Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 1, 1995 TAG: 9508010034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEVEN COLE SMITH FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
``I don't have any sense of obligation to my books, except while I'm writing them. Nor do I consider that they belong to me, except when I'm writing them,'' he said. ``Once I finish them, the emotional investment drains away very quickly.
``I wish them well. I'm not tied to them anymore.''
But McMurtry has seen, and liked, ``Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo,'' a five-hour miniseries that will air this fall on CBS. Because, for the first time in decades, he was directly involved in writing the script and helping supervise the production.
The Wichita Falls, Texas, native has written nearly 20 novels, many of which became movies or miniseries, but he generally stays away from the production process. He essentially had nothing to do with the miniseries ``Return to Lonesome Dove'' or the weekly syndicated ``Lonesome Dove'' TV series. Before ``Streets of Laredo,'' the only broadcast project he was directly involved in was ``The Last Picture Show,'' nearly 25 years ago.
McMurtry and writing partner Diana Ossana wrote the screenplay for ``Streets of Laredo'' shortly after he finished the novel, a sequel to ``Lonesome Dove.'' It stars James Garner as Woodrow Call, and features Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Sonia Braga, Randy Quaid, Ned Beatty and George Carlin.
It likely took this long for McMurtry, interviewed during the Television Critics Association press tour, to get the bad taste out of his mouth left by the original treatment of ``Lonesome Dove,'' which began not as a novel but as a feature film script.
``It was originally written about 1971 for John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, with Peter Bogdanovich, fresh from his triumph of `The Last Picture Show,' to direct,'' McMurtry said.
Wayne would play Woodrow Call; Stewart would play Gus, ``and Henry Fonda would play the ill-fated weakling, Jake Spoon, and Cybill Shepherd would play Lorena,'' he said.
``It was quite a good script, I think; the studios loved it,'' but Wayne didn't want to play the taciturn Woodrow. He wanted to play Gus, whom McMurtry calls ``the poet.''
``This block existed for years,'' McMurtry said, ``and Henry Fonda came around, and James Stewart came around, and John Wayne did not come around. And he died. And Henry Fonda died. And it went into a long limbo.''
McMurtry eventually bought his script back from the studio and turned it into the novel.
Filming ``Streets of Laredo'' has been completed, and it now awaits post-production editing. It was filmed on location in Texas, mostly near the Big Bend village of Lajitas, where the buildings of Crow Town (the novel's setting) were constructed, with additional filming done in nearby Alpine and Del Rio.
As in all his westerns, McMurtry's ``Streets of Laredo'' contains some violence, a sensitive topic on TV these days. So McMurtry and Ossana wrote a letter to a producer of ``Streets of Laredo,'' Robert Halmi Sr., defending the use of violence in the project. Halmi made that letter public.
McMurtry said he wrote the letter ``because we knew there would be questions about violence, because it's the topic of the day, thanks to Congress. Odd they can't find anything real to talk about, so they have to talk about fantasy, but we wrote a letter saying we felt that `Streets of Laredo' is a story essentially about the `failure' of violence.''
|By STEVEN COLE SMITH| |FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM|
LOS ANGELES - Author Larry McMurtry has never watched the miniseries based on his most famous book, ``Lonesome Dove,'' all the way through.
``I don't have any sense of obligation to my books, except while I'm writing them. Nor do I consider that they belong to me, except when I'm writing them,'' he said. ``Once I finish them, the emotional investment drains away very quickly.
``I wish them well. I'm not tied to them anymore.''
But McMurtry has seen, and liked, ``Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo,'' a five-hour miniseries that will air this fall on CBS. Because, for the first time in decades, he was directly involved in writing the script and helping supervise the production.
The Wichita Falls, Texas, native has written nearly 20 novels, many of which became movies or miniseries, but he generally stays away from the production process. He essentially had nothing to do with the miniseries ``Return to Lonesome Dove'' or the weekly syndicated ``Lonesome Dove'' TV series. Before ``Streets of Laredo,'' the only broadcast project he was directly involved in was ``The Last Picture Show,'' nearly 25 years ago.
McMurtry and writing partner Diana Ossana wrote the screenplay for ``Streets of Laredo'' shortly after he finished the novel, a sequel to ``Lonesome Dove.'' It stars James Garner as Woodrow Call, and features Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Sonia Braga, Randy Quaid, Ned Beatty and George Carlin.
It likely took this long for McMurtry, interviewed during the Television Critics Association press tour, to get the bad taste out of his mouth left by the original treatment of ``Lonesome Dove,'' which began not as a novel but as a feature film script.
``It was originally written about 1971 for John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, with Peter Bogdanovich, fresh from his triumph of `The Last Picture Show,' to direct,'' McMurtry said.
Wayne would play Woodrow Call; Stewart would play Gus, ``and Henry Fonda would play the ill-fated weakling, Jake Spoon, and Cybill Shepherd would play Lorena,'' he said.
``It was quite a good script, I think; the studios loved it,'' but Wayne didn't want to play the taciturn Woodrow. He wanted to play Gus, whom McMurtry calls ``the poet.''
``This block existed for years,'' McMurtry said, ``and Henry Fonda came around, and James Stewart came around, and John Wayne did not come around. And he died. And Henry Fonda died. And it went into a long limbo.''
McMurtry eventually bought his script back from the studio and turned it into the novel.
Filming ``Streets of Laredo'' has been completed, and it now awaits post-production editing. It was filmed on location in Texas, mostly near the Big Bend village of Lajitas, where the buildings of Crow Town (the novel's setting) were constructed, with additional filming done in nearby Alpine and Del Rio.
As in all his westerns, McMurtry's ``Streets of Laredo'' contains some violence, a sensitive topic on TV these days. So McMurtry and Ossana wrote a letter to a producer of ``Streets of Laredo,'' Robert Halmi Sr., defending the use of violence in the project. Halmi made that letter public.
McMurtry said he wrote the letter ``because we knew there would be questions about violence, because it's the topic of the day, thanks to Congress. Odd they can't find anything real to talk about, so they have to talk about fantasy, but we wrote a letter saying we felt that `Streets of Laredo' is a story essentially about the `failure' of violence.''
by CNB