Since TOMBSTONE RASHOMON was finished, I’ve been working on a couple of new projects — a book about THE PRISONER, which I think was the best TV show ever made, and a script about Billy the Kid.
The PRISONER book is titled I AM (NOT) A NUMBER, and is published by Kamera Books in the UK. They’ve published three other books by me – my Spaghetti Western history, my Kennedy/Oswald chronology, and, most recently, my Intro to Film. Kamera are a great company, in my estimation, and I recommend checking out their entire catalogue – much of it film-related, and Noir fiction under the Oldcastle imprint. I won’t go into my PRISONER analysis here, since the tome is now available both in hard copy (a limited edition with some very cool and expensive-to-print black pages between the chapters!) and as an e-book. Suffice it to say that in the book I analyse the episodes in the order in which they were filmed – something which has not been done before. At the outset, I don’t think anyone involved knew who ran The Village, who or what Number 1 was, or even how many episodes there would be. THE PRISONER was an organic masterpiece, which developed over eighteen months of shooting. At the outset, it seemed to be a project shared between Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein, the script editor, who had quite different ideas about who Number 6 was, and where the series was going. By the start of the curtailed second season, THE PRISONER was McGoohan’s, and McGoohan’s alone.
I’ve posted a short video about the series and its meaning here.
Since the book was done I’ve been working on a script about Billy the Kid, entitled THE THUNDERER, to be shot in the vicinity of Tucson, AZ. There seems to be less published material about the Kid than there was in the case of the OK Corral incident, but there are still a couple of good books. Walter Noble Burns (of Tombstone Iliad fame) wrote a particularly florid one, Ashton Upson ghost-wrote a biography of Billy for Pat Garrett; and Robert M. Utley wrote a nice, complete history of the Kid, A Short and Violent Life.
Rudy Wurlitzer (who wrote the difinitive script, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, and WALKER, and much more besides) sent me a link to an article which recently appeared in that notorious purveyor of Fake News, the New York Times. The headline is “A Photo of Billy the Kid Bought for $10 At A Flea Market May Be Worth Millions.”
Maybe so, but perhaps not this particular photograph, which can be compared in the original article with the “historic” picture of the Kid with his rifle. Apart from a prominent adam’s apple, I don’t think the two faces have anything in common. Even less likely is the author’s claim that the picture includes both Billy the Kid and his executioner, Pat Garrett. Garrett and the Kid may have known each other, during Garrett’s days as a Lincoln County bartender. But Garrett was famously tall – six foot four, or more – and the Kid was diminutive: around five foot, nine inches. The individuals in the New York Times photograph are all seated, so one can only judge their body height, but the one identified, by an “expert”, as Garrett appears to be average in height, while the one claimed to be the Kid looks about three inches taller.
Right now I’m Tucson for an acting assignment. Once that is done I’ll have more to report, I hope, on THE THUNDERER.
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