October 5, 2006 Bonus Bonus Blog
I drove down into the Beast for lunch today. Met with Ron Bergamo of AZ-TV and a producer, Ramon Plaza. They are recommending I do a TV show based on the elements of True West. We met at Capital Grill, at 24th St. and Camelback, a notorious watering hole for bigtime media tycoons and industry leaders. The head of something at APS came by our table, glad-handed Ron, who introduced me, to which the APS fathead said, “Yes, I see your pithy comments in the paper all the time.” For some reason this really irritated me. Pithy? Really? Well, I fumed about this all the way back out to Cave Creek. And all the way up to now, when I finally looked it up and saw that it means, “condensed, terse, and forceful.” Never mind. What a nice gentleman. One of the smartest CEOs I’ve even encountered in Phoenix.

Ha. (Oh, the ridiculous vanity of a certain blogger!)

Unearthing The Ultimate Ulzana
“Ulzana’s Raid has played on the Westerns Channel. Maybe Jeff Hildebrandt will make you a copy.”
—Steve Lodge

“$120.00 for a copy of Ulzana's Raid???? You need to call the people you work with on the Westerns Channel and get them to broadcast it and then you can tape it for free. I agree with Alan that it is the best Cavalry film produced during that era and Burt Lancaster's scout is fantastic (as good as Robert Duvall playing Al Sieber in Geronimo) Most good westerns have a few good set scenes in it, but "Ulzana's Raid" has so many good scenes in it, it would be hard to list them. Richard Jaeckel is also real good as the grizzled NCO but I just wish they had taken the damn hat cords off.

“If you keep talking about this movie in your blog and nobody can get a copy....somebody will have to release it. I do believe that it is as good as the John Ford Cavalry films.”
—Jim Hatzell

“Señor Bell, Just read your dilemma regarding Ulzana’s Raid. Huffines is right: It's a humdinger of a cavalry flick, free from the P.C. pig shit of modern movies and devoid of Golden Age Hollywood schmaltz. I can't believe an Apachephile (is that a word?) such as yourself hasn't seen it.

“I have nearly every post-WWII, big-screen Western put to disc--some 400. That's not a brag, mind you. I'm a past master of the oater—the kind of obsessive Westerner who prioritizes movies over groceries. I'd be happy to loan you Ulzana’s. I could mail it to TW's offices from here in Glendale. All I ask is that you give your word as a Hat Nazi that you'll treat it as your own, not loan it to anyone else, and return it when you're done.”
—C. Neil Williams

Wow! Several people, who I am close to, constantly question the value of this blog and the time it takes out of my busy day to write in here, and to them I say, “See, this justifies writing the blog right here. I’ve been paid back in full for every word I’ve written, in one fell swoop. Thank you C. Neil Williams, fellow Hat Nazi, anti-PCer and obsessive Westerner who prioritizes movies over groceries.”

Last night I was searching for a drawing and ran across a sketch pad from 1985. Check out this nude study taken from life in a drawing class at Scottsdale Artist’s School. Very clean, and simple, need to get back to this pithy style.



”The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended.”
—Rowan Atkinson