Friday, January 17, 2025

Charlie Goodnight On The Range And American Primeval On The Deranged

 January 17, 2025

   I'm working on a cover image for old Charlie Goodnight. It's kind of amazing there aren't any photos of him as a young cowboy. Just a couple portraits of him looking like a bearded banker:

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Charlie Goodnight, circa 1880

   And the above photo is apparently what the wardrobe and make up department used to fur out Taylor Sheridan when he played Goodnight in "1883".

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Taylor Sheridan as Charlie Goodnight.

   Cool hat, but slightly modern. I wonder if the ol' boy maybe looked more like this?

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Charles Goodnight Sketch #2

   Or, this?

Charles Goodnight sketch #3

   Kathy and I are on the fourth episode of American Primeval and I was talking to our movie editor, Henry Parke, about the equal, but incessant, brutality on the show. And, by "equal" I mean all races are equally deranged. We have an underaged Shoshone girl who steals a knife, goes home and a seemingly drunk Native American brute starts to get familiar with her and she stabs him in the neck and kills him while her mother stands by and seems upset that the girl has ruined their meal ticket. The overarching theme seems to be that we are all guilty of heinous crimes, no matter our race or gender and that is something new for Westerns. I asked Henry when this trend started, and here is his reply.

"I think this rush for the sordid started with Deadwood, which despite its virtues created the dubious impression that in the old west, every third word was cocksucker, and every third person was one. I give the show credit for temporarily jump-starting the genre, I loved the art direction, the performances, and I applaud David Milch for giving the Western a patina of 'cool' that it had long lacked." 
—Henry Parke

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