(Interview with Michael Biehn: Johnny Ringo from Tombstone)
...Over-the-phone interview conducted with Michael Biehn, by Bradley D. Pettit, on November 11, 2008...
Bradley D. Pettit:
Beginning of Interview…
BDP: Well, Mr. Biehn, what I wanted to do...and I'm not sure if your agent told you exactly what this encompasses...is to examine the life of Johnny Ringo. However, I not only desire to explore the manner in which you portrayed him in Tombstone, but perhaps also take a look at what you learned of the actual man throughout the course of your research for the role. I understand you did quite an extensive bit of digging into the literature surrounding the man from which to create your vision of Johnny Ringo.
Michael Biehn: Oh yeah!
BDP: Johnny Ringo seems to be a widely misunderstood gunslinger from the Old West, and of about whom we know surprisingly little for sure. However, although what we have to go on may be limited regarding his life, the representation you gave of Ringo in the film struck a chord with cinema and history buffs alike. The performances given by you as Johnny Ringo, Val Kilmer as the deadly dentist Doc Holliday, and Kurt Russell as the law-enforcing Wyatt Earp were, quite simply, extraordinary! In fact, it is my opinion that in a post-Eastwood Oscar-winning Hollywood, Tombstone might very well have garnered Academy Awards for some of the Tombstone cast, you included.
MB: (Humble laugh).
BDP: That being said, I'm curious to know a few things from Michael Biehn's perspective...from an actor who has played in unique, yet futuristic roles in The Terminator and The Abyss, and yet even more diverse and complex genres, other than science fiction, how you prepared to play the role of such an unsavory, factually obscure, yet highly interesting western gunslinger like Johnny Ringo?
MB: Any time that I do a role for a film, and certainly if it's based on a real character, I read as much literature as I possibly can find on the subject. There is a lot of literature around about Wyatt Earp, and about the Shootout at the O.K. Corral, and some out there about Johnny Ringo, too. The stuff about Johnny Ringo, about the way people remembered him and what kind of guy he was actually and realistically intrigued me.
So, what I originally did was read as much as I could about not only Johnny Ringo but Tombstone in general, and also about the Earps and Curly Bill Brocius. I wanted to know what people thought about them back then and back there. When an actor plays a historical man, it serves them well to take a look at what was written about that person by people alive at the same time, not just the scholars who wrote about him later on, in a different time period than Ringo’s.
BDP: Given that there was not a whole heck of a lot to go on, you certainly used the historical information at your disposal to create a very interesting and charismatic, if demon-plagued, Johnny Ringo. What about Tombstone; the movie as a whole? Did it, in your opinion, follow along very closely with the stuff of which we do have ample historical information? What I mean is, there isn’t a lot to go on regarding certain aspects of Ringo’s life, but we do have some more information on some of the other historical characters portrayed in the film. Did the film do those characters justice with regard to their true, historically documented lives? Was Tombstone mostly fact or fiction?
MB: Of course, when you do a screenplay, and you make a movie, characters do change. And things turn out to be not exactly the way you expect them to be. One of the things that I would really like to do, and I never would do it, is to tell the story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral from the perspective of the Cowboys. (Author’s note: In an email I have saved from Val Kilmer, who played Doc Holliday in the film, he stated that, “I and a partner are writing a prequel…I’d love to talk to you about the film.” However, subsequent efforts to contact Kilmer regarding this email have been unsuccessful).
BDP: You suggested it would be a good idea to tell the story from the Cowboys’ perspectives. Why?
MB: Because you get this revisionist history! The Earps, when they came to town, weren't like these saints or anything. They weren't like these great guys coming to save the town from devils. They were buying up the land and taking over the town. And I guess I feel that way because I was a Cowboy, and I was Johnny Ringo, and that's where my loyalties have always been. But that's my big take on that, what I think really happened in the movies is revisionist history. I did a lot of reading, and that's where a lot of this information that I'm relating to you comes from. At the time the incidents portrayed in Tombstone actually occurred, it was a much greyer area; a much greyer area than what was explored in the film.
BDP: Please elaborate.
