February 17, 2010
A milestone: this is my 2,900th post.

In April of last year I drove to Lincoln, New Mexico to tape an interview segment on a documentary for a British video production company, Parthenon Entertainment (they are somehow associated with, or, were doing work for, the National Geographic Network).

The show: Mystery Files: Billy the Kid, appeared about a week ago on British television. It's supposed to run in the States sometime this spring. Today, I got a DVD of the show and watched it and sent the following email to one of the stars of the show:

Fred,
Adelaide Lane, the co-producer, sent me a DVD of the Billy show and I watched it here in my office. Man, I have to say, I think they did a great job. I was worried about the scenes filmed in England, thinking it would be glaringly obvious (too green!) that it wasn't the Southwest but I couldn't tell which was which and wouldn't have even known if you hadn't told me.

Also, the dark clouds, with the young actor in the pretty decent hat (hey, they were trying!) running with the storm clouds was muy noir. In fact, the New Mexico stuff was travelogue-lishish. My favorite shot, though, was J.W. Bell going into the outhouse and we see a poop POV (camera in the john, looking up through the hole!). Now that was rich and very creative.

I also thought Steve Sederwall was very convincing, but I did cringe when I saw him, thinking to myself, "Oh, crap, Fred's not going to like this." What did you think?

The only time I flinched (other than seeing my craggy face in deep shadow) was when the narrator said Fort Sumner was 200 kilometers away. I know, I know. The entire world is on the metric system and here we are stubbornly adhering to the measurement of an English King's foot, but, but, but crap shoot! I can't defend it, but, even though it's right, it's just WRONG.

Ha.

I thought you were quite good. Was that shot in your upstairs studio? Loved the lighting. Very bold. I thought the production values were quite high. I would go as far as say it's the most creative and solid Billy doc I have had the pleasure of appearing on.

BBB

And here for your Kid viewing pleasure is a photo taken at End of Trail at Founder's Ranch, New Mexico when I had my art show there and had my Billy the Kid painting on display. One of the shooters, who had on a great sugarloaf sombrero, asked to have a photo taken next to the painting. Here tis:



“One must still have chaos in him to dance with a shooting star.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche