October 23, 2007
Book alert: Gary Wilson's long awaited book on Kid Curry, Tiger of The Wild Bunch is finally out. Gary spent 11 years researching the outlaw and has dispelled many myths about him. Gary helped me out with the Pike Landusky shooting and provided much historical detail to that encounter.

The Assassination of Jesse James is struggling along: domestic total as of Oct. 21, 2007: $2,178,826. The budget was $30 million, so they have a ways to go. The film opened in England and France this week. I have a hunch the French are going to go crazy over this film.

Had a snafu in Kingman on the time of my speech. By the way, I did the parade and speech for free, and didn't charge them for my hotel, etc. Here's the excahnge so far:

On Oct 21, 2007, at 1:59 PM, bob the dog wrote:
"Judging by the October 19, blog entry copied below 'returning by noon tomorrow' it's obvious that you had no intention of keeping your 5:30 p.m. speaking engagement at Kingman Locomotive Park on Oct. 20th. Too bad those of us who waited until well after 5:30 to be told that you had a 'family emergency', hadn't read your blog on Friday, then we would have known that you had no intention honoring your speaking committment. No wonder there were so few people there.

"We have forwarded your blog to the event organizers and other interested parties and are cancelling our subscriptions to your publications.

"Thanks for nothing."
—Bob The Dog

Bob The Dog,
When I called my contact at the Beale Days Parade, she told me they had me down for 1:30. I asked if they could move me up to 11. She told me they could. I was not aware of the 5:30 speaking time.
—BBB

On Oct 22, 2007, at 1:17 PM, bob thedog wrote:
"Then why the announcement that 'Bob Boze Bell won't be speaking due to a family emergency' that was provided to the people waiting after 5:30 p.m., obviously that was a complete lie and someone was aware that you were supposed to be speaking at that time or there would have been no such announcement. Also, a schedule printed several times in the Kingman Daily Miner had the 5:30 p.m. time listed as did posters placed in business around town, we have copies of both."
—Bob The Dog

Bob The Dog,
All I can say is I'm sorry you didn't get to hear my speech. The high points are these:

• My father had a gas station on Route 66 and the price of gas was 39.9 cents a gallon (and we got complaints all day long).

• My grandmother lived up on Hilltop on Jefferson Street and she told me how we were related to outlaws. Also, when we watched the TV show "Wyatt Earp" she told me "Wyatt Earp was the biggest jerk to ever walk the West." That set me off on a life of finding out the truth about all the Old West icons.

• I used to read True West magazine, and bought my copies at Desert Drugs in downtown Kingman (on Front Street, or Andy Devine as it's called now).

• I remember when they hauled the locomotive to its current location, building tracks right down the center of Route 66 and pulling it with cranes.

• At about the same time I saw a brand new Edsel in the show room of Dunton Motors. And, ironically, it was one of the last I ever saw.

• I received my nickname "Boze" on Dickie Grounds Field (right across the street from Locomotive Park). I ran backwards to first and second base in a baseball game with Needles and Coach Baca called me "Piaso," and cruel teammates, mainly Charlie Waters (whose father owned the Mohave Miner), picked up on this and called me "Bozo." Then it got shortened to Boze. It stuck.

• Lt. Beale's camels came through slightly before this (1857). The camels were imported from Persia and spent three months at sea, lashed on deck, on their knees. When they got off the boat in Indianola, Texas, they romped and ran, so glad to be free.

• The toughest part of the journey was at the Colorado River. Beale and his men lost 11 horses and 3 mules trying to cross. The Mohave Indians retrieved the carcasses and had a feast.

• Martha Summerhays came through Mohave County in the 1870s. She was a newlywed, married to a soldier on his way to Fort Apache, via a steamer from San Francisco. She couldn't believe how out of date the women's clothing was, who she met in Yuma, coming out of Arizona on their husband's tour of duty (think Iraq). On the steamer coming up to Fort Mojave, it was so hot, the soldiers and their wives stayed on the west side of the boat, and in the afternoon, on the east. The boat listed both ways all the way up the river.

• When Martha and the troops were crossing Golden Valley, coming towards Beale Springs, one of the soldier's dogs went crazy from the heat, and ran to its death. Martha wrote in her diary, "What a God forsaken country. No civilized people will ever live here." Her prediction is true to this day.

See, you didn't miss much.

BBB

P.S. In 1999, two crazy friends and myself bought True West and moved it to Cave Creek, Arizona. May I send you a copy?

"Don't worry about it, I think they got what they paid for."
—Kathy Radina

October 22, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
Well, when I step in it, I really step in it. The following email is in response to my review of Jesse James where I said, and I quote, "I felt genuine empathy for Robert Ford! No Jesse movie has ever attempted or
achieved that."

Got this just now:

"Have you ever seen the peculiar Sam Fuller film, 'I Shot Jesse James,' from 1949?

"It is more about Ford than James, and how Ford, re-enacting the murder on stage over the years, warps his personality.

"It's currently out on DVD in a cheap set (by Criterion standards) of the first three Fuller films (including the Arizona history story, 'The Baron of Arizona' with Vincent Price as a slightly fictionalized James Addison Reavis (1843-1914, who attempted fraudulently to seize Arizona land-grant properties.

"(The third film in the set, 'The Steel Helmet' is one of the first war movies ever made in Hollywood to question the pieties of war films, and the pieties of America's moral superiority -- a North Korean captured soldier taunts a Black American about his so-called freedom in the U.S. It's a pretty good film, too.)"
—Richard Nilsen, The Arizona Republic

October 22, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
Okay, here are the frenetic, last thumbnails of the run-up to the halfway point (5,000 sketches):



Like I said, I woke up this morning, looking at the far wall. I thought I saw Mickey Free on a white horse in the cup on the wall. It looked like an Apache rendering of the boy, so I went and got my sketchbook and whipped out what I saw (the blurred version).



After I was finished, I walked up and put on my glasses and saw the birds. Hmmmmmm.

"Draw what you see, not what you think you see."
—Old Vaquero Artista Saying

October 22, 2007
Went home for lunch and whipped out the 5,000 sketch. It's a bit of a reversal, from what I've been doing. I woke up this morning and looked at a Tarahumara cup on the far wall of our bedroom. I didn't have my glasses on. I went with that.

Anyway, our server has been acting up all day (Meghan left to work at home) and it won't load scans from the server onto the blog. I'll try again later.

Meanwhile:

Bye Bye Ms. Peru Piggy Pie
"So I woke up a few days ago to the screaming of what turned out to be a pig. My host mom said in her heavy Quechua accent, ]van a matar chancho'. So I jumped up on the rock wall that seperates our house from my host dad's son's house and saw that they had the beast on the ground and were tying its legs. They all laughed when they saw me on the wall. 'Tomas quiere mirar'. The next part gets a little heavy for the weak at heart. Using a razorblade, they cut a whole in her backside and pulled out her eggs. They then took a steak to her heart with a hammer and through the screaming she slowly died.

"The reason they killed the pig was to celebrate the completion of putting on the roof on the newly built parts of the health post. The idea being that people from the town show up to help the contracted workers and when its finished there's a celebration and food. Well I showed up thursday at 8:30 to work and I was the only one from the town that came. A couple of guys showed up two hours before we finished and some ladies came to serve chicha but that was it. I worked my ass off all day with these guys. I was in charge of throwing buckets of water into the cement mixer. The pig afterward was delicious."
—Tomas Bell

"If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything yet."
—Lou Holtz

October 21, 2007
Worked all morning on scenes for The Top Secret Project. Did a whole gaggle of black and white thumbnails. Got ready to go down into the Beast to see a movie, and counted up the sketches. Did 21, which puts me at 4,999 sketches. Not a bad place to stop. I'll post number 5,000 tomorrow.

At 2:30 Kathy and I drove down to the Harkins at 101 to see The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford ($14 for two, popcorn $5.50, left a .50 cent tip). About 100 people in the theatre. I really enjoyed the whole experience (the time flew by), although I have to agree with Jason Strykowski that it seemed more like a History Channel documentary with a bigger budget. But I say that not as a knock, because I love those History Channel docs. Some of my friends have knocked the narration, but I really enjoyed it. And, this is a movie I want to own. It is the most honest retelling of the Jesse James story I have ever seen. Now I'm sure the Ted Yeatmans of the world will nitpick it to death, but it created an accurate world for me. Not one cowboy (although one of the only dings I would give it is in the Kansas City scenes they had too many saddle horses, but at least they were dressed as businessmen and not cowboys!). The acting is superb. Brad has never been more nuanced and menacing (he said in a recent interview he hates most of the scripts he gets sent because it's all the same guy. In this film, I can assure you, it ain't that guy). Casey Affleck (as Robert Ford) is brilliant and so is Sam Rockwell (as Charley Ford). Sam Shepard as Frank James was dead on, I only wish he could have been in the film more. Even the police officer from the TV show Monk was brilliant in his small part (Sheriff Timberlake?). And, here's the kicker: At the end I felt genuine empathy for Robert Ford! No Jesse movie has ever attempted or achieved that. Congrats to all. It is a work of art. I'd give it five stars and a good solid nine, on a scale of ten.

"It is true that no one can harm the person who wears armor. But no one can help him, either."
—Kristin Hunter

October 20, 2007
Got to Kingman last night at about six. 177 mile run. Checked into the Hampton Inn Suites on Stockton Hill Road (special parade rate: $99). Got down to the Beale Days Parade deployment area at 8:30 (at 6th and Beale, in the parking lot of the old Safeway). Checked in with Paulette Dollarhide and ran into old classmate June Smith, her son and her mom, who rode in the parade). Rode in a new Ford F-150 down the parade route, Beale Street of course. Gave away two boxes of True Wests en route. Kids would run out and I'd give them the mags. One snotty kid gave the magazine back, "I don't want this." Ha. Kids today.

