September 16, 2007
Worked all day yesterday on Al Sieber images. I wanted to sneak in a First Minnesota pin on his lapel. Al served with the First Minnesota and was severely wounded at Gettysburg on the second day. I had a photo of a gent wearing the pin, so I snuck it in. Not sure I captured Al's visage, but I like the steely eyes:



Also, more red and black color schemes in the sketch book (4,748 sketches):



A feature on the state of Arizona filmmaking in Sunday's Arizona Republic notes that director James Mangold wanted to film 3:10 To Yuma in Sedona, but the studio overruled him when they learned about New Mexico's generous production refund ("A 25 percent tax rebate on direct production expenditures and a zero-interest loan of up to $15 million for qualified productions). So 3:10 To Yuma, Arizona, went to New Mexico. One of the things I didn't like about the movie is that it was so obviously not Bisbee, Contention or Yuma. I guess one of the clues was all of the damn snow. Ha.

This is one of my pet peeves: I hate geographic ignorance in movies. Your typical Hollywood producer rationalizes: "If it's a Western, as long as it has mountains and rugged landscapes, the audience doesn't care. " To which, I would like to add, "Okay, then let's film a cop story that takes place in LA and most of it on the Sunset Strip, but let's film it in Albuquerque. They've got similiar streets there and the audience doesn't care." I predict, the typical Hollywood producer wouldn't buy that. Why? Because they live in LA and would never accept an anonymous street passing for Sunset Blvd. It would seem ridiculous to them. And that's exactly how we feel about the Taos area standing in for Bisbee.

Westerns held their own last night on the Emmy's with Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee winning Best Made-for-TV Movie, and Broken Trail won for Best Miniseries. Robert Duvall accepted and kind of seemed lost, or confused (the paper said it was a "rather awkward speech that was thankfully cut off by the band"), which unfortunately undermined the very victory we needed.

When we were in Ouray, Kim Darby told us a great story about Bob on the set of True Grit. The director, Henry Hathaway was a tirant and abused the crew and Ms. Darby, yelling at them, cussing them out, etc.. Robert Duvall was only there for two weeks so when they got ready to do his first scene, Hathaway barked at him, "I want you to stand with your left leg forward and your right back and say all of your lines just like that." To which the young upstart Duvall replied, "Who are you f***ing Martha Graham?" (Kim didn't put the expletive in). The two proceeded to get into a roaring fistfight which was broken up by John Wayne, who then demanded that the two apologize to Ms. Darby, and then The Duke apologized, as well, for the profanity he used while breaking up the fight. Is that too rich, or what?

I told Kim I had never heard this story and we would love to get more of her take on the movie for True West.

"Hi, I'm f***ing Martha Graham."
—Martha Graham, as quoted by Robert Duvall