TV Guide Article

I remember a TV Guide article I read about this movie back in the 1980s. The writer was on location with the cast and crew while the movie was being made.

Willie Nelson kept after the producers to completely change the storyline so that the plight of the Indians would be the main focus of the movie. Nelson didn't get his way on that, but he did get them to change his character into Doc Holliday. Nelson didn't like the idea of being the country doctor Doc Boone created by Thomas Mitchell in the 1939 original, or by Bing Crosby in the 1966 remake. Nelson wanted his character to be a steely-eyed gunfifghter, a man's man capable of imposing his will on other men, as opposed to the unimposing Doc Boone character. So, he morphed into Doc Holliday, which caused a whole bunch of rewrites to the script.