy that, the next time you see him, he’ll be riding into one of those dusty towns, a man with no name, cold and hard, but with maybe a little bit of warmth inside him.  But he’s a killer now; he’s a hero and a killer.  To me the story was about getting him there.  Even the name, Saul.  Biblically, he’s Saul before he becomes Paul, becomes that transformed guy.  This is his Saul stage.  That’s not something everyone’s going to look into and see, but for me, creatively, those were sort of important elements to his arc.     

 

TYRONE POWER in MARK OF ZORRO at the AUTRY Sept. 8

As part of their continuing series, What is a Western?, the Autry will screen one of the greatest of swash-bucklers, THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940), starring Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell, and directed by the maestro of BLOOD AND SAND and DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Rouben Mamoulian.  It even features, from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, the greatest of all sword-wielding villains, Basil Rathbone, and the most delightful friar of them all, Eugene Pallette.   Jeffrey Richardson, the Autry’s Gamble Curator of Western History, Popular Culture, and Firearms, will lead the discussion before the film, which screens at 1:30 in the Wells Fargo Theatre. 

 

And if this one puts you in the mood for more of the bold renegade who carves a Z with his blade, come back to the Autry on Saturday, September 15^th, when, as part of the Latino Heritage Month celebration, the Autry will screen episodes of the 1990s ZORRO series, and of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, all featuring actor Henry Darrow, who will be signing his autobiography.

 

EASTWOOD AT THE AERO SANTA MONICA

 

The American Cinemateque at the Aero is featuring several Clint Eastwood Westerns in September.  On Wednesday, Sept. 5^th it’s THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES; on Monday, Sept. 10^th it’s a 20^th anniversary screening of UNFORGIVEN; and on Tuesday, Sept. 25^th it’s TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARAH, co-starring Shirley Macaine, directed by Don Siegel, scripted by Budd Boetticher, with an amusing score by Ennio Morricone. 

 

‘THE VIRGINIAN’ RETURNS ON INSP!

 

Not content to rest on their laurels, after announcing the return to the airwaves of THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, INSP has announced that THE VIRGINIAN will be added to their Saddle-Up Saturday schedule!   Coinciding with the series’ 50^th Anniversary celebration at the Autry on September 22^nd, a VIRGINIAN marathon will play on INSP, and the following Saturday it will become part of the regular line-up.    Premiering in 1962, it was the first western series to run 90 minutes; in effect, it was a weekly movie.  Based on Owen Wister’s novel, it ran nine seasons and 249 episodes, all of them starring James Drury as the title character without a name.  Drury says, “I am thrilled that THE VIRGINIAN is coming back to television.  And there’s no better place to call home than INSP.  They have brought back so many of the shows that America still loves, and THE VIRGINIAN is sure to fit right in with their western line-up.  INSP and THE VIRGINIAN prove that good television never goes out of style.”

That's all for this week!  Next week I'll have info about an upcoming RAMONA event, The Western Writer's of America's Round-up Magazine's take on direct-to-home-video westerns, my review of two different published screenplays for CHEYENNE WARRIOR II, and more!

Hope you had a great Labor Day!  Uh-oh, it's dark, and I' haven't brought the flag in yet!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright September 2012 by Henry C. Parke -- All Rights Reserved