Letters to the Editor
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Can you ever forgive McMurtry?
I continue to read every novel that McMurtry writes, however I never will forgive him for killing Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove or maiming Woodrow Call in Streets of Laredo. And I punish myself every few years by rereading both, and I enjoy every word until McMurtry crosses the line with the violence to these great characters. It is true that neither Dead Man's Walk or Comanche Moon rises to the level of Lonesome Dove, but both are entertaining, and because they are prequels, the reader knows that neither Augustus or Call can be mortally wounded or die. Sometimes I believe that McMurtry wrote these novels to appease those of us that were so goodamned mad at him for his sins in Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. He let Augustus and Call live again, and I cannot and will not fault him for that.
Bluecatt
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Thanks for the reminder
"Lonesome Dove" was the only book my father ever gave me to read. A fairly slow reader, I lived in it for about two weeks. It is one of those stories that can pull you in completely, with a landscape so broad and characters so vivid that you are no longer a reader, but a participant, in this case part of the trail drive. A man should be so lucky as to write one such book in his life. I was lucky enough to read it.
When the movie was being hyped, I didn't expect it to be worth watching. No one could measure up to the characters in the book, I thought, and even felt resentful. I watched it anyway, and was sucked in immediately. The casting was brilliant - except for a few. Chris Cooper, Robert Urich, and Frederic Forrest were unconvincing to me, but some of the others were strokes of genius. Rick Schroder was passable, but the strong performances by everyone else in the cast made his role work well enough. I think the best cast choices, other than Duvall and Jones, were Danny Glover and Angelica Huston, huge surprises. Diane Lane was pretty unbelievable too.
I'll probably watch this show too, not expecting much. I didn't read the book this time, so I won't be disappointed. Westerns are so rare on TV these days, that just about anything will do. I probably wouldn't know about this offering if I hadn't read this review.
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Not with that title
Hokiest title evuh.
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Books to Screen
Giving equal weight to both the book and the screen adaptation, LONESOME DOVE is the greatest ever IMO.
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Nah!
The best TV Western Ever was The Slowest Gun in the West (1960)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057510/
It starred Phil Silvers and Jack Benny, what could be better?
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Was this aired because of the writer's strike?
When was "Comanche Moon" made? Was it filmed earlier and left in a can for a while? I'm suspicious because networks don't usually air miniseries in January. They usually schedule them for a sweeps month (usually May or February).
A couple of reasons why they might do this:
(1) It was originally going to air in May, but the lack of new episodes because of the writer's strike caused CBS to move it up to January.
(2) It was filmed a while ago, but never aired because it wasn't good. But CBS needed to show something during the strike, so they dusted this off.
Does anyone know the real story? Does the timing of this miniseries have anything to do with the strike?
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McMurtry set such a high standard with LD, even he can't beat it
I went to high school in a little town in Texas and our creative writing teacher set aside the usual curriculum and had us read Larry McMurty novels instead. This was before Lonesome Dove came out, but there were still The Last Picture Show and Horseman Pass By, and Terms of Endearment -- all of which have been made into amazing movies. (I would encourage everyone to read Terms of Endearment; there is a whole lot of the book that didn't make it into the movie.)
So I was already a huge McMurtry fan when Lonesome Dove came out, and it has been my favorite book ever since. I gave it to my son to read when he was about 12 and he came rushing out of his bedroom crying and threw the book at me, yelling, "you didn't tell me Gus dies!" Like HappyJack, I was dubious about LD being made into a miniseries. But it was pretty much perfect (except for Robert Urich; he was no Jake Spoon). The sequels -- both the books and the miniseries -- definitely haven't measured up. But how could they?
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Character abuse
Seems to me, too, that McMurtry has a way of abusing his main characters. Whichever book it was that was his "sequel" to LD has him offing Newt in some dreary way early on, rendering the whole Montana trek kind of pointless. And what he does to Call (in whatever book that was) is just plain cussedness.
As for the LD mini-series being the "best" TV western (I assume regular series are not being counted), maybe so, but it does not seem to be a very large field. Like the book, I thought it OK, but hardly "great."
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What can you say? Its a prequal
I don't think I've ever read or seen a prequal that didn't have a claustrophobic feel to it, and Comanche Moon was no different. It is just the nature of the beast I guess. You always have the feeling of watching the little puzzle pieces fall into their places so that you eventually get the picture you've already seen on the box. Much like the writer here, I'll try to watch the series. Its still a good story and I like McMurtry's dialog, but I don't expect the magic of LD.
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To David B.
I looked it up in IMDB
http://imdb.com/title/tt0783328/
There they say the release date is Jan 13, 2008, but there are already some comments about it by people who saw it last winter. Apparently there was a showing in Las Vegas or something. So it's been around awhile, but that doesn't give much info.
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Actors eating their own children
While he certainly may have reason for his opinions, the sharp comments Robert Duvall still occasionally issues against Wincer's directorial choices cannot have done much for the original miniseries' reputation.
Having said that, of course, makes me feel like a heretic, since I loved the "Lonesome Dove" miniseries, most especially Duvall's contributions to it. As for McMurtry, last spring I spent days trying to get to the Milk River country he describes in his travel memoir "Roads" to see if it matched the beauty of his prose. Needless to say, he captured it perfectly.