Also, I was standing in the back of the Ford with no identification on the truck. So I had to yell out who I was and why I was standing in the truck. Even at that, when we rounded a corner I said to a pretty mother sitting on the curb, "I'll bet you're wondering who the hell I am?" And she replied, "I'll bet you sell Fords." Ouch.

The parade ended at Railroad Park and I jumped out and walked over to the tent where I was to speak. No one was there so I walked back up to get my car. On the way up Spring Street, ran into my old Eighth Grade Coach Les Byram and his wife. Nice talk with them. Les is the mayor of Kingman.

Spoke at 11 (got an irate email from a Kingmanite who said I was scheduled to speak at 5:30). After the short talk, two old classmates came up to me: Joe Hart and Richard Glancy. We chatted about being old and old Kingman. When I mentioned in my speech that I remembered the day the steam engine arrived in Locomotive Park (they built tracks right off the rail line and onto Route 66, then pulled it into position with cranes), the young people looked at me like I am old as dirt. Ha.

Did my daily sketches in room 421 looking out at the Cerbats. When I was a kid, I ran all over those hills. None of the houses in the sketches were there when I was growing up. But then, neither was the Hampton Inn. Ha:



Checked out of the Hampton at one and drove home. Nasty wreck south of the Santa Maria River. Two cars way off in the bushes and Joshua Trees. Met ambulences and fire trucks all the way to Wickenburg and beyond, all going out to the wreck.

Got home at four to work on the Source Book and the Top Secret Project. Worked late.

Long day, but enjoyed the quality time in my hometown.

"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball."
—Pete Rose

October 19, 2007 Bonus Blog
Leaving for Kingman at three. Returning tomorrow at noon. Going to be a short one. Got some good press, thanks to Roger Galloway of Lake Havasu. You can check out the press coverage at:

justsaynews.com

And the radio interview will be accessible in the upper right hand corner. Click on Good Sunday.

Worked on the Toast of The Town postcard with Robert Ray today. Here's what he came up with:



Not bad. Should work nicely.

Two of my former employers and nemesis(s?), Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, are in jail. Too bad I already forgave them. Ha. Actually, I'm kind of proud of the two jailbirds. America's Toughest Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, is out to get them, and in the process (Jim and Mike allegedly leaked Grand Jury stuff), Joe is making them into Freedom of The Press Legends. This is the kind of stuff that gives both of them erections and I hate to admit it but I'm mildly turned on myself.

"All we have of freedom
all we use or know
This our fathers bought for us,
long and long ago."
—Rudyard Kipling

October 19, 2007
Taking off today for Kingman. Big Beale Days celebration tomorrow. Going to ride in the parade and then talk about Lt. Beale, poaching directly from Paul Andrew Hutton's excellent piece on the Beale Camel Campaign in the 1850s. The parade will take place on Beale Street in downtown Kingman.

Last night, Joel Klasky and I manned a True West table down at Scottsdale Main Street Artwalk Night. Tons of people, many Cowboy Artist celebrities walking the streets. Beautiful night. Legendary Joe Bethencourt played music next to us and I really enjoyed his music. It's funny, Joe has been a musical fixture in the Valley for over 40 years and yet I had never met him until last night. He played some cool oldstyle Arizona songs, like "Glory Trail", AKA "High Chin Bob." Here's a sample lyric:

"And now I know beyond a doubt the heroes I have read about are only fools who stuck it out, until the end of mortal breath."
—Charles Badger Clark

Now that is one fantastic lyric, no? Joe also got off a couple funny quips. Like this one:

"If it wasn't for the cows they'd just be boys."
—Joe Bethencourt

October 18, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
Last Friday my daughter Deena came by the office and she asked me what we were working on and I said, "We need an idea for a postcard for our annual Town Of The Year issue." Without even pausing she said, "Have an Indian and a cowboy toasting tea cups."

Not bad, number one daughter.



And the headline is: "Toast Of The (#1) Town."

Went home for lunch and poached a Remington head from one of the oodles of books I have. I love his profiles with the big mustaches.



"Walls turned sideways are bridges."
—General George S. Patton (actually Angela Davis, but I liked it better when I thought it was Patton)

October 18, 2007
Last night I had a conversation with Kathy about problematic relationships. You know, people we hate. No, that's too strong. We don't really hate anyone, we just get very irritated with certain people. Her and I have different lists, although there is some overlap as you might expect. After we compared notes about the ones that really bug us, I told her that I have come to the conclusion that my goal for the rest of my life is to forgive everyone.

Meanwhile, I have a new ritual in the mornings where I force myself to sit down at the computer and bang out a scene for the Top Secret Project. Whenever I sit down I am fighting pre-failure, pre-fatigue and all negativity, but I just keep going ("Write a little every day, without hope, without despair."). Lo and behold, it just starts coming out. I then forward the scene to the Top Secret Writer for his input. I call it playing ping pong. So far, it's been mostly ping and very little pong.

Like I said, I'm trying to forgive everyone.

"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy."
—Old Vaquero Saying

October 17, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
A month or so ago I was doing a book signing at Barnes & Noble in Scottsdale and gave a talk beforehand to talk about the gunfights in my latest book, Classic Gunfights, Volume III. One of the stories I told was the story of the Apache Kid's escape, and how one of the Apache prisoners grabbed Hunkydory Holme's Winchester and ran up to shoot Eugene Middleton, the stage driver, in the face (he survived). But, as I was describing this, I said, for dramatic impact, "Imagine a guy with a thirty-thirty shooting at you from ten feet away and hitting you in the face."

I finished my talk and asked if there were any questions. A guy in the back raises his hand. He's an outdoor type, husky, farmer's tan. He says, "Hey, Boze, could you explain to me how an Apache could shoot someone in 1888 with a rifle that wasn't created until the 1890s?"

Well, we all laughed and I cringed, to say the least. As I drove home with a head the size of a shrunken pea, I made a mental note to myself: "Do not, I repeat, DO NOT use gun references in the future when speaking."

Unfortunately, I should have expanded that mental referendum to include the written word:

Bisley Unwisely?
“Bob, in your new ad for Mickey Free in the current issue of True West, Remington says, 'In 1888, I met a most unusual character at San Carlos… He rode a Mammoth Jack, 18-hands high, And he carried a long-barreled Sharps, a BISLEY COLT....'

"Friend Bob, the Colt Bisley model was produced between 1894-1915. Is Remington writing about seeing him in 1888 or later (after 1894)?"
—Richard Ignarski

Richard,
You see, Remington saw Mickey Free in 1888, but when he was writing up his memories of the events, it was in 1896 and he misremembered what Free was carrying.

At least that would be my defense if I was a flaky liar. Instead I'm just flaky, and didn't know Jack about the dates of the Bisley, just liked the name and thought it would be a cool weapon for Mickey to carry.

"Note to self: 'Don't do specific gun stuff without talking to the experts. Better yet, don't even mention gun specifics—'he had a long-barreled pistol'."
—BBB

October 17, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
Inspired by our trip down to see Mark McDowell's studio at Cattle Track in Scottsdale, Jason Strykowski ordered several books off Amazon for us to study. The first is God's Man: A Novel In Woodcuts by Lynd Ward, and the second is Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels, featuring woodcut masters, Frans Masereel, Lyn Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde.

Both books have a stark brilliance to them, and supposedly there is a physiological reason for this. According to George Walker, the author of Graphic Witness, "The human eye consists of rods and cones that process the reflected light of our world. These signals are then translated into color and form for processing by our brain. The rods, which are sensitive only to black and white, are the first components activated in a baby's eyes. That's why infants readily respond to high-contrast black-and-white images. We are hardwired to appreciate black-and-white artwork.

"Let's not resist its temptation. I know I can't."
—George A. Walker

I took the books home for lunch today and took a good look. Got very excited and brought two black Essdee scraperboards into the office. I quickly whipped out this mug shot of The Apache Kid. Not a great likeness but there is some truth in there. Gee, I wonder if George has anything to say about that?



"The truth is always easier to take in black and white."
—George A. Walker

October 17, 2007 Bonus Blog
One of our prettiest staffers is getting married. Ms. Abby Pearson, our crack designer, is marrying Mr. Scott Goodrich this coming January 19th.

We often talk about the graying of our audience, and how do we reach younger readers. Here's a Hollywood example of reaching younger viewers at the expense of people my age:

"This new generation may all become deaf.

"Attending the movie 3:10 to Yuma with a friend, the sound was so loud, she had to remove her hearing aids. And I held my hands over my ears the whole time.

"This is not what concerns me. Growing up in the 1930s, movies were not allowed to show violence or sex. Even married couples were shown in twin beds because the actors were not married.

"Obviously, things have greatly changed, and it is no wonder we have so much violence and sexual harassment today.

"Thinking back to the 'good ol' days,' we left the keys in the car when shopping downtown, did not have keys to the house beause we never locked it anyway, and my parents allowed my 13-year-old girlfriend and I to walk home from the evening movie without concern for our safety.

"Perhaps if we reinstated the ban on violence and sex in the media, we would experience a safer environment."
—Martha Ackerman, Scottsdale, letter to the editor in The Arizona Republic

"To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."
—Bette Davis

October 18, 2007
Much cooler out in the mornings. Ran across three coyotes on the bike ride. Buddy Boze Hatkiller runs among them with his tail wagging and they snarl and snip at him (he's got the hind end scars to prove it). Amazing how dumb luck plays in survival. Until it runs out of course.

Speaking of dumb luck and running out of it, my email conversations with writer Dan Buck (see below), got me to thinking about the endless cycle in Tinseltown:

Hollywood Ending
You are miserable and unfulfilled. People think you are a loser. You lock yourself away and work on a project that will prove everyone wrong. It fails. You try again and it fails again. So does your marriage. But you are stubborn and you keep at it and lo and behold, your umpteenth project hits the jackpot, but unfortunately you gave away the rights cheaply because of child support needs and now you want to repeat the jackpot part in order to cash in and to prove it wasn't a fluke. You fail at that, but you have connections now and you get a dogbone assignment to write something tawdry, but it pays boatloads of money. Now you are fat, rich and jaded and you wish you were as happy as you were when you were first starting out. You are miserable and unfulfilled.