MB: There it was, kind of the Cowboys’ ground, and it became kind of a turf war. And it was kind of a gang war between these two groups. And I always look at it sort of differently than a lot of people do. When you think about Tombstone, the historical town, you think about the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. Wyatt Earp is always portrayed as this great hero, and the Cowboys are the bad guys! But when you think about it, during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the Earps and company went down there, and they were all loaded up with two six-guns each and with shotguns. The McLaury brothers and Ike Clanton weren't expecting anything! They were just sitting there, and they all had their single six-shooters on them. And back then most of them didn't keep all six bullets in their cylinders because they didn't want anything to accidentally discharge. They had like 10 or 12 rounds between them, is all! You know, a lot of people felt like the Earps just went down there and slaughtered them. And basically, there was this big inquiry made, where the Earps should be charged for murder. But the Earps eventually were not charged with murder, although the case could be made that perhaps they should have been.
BDP: A lot of people thoroughly enjoyed Tombstone, and a great majority of those people seem to enjoy the gun-twirling scene between Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday even more than the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We, as moviegoers, have become familiar with trick photography, cutaway shots and various camera angles to make something quite simple appear to be vastly more complex and cool. So, I’ve got to ask you. In the saloon scene, when you draw your Colt on Val Kilmer, then pull it away and begin a complicated gun-twirling routine, was that all you, or was a stunt-double or some kind of camera trickery employed?
MB: I was taught that by a man named Thell Reed, who is renowned as a weapons expert and quick shot artist. He’s what’s called an “armorer” in Hollywood; somebody who works with actors in movies so nobody gets hurt. Whenever a scene is shot in a movie, there is always an armorer on site…always! (Author’s Note: When Brandon Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, died from a gun accident on the set of his first and only movie, The Crow, it was likely the result of a mistake by, or due to the absence of, a competent on-set armorer).
Thell’s worked on many films like L.A. Confidential. So we worked together, Thell and I, to create a unique gun-twirling routine. I made up a trick here, and Thell made up a trick there, and we put that routine together in a matter of two or three months. I'd never even been on a horse before Tombstone, so I had to learn how to ride, plus all the gun stuff. But to answer your question, yes…the gun twirling...that was all me! Thell helped me put the routine together, but the actual gun twirling...that was all me!
BDP: I noticed that in the movie there didn't seem to be a lot of cutaway shots, so I was wondering if you did all the routine at once, or if it took multiple takes and/or trick camera angles.
MB: Actually, they do cut into that scene a bit. There are a couple of cuts in that scene. What I do, even though there are a couple of cuts in the film, and it is not one shot from top to bottom, it's still all me doing the gun twirling. What you see, even though it's cut differently, is all me. From the time I draw on Val is all one piece; I draw it, cock it and spin it, all at the same time. From that point on, that's the beginning of it. Then I go into the routine, and the routine is something I could do from top to bottom. But it is cut a little; in the movie you'll see a couple different cuts…if they wanted to, they could have shot it in a single mass. I could do the whole routine, top to bottom. I had practiced for months and had gotten quite good at it.
BDP: And now? Can you still twirl a Colt like you could back in the early nineties?
MB: Well I can still do some of the tricks, but I haven't gone through that routine in a very long time. I haven't had a Colt in my hand since I did Tombstone. Every once in a while, someone will hand me a revolver or something and say, "Let's see what you can do with this!" What they don’t understand is that the gun I had in Tombstone was perfectly balanced for twirling and for getting back into the holster, and so forth and so on. I could probably still twirl the gun, that particular Colt, as well as anyone. It’s been a long time, it’s a hard thing to forget. It’s like playing golf or riding a bike, once you learn how to do it, it's difficult to unlearn! That routine I did in the movie was one that I could eventually do just standing around. Sometimes I would get it, but sometimes I wouldn’t. So I do remember a lot of it, and can still do some of it to this day.
BDP: In Tombstone, you had to play a very dark character. And by that, I mean that when the Earp funeral procession is going by, right passed where you're sitting on the porch, you say something hauntingly dark and morbidly cruel. “Smells like someone died,” your character said.
Also, in the movie, there is also a not-so-thinly veiled reference to you having sold your soul to the devil. And then, in one scene, you cold-heartedly shoot a Catholic priest who had just finished marrying a couple! Add to that the crazy look you had in your eyes as you performed those dastardly deeds and you've got a well-developed villain with few, if any, redeeming qualities or character traits. What type of method did you employ to delve that deep into the psyche of a madman—one who could do those sorts of horrible things and apparently feel no remorse?
