SAM SHEPARD: A Life

 

Once upon a time, I shook hands with Sam Shepard.

I suppose that most people who remember Shepard remember him as a movie actor; but that was only one facet of his professional life -- and it wasn't even the most important.

He first made his mark as a playwright and his talent led New York Magazine to name him the greatest playwright of his generation.  In fact, three of his plays were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and one of them, Buried Child, won.  He also directed a number of plays.

He even co-wrote a song with Bob Dylan, Brownsville Girl.  It was eleven minutes long.  It was said that it was either Dylan's longest song or Shepard's shortest play.

You can watch an interesting video of the song on YouTube that features scenes from two Gregory Peck western movies.  Also, Dylan changed the title to Danville Girl, because, he said, there were already too many songs about Brownsville.  The link is : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mLlNoilSqA

Shepard also wrote poetry and prose, prose that is difficult to categorize, because, as with many of his plays, it is experimental; also because Shepard admitted he found it easy to write dialogue, but struggled when it came to narration.  All his life he was a rambling man and his prose which is always semi-biographical bears that out.

Sam, age 21, already an accomplished playwright

When he began acting he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of famed test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983).

Sam is Chuck Yeager

He didn't win; instead the Oscar went to Jack Nicholson, who ironically played an ex-astronaut in Terms of Endearment.

During the years in which he was in great demand as an actor he continued to write plays, directed a couple of films, and wrote screenplays.  His best script was for Paris, Texas (1984), a film that won three prizes, including first place, at the Cannes Film Festival.

All and all, "not bad for a Southern California kid whose greatest dream had once been to be 'a veterinarian with a flashy station wagon, and a flashy blond wife, raising German shepherds in some fancy suburb.'"

Although he was uniquely someone who was simultaneously an accomplished playwright and movie star he once said, "I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff.  I think of myself as a writer."

Furthermore, "being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody.  Whereas, as an actor, you have to audition or wait for somebody else to make a decision about how to use you, with writing, you can do it anywhere, anytime you want.  You don't have to ask permission."

However, he said that while nobody could make a living as a playwright he was able to make enough money from one movie that allowed him to spend a whold year concentrating on his writing and also be able to feed his horses.

Shepard placed a high premium on his privacy and guarded it with a vengeance and therefore refused to cooperate with Winters -- or any other biographer.  He did, however, leave a mother lode of written material that Winters was able to mine and that allowed him to accomplish his goal of revealing "the chasm that exists between the Shepard the public sees and thinks it knows, and the man himself."

******

Some of what I have written I already knew before reading his biography.  I knew that he was an impotant playwright, but I was much more familiar with his film career.  That's partly because we don't have many opportunities in the Missouri Ozarks to take in plays staged by professionals.  That's an ovestatement; we don't have any opportunties

If, however, I had known then what I now know after reading the book, I might have been in such a state of awe that I would have been unable to say anything to him.

It was in a coffee shop in Santa Fe in the fall of 2015 that I shook his hand.  I was there with my son, who manages a well-known western hat store just off the plaza.

Now, unlike me, my son is accustomed to seeing celebrities, since Santa Fe has become a magnet for actors, writers, and entertainers who want to escape the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles.  And sometimes they wander into his store.

I was at the coffee shop because I was in the middle of a road trip and had stopped for a couple of days to spend some time with my son and his family.  It was a weekday and it was my son's routine to go to this coffee shop each morning before going to work.  It was a popular place that served good coffee and you had to stand in line to be waited on.

We're standing in line and my son nudges me in the ribs and whispers "Look, look."

So I looked, but I didn't see what he saw.

And then I heard him say, "Hello, Mr. Shepard."

And I turned my head and Sam Shepard was standing in front of me.

My son knew more about Shepard than I did, especially about his literary career.  And because he will talk to anyone and everyone, he was able to engage Shepard in a conversation that had not yet gotten around to his films, which I could have commented on.

But I noticed that Shepard was carrying a book, and I asked him what he was reading.  It was Empire of the Summer Moon, a biography of the last Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker, a book that I had read earlier that year.  So now I had something that I could add to the convesation, one that lasted a good half hour.

We were still standing in line, but people were stepping around us and finally Shepard said that he should be moving on, that he was keeping us from getting our coffee.  We shook hands -- and he left.

Less than two years later, he was dead.

******

The cause of death was complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease.  I had a friend who died from the disease so I know something about it.  It is an insidious disease in which the mind outlives the body, with the victim living on the average two to four years after contracting the disease.

Although his handshake was firm and I didn't notice that he was experiencing any difficulties in walking, in all likelihood Sam Shepard was already in the early stages of ALS, and yet he paused to pass the day with two of his admirers.