The End.

Jesse James Sputtering Off To Respectability?
"Domestic total for TAJJBTCRF is $1,404,225.00 which is not terrible for three cities, 163 theatres, and twenty-four days. Movie is two hours, forty minutes long. Budget was $30 M. I think it will be an earner and an award winner."
—Alan Huffines

Working on white space and specific faces, this one Powhattan Clark (the tall guy, below, left) and two very unhappy Apache lovers behind him. More white space attempts, and design



"The good is the greatest rival of the best."
—Nellie L. McClung

October 16, 2007
My Aunt Fern Hauan, 95, passed away last Friday at the Good Samaritan Center in Forest City, Iowa. Funeral service will be Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 1:00 PM at Bethany Lutheran Church in Thompson with Pastor Mark Decker officiating. Burial wil be at Rose Hill Cemetery in Thompson. Visitation will be Wednesday, October 17 from 11 AM until time of service at the church.

Fern Lucille Hauan was born in McCallsburg, Iowa on August 27, 1912, the daughter of Paul and Sophia (Strum) Lura. She moved with her family to Winnebago County in 1920 and received her education in Thompson. She graduated from high school there in 1930. She was my father's mother's brother's wife.

Back in the 1970s she made us a homemade Norwegian quilt, which we treasure and use to this day.

My son Thomas sent me this photo of himself in Peru:



At first I was concerned because I thought he might be going into politics, or worse yet, a life in media. But, no, he was just goofing at an empty podium. Whew! A life dedicated to humor I can handle.

"Like father, like his son."
—Old Vaquero Saying

October 16, 2007 Bonus Blog
This might seem too obvious to even mention, but I have always been fascinated by gunfights, and not just Old West gunfights. When I was eight or nine I would go up to my grandmother's house in Kingman and while she told me stories about outlaws she knew, or we were related to, I would draw pictures on her dining room table (well, actually on paper on her dining room table) of guys shooting it out. For some reason, the idea of illustrating where gunfighters stood and where they fired and what they hit, has always fascinated me (see Classic Gunfights, Volume I, Volume II and Volume III).

So, last Saturday night I went with my lovely wife to a party in Mesa. After a fine catered dinner in the back yard we retired to the carport for a Casino Nite deal, with three dealers. Kathy and I sat at the Texas Hold'em table and the dealer, a silver-haired, gregarious guy who looked to be in his mid-sixties, taught us the game and entertained us with his stories. I'm not much of a card player but I really started paying attention when he said he was a sniper for the LAPD in a former life. I immediately asked, "We're you in the SLA shootout?"

He laughed and told me they were so outgunned in that fight they were lucky to have survived. Ever since I read about that fight in the newspapers I have always wondered what actually went down. Here are the basic perameters of the fight, which I Googled:

May 17, 1974: Six heavily armed members of the SLA, including leader Donald DeFreeze, die in a shootout and fire that consumes their Los Angeles hideout. [Patty] Hearst and Bill and Emily Harris escape because they had been stopped at a store for shoplifting. The Harrises eventually serve eight years in prison for the Hearst kidnapping.

After the card games broke up, I approached him and asked him for his card.

I called him this afternoon and this is what he told me (he requested that his name not be used): he was part of a ten-man police unit in Los Angeles. He was armed with a 308 Remington bolt-action rifle. When they got the call that the Symbionese Liberation Army (the radicals who kidnapped Patty Hearst), were holed up in a house in LA, every unit in the entire region sped to the area. There was only one problem: they were two blocks away at the wrong house (no Google Earth). In the meantime a TV reporter (Christie Lund?) walked up to the right house and asked if she could interview the inhabitants, so Donald DeFreeze, Charlie Wolfe, and seven other fighters had time to get ready to rumble. They were all armed with fully automatic weapons (while serving time in prison Wolfe learned how to bypass the M-1 mechanism and make it fully automatic).

So many bullets were sprayed in the ensuing firefight that houses three blocks away had bullet holes in them. The police were totally outgunned and my guy says the SLA could have come out of the house at any time and nobody could have stopped them.

Instead, they were hunkered down for the Last Stand. They had been using the house as a safe haven for several weeks, and they threw up plywood sheets inside the main walls and poured dirt in between, which absorbed most of the firepower from the outside. My guy said the only thing they could do was "shoot off their fingers when they stuck their guns out of the portholes." I think he said he shot three fingers off one of the shooters.

Ever since I read the news reports in 1974 I always pictured the snipers trying to find a clear shot from 150 yards and through the trees, etc. but when I asked him where he was he said "Twenty feet behind the rear door—and out of bullets." They had never been involved in this kind of fight and had only brought two boxes of shells each.

Someone went to the property division where impounded guns and stuff are stored, and when they came back, he got a MP-30, one of those German WWII machine guns with the wire stock. As the fight resumed, SLA member Nancy Ling Perry appeared at the back door and he cut her in half. She fell to a sitting position, in two parts.

When I asked him what it felt like, he said, "it all kicks into slow motion action and you think you've fired two shots and you've fired ten or fifteen times, and they're going so fast, and you feel like you're going so slow. You can actually go into shock. You feel lethargic, you're coherant to a certain degree. And when people ask you if you're okay, you say you're fine and they say, 'Then why are you talking so slow?'"

"Give peace a chance."
—John Lennon

October 16, 2007
Just got off the phone with a radio interview from Lake Havasu. More on that later. just got this review on The Assasination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and wanted to get it up here:

"Even three days after seeing it, I think TAJJBTCRF may be one of the best period films made. This one will not be for everybody—it is a mature BIO-PIC concerning the complicated relationships between two men. What little action there is, is violent and bloody but conscientiously awkward, almost like a local dinner theatre might attempt. This is not to say it looks bad, just the reverse—it looks all too real.

"Since we all stand on the shoulders of giants, this film seems to have been influenced by THE GREYFOX, BARRY LYNDON and a bit of HEAVEN’S GATE. Depending on what one thinks of these films will probably determine how TAJJBTCRF will be received.

"A viewing of RIDE WITH THE DEVIL followed by THE LONG RIDERS will do anyone a good turn to refresh the palate prior to seeing the new movie. It is the perfect threequel, but at the same time in many ways surpasses the other two. Production design, wardrobe, and dialogue are all as good as can be found. The minor quibble is the horse equipage—it sucks. Probably not productions’ fault so much as the wranglers. Until films put saddlery in the props category, it will not get better. Wranglers generally bring every high cantled/pommeled saddle they can find and assume it will be right. I have no quarrel with this on background, but for goodness sake, the principles need accurate saddles. Our mutual friend David Caarrico built nice gun leather for the film and it’s a pity he was not allowed to build saddles as well.

"The movie flows at a 19th Century pace, which some might say is slow, but it is not at all. The editing will not allow us to get in front of the story; we must follow at the stroll rather than the overthetoptwohourblockbuster speed. It worked perfectly.

"Each scene is masterfully composed. The streets are filled with people going about their days and dressed as they would have been in NYC or London (rather then the normal back and forth in front of the camera stuff). The DP was fantastic, spare, stark, and beautiful. Many shots are through appropriate period windows (remember the dustup with DEADWOOD?) and the saloons are cramped and authentic going even further than TOMBSTONE in this regard.

"I stand by my original comments that this is not a Western, but rather the final act of a failed insurgency. While preparing for the only train robbery in the film, Wood sings 'I’m A Good Ol’ Rebel' (last heard on film in THE LONG RIDERS), and an important story point reminds us from whence Jesse came, when he beats a young man while questioning him, then stops and weeps like a child must be remembered from teenage Jesse’s beating by Union forces at the family farm during the War. I understood his shame because I know the backstory, others may not.

"I have long been a fan of the novel, and own a threadbare mass market edition from the eighties. I am reminded of LONESOME DOVE in that both novel and mini-series do not detract from each other but form some sort of continuum and compliment each other. The same can be said for TAJJBTCRF. I eagerly await a Special Edition DVD with the uncut movie."
—ALAN C. HUFFINES

October 15, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
Richard Nilsen wrote a spectacular piece in Sunday's Arizona Republic on the state of art and art galleries in the Valley of the Sun. Some highlights:

The failure rate of art galleries is "nearly 100 percent—almost every gallery eventually goes out of business."

I also loved these definitions of art terms:

• Acid Free—The art-world marketing adjective equivalent to "free range."

• Art Gallery—Like a shooting gallery, only with paintings instead of tin ducks, and critics instead of rifles.

• Atelier—Originally, a master artist's studio, with his apprentices or assistants. Now, a fancy way of saying the art was made by the assistants and signed by the superstar artist.

• Giclee—A $4 word for a computer inkjet print. . .

• Group Show—An art exhibition, catering not to the individual ego of an artist, but to the common jealousies of several.

• Retrospective—A show looking at the work of a single artists over his lifetime and demonstrating the development of a body of work. Often reserved for the very young.

• Stable—The group of artists represented by a commercial gallery. The suggestion of cattle is not unnoticed by artists.

Ha. I also loved this line:

"People think art galleries are glamorous. Well, who do you think cleans the toilets?"
—Victoria Boyce, gallery owner

October 15, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
Looking forward to seeing a media screening of No Country For Old Men in two weeks. Here's the synopsis of the Coen brothers film:

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a mesmerizing new thriller from Academy Award®-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the acclaimed novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning American master, Cormac McCarthy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. Featuring a cast that includes Academy Award®-winner Tommy Lee Jones (“The Fugitive,” “Men in Black”), Josh Brolin (“Grindhouse”), Academy Award®-nominee Javier Bardem (“The Sea Inside”), Academy Award®-nominee Woody Harrelson (“The People Vs. Larry Flynt”) and Kelly Macdonald (“Trainspotting”), NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is written for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, produced by Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, and executive produced by Robert Graf and Mark Roybal.
The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (BROLIN) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law –in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (JONES) – can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers – in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (BARDEM) – the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible, and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.