MB: Man doesn't have to dig too far to hate and become violent. I mean, if someone hurt your child, or your brother or father, it is instinct to seek revenge. And the line about something stinking around here, well basically they got what they deserved. I mean, they came into town and tried to take our shit, and they killed our friends! So, that’s what you get! That is how wars get started…every time!
What happened there is no different than the wars that are fought today. We shoot one of their guys and they shoot one of our guys, or vice versa. That’s the shot that starts the war, and war is just a microcosm of man. As far as Johnny Ringo and the Cowboys were concerned, we were doing just fine until they showed up in town and started taking our shit. They tried to take our guns away from us. They tried to bring law to a town that the Cowboys already basically owned. It was our town! They went to the O.K. Corral and shot up the town. And at that point, it was basically like, “Fuck you!” You killed my blood! You killed my kin! You killed my family! And I want revenge!” That’s how we saw it!
But, I think that's a very natural reaction, when somebody hurts someone you care about. You want revenge. For me, personally, for Michael Biehn, I don't think it would take very much for me to go right there if somebody hurt someone that I cared about. Especially in a way that was unfair.
BDP: From watching the movie, most people come away having a strong sense of disrespect for the way Johnny Ringo treated innocent people, especially the priest at the wedding. Because shooting an honorable man is a hard thing for an audience to stomach.
Therefore, it's difficult to reconcile the plainly sinister characteristics your character had on film with the statements you previously made regarding the negative aspects of the Earp. Regardless of the understandable resentment on the part of the Cowboys over having their land taken away from them, it is hard to see how Johnny Ringo could have possibly been in the right when he goes and does something like killing a priest. Even if the Earps were stealing the Cowboys' land, how is this type of activity justified?
MB: Well, here's something that you should understand, Brad. That never happened. The idea that Johnny Ringo shot a priest through the forehead is totally artistic license. And, basically what you say is true. They put that scene in the movie so that the Cowboys look like the bad guys and the Earps look like the good guys. Now, from a moviemaking standpoint, that's a smart thing to do because you want your audience to root for the good guys and you want your bad guys to get theirs in the end.
You know, it was smart. But that scene was not originally in Kevin Jarre's script. Kevin's script was originally much grayer. So, Kevin quit the movie after about four weeks. He was frustrated with Disney and walked off the film. So they brought in George Cosmatos to finish the movie.
Anyway, Kevin did not write that. And when they fired Kevin, they brought in another director and rewrote some scenes. That scene with the priest was one of the scenes that they rewrote.
So anyway, that never happened. Johnny Ringo never did that. Nor do they even know exactly how Johnny Ringo died. In the movie, Doc Holliday shot him. Nobody knows how he died. They thought that the Earps might have gone out and possibly got him, but they found him up against a tree someplace, and he had been shot. They never knew who killed him. Some thought it might have been suicide. His boots were either on backwards, or on his hands. There were some strange circumstances around his death, but nobody really knows who killed him, or whether or not he took his own life. So, what you're looking at in the movie, Tombstone, is the Hollywood version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and good guys versus the bad guys. And certain scenes are added just for dramatic effect. I think they did a good job with it! I applaud them. I mean, it was a great script.
Val did a great job! And we had this great cast of Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton, Thomas Haden Church, John Corbett, and Kurt Russell. But, the movie…it’s not how it really went down.
BDP: Are you a particular fan of westerns?
MB: I like westerns. I am not a particular fan of anything more than anything else. I just like good movies. When I was a kid, growing up, Shane one of my favorite movies. I always loved Shane. More recently, I think the best western that's been done in the past 20 years is The Unforgiven. I can watch that movie over and over and over again. I just think [it] is a brilliant movie. I love Clint Eastwood's line when he says, "When you kill a man, you take away everything he's got, and everything he's ever gonna have." That is one of my favorite lines of all time.
BDP: I've seen the westerns you've mentioned, and I agree that they are extraordinary films. Where would you rank Tombstone as far as the greatest western movies of all time are concerned?
MB: I don't want to toot my own horn, because I'm just a character in it. I am just a piece of the jigsaw. But if you are rating it on a scale of 1 to 10, I would put it right up there around an eight or nine. Because I get approached a lot…and I've been in some pretty good films. I've been in The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, The Rock and Grindhouse. But, I get more people that approach me about Tombstone and how they loved the movie, how they watch it over, and over, and over again. They come up to me, and they quote lines from it, and they ask me questions about it, but it's hard for me to look at it and say that it’s a great movie. But from the reactions I get from the people, I'd place it as high as any western film done in the last 30 years, probably.
