BBB's Blog

If you've ever wondered what it's like to run a magazine or how crazy my personal life is, be sure to read the behind-the-scenes peek at the daily trials and tribulations of running True West. Culled straight from my Franklin Daytimer, it contains actual journal entries, laid out raw and uncensored. Some of it is enlightening. Much of it is embarrassing, but all of it is painfully true.

In addition to this current journal, my early journal entries show the rocky road and money lost in the True West Business Timeline.

Bob's biography - The Unvarnished Truth

February 8, 2012

Still culling and filing old illustrations out of my flat files in the garage. Fresh out of college I launched into a comic strip called The Doper-Roper which ran in the Razz Revue and although it was inconsistent, in both art and writing, I sometimes hit the mark, like this rooster tail of dust thrown up by the entire Cattletrack Police Department:

I was racing a Triumph Tiger 500 at the local TT Track in Tucson at the time, and had a thing for sideways-sweeper bust-outs.

Here's an illustration that ran in the Phoenix New Times, about how every generation rejects the previous generation's music. This barcalounger dad is obviously modeled on my father, Allen P. Bell, although it's unfair to give him the line. He always loved it when our band practiced and he was very open to new music.

Found a couple year's worth of Honkytonk Sue strips. Here's the first strip, circa 1979, when I used the term "Woosie" for the very first time:

And here's a very ambitious Sue strip featuring the Beatles having an encounter with Sue at the Crossroads Drive-in in Tucson:

Yes, Ringo is wearing a Razz T-shirt, and the sign is dead on. The real Crossroads Drive-in on South Fourth Ave. in the Old Pueblo had a remodel not long after this and the drive-up awnings are long gone. I think the sign is still there though, and the Gizmos are still fantastic.

"As long as the day lasts, let's give it all we've got."

—David O. McKay

Bob Boze 10:51 AM

February 7, 2012

Still culling cartoons out of my flat files in the garage. Found this image of the dead Daltons, only someone has put a Groucho nose and glasses on Dick Broadwell.

Not sure why, although I suspect this had something to do with my BBB doubletrucks that ran in the Phoenix New Times back in the eighties. Here's another image that depicts Ronald Reagan as a Navajo President, holding two live rattlesnakes. Don't remember why on this one either, but it does have a certain vitality.

Going back even further, when I was doing the adventures of the DopeRoper in the mid-1970s I hat a set piece in a cliff dwelling and I whipped out this little ink wash:

And here's a nice, little pen and ink of a desert mouse about to get zapped by a great-horned owl. This was for a sequence of Honkytonk Sue that was to appear in a graphic novel, "The Man Canyon."

Bob Boze 4:04 PM

February 6, 2012

Finally, saw Drive. Thomas Bell brought it out yesterday and we all watched it. Really enjoyed it. Minimalist story, told well. Albert Brooks is fantastic as a stand-up mobster. Also recently saw Hugo and The Adventures of Tin Tin (weak stories, outrageous cinema techniques, which is the problem, it's all technique and no humanity), and before that I saw The Descendants, which has a sweet arc and has great humanity.

Speaking of the Ryan Gosling movie Drive can you believe some woman has sued the producers of Drive, claiming false advertising. Based on the trailer she thought she was going to see a movie like Fast And Furious. Just funny. For my money, Drive spins brodies around Fast & Spurious, I mean Furious. It would be like suing Kristen Wiig and the producers of Bridesmaids because you thought were going to see Brideshead Revisited.

I continue working on the Bob Paul commission. John Boessenecker wants to lean on the fact that Paul is massive at six four and 240, so I expanded the sketches to give him a bit more of a barrel chest.

Moved his pistol to the other side. Did a color study of this pose to try out the tonal values:

Went through my flat files in the garage over the weekend and found a couple keepers (did throw away quite a bit of weak crap). This one still stands:

In Defense of Savagery

"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
—Elmore Leonard

Bob Boze 11:33 AM

February 6, 2012

Moved his pistol to the other side. Did a color study of this pose to try out the tonal values:

Went through my flat files in the garage over the weekend and found a couple keepers (did throw away quite a bit of weak crap). This one still stands:

In Defense of Savagery

"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

—Elmore Leonard

Bob Boze 11:33 AM

February 3, 2012

I had a performance-speech last night in Apache Junction. Took me an hour and a half to wade across The Beast to AJ during rush hour. The 101 crawled all the way to the 202 (I'm sure it's the same across the country, just different numbers). I'm thankful I don't have to do this every day as so many commuters do everywhere.

That said, the show in the Apache Junction High School Performance Art Center Auditorium was fun. This was a joint show with Allen Fossenkemper's O.K. Chorale, a trio specializing in Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral fight, believe it or not. They did a half hour, then I followed with a half hour and they closed the show. Afterwards, sold some books, gave away some mags and met some very rabid afficionados of the Wild West like Walter Christ, a snowbird from Illinois. He wanted a photo with me, but his camera wouldn't work, so I pulled out my cell phone and Linda, the promoter, took this shot of us:

My phone took this! Still amazes me. Chester Gould (of Dick Tracy fame) predicted that someday we would have picture-wrist watches that doubled as phones, well, here we are not even a half century later and he only missed it by two fingers.

Walter is one of the charter members to our True West Preservation Society. I originally met him at our first fundraiser for the club at the Buffalo Chip Saloon in Cave Creek several years ago.

Last night Walter regaled me with modern-day-farming stories. I had no idea how sophisticated farm machinery has become. Walter told me about the new combine harvesters that plant seeds via GPS to within one inch of accuracy. The combine is guided by GPS and all the operator does is make the turns! And when it comes time to load up the trucks with the harvest, the same GPS systems automatically load the trucks, evening out the load with automated thrusts and moves to even out the payload, while the combine operator and the truck driver eat lunch, answer emails or play video games. I swear, the prediction that machines will very quickly take over every aspect of our lives while we sit by and pretend to be doing something, is a lot closer than any of us would like to believe.

I read recently, that with the external memory available from Google, etc. "we are all cyborgs now."

Yikes!

Whipped out another study of Bob Paul this morning before I came into work. This is no. 8:

Shifting gears today to work on what Hollywood was like in the 1920s when Wyatt Earp was desperately trying to cash in on his story. Even though he had the ear, and admiration of, both William S. Hart and Tom Mix, they could not get his story published, or made into a successful movie. Hart came the closest, with "Wild Bill Hickok" (1923) where he hired Wyatt as a consultant and weaved a story about, Hickok, Custer, Lincoln, and, of all things, The Dodge City Peace Commission.

So what was happening to the careers of Hart and Mix in this period? Well, Hart was on the decline after 1923 and bowed out. Mix, meanwhile started earlier than Hart, but had a longer road to stardom.

I am reading a biography of Tom Mix and in the beginning (1909-1920) he is bouncing all over the West filming one-reelers in little towns like Prescott, Arizona and then over in Las Vegas, New Mexico and the newspapers are all reporting that the Selig Movie Company plans to make "this area the center of the film industry." Reading between the lines it's like it's a big carnival road show and they are milking it with the locals, getting them to invest, etc. The names of some of these one-reelers are crazy, ridiculous, like "Rescued by Her Lions" (1911); "Bud Doble Comes Back" (1913); "When The Cook Fell Ill" (1914); "The White Mouse" (1914); "Weary Goes Wooing" (1915);"The Child, the Dog and the Villain" (1915, filmed in Las Vegas, NM). They appear to turn these out in a week or so. By 1921 he starts making five-reelers and his contract at Fox is amazing, at $900,000 a year. But it's bust by 1927.

Hart has already soared and crashed (partly because of Mix being the new kid on the block) by 1923, when Earp is the consultant on "Wild Bill Hickok" (1923). Still, the two of them , Hart and Mix are royalty.

I want to know that world, the pecking order of the big stars. Did they go to lunch at Musso and Frank's on Sunset? Did Mix pick up the tab for Wyatt? We know that at one point Wyatt borrowed $50 from Hart.

Of course, we all assume the story of Tombstone and the O.K. Corral was part of the movie biz from the beginning, but it wasn't. It doesn't enter the standard plot line until after Walter Noble Burns publishes his book "Tombstone" and Stuart Lake follows with "Frontier Marshal." These two books, the result of creative writers (mostly Burns who also reinvented Billy the Kid for the modern age) into a plot line in the early thirties and is still going strong today. How it got to that point and what happened in the culture to make this odd and tragic story finally resonate, that is what fascinates me.

"History is a cruel trick played on the dead by the living."
—Still my favorite Old Vaquero Saying

Bob Boze 10:51 AM

February 2, 2012

So I'm proofing John Boessenecker's historic travel loop from San Francisco to Virginia City and he mentions checking out Rancho de los Putos and I do a double take. Surely that can't be correct. Puto is Spanish for male whore and puta is whore. After some fact checking, Meghan Saar came up with this:

"I believe the Los Putos part of the name comes from the nearby Putah Creek, which was called Rio Los Putos. That came from the Puto tribe of Indians living on its shores. (p.8 History of Yulo County, California by Tom Gregory, 1913). The Spanish did dub them that, according to Stephen Powers' book Tribes of California (p. 219), 'on account of their gross licentiousness.'"

Wow! I understood it when our local Pima In-dins wanted to change their tribal name, since it was allegedly bestowed on them by their enemies (I believe it means "bean eaters") but this level of insulting monikers takes the cake. The Whore Tribe. I swear you can't make up ANYTHING funnier than real life. Gee, I wonder what the native dress of Los Putos looked like? I think I know:

News From The Front Lines
"Iurii Chaika from Kiev, Ukraine, called to subscribe and order two issues (Jan 03/Historic Photos and May 11/Historic Ranches). I asked how he heard of True West magazine and he said he went to Cheyenne Frontier Days last year and the hotel where he stayed had TW in the rooms."

—Carole Glenn

Is This Eighties Enough For You?

Cleaning in my studio I found this pen and ink done for Boots Niteclub in the early eighties.

Boots was a trendy club created by John Riskus in the Colonnade Mall at 20th Street and Camelback and exploited the short-lived Country Swing phenom that grew out of the movie Urban Cowboy.

"How do you make a hormone? Don't pay her."
—Old Niteclub joke

Bob Boze 10:09 AM

February 1, 2012

This is a cover sketch of Doc Holliday for Wild West magazine. Found it in my studio last weekend. Did this before Bob McCubbin, Rick Baish and I bought True West.

So this is pre-1999. Not a bad cover concept (his shoulders are a tad low and the hat too small, but the likeness is pretty good). I seem to remember they used someone else.

"This is funny, and ironic."
—Doc Holliday, if he had been alive to see me doing covers for Wild West magazine

Bob Boze 2:20 PM

January 31, 2012

Very busy day. Started with a blood test at 7:45, then a biz breakfast at C4 in Cave Creek and then a long day scrambling to finish our 10th Annual Travel issue. Lots of Texas Rangers work, including this shot of Bass Outlaw as he looks today. Ha.

"I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard."

—Lyle Lovett, in Esquire magazine

Bob Boze 5:00 PM