And here's the poster. Sweet, eh?



Meet The Top Secret Project's MacGuffin
A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters and/or advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hitchcock explained the term in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is most always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."



There are a couple things to notice about this MacGuffin. Note the time on the watch (lower left), and note the back of the watch (two lambs, one lying down). These clues will point directly towards the climax. Kind of exciting. I sketched these off of three photos that came from a museum in Texas who has Glenn Reynold's MacGuffin, I mean watch.

I'm still a long way from the goal line on the project, but I try to take a whack at it every day. Gee, I wonder if Goethe has anything to say on this subject?

"Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action. Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made."
—Goethe

October 15, 2007 Bonus Blog
As promised, here are two photos from the Bison Museum opening on Saturday. The first was taken in the museum and shows Marshall Trimble (at left in red), Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross (in saddle), U.S. Senator Jon Kyl and me squatting and spitting:



After the tour of the museum we went outside for the ribbon cutting. Cutting with fake, plastic scissors, left to right: former Dalllas Cowboys quarterback Danny White, BBB, Senator Jon Kyl, Mayor Manross, Marshall Trimble and Gary Martinson (the owner of the museum):



Thanks to Larry Manross (Mary's husband) for sending me the pics.

"There are times when life surpises one, and anything may happen, even what one had hoped for."
—Ellen Glasgow

October 15, 2007
Excellent weekend working on The Top Secret Project. Got a timepiece page going. I'll post that this afternoon.

The Buck & Boze Show
"I haven't read a lot on movies, Hollywood, etc, but David Thomson's THE WHOLE
EQUATION is a marvelous book, insightful and stylishly written. The phrase
"the whole equation" refers to when it all comes together, commerce, art, and
box office. It's a rare confluence, and a wonder to behold when it occurs.

There are many movies that are huge box office hits, but not art. And the
other way round, like THE ASSASSINATION OF. We may quarrel with WB's
distribution approach, but it's possible that what makes THE ASSASSINATION OF engrossing
and atmospheric kills it as a wide release film.
—Dan Buck

Yes, you've nailed it. The stories are legion of meddling. Have you seen "The
Kid Stays In The Picture"? It's an excellent documentary of the rise and fall
of Robert Evans who produced "The Godfather." As producer he claims he forced
Francis Ford Coppola to change parts of the film, and he claims, this made it
a classic (he was trimming or reining in Francis' wandering excess). Then,
later, when Francis had enough clout he gets a restraining order against Evans
on the film "The Cotton Club," and Evans is banned from touching the film,
which turns out to be a pile of total doo doo.

On the other side of the fence is Ridley Scott and "Blade Runner" and
Scott has just released his intended version 25 years later. He nuked out the
"lame narrative voice over" and killed other studio tampering. it wasn't a box
office hit then, it is a critic's darling now. Will the box office follow? I
doubt it, but what do I know? Very little, but then I take some comfort in William
Goldman's comment, "Nobody knows anything." Ha.

You are right when you say it's a rare thing when commerce and art mesh.
It's a fluke of nature really. And the older I get the more in awe I am of
films that still work, and I would include "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid" on
that list. Amazing.
—BBB


Never saw "The Kid,"' but heard good things about it.

Evans is all over Thomson's first chapter, "The Gamble and the Lost Rights,"
re the making of CHINATOWN, which he considers emblematic to his history of
Hollywood. Robert Towne, Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, and Robert Evans all
threw dice in that venture. For Thomson, moviemaking is as much gambling, as
it is dreaming.

Towne had a dream for a trio of movies about Los Angeles. CHINATOWN he lost
control of (sold the rights because he was short of cash). But in spite of
his ceding control to the studio, which is to say Polanski, that film ended up
being the beau ideal whole equation.

Towne and Nicholson went to war over the second film in the trio, THE TWO
JAKES, which Nicholson, being the more powerful at that moment, took over and
directed, into the ground.

Towne? He went on to get filthy rich writing two MISSION: IMPOSSIBLES, the
equivalent of Edward Hopper making a fortune painting barns. The third in
Towne's dream trio was never made.

Thomson: "The gap between CHINATOWN and the umpteen future MISSION:
IMPOSSIBLE is the lament of this book."

The profile of hedge fund corsair Victor Niederhoffer in the current NEW
YORKER makes reference to what mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot calls "the
'multifractal nature of trading time,'" that is, the market when it's is volatile and
fast-moving and chaotic.

Multifractal -- I had to look it up -- is from mathematics, a field that is
not only alien to me, but which makes me break out in hives. A multifractal
system, e.g., the stock market, current events (history as its unfolding and
biting us in the arse when we least expect it), and many phenomenon in nature,
cannot be explained or standardized with a single exponent. The making of a
movie is a multifractal system.
—Dan

Dan,
Didn't know this. Amazing. In a recent interview with Warren Beatty, Towne
shows up for a meeting with Beatty, or maybe he's just leaving a meeting, I
can't remember, and the interviewer notes this and surmises that Beatty and
Towne have a project together. Beatty wouldn't divulge anything, but I wonder?
Hmmmm.

Didn't Towne also do that Lesbian runner movie "Personal Best"? I was
rather underwhelmed by that one. Also, "The Two Jakes" was so bad. Nicholson has a
gut (supposedly planned, because Jake would have been middle-aged in the
sequel, etc. but Pa-leeze!), and there are major gaffs in the settings. I seem to
remember an ATM machine in the background, and the plot twist, of winding up
the alleged bad guy a la Walter Huston, (The Gray Fox guy—Richard
Farnsworth!!), and then slowly letting the air out of the whole mess, I mean movie. I
remember thinking to myself, "Maybe Towne isn't a genius. Maybe he just got lucky."

And maybe he did, but "Chinatown: is so good I don't care. When you look
at what Polanski did after that ("Tess," what a mess!). He actually said
somewhere that he did Chinatown to show the movie bosses that he could make a box
office success, and then he planned to do the movies he really wanted to do.
Ouch!! A warning fable for us all.
—BBB


You found the director/actor's dream zone: I want to do the movies I've
always wanted to do. Which is inevitably leads to a nightmare.

My final contribution to our dialogue I poached from the November ATLANTIC,
which landed in our mail box this afternoon: Bernard Schwarz, the magazine's
erudite book critic, on several new Hollywood tomes (below). During
Hollywood's so-called golden rea, most of which they made was schlock. They had to make
schlock, to make money to make the really important pictures. But, most of
those important pictures are forgotten today, and it's the handful of creative
entertainments and noirs that survived, like MY MAN GODFREY and DOUBLE
INDEMNITY.
—Dan Buck

Photos of Saturday's opening at the Bison Museum coming right up.

"It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded."
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

October 13, 2007
Just got back from the ribbon cutting at The Bison Museum down in Scottsdale. I was on the dignitary platform with the mayor of Scottsdale, Mary Manross; Senator John Kyl; former Dallas Cowboy Danny White; and our own Marshall Trimble. Actually participated in the ribbon cutting (a first for me). Also ran into Scottsdale Councilwoman Betty Drake. She and I go way back to Razz Revue days when we were both budding cartoonists. She ended up as an environmentalist and activist who got herself elected to a very controversial post, and I paid $350,000 to have an outlet to publish my stuff. Somehow I think we both made out like bandits. She looked great by the way. We both hung out nude on the Recession Artists' River Trip down the Grand Canyon in 1982. The group, formed by artist Meryl Mahaffey, just had their (our) 25th anniversary get together last week, but I didn't go. Had some conflicting event.

Came back out to Cave Creek at 11 and ran into a massive traffic jam in front of our offices. It's the Cactus Shadows' High School Homecoming Parade, which came off at ten, but evidently there are still events going on. Pulled out of line and came in the office to check my email and write this up.

Had dinner last night down at Keg Steakhouse with Kathy, Wonderful Russ and his wife Wendy. Had the mahi tuna special ($60, plus $12 tip, Sue account). Fun time. Ran into Karen Bell (no relation) and her very attractive children and grandchildren. She's moving to Montana. Deena was also there and met her boyfriend Frank in the bar. We had drinks before dinner and chatted up the other Bells and Frank.

"There are two people you have to be true to—those people who came before you and those people who come after you."
—Gayl Jones

October 12, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
Deena Bell just dropped by the True West offices, after giving all day consultations for 401(k) plans at Desert Mountain, which is up the road east of Carefree. She is in town all this week and loving it, because she is literally on the road every week. Last week she was in upstate New York, hitting six different towns and flying home out of Newark, New Jersey. The week before she was in Coldwater, Michigan and the week before that in Chicago Heights and the week before in Terre Haute, Indiana.

She is a bonified road warrior.

Brad Pitt Cooks His Own Goose?
"I asked a major film critic this afternoon—just e'd him out of the blue. He replied that Warner Brothers fought Brad Pitt over length and lost, and his 'guess' is that now they're punishing him by releasing it in 'dribs and drabs.'

"Hmm, passive-aggressive behavior, the engine that powers most marriages.

"I will say though, that nobody ever got criticized for making a shorter movie, and star or director driven projects often suffer because they want to keep everything in. The hardest thing for writers learn is that you have to kill off your 'little darlings.' I forget who came up with that figure of speech to describe all the cutesy stuff, the garlands, the baubles, that writers want in and good editors take out."
—Dan Buck

"Never let the urgent crowd out the important."
—Kelly Catlin Walker

October 12, 2007 Bonus Blog
Working hard on the black and white game. Pulled a couple of scratchboards out of my morgue for reference. This is the tonal qualities I want for the Top Secret Project (Limited Edition Custom Book Phase):



Both were done from photos, but free hand. Nice effects. Yesterday I did some sketches of Walter Camp running for a touchdown with one of those oldstyle footballs (very medicine ball-ish). That's Jim Thorpe at top, most of the scenes from the new book, which touts: "In 1903, a group of defeated warriors stepped out onto a field in front of thousands of hostile fans. They walked off heroes." The title is: "The Real All Americans," by Sally Jenkins.