The Unforgiven is a great film, and my favorite western, but as far as audience reaction, I'd place it right up there with that film. In fact, I think some people might like Tombstone more, although it may be because Tombstone is a little bit more fun for general audiences than The Unforgiven. The Unforgiven is a little darker than Tombstone. And, of course, I like The Unforgiven more, but people just love Tombstone, so I would give it the highest possible rating when it comes to pure entertainment value.
BDP: One more point of interest for me, and then I'll let you go. I know that Kevin Costner was working on a film entitled Wyatt Earp around the same time that Tombstone was being worked on. Wyatt Earp turned out to be not nearly as popular as Tombstone, but I was wondering what you thought of the film’s alternative vision of the same events. Wyatt Earp also had a host of great actors in it. But, for whatever reason, the movie was not nearly as successful as Tombstone. So, what are your thoughts on that, and did the fact that Wyatt Earp was being made at around the same time as Tombstone affect the shooting schedule or the mood on the Tombstone set in any way?
MB: Well, I'm not a very good person to ask about that, because I'm biased. You know? I thought it was a well-made film, but it felt a little long to me. I have a lot of respect for Kevin Costner. And since we're talking about westerns, and I guess you could call Dances with Wolves a western, and it won an Academy Award, it was another great western that I probably forgot to mention.
Dances with Wolves is a great, great, great movie, so I have a lot of respect for Kevin Costner. But asking that question, it's sort of like asking a Met what he thinks of the Yankees. You know what I mean? I admit I'm biased in this regard. I liked Tombstone. I thought it was a much more entertaining film.
But, to comment on what you said earlier, [the shooting of] Wyatt Earp really didn't have anything to do with Tombstone. But talking about historical accuracy, I think that Kevin Jarre's original script was as close to historically accurate as you can get with the subject matter of Wyatt Earp, the Cowboys and the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. His script was about as factual as you can possibly get when it comes to Tombstone, but they changed [it] significantly when he left the picture. For entertainment purposes, Tombstone was an excellent western film. But I think a movie from the Cowboys’ perspective would make for a damn good movie!
BDP: Well, not in any way to diminish your other past films, or your present or future projects as an actor, but you're work as Johnny Ringo in Tombstone could be what you’re most remembered for at the end of your career. In fact, Tombstone might very well influence what goes on your own tombstone...let's just hope that that's many more years down the road, and with a ton of other great movies under your belt!
BDP and MB: (Shared laughs).
MB: So, Brad, what are you doing this magazine article for again?
BDP: Well, sir, I wrote a cover article for the December/January 2009 issue of American Cowboy magazine entitled, "The Greatest Living Western Author" about western author Elmer Kelton. And what I did in this article was explore the relationship between Kelton's life and the life of his mentor and high-school journalism teacher, Mr. Paul Patterson. Kelton had been named the "All-Time Best Western Author" by the Western Writers of America, a collection of his most influential western-writing peers. And the thrill of researching and talking about all things western got me back into wanting to write about western literature and films. So, naturally I wanted to talk to you about Tombstone, and I'm sure some other westerns aficionados will enjoy reading your take on that particular time and place of the Old West! Thanks for your time!
MB: My pleasure! Best of luck!
--End of Interview--
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Elmer Kelton: The Best Western Author and Western Man
by Bradley D. Pettit
Earlier this year, Elmer Kelton, one of Western literature’s leading voices, returned to his hometown of Crane, Texas, to lay to rest his friend and mentor of many years, Paul Patterson. Patterson was a cowboy, folklorist, author, teacher, and friend to the people of Crane, a small west Texas oil town located about 50 miles southwest of Midland. Patterson was known for his wry wit and kindness, but above all his lasting legacy is in the generations of students he influenced as a high school teacher. It was in this role of teacher and student that Patterson’s and Kelton’s lives first intertwined. Recognizing Kelton’s potential early on, Patterson forged a special bond with his young student, offering the future best-selling author advice on journalism, college, and life in general. I recently had an opportunity to visit with Kelton at his home in San Angelo, Texas, where he discussed what it was like growing up in Crane, the passing of his mentor, authors he admires, and what it means to be voted “All-Time Best Western Author” by the Western Writers of America.
