Appointment With Destiny Gets A Closer Look at the 38:44 Mark

 September  26, 2024

   I'm getting ready for today's taping of my review of Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War, the Netlfix docudrama that has already been seen by over four million people. I really hadn't planned on commenting on it, but so many readers and friends have asked me what they got right and what they got wrong, so I finally decided I had to step up and give my opinion, and take my shots, and also to give credit where credit is due.

   One of the talking heads on the show had this to say about all the nitpickers and whiners:

"I've got to think you've gotten at least a whiff of all the hand wringing and bellyaching coming from our colleagues and fellow western history enthusiasts about the many historical inaccuracies in the Netflix docuseries 'Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War.' What a travesty, they say, that viewers, especially impressionable youth, are being misled, that the truth of the past is taking a beating. I would like to ask these same critics, though, how many of them first took an interest in the Old West after reading Walter Noble Burns or Stuart Lake? So far, 'Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War' is among the top ten TV shows on Netflix. It's garnered more than four million views, and the reviews in the media have been overwhelmingly positive. The audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 84% fresh."

  By the way, the producer of Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War, Stephen David Entertainment, also produced a documentary on Sitting Bull for Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions and the History Channel. I was interviewed for that as well. Still no word on when that will air.

   The docuseries has definitely raised my profile. Lots of emails and new Instagram followers. And folks wanting to buy the book that's listed each time I appear onscreen, which won't be released until November of next year!

—Mark Lee Gardner

   Some of my other friends have compared the new show to the classic David Wolper docudrama Appointment With Destiny: Showdown at O.K. Corral (shot like a newsreel) and which totally changed the direction of my life when I saw it back in 1974.

Wyatt and Doc in Destiny Doc

   The Wolper show has more than a few things in common with the new Cowboy War version of events.

Lorne Green's baritone pipes on full display

Apointment With Destiny Revisited

"I just watched this excellent doc yet again. I remember when I first saw it in 1971 and that cemented the event in me for life.  I agree that it is the best amd fairest recounting of that gunfight. If you go to the 38:42 moment in the film you will see Virgil blink, in slo-mo, 4 times; these are the best "blinks" in cinematic history! 

Virgil Between Blinks

With Eternity at 38:44 

   "Better than Leone...better than "Tombstone".....maybe it is due to the black and white photography, I don't know.  I think it is the momentary use of slo-mo for those few seconds that really make Virgil's decision seem epic."

—Thom "Kid" Ross

L-R: Kid Ross, BBB and Buckeye Blake

(photo by Lucinda Amorosano)

Key word: "epic." the makers of Wyatt Earp and The Cowboy War seemed to want to error on the side of epic. They took the show wider to include world capitalists and how they may have affected the conflict. I can't speak to the accuracy of those assertions because it's out of my purview, but it was a refreshing new angle into the story. 

"History itself sometimes has a bad memory."

—Lorne Green, narrating Destiny