The right hand page, done this morning, reflects the sparse ("This is Sparta!"), white space design of the books we saw down at Mark McDowell's. Trying to push things in that direction rather than the crowded, paranoid world of the usual comic book design.

Jesse James Backstory
"There's a backstory in here somewhere: what did Warner Brothers know about THE ASSASSINATION OF that caused them to embark on the desultory roll-out?  Something happened.  What?  Sour focus groups?  Ran out of mazuma for distribution?  Competition from other movies being released at the same time?  Or! Or!  WB is not done.  It's a trick.  It's a slow build-up.  A cinematic-distribution tsunami in slow motion.  What?  Unleash your beagle.

"Second, since the movie is running 3 to 1 fresh tomatoes to rotten, why would the ARIZONA REPUBLIC run an uninformed, negative review from a small newspaper 1,500 miles away, or however far NJ is from AZ.  And:  there's no East Coast bias here.  Most NYC critics like THE ASSASSINATION OF, for all the right reasons. It's moody and elegiac, and the acting dazzles.

"My guess is REPUBLIC editor just grabbed the review off the wire without thinking twice."
—Dan Buck

Yes, I agree. My theory is they did the limited release and the business wasn't there for a winner and they dumped it. It has had a very mixed focus group track record for over a year, so it really isn't a surprise, but still, I was hoping it would come out of nowhere, slowly and steadily build business and redefine Westerns as we know them. But then, I'm a hopeless artist (brilliant cartoonist but a hopeless artist and capitalist). ha.

"Be aware. For there are shadows within the shadows."
—Leonardo da Vinci (quote sent to me by Scott Matula—Thanks!)

October 12, 2007
I read more of Elmore Leonard's Classic Tales last night. "The Kid" is a short story about a white boy raised by Apaches who shows up in southern Arizona and, wait a minute! That sounds familiar. Ha. There is nothing new under the sun, or as Lennon said, "Nothing you can know that isn't known."

Jesse James On The Brink of Doom
More evidence that Warner Brothers has written off The Assasinatioin of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. This morning's Arizona Republic printed a sour opinion of the Brad Pitt flick, running an eastcoast review (since it is opening here without a press preview). The author, Eleanor O'Sullivan, gives it two stars and pouts, "a movie that feels endless—160 minutes—and repetitive to the point of excess."

Meanwhile, the new movie Into The Wild has numerous Arizona locations, including Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Bullhead City, Parker, Page and Yuma. Turns out the executive-producer, John J. Kelly lives out here by me. Kathy and I may go see the movie this weekend.

Buckeye Blake's Cursed Dead Billy Goat
Buckeye's son Teal, sent me a photo of the black billy goat that died under the sculpture of the dead Billy Kid. Here it is:



Man, I wish I had this for photo reference when I was producing all of those death goats for my Illustrated Life & Times of Billy the Kid. Isn't that death stare haunting? Real death eyeballs are so fixated and scary, it's hard to capture.

"All you need is love."
—John Lennon

October 11, 2007 Bonus Blog
Okay, I finally got to read the Larry McMurtry piece on Billy the Kid on the New York Review of Books website. But only because Meghan Saar went on with her computer and registered me ($3, business account).

Here's the paragraph in question:

"In the last three decades, scholarship about Billy has shaken off its pulp origins and become professional, the three best books, in my view, being Robert M. Utley's Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989), Frederick Nolan's The West of Billy the Kid (1998), and now Michael Wallis's Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride. Nor should one forget the brilliant cartoonist Bob Boze Bell's Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid, a fine contribution to the vast literature on the Kid."
—Larry McMurtry

Heady company I must say. Utley, Nolan and Wallis are heroes of mine. And FYI, he only uses the term brilliant one other time, when discussing other mythical characters, as in, "The folk heroes you might put against [Billy]—Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox Babe, Pecos Bill—seem pretty tame these days, though the Coen brothers did their best for Paul Bunyan, in their brilliant movie Fargo."

And, I'll certainly take that comparison standing up as well.

"A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey."
—Old Vaquero Saying

October 11, 2007
Cool at night but still hot in daytime (yesterday's high of 105 is a record). Quite nice to wear long pants on the morning bike ride.

Bandits In Black
"Liked 'Our Favorite Bandit'. I often wonder why he got tagged with the monicker 'the Kid'? He really wasn't much of a kid, more like a mad yearling bull.

"The black and white is good, it lets us think color!

"Snow is back in the Alberta Rockies!"
—Bill Dunn

I asked Jason Strykowski to pick up the Elmore Leonard short story 3:10 To Yuma which was among "seven clalssic tales of the West from America's premier storyteller." We both thought it would be a good exercise to see exactly what they got from Elmore's version for the two movies. I put the paperback on my nightstand and thought I'd read it in several bites, but the sucker is only two dozen pages long! Finished it in one sitting. They weren't kidding when they said, "Based on a short story." What's amazing to me is how they fleshed this out into an entire movie—twice!

In Elmore's short story, the outlaw's name is Jim Kidd ( hmmmmm, I wonder if Joe Jidd was poached from this?). The deputy with his prisoner are coming from Fort Huachuca, not Bisbee, and there are maybe three scenes: riding into Contention, waiting in the hotel, a brief fight at the train station against Charlie Prince (a half page) and then they jump on the mail car and as the train pulls away, Kidd says, "You know, you really earn your hundred and a half." That's it.

Jason speculates it's the title that gives it heft and the kid is probably right.

Spent most of this morning trying to corral The Top Secret Project down into a clean and mean narrative (absolutely no help from the Top Secret Writer who sniffs, "I'm not writing a short story, I'm writing a screenplay."). Managed to knock a big hole in it (the project not the TSW's head) and I'm hoping to have a working document by tommorrow. Still, it's been a marathon run and I'm used to sprints. Gee, I wonder if William James has anything to say about this?

"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task."
—William James

October 10, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
Well, this is a record of sorts (more Bonus Blogs than ever before), but this can't wait:

Our Favorite Bandit
By Larry McMurtry, Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride, by Michael Wallis, Norton, 328 pp., $25.95
Billy the Kid was ambidextrous—according to some. His favorite song —according to some—was 'Silver Threads Among the Gold,' though once he discovered dancing, for which he had a flair, 'Silver Threads' may have been bumped for 'Turkey in the Straw.' According to some, his last (and perhaps only true) girlfriend, Paulita Maxwell, was pregnant by him on that fateful night—July 14, 1881—when Sheriff Pat Garrett, of Lincoln County, New Mexico, snuck up on her father's ranch house and shot Billy dead, firing into darkness at the sound of Billy's voice.

"You need to go on the NYRB website < www.nybooks.com > and fork over three dollars (house account) for the complete review, which I am sure you will be doing in what's known as a New York second, because deep in the piece McMurty refers to "the brilliant cartoonist Bob Boze Bell's ILLUSTRATED LIFE AND TIMES OF BILLY THE KID."

"Could he have meant 'brillantine cartoonist,' 'brindled cartoonist,' or 'bright-eyed cartoonist'? No, he said brilliant. Now we know."
—Dan Buck

Personally, I would have settled for "brillantine cartoonist," but hey, it's McMurtry, and I'll take it standing up.

And, by the way, about the segue from sepia to. . .

BBB Back In Black


"Back in black, I hit the sack,
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back
Yes I'm let loose from the noose,
That's kept me hangin' about

[Chorus]
"'Cause I'm back! Yes, I'm back!
Well, I'm back! Yes, I'm back!
Well, I'm baaack, baaack...
Well, I'm back in black,
Yes, I'm back in black!"
—AC/DC

October 10, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
Since I ran a quote two days ago, I've had so many requests to run an excerpt from Stephen Colbert's new book (okay it was two, Kathy and Meghan). Here it is:

"It's time to impregnate this country with my mind.

"See, at one time America was pure. Men were men, women were women, and gays were 'confirmed bachelors.' But somewhere around the late 60's, it became 'groovy' to 'let it all hang out' while you 'kept on truckin'' stopping only to 'give a hoot.' And today, Lady Liberty is under attack from the cable channels, the internet blogs, and the Hollywood celebritocracy, out there spewing 'facts' like so many locusts descending on America's crop of ripe, tender values. And as any farmer or biblical scholar will tell you, locusts are damn hard to get rid of.

"I said on the very first episode of The Colbert Report that, together, I was going to change the world, and I've kept up my end of the bargain. But it's not changing fast enough. Last time I checked my supermarket still sold yogurt. From France! See a pattern? Turns out, it takes more than thirty minutes a night to fix everything that's destroying America, and that's where this book comes in. It's not just some collection of reasoned arguments supported by facts. That's the coward's way out.

"This book is Truth. My Truth.

"I deliver my Truth hot and hard. Fast and Furious. So either accept it without hesitation or get out of the way, because somebody might get hurt, and it's not going to be me.

"Think you can handle it?

"I'm scared of Koreans.

"Bam! That's me off the cuff. Blunt and in your face. No editing. I think it. I say it. You read it. Sometimes I don't even think it, I just say it.

"Baby carrots are trying to turn me gay.