Bradley Pettit: Let’s start with Paul Patterson. How do you best remember him?
Elmer Kelton: Well, Paul Patterson came to Crane to teach school in the fall semester of 1939. His brother, John, worked out on the McElroy Ranch with my father, Buck Kelton. And since Paul arrived in town a couple of weeks before school was to start, he decided to fill in his time and make a few extra dollars by working through the McElroy roundup. So, my first acquaintance with Paul was as cowboy Paul Patterson.
Then school started, and all of the sudden he was my teacher, and he was Mr. Patterson. So, the relationship then took on a little different aspect.
Paul taught Spanish and journalism. I took both, and I can’t say that the Spanish stayed with me too well, but the journalism definitely stuck. And I think Paul was responsible for giving me the idea that one way to get into writing, as a profession, was through newspaper work. He was a big influence on my decision to go to the University of Texas and major in journalism. In fact, Paul took a group of us journalism students from Crane to Austin one time for a scholastic journalism contest. That decided me on the University of Texas because, at that time, it was far and away the best journalism school in the state.
BP: You and Paul both served in World War II. When you both returned, it is my understanding that you two worked on a project together?
EK: When I got back from WWII, Paul had written a book while he was in the service and he asked me to illustrate it. Well, I drew the cartoons for it, and it got published with the cartoons. So, Paul was responsible—other than the newspaper work I did at school—for the first publication of anything that I did. We remained good friends throughout the rest of his life, which went on for a little over 60 years after school. And I just cannot give enough credit to Paul for a lot of the good things that have happened to me as a writer. Paul was always one of the best friends, and I consider him to be the nearest thing to a mentor that I’ve ever had.
BP: Where do you think you would be today if Paul Patterson hadn’t been an influence in your life?
EK: (chuckles) I might still be out on the Pecos River, holding down somebody’s ranch. Just out there waiting for some rain.
BP: What did you think personally of Paul’s writings, and did they influence your own in any way?
EK: Paul always had a touch of humor about him, and some of his stories were downright hilarious. They’d just kind of make you chuckle a little bit. For one thing, Paul was a great folklorist. He was able to capture the spirit of the time, place, and people that he wrote about. And, of course, he understood the cowboy. He understood him inside and out.
I only saw Paul perform the duties of a cowboy that one time during the McElroy roundup, but he was as good as anybody else. Except maybe for his brother, John, who perhaps had him skinned a little bit in that area (laughs). But Paul did do a little bit of cowboyin’ elsewhere. One time an outfit gave him a string of pretty bad horses, and one of the horses in particular kept throwing Paul off on his head. He used to say, “That ol’ horse gave me a burnin’ yearnin’ for learnin’.” So that fall, he went to Sul Ross State University to work on becoming a school teacher.
Paul was certainly not a professional cowboy, you know, but he was a competent hand. He could hold his own with the rest of ’em. In a lot of ways, we were the same in that respect. Even though I worked a lot on the McElroy Ranch, I considered myself more of an astute observer of the cowboy, rather than actually being a professional one myself. Paul was the same way.
But to answer your question, we didn’t really have the same writing style, but his influence as a teacher, mentor, and observer definitely had an influence on the way I came to write. Because, like I say, we remained friends until the day he died. He was always there to listen and offer advice. And I miss him. I miss him deeply.
BP: The Western Writers of America recently named you the “All-Time Best Western Author.” What does this award and honor mean to you?
EK: Well, I’m real proud of it, but I’m not sure I really believe it. I think of so many other great Western writers who have come along before me that I’m sure should have gotten that award instead of me. But I’m the one who is contemporary, and I’m getting to be one of the old founders, you might say. I joined that outfit when I was one of the kids, and that’s been so long now, I’m an old founder. But I appreciate the honor. But, I really have got reservations about it. Because I go back to people of an earlier time, like Will James and Ernest Haycox, and, of course, the more literary-type people, and that’s a whole different category. And I’d hate to have to stand up and make a jury believe I was better than them, because it’s just not so.
BP: Who would you nominate as the “All-Time Best Western Writer”?
EK: I’d have to give that a lot of thought. You’d have to consider, first of all, what that writer was trying to accomplish; whether he was more of a literary writer, or more of a popular-entertainment type of a writer. In the more popular field with a literary touch, I’d say Ernest Haycox would be hard to beat. Of course he comes from another era. And because I’ve still got so many friends in the field, I’d hate to try to name one of the contemporaries, because I would certainly forget about somebody I shouldn’t.
