Wednesday, July 23, 2003

July 23, 2003
The monsoon is upon us. Very muggy out. Big storm on Monday night, sprinkles and dust last night. Telephone lines are evidently wet, can’t get online (finally got online at around 2 PM). This happens several times a year.

The James W. Bell headstone dedication last Saturday was interesting. They got a pretty big crowd and there were several video crews filming everything. I got some good shots. Ran up a nearby hill to get a long shot of the whole deal, then worked my way down to the grave and arrived just in time to get Sheriff Tom Sullivan meeting the director of the Brushy Bill-Hico Museum. At first, the Sheriff looked tense like he might pull iron, but then they shook hands. I got it all. I have been somewhat lucky in this regard. I got the photo of writer-director Kevin Jarre at the moment he lost his movie Tombstone, and I also was in the right place at the right time when I got the sequence in Schieffelin Hall when Glenn Boyer confronted Allen Barra (Feb.-Mar. 2001 True West)).

Swam laps last night. Felt very good. Watched a certain cable channel looking for clues (who are they trying to appeal to and how are they doing it?). Had lunch with Jeb Rosebrook yesterday (he bought) and we talked a bit about writing a pilot for the TV show. Flying to New York a week from today. Gus has been working non-stop on the presentation. Goes to Techniprint on Monday.

One of my driving miracles last weekend is the fact that after you boil it all down I am a cartoonist and have been from day one. I was watching Project Greenlight last night and I realized how compromising making a movie is. The crews are so large and moving all that equipment around necessitates cutting corners on locations and I hate that (In the road flick Thelma & Louise the San Fernando Valley ends up doubling for Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, etc., so you end up with mountains in Oklahoma. Yuck!). I don’t have to do that in my books. It’s just me and if I want to stay up all night marrying a New Mexico background to models I shot in Cave Creek, I can. Funny, Greenlight is turning out to be a real redlight for me (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon should probably each get a Nobel Peace Prize for dissuading guys like me from the conceit that we can be directors,).

Finished the last piece of art for this issue’s Classic Gunfight. Feels good. I’m in the zone.

Small world: Dave Daiss told me he also dated Ann Margaret (Olson) when they were in junior high. Amazing.

”Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.
—George Scialabba

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