ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 11, 1996 TAG: 9605130155
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. HILL THE WASHINGTON POST
Shortly before once upon a time, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call set off with a band of fellow Texas Rangers to take back Santa Fe from the Mexicans. It was the 1840s, the Alamo siege was still a bitter recent memory, and it seemed like the thing to do.
David Arquette and Jonny Lee Miller, dressed in the dustiest western duds the wardrobe department could find, spent nearly three months in the Texas desert playing Gus and Woodrow in ``Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk.''
Their story, airing this week on ABC, is a ``prequel,'' in television's time-warp terms, to McMurtry's ``Lonesome Dove'' saga, and it somehow looks familiar.
Gus and Woodrow, two very young Rangers at this point, head off under the command of Caleb Cobb, played by F. Murray Abraham.
The band is a colorful one, including a couple of likable and grizzled scouts - Bigfoot, played by Keith Carradine, and Shadrach, by Harry Dean Stanton.
Naturally, a gold-hearted prostitute tags along, played by Patricia Childress, lending her own dignity, courage and class to the proceedings.
The proceedings, of course, get rough. The Rangers are bedeviled by Indians and ultimately captured by a Mexican army contingent led by Edward James Olmos, who's bent on taking them south. And so begins a seemingly endless trek.
The story spans hundreds and hundreds of miles and two nights of viewing on Sunday and Monday (airing at 9 and 8, respectively, on WSET-Channel 13).
The hazards of the trail are awesome: Indians, heat, thirst and hunger, even a bear. Violent death strikes in a random pattern. You fear that your favorite characters might be killed at any moment.
Except, of course, for Arquette and Miller, who, we know, are destined to grow up and become Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.
Once upon a time, Feb. 5, 1989, to be exact, they played Gus and Woodrow in ``Lonesome Dove,'' helping successfully translate McMurtry's big novel into a truly big television miniseries.
Not only was ``Lonesome Dove'' one of television's landmark presentations, it also has generated a syndicated TV series and two sequels - ``Return to Lonesome Dove'' and the recent ``Streets of Laredo'' starring James Garner - with another prequel looming.
The television productions also have added a dimension to the life of McMurtry, who was already an acclaimed writer before TV's millions tuned in to his work.
McMurtry, a native Texan born in Wichita Falls and raised in Archer City, plans a fourth book, ``Comanche Moon,'' fitting between ``Dead Man's Walk'' and ``Lonesome Dove'' to complete the saga of Gus and Woodrow.
``With the completion of the fourth book in the series, you'll have a long narrative about the settling of the frontier, starting with this one in the 1840s, when the settlers were in conflict with the Mexicans and Indians,'' McMurtry said. ``In `Streets of Laredo,' the day of the gun has concluded. It is a long stretch from the '40s to the 1890s. The four volumes and their TV series will tell this story.''
And they may raise further the McMurtry profile, which soared on the strength of ``Lonesome Dove.''
Before that miniseries aired, ``No one knew who Larry was,'' said Diana Ossana, his screenplay-writing partner on ``Streets of Laredo'' and ``Dead Man's Walk.'' ``He had written `Hud,' `Terms of Endearment,' `The Last Picture Show,' but no one knew who he was. We still meet people who don't know about those works.''
As McMurtry envisions ``Dead Man's Walk,'' the five-hour drama is a story of massive culture clash among the territorial white men and Mexicans and the Indians, who understandably resent them both.
Arquette, who said he had seen an early edit of the miniseries, said he believed the piece leaned too heavily on the violence committed by Indians.
``I want to say one thing about our film,'' said Arquette, reached in San Francisco. ``In the script, it had a lot of concern toward the Indians. The way it depicted them in the script, it seemed they were concerned about not portraying them as savages.
``One trouble I have with the film is that although everyone was doing all these warlike activities, it literally only shows the Indians doing them. I have a real problem with that.''
McMurtry seemed surprised to hear Arquette's critique. ``We try hard to be fair to all three cultures, and they are cultures,'' he said. ``The Anglos were squeezed between the Mexicans and the Indians. The most obnoxious people [in the film] are the white scalp hunters and slave traders.''
``Remember,'' Ossana added, ``both were encroaching on Indian territory. The white scalp hunters - they got a bounty at the time - would scalp Mexicans'' and try to pass off their hair as Indian. ``We feel, Larry and I, that this is a realistic portrayal of all the groups.''
Whatever the film's violence ratios, the Indians in the piece outsmart the Anglos and Mexicans at virtually every turn. The very clever Buffalo Hump is played by Eric Schweig, who was Uncas in ``The Last of the Mohicans.''
The whole piece is warmed by the presence of Childress, who is responsible for much of the humanity displayed against the cruelty of the terrain and the antagonists.
``Dead Man's Walk,'' like most sequels or prequels, is not equal to the original. But then few TV dramas have matched ``Lonesome Dove.''
On its own merits, ``Dead Man's Walk'' is a gritty, hard-bitten film that blows away the romantic western stereotypes, if indeed any of those stereotypes are left to blow away.
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Jonny Lee Miller (clockwise from top), David Arquetteby CNBand Keith Carradine star in ``Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk,''
airing Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 8 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13.
color. 2. F. Murray Abraham stars as Caleb Cobb, the commander who
leads Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call. Type first letter of feature OR type help for list of commands FIND S-DB DB OPT SS WRD QUIT QUIT Save options? YES NO GROUP YOU'VE SELECTED: QUIT NO login: cquit