"See? I'm not pulling any punches. I'm telling it like it is. Get used to it or put this book down. Because this book is for America's Heroes. And who are the Heroes? The people who bought this book. That bears repeating. People who borrow this book are not Heroes. They are no better then welfare queens mooching off the system like card-carrying library card-carriers. For the record, we're not offering this book to libraries. No free rides."
—Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You)

October 10, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
We just got the office copies for the November/December issue of True West. Really strong issue with Brad Pitt as Jesse on the cover. Excellent coverage of the movie inside, and also strong stuff on the actual Jesse, with info from Ted Yeatman and other Jesse experts. Paul Hutton's extravaganza on Western History In Comics is also quite strong and a visual goldmine. Subscribers will start getting theirs tomorrow.

Jason Strykowski attended the Telluride Film Fesitval last June and one of the films playing there was "Into The Wild," directed by Sean Penn, and based on the book of the same title by John Krakauer. When Jason and I came back from Ridgeway and the True Grit Days, we came back via Telluride and I bought the book. The story is about a young, college graduate from a well-to-do family who gave $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter in Alaska. In between those two events he crisscrossed the West and spent some quality time in Arizona. Here is an excerpt about my home range:

"Bullhead City is a community in the oxymoronic, late-twentieth-century idiom. Lacking a discernable center, the town exists as a haphazard sprawl of subdivisions and stirp malls stretching for eight or nine miles along the banks fo the Colorado, directly across the river from the high-rise hotels and casinos of Laughlin, Nevada. Bullhead's distinguishing civic feature is the Mohave Valley Highway, four lanes of asphalt lined with gas stations and fast-food franchises, chiropractors and video shops, auto-parts outlets and tourist traps."

"On the face of it, Bullhead City doesn't seem like the kind of place that would appeal to an adherent of Thoreau and Tolstoy, an idealogue who expressed nothing but contempt for the bourgeois trappings of mainstream America. [Chris] McCandless, nevertheless, took a strong liking to Bullhead. Maybe it was his affinity for the lumpen, who were well represented in the community's trailer parks and campgrounds and laundromats; perhaps he simply fell in love with the stark desert landscape that encircles the town."
—John Krakauer

McCandless abandoned his car near Temple Bar, which is north of Kingman, near Lake Mead. All of these locations are quite familiar to me and so I have a morbid curiosity about McCandless and the book. As the blurbs convey: "Compelling and tragic. . .hard to put down."

How a Western Made ‘Yuma’ Cuban for ‘U.S.A.’
Russell Crowe in the new Yuma The movie “3:10 to Yuma,” a 1957 western that has gained new life in a remake starring Russell Crowe, has played an unusual role in defining Cubans’ relationship with America, says Brett Sokol in Slate. Before the 1959 revolution, some high-profile U.S. companies operating in Cuba had the word United in their name, which in Spanish morphed into “yunay.” Some Cubans began referring to the United States as Yunay Estey rather than the formal Estados Unidos. When the original “3:10 to Yuma” starring Glenn Ford hit theaters in Cuba, the similarly sounding “La Yuma” became the slang term for the U.S. Mr. Sokol, a Miami-based journalist, speculates the protagonist’s choice between personal honor and community resonated with Cubans wondering whether to flee their country. The expression fell into disuse during the early Castro years, but a cultural thaw that allowed westerns back onto Cuba’s screens in the late 1970s returned the term to the Cuban lexicon, where it has remained since. Legend has it that when a Havana bus driver crashed into the Peruvian embassy in 1980 in a bid for asylum he cried “I want to go to La Yuma!"
— Robin Moroney

"Yu-ma-ma!"
—Proposed BBB slogan for Yuma

October 10, 2007 Bonus Blog
I'm doing more research on Frederic Remington and ran across a quote that Freddy played on the Yale football team with Walter Camp, who was the captain of the team in 1878, '79 and '81. I asked another Yale football champion, Bob Brink, if he had any books on Camp. The Yale quarterback (1953-54) brought in "The Game: The Harvard-Yale Football Rivalry, 1875-1983," by Thomas G. Bergin, yesterday and I took it home to read last night.

Wow! I had no idea how controversial the game was in those early days. Of course, I knew it started as rugby, but there were so many weird aspcets and changes as the game evolved. For example, in Remington's time, there were 15 players to a side (finally changed to 11 in 1880 through the efforts of Walter Camp), no tackling below the waist, the ball was more round than oblong like it is today. And, it was very violent, with linemen punching each other in the face before the snap (actually a foot kick back to the quarterback). Camp also later helped institute the no moving on the line of scrimmage before the snap. Prior to that there was a phase when the flying wedge was dominate in the game and, as I understand it, the linemen could run towards the line of scrimmage, enabling an advantage to the offense that was later negated by the static line.

In one early phase, the offense didn't have to give up the ball on downs, so, in one game, for the entire first half Yale had the ball, then they kicked off after the half and Harvard hogged the ball for the entire second half. Ha. Amazing.

One thing was constant from the beginning and that is the crowds. The first games attracted some 12,000 fans, throught to be a record for an American sports event up to that time. And they increasingly grew larger crowds every year. There was even a period when the game was banned from college sports because of the increasing violence (one guy lost an eye, several died).

Here's what the Walter Camp website says about The Man Who Basically Invented The NFL:

"Recognized as the "Father of American Football", Walter Camp was one of the giants of football in the US. It was he who sired the game as it is played in the United States, the game that evolved from rugby as it was played in England. He is credited with the play from scrimmage, the numerical assessment of goals and tries, the restriction of play to eleven men per side, set plays, and strategy features which have led to the development of the fast, interesting, and organized game which we enjoy so much today."

October 10, 2007
We found out late yesterday that Jesse James will open this Friday, without media reviews. This has caused a flury of angry responses in the media. Here's a couple examples:

"Phoenix-based entertainment journalist Henry Cabot Beck wrote earlier today to report that 'here in Arizona it was announced yesterday that despite The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opening this Friday in Phoenix, it's been decided at the last minute not to screen it for critics.

"It was touch-and-go yesterday for about an hour with the talk being that they might screen it tonight (Tuesday) with a one-day notice,' he adds. 'Depending on how this shakes out, this could mean that Jesse James has become the most lauded, worst-treated movie of the year.'

"Everybody's split on the picture, but some feel that Andrew Dominik's film is one of the best of the year. I fall a bit over into that camp. A Brad Pitt picture with some Oscar buzz, a couple of amazing performances -- even if you don't like the movie overall -- and they're treating it like a one-weekend horror turd."
—Hollywood Elsewhere

"I already count 11 features opening here on Friday, plus the Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, plus a festival in Bend, plus the 10 films that opened last week and the 14 due to open next week. Amid that competition, Jesse would've had a fight on its hands if it had been brought to the market with care and forewarning. Treated like this -- like stale food being tossed to homeless folks just to save the restaurant help the trouble of wrapping and storing it -- it's doomed. I don't expect it to be showing anywhere in Portland in November. Maybe it would've done well here; maybe not. But it's got no shot now. None.
"And if the movie biz is anything like the book publishing biz, some day the producers and director will have another movie to make, and they'll be told how poorly this one did and be treated less well accordingly.
"And it won't be their fault.
"For shame, Warner Bros. For shame."
—Shawn Levy, The Oregonian

October 9, 2007 Bonus Blog
Well, speak of the devil, Henry Cabot Beck just called and said he landed an interview with Tommy Lee Jones, regarding the new Coen brother's film No Country For Old Men. Henry asked me what I'd like him to ask Sheriff Bell (Jone's character in the movie based on the Cormac McCarthy book), and I said, "Ask him if any ants were hurt in the making of the movie."

Speaking of legendary Westerners, my good friend, Jeff Hildebrandt got a cool endorsement:



How about them apples?

October 9, 2007
Still having a hard time shifting gears to black and white. Here are the sketch pages to prove it:



And, of course, now that I've made up my mind to move back to scratchboard, all the subtle transitions that evaded me for months, suddenly come bubbling up to the surface. Check out the incredible face in the sepia frame, above, left (bottom right hand corner).

Notice how I tried to shift gears to black and white (below), then reverted to sepia, like some baby who stands and walks for the first time, then goes back on his knees and crawls around for a month. The right-hand page, done last night, is possibly the best page of sepia wash I have ever done.



And, by the way, these sketches put me over the 4,900 mark.

This Just In From Liz Young
Bono, the lead singer of the band, U2, is famous throughout the entertainment industry for being more than just a little self-righteous. At a recent U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, he asked the audience for total quiet. Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone,'Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.' A voice with a broad Scottish accent from the front of the crowd pierced the quiet: 'Well, stop doin it then, ya evil basturd!'

Traffic Observation #233
Have you ever noticed that when a traffic signal turns green,
automatically it activates the horn of the car behind you?

Our talented movie writer, Henry Cabot Beck, was in the office yesterday and he told me the commentary track on the DVD of "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is the best he has ever heard. On the Special Features track, the director and star, Tommy Lee Jones, and Dwight Yoakam and January Jones talk about the making of the movie.

Well, guess what I got from Netflix that very morning? Went home last night and watched it. Tommy Lee is both amazing and infuriating. When he cryptically says, "That girl's a good actress," Dwight says, "Isn't that your daughter?" Jones kinds of grunts, admitting it might be, and offers no other comment. Later, when Barry Pepper's character is driving along a back road, it comes out that the Merle Haggard song playing on the soundtrack was not cleared for rights, Tommy just stuck it in the movie. Dwight goes off on the copyright issues involved, to which Jones replies, "I don't know." Incredible.

When Yokam points out an actor in a scene and asks Tommy Lee, "Didn't you do a movie with hime prior to this?" Tommy Lee says, "Yes, ten years ago." But he doesn't tell us the movie! Or any details. This is maddening, but as the commentary progresses, you realize he's very guarded about what he talks about. Some things he relishes:

He mentions that the French hated the color of the titles (hot pinks and blues a la Mexicana), and they warned him it "ruined the movie," and he said he wasn't changing it and told his detractors to talk about something of substance that might be worth changing. Or, words to that effect.