"I could go on and on about death.  One of my favorite subjects -- so long as you can keep it at arm's length." -- Sam Sheperd

1943-2017

    

 

THE GOOD OLD BOYS: The Movie

Elmer kelton wrote more than forty novels, all set in the American West.  One would think that more than one of them might have been filmed, wouldn't you?

After all, Zane Grey's stories were filmed over and over and over.  The plots were rewritten so many times that in the last productions the only two things they had in common with the original product was Grey's name above the title -- and the title.

This despite the fact that, let's face it, he wasn't a good writer.

Two good writers whose novels were many times adapted to the screen were Ernest Haycox and Luke Short, though not as many times as Grey's.

Of course, when all three of these writers were publishing the Western dominated all other genres in print and on the screen.

Louis L'Amour, who sold more Western novels than any other writer, including Zane Grey, began his writing career in the early 50's and many of his did make their way to the big screen, but they were written in the 50s and 60s.  By the time the 70s arrived his books were still selling but they weren't being adapted for movies though some did become TV movies.

Did I mention that Elmer Kelton wrote over forty novels and that only one was adapted as a movie? 

That didn't happen because Kelton wasn't a good writer.  In fact, he was a great one.  The Western Writers of American even named him the greatest Western novelist of all time.  

Of course, one factor that explains the lack of screen adaptations of Kelton's novels is the explanation of L'Amour's drop-off at the end.  Western movie production was curtailed in the 60's due to the competition of the little screen in the living room and even more so during the 70's and later.

However, I am still flabbergasted that only one Kelton story made it to the screen -- and it wasn't even a theatrical release, it was a TV movie.

That movie was THE GOOD OLD BOYS (Turner/TNT, 1995).

DIRECTOR: TOMMY LEE JONES; PRODUCER: SAM NEWMAN; WRITERS: TELEPLAY BY TOMMY LEE JONES & J.T. ALLEN BASED ON NOVEL BY ELMER KELTON; CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALAN CASE

CAST: TOMMY LEE JONES, TERRY KINNEY, FRANCES MCDORMAND, SAM SHEPARD, SISSY SPACEK, MATT DAMON, WILFORD BRIMLEY, WALTER OKLEWICZ, BLAYNE WEAVER, BRUCE MCGILL, LARRY MAHAN, PARK OVERALL, JIMMY DON COX

Here's what Jonathan Taylor had to say about the film in Variety at the time that it debuted:

"THE GOOD OLD BOYS has 'vanity project' written all over it.  Tommy Lee Jones not only stars but also makes his debut as director and writer .... By rights, it should be an indulgent and self-conscious effort, instead, it's a work of uncommon charm and poignance.  It's being shown on TNT but would look just fine on the bigscreen."

Good for you, Mr. Taylor, those are my exact sentiments.  But there's more:

"It's enormously entertaining and marks an auspicious directing debut.  It's not so much of a vanity project as a virtuosity effort."

Well, now, that is indeed high praise.  And it would not have happened had it not been for Tommy Lee Jones' "vanity project."  Look at that cast list; not quite what one would expect for a TV movie.

Tommy Lee Jones is Hewey Calloway

The movie is set in West Texas and is filmed there around Brackettville, Alpine, Del Rio, and Fort Davis.

It is an "end of the West" story in the tradition of films such as SHANE, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, and THE WILD BUNCH.

It is, however, a story of quiet characterization, with a lack of gunplay.  Hewey doesn't carry a gun and was a notoriously bad shot. Only one shot is fired in the whole movie and it is a warning shot fired by a county sheriff. 

Therefore, it doesn't portray the violence that takes place in the previously mentioned films, especially the last one.  It is much more akin to MONTE WALSH, but even that film had a shootout near the end.

Jones and his co-writer must have admired Kelton's novel for the script adheres closely to what the author had written and many of the good lines and humor are taken directly from the book.

Hewey Calloway is one of the good old boys whose only ambition, like that of Monte Walsh, is to be a cowboy forever, and, in the year 1906, that sets him off from most of the rest of the world, for the life he desires to live forever is being rapidly replaced by techological progress.

Elmer Kelton wrote in the introduction to my copy of the book:

"[Hewey] tries to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a machine age .... He lives in an impossible dream, trying to remain changeless in a world where the only constant is change."

The movie opens with Hewey riding toward the homestead that his younger brother, Walter (Terry Kinney), is farming in west Texas.

Along the way he has a conversation with his horse, Biscuit:

"Biscuit, I'm tired of this cowology.  I'm tired of these mountains.  And if you won't take it the wrong way, I'd just as soon talk with somebody can talk back, every once in a while.  You ain't said nothin' in two years."

