...It was probably one of the best cast Westerns ever.
Casting by Lynn Kressel was just outstanding. I mean Patricia Childress as Mattie Roberts; you just don't see "real looking" people in these roles often enough. The studio was probably pushing to have Tori Spelling play her + thank gawd for once someone chose the right people for the right parts.
i first met mcmurtry years ago when the last picture show had just come out, and he had his dc bookstore. he told me he'd written a western for wayne, stewart and fonda about 3 old cowboys who go out for one last adventure. at least one of them doesn't come back.
the 3 stars refused to do it because they didn't want to play old men, but finally stewart and fonda realized it was a damn good script with good roles which were getting harder to find. mcmurtry told me they could do it with other actors but it wouldn't be the same.
was this the basis for lonesome dove? i asked somebody who knew mcmurtry and he said he had never heard the story.
i saw robert duvall at george washington university a few years but didn't get to ask him about the story mcmurtry had told me years ago. duvall said his two personal favorite films were lonesome dove and the godfather. he also brought his girlfriend out and they danced the tango.
In an interview, McMurtry said the original idea was a script about three old guys...and told the Stewart, Fonda, Wayne story...and said John Wayne didn't want to do it because he'd be the boring old guy again. So it seems to be the embryo of what finally became Lonesome Dove.
shareLonesome Dove was first a movie script, then a novel, and finally a TV mini series.
From wikipedia:
McMurtry originally developed the tale in 1972 for a feature film entitled The Streets of Laredo (a title later used for the sequel), which was to have starred John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart, and be directed by Peter Bogdanovich, but plans fell through. McMurtry later resurrected the screenplay as a full-length novel, which became a bestseller and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
It was then made into a four-part TV miniseries, which won six Emmy Awards and was nominated for 13 others
From imdb trivia:
McMurtry intended John Wayne to play Woodrow Call, James Stewart to play Gus McCrae and Henry Fonda to play Jake Spoon. Wayne turned it down, and the project was shelved.
I agree with you, Mudflap. Patricia Childress was terrific as Mattie. I also thought that Jonny Lee Miller was great as Woodrow.
shareWith John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in would have been a pile of crap. Thank God they had to wait for real actors.
shareThat's bosh, you fool (notice my Dead Man's Walk reference?)! Dammit, Wayne and Stewart are fine actors and considering they were leading actors of the time and Wayne pretty much had the monopoly on Westerns, they were the ONLY choices for this film AT THAT TIME. Obviously you are ignorant of both actors and their careers. Wayne would have made a great Call (see Red River, True Grit, The Searchers or The Shootist). Stewart, while not always bristling with humor like Duvall played McCrae, could still do it because the man's versatile (Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Night Passage, How the West Was Won). Actually, this idea is sort of like a western fan's fantasy. Imagine material like Lonesome Dove with actors like Wayne, Stewart and Fonda. Could have been something really cool.......
shareAs rumor has it (actually I was following the news in papers and magazines and TV shows at the time and probably still have some of those magazines in my library) Bogdonavich had finished doing the John Ford documentary special with Duke and Fonda and Jimmy Stewart and talked about remaking The Texas Rangers/Streets of Laredo with Larry McMurtry writing the story for Bogdonavich as he had written The Last Picture Show years before. As the story goes, the movie would have been the final salute to the western as an artform in both film and written word as all three actors/characters would be as over the hill cowboys/outlaws/rangers as the genre was. Instead, all three actors turned it down, didn't like the message of the movie, thought the western still had life to it. McMurtry while penning Lonesome Dove actually did it under the working title of Streets of Laredo, so...... Duke Wayne would have been the Jim Dawkins/Woodrow Call character, Jimmy Stewart would have been Wahoo Jones/Augustus McCrae, and Henry Fonda would have been the Sam McGee-Lorn Reming/Jake Spoon character. As the western gave way to the "buddy" movie (same concept, different era), there were still places for films like Silverado, Tombstone, Dances With Wolves, Open Range, Wyatt Earp, Tom Selleck's Quigley Down Under and various TNT westerns, and Unforgiven. The "old boys" were right, and what better proof than Lonesome Dove, its sequels and prequels and series. Duke doing Tom Dunson/Ethan Edwards, Fonda stepping out of a spaghetti western, and Jimmy just doing his comic Jimmy, for one last western hurrah? Now that's a fantasy movie made in heaven!
shareI wish both projects could have happened...I would have loved to see the Greats, Wayne, Stewart and Fonda spouting McMurtry's understated yet hilarious dialogue. No one can do understated humor mixed with gore and terror like McMurtry can. One of my favorite lines in the hole series is Carradine as Big Foot Wallace perched on the Palo Duro Canyon walls with the rest of the grass fire escapees and all of a sudden the dentist tumbles off the rock to his death..." Wellll, there goes the dentist; hope nobody gets a toothache on the rest of our trip". AAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!
Law? WHERE'S THE LAW NOW!!??!!-Burt Reynolds; Deliverance.
It is quite clear you know nothing about acting or your heroes. John Wayne nor James Stewart could carry Tommy Lee Jones or Robert Duval's lunch. Talk about ignorant--that would be your uninformed rant about acting skill. Now--who is the fool--fool.
shareAnyone who slams Wayne, Stewart and/or Fonda knows nothing about acting and should have excluded themselves from any thread discussing actors. Jones and Duvall are awesome. Nobody debates that. But to say that neither John Wayne nor James Stewarts,LEGENDS, could carry the lunch of Tommy Lee Jones or Robert Duvall, is not just ignorant but is a ranting moron. You are little more than a jibbbering monkey, sir. An shell of a man whose brain has been scooped cell by cell from his skull. You are an idiot. You donkey! You putz! I mean does no one but me see how stupid your statement is? How freakin' feeble minded you are! How bloody inept! You foolish, dunderheaded little troll! Shut up! Shut up right now! Never post again! Never SPEAK again! Hide your head! Hide it in the sand! Smother yourself until you're dead and then let the winds bury you! You know NOTHING! NOTHING, SIR!
YOU MORON!
BWAAAAAAAA!
Kettle meet pot. I forgot more about the business this morning while taking a dump than you know--you illiterate boob.
AND by the way moron:
I never mentioned Fonda; Who was a much better actor than Stewart or Wayne put together. You probably believe John Wayne really was a soldier in WWII and Vietnam; instead of the avoider of Military service that he was. John Ford used to make fun of him for being such a wimp. Don't cry moron.
"What a Maroon!"
(Naturalragman) is a total fool and should shove his head back up his a-- were it belongs !!!!!!!!!!!
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