Turns out that Tommy Lee did the sound editing at some studio near Normandy, France. He went to France to finish a movie about Texas and the Mexican border! He is so meticulous, he describes how, in one scene where his character puts lighter fluid on the corpse of Melquiades and then lights it afire, he fretted for days on "what the sound of Mexican hair would sound like burning." He laughingly says he wanted to ask his hispanic wife if he could cut some of her hair and burn it but she wouldn't let him. They allegedly spent two hours in the Normandy studio trying to get that snippet of sound "right."

He also admits they used "stunt ants" in the same scene, and adds, "No ants were harmed in the making of this movie."

Tommy Lee gets off a couple great lines: when he was questioned as to why he had such detailed shot lists, with maps of where all the camera set-ups would go, and then when he showed up on set he was constantly changing everything, Jones laughs, saying, "You can't change your mind if you haven't made it up." Spoken like a true artist.

The other wonderful comment comes at the end of the movie when his character, Pete Perkins, "finds" the non-existent town he has been looking for, and Jones quips, "This is a case where seeing is not believing, but believing is seeing."

Jones shot most of the movie on his Boracho ranch in West Texas, and he's really a piece of work. Probably the most existential cowboy America has ever produced.

"Things That Are Trying To Turn Me Gay."
—Stephen Colbert, in his new book, "I Am America (And So Can You)"

October 8, 2007
Busy weekend. Worked most of Saturday on The Top Secret Project, adapting Freddy Remington's voice to Snippet Style Narraative. Sent it off. Waiting for the Top Secret Writer to do his thing. So far, nothing.

The Radina clan came out Saturday afternoon for steaks and hotdogs. Deena and her boyfriend Frank also joined us. Nice time. Deena stayed afterwards and read aloud from Chuck Klosterman's new book "IV". He's a very funny writer, and we laughed and laughed, especially at his alleged vertical leaping ability.

Worked again on Sunday on voice issues for TSP. Had fun, got a lot done. At 6:30 we motored into the Beast to have dinner at Ed Mell's house. Jazz great Cliff Sardi was there. He's now doing Cliff's Cafe on West Van Buren. Zany stuff. Can't wait to go there. Photographer and artist John Gipe and his wife were also in attendance. Ed's wife Rose Marie made excellent green and red chile dishes and capped everything off with homemade key lime pie. Ed's art collection is nothing short of spectacular, with Frank Tenney Johnson, Lon Megargee, Diego Rivera and of course several Maynard Dixons hanging everywhere. Always inspiring.

Got home late (10:30) and had to go right back in this morning to do volunteer reading for the Arizona Unit of Reading For The Blind and Dyslexic (which in my case is like reading to self my). They gave me Marshall Trimbles's book, "Arizona: A Cavalcade of History," and I thought it would be a cake walk, but they assigned me the first two chapters, which had this on the first page: "Arizona has three phyusiographic zones, and many contrasts within these zones. For example, the desert region of the western and sourthern part has islands of mountains includinig the Chiricahua, inalas, Galiuro, Santa Catalina, Santa Rita and Pinaleno ranges." And "Precambrian Age, Paleozois Age, the Mesozoic. . ." and thrown with an "atlatl, a spear-launcher. . .the Hopi use Hisastsinom. . . and Betatakin ("ledge house"}, Tohono O'odham. . . and Mogollon. . .Wupatki,. . .Tuzigoot and Sinaguas and Patayan. . ." It was really tough work and it took me more than two hours to get it right. I'm going to strangle Marshall when he comes out tomorrow to talk about his book deal with us.

And speaking of books, I had coffee with Jana Bommersbach afterwards (she was also a reader) and she told me about finishing her new book (top secret, can't tell). She spent four months in a cabin on a lake outside Brainerd, Minnesota finishing it. Going to be a best-seller, I can just sense it.

3:10 Hangs In
“Who knew? Per the weekend Movie Box Office (www.nytimes.com), 3:10 TO YUMA did $3.0 million last weekend (I think the report is always a week behind, meaning the weekend of 9/28-9/30), which puts it at no. seven for that weekend. Its grand total is $48.6 million, and it's the only movie five weeks out still on the top ten.

“THE BRAVE ONE, which came out a week later than 3:10 and eclipsed it, has now sunk below it in both weekend and total. 3:10 chugs along.

“These numbers are, for the ignorati, difficult to decipher, but it appears that 3:10 has more staying power than first imagined, whatever that means. I suspect the talismanic mantra ‘Russell Crowe’ has something to do with it. In other words, the word on Hollywood Blvd. is not, ‘let's make another Western,’ but ‘sign Russell Crowe.’

“As I was waiting in line at the Regal Gallery Place last Friday to buy a ticket for THE ASSASSINATION of you know who, the woman behind me said to her chum: ‘I want to see that movie that has Brad Pitt in it. It's a Western or something. He's Billy the Kid.’

“Speaking of Billy-boy: Johnny Depp as the Lincoln County gunslinger? That would be the producer's calculus. A gamble: Casey Affleck. Did you notice that Affleck's top hatted Bob Ford looked eerily like he'd just stepped out of Billy the Kid's tintype? The hat-faniacs may have gone up a tree, but I thought the result was beguiling.”
—Dan Buck

I'm having a difficult time shifting gears to work on woodcut style images, which is weird because I love doing them, but I keep putting it off. Gee, I wonder if the Old Vaqueros have anything to say about that?

”The difficulties we experience always illuminate the lessons we need most.”
—Old Vaquero Saying

October 5, 2007 Bonus Blog
Speaking of book signings, I've got two coming up: the first is at the Old Town Scottsdale Artwalk on Thursday night, October 18 from 7 to nine in the evening, right on Main Street.

Second, I'll be signing my newest Classic Gunfights (plus the other two editions) at Barnes & Noble, Tempe Marketplace, 2000 E. Rio Salado Parkway at 7 P.M. on October 25.

Hampton Sides will also be signing on October 14 at 7 P.M. at the same Barnes & Noble.

"Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth."
—Ruth McKenney

October 5, 2007
Woke up excited about the possibilities of the hand-made, custom book as a lead off promotion for The Top Secret Project. I really had no idea of the vastness of this collectable world where limited edition books are sold for $300, $750 and even for as much as $3,000 each (the latter price usually contains an original piece of art). And they have weird print runs like 25, 75 and 300 (I think they rarely go over 350). Very small runs. Mark McDowell, who owns Tiny Satellite Press, showed me a whole bunch of examples of the genre, including a Stagecoach Press Southwestern Series Limited Edition called "Exciting Days of Early Arizona" by Edward Wilson, 750 copies. Published in 1966 by Jack Rittenhouse, who was evidently a mainstay of the Western publishing world in this arena.

Just came out of a meeting with Robert Ray and Jason Strykowski and this is the direction we're going for Mickey Free. The Booth Museum has contacted me about a joint art show with Buck Taylor and Thom Ross, and that could be a launching event to showcase the art of the Top Secreet Project and premiere the limited edition book.

I'm sending Robert Ray down there this afternoon to peruse the operation and see the perameters of the paper, ink and presses. It's all hand done.

Killer Name
“What’s your name?’
“Tex.”
“From Texas, huh?”
“Nope. Louisiana.”
“Then how come you’re called Tex?”
“Got tired of shootin’ guys for callin’ me Louise.”

Brian Lebel just came by and dropped off The Dodge City Police Docket book, covering 1878 to 1882. One of the first arrests is by Wyatt Earp (his name is all over the book), along with James Masterson and one cowboy, James Kennedy, who is arrested several times for disturbing the peace. In October of 1878 he shot into the mayor's house ("Dog" Kelly), killing a house guest, Dora Hand. The subsequent posse that tracked him down contained Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman and Charlie Bassett. Kennedy was captured near Meade, Kansas and returned to Dodge City. However Kennedy's father was a powerful rancher in Texas (a co-founder of the King Ranch) and the rumor is he bought off the city officials. I recognized Kennedy's name in the docket, but this is just the part I know about. We have contacted a Dodge City history expert and are awaiting his perusal of this Old West treasure that was kept in an Ohio attic for 125 years before Brian got it a couple weeks ago. It's in great shape and a national treasure. Here's a photo of it:



"No stair is steep to happy feet."
—Old Vaquero Saying

October 4, 2007
Had lunch today with artist Mark McDowell and photographer Jay Dusard. I met Jay in Prescott many years ago, and my good friend Charlie Waters bought me a set of Jay's classic prints, including, "Julie Hagen, Wagstaff Land & Cattle Co.," Wyoming, 1981, which hangs prominently in my studio. Jay's a classic Western photographer and we want to feature him on the cover of True West magazine. He's the guy who is going to shoot Monk Maxwell (the cowboy I met in the only cafe in Alma, New Mexico back in June).

We ate at Houston's which has the irritating house rule that you can't wear your hat in the dining room (and their name is Houston's!). Lucky for them their food is great. As the hostess walked us to our seats, I held my custom Optimo hat over my head and said loudly, "I'm not in a gang. Don't worry, I'm not in a gang." Had the Mexican soup and a Caesar salad (Mark bought).

Mark is an accomplished artist himself. His pencil drawings sell for $20,000. Saw his latest, a huge color job with clouds and a toy car and trailer. He loves to produce custom, limited-edition books and he showed me 1930s examples that foreshadowed graphic novels by at least two decades. A custom edition of Alice In Wonderland really excited me, because it's the prototype for a limited edition version of The Top Secret Project. Really thrilling. According to Mark, the motto is—if you don't show white space on a page you don't have enough money (the perfect anti-example is comic books with every square inch covered with art, balloons and stuff). Yes, the formula is oodles of white space and tasty, Spartan design. This is the ticket, for me.