Before he arrives at his brother's place he meets up with a former employer and big rancher and banker C.C. Tarpley (Wilford Brimley), who, as it turns out, owns the mortgage on Hewey's brother's farm:

C.C. has designs on Walter's farm

C.C. TARPLEY: "All you got is a brown horse past his prime, an old saddle, and maybe twenty dollars.  Now that ain't much to show for them years, is it?"

HEWEY: "I went north one time into Canada and seen the glaciers.  You ever see a glacier, C.C.?"

Eventually he arrives at his brother's farm where he spies his brother and his brother's youngest son, Tommy (Blayne Weaver), plowing a field.

Father and son are tickled and pleased to see Hewey who had been drifting for two years.

He expected a warm welcome from his brother and nephews, but he knows his appearance will not be welcomed by Eve (Fances McDormand), his headstrong, temperameltal sister-in-law, who seemed to always like him more when he was going than when he was coming.

headstrong and temperamental Eve (Frances McDormand

Before Walter married Eve he was as footloose as Hewey and beginning at an early age the two had ridden many a trail together.

That changed, however, after Walter met Eve, a pretty young woman working in a boarding house.  Despite Hewey's objections and efforts to abort the relationship Walter married Eve.

After their marriage Eve insisted that Walter take a job as a ranch foreman rather than jumping from one job to another as he once did, and as Hewey still did.  She grew dissatisfied with their situation on the ranch and she talked Walter into staking a homestead claim so that they could raise their two sons on land that they owned.  Walter, cowboy, became Walter, farmer.

Eve fears the effect that Hewey might have on Walter and their two sons.  She is afraid that Walter may be influenced by Hewey and long for the days in which he too had the freedom to roam at will.  She knows that Hewey loves her sons and they love him in return, but she is fearful that they might grow up to emulate their wandering uncle.

Eve was always lecturing Hewey about settling down, about responsibility, respectability, always trying to change him.

EVE: "A man with a good woman to help and encourage him can make a garden out of a desert."

HEWEY: "If he's anything like me he'd make a desert out of a garden."

The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different.  He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord's work by making everyone the same.

 

Hewey, riding his horse "Biscuit" flanked by his nephews (L) Cotton (Matt Damon) and (R) Tommy (Blayne Weaver)

 

Fourteen-year old Tommy has grown a good deal in the two years since Hewey last saw him, but he's young enough that he still worships his uncle Hewey.  Cotton, age 16, is a different story.  He has not only grown, he has changed, and he has grown distant from both Hewy and his parents.

young Matt Damon, in one of his earliest screen roles, is Cotton Calloway

Cotton talked of the future as a time of automobiles and great machines and fantastic inventions waiting to burst forth upon the world.  Hewey shuddered.  He tried, but could picture no place in such a world for him.  The wonders that made the future look golden to Cotton made it bleak and terrifying to Hewey.

COTTON: "Yov ever ride in an automobile?"

HEWEY: "No. Only ones I've been around are broken down or fixin' to explode."

COTTON: "World's movin' faster all the time.  You either go on with it, or you get left behind.  I'm gonna be part of it.  I'm gonna help build it."

HEWEY: "Well, I hope you like it when you get finished."

Hewey is approaching middle age, but has never married, and posseses no desire to change that situation, at least not until he meets the boys' teacher, Miss Spring Renfro. This casuses him to examine and re-examine the life he has chosen to pursue.

Miss Spring Renfro (Sissy Spacek)

Kelton states Hewey's quandary in the introdution to his book:

"To fulfill a wish we often give up something of equal or nearly equal value.  Hewey feels drawn to the life his brother Walter has found: a home a family, a piece of land that is his own.  But to have it he knows he must give up his freedom to go where he pleases, when he pleases, to travel his own road without considering the needs of someone else ....

He cannot have it all: nobody can.

He asks Spring to marry him and they make plans.  Enter Snort Yarnell (Sam Shepard), Hewey's saddle pal and partner in making mischief.  He has a string of horses that he is taking into Mexico and asks Hewey if he would like to go with him.

Which road will Hewey choose?  Will it be the open road with Snort or a settled domestic life with Spring?

Sam as Chuck Yeager, his most famous role

Sam as Frank James  

Elmer the Great

******

REVIEWS

".... a charming cowboy yarn that Jones also directed, artfully blending romance and adventure, the call of the hearth and that of the open sky.  He plays Hewey Calloway, a true Texas cowboy trying to keep the modern era from tossing his era out of the saddle. -- Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune

"This is a Western without gunfire or even the threat of serious violence.  The characters and builders we see, to quote novelist Elmer Kelton, are the West's 'main event,' not the storied gunslingers whom Kelton brushes off as 'the sideshow.'" -- Ray Loynd, LA Times 

THE END