Western Wednesday: Saddle Bits

There once was a horse named Ed/whose talking really messed with Wilbur’s head/till one night/when Wilbur got tight/and woke up with Ed’s head in his bed…

Screened: Trial of Billy Jack. Won’t spend much time on this because the movie is just plain bad. Terrible sequel to the cult classic film, totally laden with political garbage and propaganda just preached endlessly and very little action in the dragging first hour. I don’t care what side of the political spectrum things are coming from if it is integral to the story and skillfully woven into it—but beating viewers over the head with it gets old fast. Something about Laughlin’s wife’s incessant whine really grates on the nerves, too. She can’t act to save her life, and she has a delivery that is like two hours of nails dragging across a chalkboard. She didn’t annoy me quite as much in Billy Jack, because she was more balanced with the other performances in that one, but she’s the narrator throughout this film. I’ve got one more in the set to go, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, and I am suddenly not looking forward to it. Maybe some things are best left viewed through memory.

My next Lance Howard western after the August release of Dead Man Riding is called The Killing Kind, scheduled for early next year and the cover art arrived this week. From the blurb: Jim Bartlett thought he could put his former life behind him and forge a new one as small Texas ranch owner but he was wrong—dead wrong. Because someone from his past has followed him and is systematically and permanently trying to destroy that new life piece by piece. And now with his friends and the woman he loves threatened by a man who knows no remorse and no boundaries, he finds himself in a desperate struggle not only to escape his past but hold onto his very life.

I am a little worried about Western movies again after the abysmal performance of Jonah Hex. Hollywood has a terrible habit of blaming the genre, not the bad writers and studios who turn out a poor script and film. Jonah opened terribly, was torn a new one by critics…and probably rightly so. But that is not the Western’s fault. It is again the fault of those who don’t have a clue what they are doing and/or are forced into a certain presentation by idiot marketing “experts,” who keep doing the same thing to the same result, then scratching their saddles and wondering why. And passing the blame to where it does not belong. Jonah had an excellent lead actor who looks the part. Apparently that was squandered. They also had excellent source material from DC. Apparently that was squandered as well. When will they learn?

This trend looks to repeat itself with the upcoming Rogen ruin of the Green Hornet, and I’m frankly tired of it. I’d prefer they didn’t bother, if they can’t at least make an attempt at presenting the genre and source material right. All for innovation, but camp rarely works and bad writing works even less, Keeping up with the Kardashians aside. It is all the more irritating because it tends to translate to the genre in the eyes of the general public, whom we, as Western writers are trying to persuade to read our work and discover it is not what Hollywood often portrays it as.

All I can say is I hope The Lone Ranger doesn’t suffer the same way (though history with the Ranger’s past two movies in cinema and TV doesn’t bode well…), though with Johnny Depp as Tonto perhaps things will be taken seriously.