Movie Locations
"Your mention of locations brought to mind a great book by David Rothel called An Ambush of Ghosts. It is a heavily illustrated tour of old western movie locations the author made in the nineties with photos from films matched to some areas as they now appear. There is great information on what areas were used for all kinds of places from the Khyber pass to the planet Mongo in the Flash Gordons. Brought to mind Mr. Dan Buck's comment on 3:10 to Yuma, it may not be the real place but it is close enough. An old Hollywood saying was 'A rock is a rock, a tree is a tree, shoot it in Griffith Park'."
—Jim Trumbo

October 3, 2007
My mention of "The Big Sombrero" Western yesterday and the possibility of it being filmed at the White Stallion Guest Ranch brought this response:

"The Big Sombrero" Shooting Locations
Corriganville, Ray Corrigan Ranch, Simi Valley, California, USA
Monogram Ranch, Newhall, California, USA
Rancho Maria - 25933 Sand Canyon Road, Canyon Country, California, USA
Red Rock Canyon State Park, Cantil, California, USA
near, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Thanks to Steve Lodge, who, of course, found it online. Amazing. I predict a major growth industry for someone who can figure out how to keep private information off the web. I know I would pay extra not to see the ads that are smothering most sites, but I don't know how you would eliminate GPS directions to anyone's house in the world. There's a great cartoon in the new New Yorker that shows a barber holding a gadget over a customer's head, sayinig, "Would you like to see the top on Google Earth?"

Ha.

Yesterday I whipped out my 4,860th sketch, @ six a day, without missing. Closing in on the half-way mark of 5,000. When I go back and look at different sketchbooks I can see my moods. Very interesting. I wonder if any other artists have had this insight?

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."
—Pablo Picasso

October 2, 2007 Bonus Bonus Bonus Blog
The search capabilities of the web are just mind blowing. Mark Boardman (it's his birthday today and second anniversary of working at True West), Meghan Saar, Jason Strykowski and I took a working lunch at El Encanto to discuss upcoming editorial ($30 plus tip, TW account). In addition to upcoming cover strories and new departments we talked at length about the Coen brother's forthcoming film No Country For Old Men which is due out in November.

My comment was that I have read Cormac McCarthy's book, which the movie is based on, and that the ending is problematic (Okay, I said it really sucked) and I have my doubts about whether they can save it. Both Meghan and Jason spoke highly of the Coen brother's ability to pull things off and I said, "You obviously haven't seen Hudsucker Proxy."

So, when we came back from lunch, Meghan went online and found the script for No Country For Old Men and forwarded it to me and I read the opening and the ending (this draft is from 2005 and it's probably not the final, but still!). Well, it's masterful, and I could hear Tommy Lee Jones so clear it wasn't even funny. It's basically the same ending as the book, but somehow, someway, those Minnesota Bastards pulled it off. It reads really, really good.

If you don't believe me, Google it.

"Okay, we will."
—People with computers

October 2, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
I met a guy out at the Wild West Festival last Saturday who is an expert on movie locations. Greg Stewart regaled me with his passion of visiting and chronicling all of the sites used for TV shows and movies. One of them is The White Stallion Guest Ranch near Marana, Arizona. Greg told me that many Westerns were filmed there and many are not even known by the owners of the ranch. Well, I happen to know Russell True, the owner, and found it interesting there would be movies he didn't even know about.

Last night, I was watching the Gene Autry Westerns Channel Celebration of Gene's 100th birthday, and the movie was "The Big Sombrero" filmed in 1949. It was in blazing color and involved a guest ranch and a Mexican hacienda named The Big Sombrero Ranch. I could swear it was filmed on the White Stallion. I've only been there once, but I could swear those are saguaros and the mountains behind the ranch (actually near Cortaro Road and Rillito Road on I-10). That was exciting, and the color in the movie was beautiful. The Westerns Channel has spent a bundle rennovating some of Gene's old films and they are a hoot to watch just for the costuming alone.

Speaking Of Westerns
"Last Saturday I was in Deadwood for a western book festival and I got to meet author Pete Dexter. Pete wrote one of the best western novels ever.....'Deadwood', and wrote a screenplay from the book. I asked him, what was the disconnect between his fantastic book and the awful movie Wild Bill? I also told him that I was tagged way back when to scout some locations for the movie when they were still using his screenplay....(I had to find an island on a lake for a moose hunting scene.) Pete said things went to hell on the film when Walter Hill came on board. Hill really liked a stage play about Hickok and had the film rewritten. Pete said that there is only one scene in the movie that he had written (and that was not in the book.) The book's main character is actually Charlie Utter who gets all the best lines....and he in NOT in the film Wild Bill. They did use a lot of the book for the HBO series Deadwood. If Hollywood wanted to make a film version to capitalize on the success of the HBO series......they should ressurect Pete Dexter's original screenplay and film it as is."
—Jim Hatzell

According to Variety, 3:10 to Yuma is at #4. So far, it has made $40 million. Film budget was $50 million + $27 million for publicity and advertising. So not stellar numbers, but it will probably make money for the studio.

When I was a punk kid I looked down my nose at all the people who went to work everyday at the same job year after year. I thought real enlightenment and real success was found in exotic, far-off places. I don't think that anymore. Gee, I wonder if Richard Nelson has anything to say about that?

"There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains."
—Richard Nelson

October 2, 2007 Bonus Blog
Picked up Peaches at the vet at one. Bill was $250. Still not sure I want to spring for $450 for the dog teeth cleaning. And speaking of which, here's an additional thought:

"And when they're in the chair, do they have pix of various fire hydrants on the ceiling? And are they given barking gas?"
—Steve Sanders

October 2, 2007
Took Peaches to the vet yesterday, along with a stool sample (that is always fun to gather up). She had two foxtails in her ear. They took one out, but the other is right on her ear-drum, so I have to take her in again this morning so they put her out, etc. I smell $400. Speaking of major moolah, Kathy took Buddy to the vet yesterday (different vet) and they are recommending a teeth cleaning for $450. This seems so ridiculous. Dog teeth cleaning? Do they put the napkin around their neck and tell them to spit every two minutes?

So I have Peaches at work this morning. Her appointment is at nine. She's lying at the front door of my office in case I try and leave without her. Everyone who comes in has to step over her.

Jason Strykowski went to LA over the weekend and paid $14 to see The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. His mini-review is: "Very long and very beautiful. And a little bit on the boring side, but not without its charms.} Favorite part: "They did a really cool job with the actual killing of Jesse, and the Blue Cut robbery was done nicely. But if you ever want to see how conversation and narration can kill a movie, this is it. The other problem is it takes a novel's sense of timing, in terms of action." The theatre was three-eighths full (Sunday in Hollywood). It's only playing on four or five screens in LA. Jason gives it a 6.5 or 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10). By way of comparison, he gives 3:10 To Yuma the same rating, and says "both films suffer the same middling ground, without a clear hero or someone to pull for. It's an art film and it's going to find an art film following. That doesn't mean it's going to be a bad film, it's just not going to be Tombstone." Jason also adds, "It's like watching a really nicely done History Channel show." Jason is 26.

"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting."
—Tom Stoppard

October 1, 2007
The Top Secret Writer's op-ed piece on the return of the Western ran yesterday in the Boston Globe.

Got this feedback from the BBB Cutting Board:

" Lots of memories, I suppose, with the cutting board made to look like your head. And from the looks of it---and which is commonplace with wood cutting boards---lurking within is an outbreak of something or the other. :-)"
—Bugs

"In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it."
—Boris Pasternak

September 30, 2007
Gave my final speech at the festival at 11:30 then worked the booth with Joel Klasky until about 2:30. Met lots of great people and sold a few subscriptions.

Got home at three and Kathy and I decided to go see another movie (we saw Eastern Promises on Saturday). Drove down to Harkins to catch The Kingdom. Enjoyed it. Really strong action and yes, the big blow-up stuff was filmed on the 202 in Mesa. They had wide open shots (no saguaros) and it was seamless, standing in for Saudi Arabia. It also seemed like they filmed some of the government housing sequences in Mesa as well, utilizing fifties style tract homes to simulate a U.S. housing compound in Saudi Arabia. Saw local friend and cowboy enthusiast, Tony Casanova, as a corpse with Jennifer Garner poking around his chest cavity for marbles. And, yes, that's Country singer Tim McGraw as an angry, grieving survivor. The final action sequence is the best I've seen since Saving Private Ryan and with flipping SUVs amid fireballs of explosives it looks as dangerous as it evidently was to film it. At the end they dedicated the film to Nick Papac, who was killed during the filming in Mesa after suffering head injuries. Also two other crew members also died during production, but I don't have the why. If you see the movie you'll see how you could get a high mortality rate like that.

Been playing with color schemes some more, noodling flashes of color I'd like to do with more Greek pottery style colors:



And pushinig that as far as it can go with chiariscuro effects. I especially like the sequences where I had no preconceived idea of the outcome:



How to maintain that credibility into actual shot-for-shot sequences is the key, for me.

Classic Onion Headline de Jour
Life In The Navy Rocks Even Harder Than The Commerical Implied

"It's ok to look back. Just don't stare."
—Doris Roberts

September 29, 2007
Went out to the Wild West Festival at Pioneer at 10:30. Spoke in the Opera House at 11:30. Full house, good crowd and very responsive. Sold about 20 DVDs and ten books. Lots of comments about the magazine and True West Moments.

Last weekend when Deena's boyfriend came out to cook dinner for his parents and us, he was a tad nervous in our kitchen looking for utensils and stuff. He asked Deena if we had a cutting board and she said: "Let's see, do you want a square one, or one that's in the shape of my father's head?"

Frank was too nervous to get it, but Kathy and I laughed pretty hard. One of my fans created a cutting board in the shape of my head and we've had it in the kitchen ever since we moved to Cave Creek (21 years). So the kids grew up with this odd family momento. Here it is:



I've chopped many an onion on that board. Trying to shift gears and get back on the Top Secret Project. Hard to do with the festival, etc.

”To do two things at once is to do neither.”
—Old Vaquero Saying