November 2, 2003
Worked all day yesterday on cover stuff. Drawing and drawing. Speaking of which, in this morning’s paper is a review for a new magazine called Drawing. I guess the big question is: is there a subject that doesn’t have a magazine? I can’t think of one. Everything is splintering into narrower and narrower slices. Maybe we need to do a spin-off magazine called Left-Handed Gunfighters Who Braided Their Hair.

Or not.

As for my Alamo comments yesterday, Dan Buck has some interesting insights. Here’s what he has to say on the subject:

“An Alamo movie with a sympathetic Santa Anna could work if the entire movie worked, that is, if the drama worked. If the movie doesn't work, it really doesn't matter if Santa Anna is depicted as troubled, an ogre, or a patriot. For my money, the best book on this subject is Lillian Ross's PICTURE, her account of the making of John Huston's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (1951). Even back then Hollywood had troubled productions, and carefully screened movies before test audiences. RED BADGE drew negative reactions and Huston re-shot parts of it. One need hardly underscore the irony that the movie was based on the eponymous novel by Stephen Crane, who had never set foot in the Civil War, yet his novel was lauded as terribly realistic.”

And as a follow-up to the follow-up, the postponing of The Alamo is made even more intriguing by the fact that Disney turned down the Ron Howard version (script by John Sayles, dark and gritty, $125 million budget with Russell Crowe as Travis), and now Howard has his Western The Missing coming out on Thanksgiving Day, and his partner Brian Grazer is quoted as saying there is only room for one Western this Christmas, and both Grazer and Howard are executive producers of The Alamo. Gets kind of incestuous, doesn’t it?

”Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.”
—Charlie Parker