February 1, 2007 Bonus, Bonus Blog
This morning I got this Email forwarded to me and I thought you might enjoy the answer:

“I enjoy Bob Boze Bell's 'True West Moments' on Encore Westerns, but I have a question. Does it strike you as odd in the one regarding a Tombstone, AZ policeman singlehandedly disarming three gunfighters, then Mr. Bell saying 'Sometimes history isn't fair, is it?' - he doesn't even mentioning the policeman's name? Granted, on his artwork shown in the piece, the name of policeman (Jim Flynn) is shown on the screen for maybe three or four seconds, but that's hardly a way to make history more fair, is it?

“Since that piece is already completed and running on the air, there's probably nothing that can be done about it at this point. I just wanted to point out to you that Mr. Bell is perpetuating the unfair situation. Since I'm a former TV director, I was trained to see everything on the screen, but the vast majority of viewers were not trained that way. I'm sure the majority of Encore Westerns' audience still does not know that policeman's name!”
—Ed Ryba, Hollywood, CA

Well, Ed, you caught us in a flub. When we filmed this piece in Tombstone in November 2005 we didn't have a teleprompter and I was reeling it off from memory. And in so doing I called him John Flynn. When we got back to civilization I realized my mistake and called the producer Jeff Hildebrandt at the Westerns Channel and told him the gaff, and he edited out me saying the wrong name on camera and we hoped most would read his name on the screen. It figures a director would catch the oversight. Ha.

Are you a subscriber to True West and what have you directed that I may have seen?
—BBB