I’ll also mention Don Coldsmith. Don writes books from an Indian point of view, somewhat like Bob Conley, except Don’s not Indian himself. But he’s another one whom I consider one of the top writers in the field today. Another one I’d have to think about would be A.B. Guthrie, Jr., who wrote The Way West and The Big Sky. He’s another one who I would seriously consider for having been the best, both in the entertainment side of it, as well as the literary side. The Big Sky is kind of a dark book, in a lot of ways. The Way West is a little bit more cheerful. And then he wrote, in later years, before he died, a sequel to both of them, with some of the same characters out of both books. It was the bleakest Western I think I’d ever read. Nobody came out of it alive. I mean, at the end of it, everything was dark and getting darker.
Which brings me to Cormac McCarthy. He’s probably the best contemporary writer. All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian, which is probably the most brutal book I know of in the field. Cormac McCarthy is probably the best-known, most widely accepted literary Western writer alive today. And, of course, you can’t overlook Larry McMurtry. The most outstanding thing he’s done from the standpoint of popularity is, or course, Lonesome Dove. You could make a pretty good case for Larry instead of me for this best writer thing. I think he’s a wonderful writer. He’s got a wry wit. He’s got a very dark view of things. Most of his characters come up at the end of the story with an empty sack. There are a lot of good ones out there.
BP: Who do you think might be responsible for getting you involved in your interest with the Western writing genre?
EK: I can’t pin it down to any one thing. My mother taught me to read when I was five. We lived out in the country, so there wasn’t a whole lot else for entertainment but to read. I loved reading. I got started on the Western books fairly early because, growing up around cowboys, I related to the Western story very strongly. I guess my early influences were writers like Will James, who did Smoky and a lot of other horse and cowboy books, J. Frank Dobie, the folklorist, and Zane Grey, who wrote those grand, old-time Western adventure stories.
Later on I kept up with more contemporary writers. And when I began to try to write professionally, I studied people like Ernest Haycox and Luke Short, who were at the top of the ladder at that time in that field. I studied them to try to learn how they did it. I tried to figure it out: “Why did it work? How did he do that?” I learned a lot of things from these writers who never knew they’d taught me anything.
BP: Did any of your earlier work resemble some of the writers you were analyzing at that time?
EK: Oh, sure. You know, you start out trying to be a carbon copy of someone else until you finally begin to develop your own style. And then you try to avoid being a carbon copy of anyone else. It’s like a young artist copying the old masters to try to get a feel for how they did it. And then, eventually, you develop your own way. That’s basically what I did. I tried to emulate those people, but then gradually developed my own voice.
BP: What piece of writing would you be able to say, “That’s all me there. That’s the voice of Elmer Kelton.”
EK: Well, the first novel I had. I’d written short stories for a number of years, and published a good many of ’em before I ever tried a book. The first book was Hot Iron, and I think by that time it was beginning to come together. I think where it came together best in those years was probably my first real hard-cover book, The Day the Cowboys Quit. From there, I kind of graduated into a little bit more literary-type Western than my early work had been. The only problem I see is that I probably peaked with The Time it Never Rained and The Good Ol’ Boys, which are now both more than 30 years old. So, if I peaked that far back, where have I been since then, you know? I kind of worry about it from that standpoint, if that was my best work. But, I have to admit, it probably was.
BP: If you feel that you’ve peaked, is that a large reason for why you wrote your autobiography recently? EK: I think that I had a lot of pressure to do that memoir through my publisher and my agent. I had resisted it because I didn’t think my life, in itself, had been all that interesting. So when I finally decided to do it, I thought, “Well, I’ll concentrate more on people that I knew than on myself.” So, a good part of that book is about other people. It’s more about my times than it is my life. But I enjoyed it once I finally got started. I felt it was worthwhile. At least my descendants will have something to go by, at least they’ll know where I was coming from.
BP: Well, in all truth, sir, I can’t totally agree that you’ve peaked. I think you’ve got a few great ones left in you. Just look at that wall behind you. I mean, you’re still putting them out, they’re still selling, and people still love them.
EK: Yeah, well, I’m not going to try to downgrade my later work, but I guess that The Time it Never Rained, that was the most personal book to me because it was about a period when I was a reporter in livestock and farm news. I reported that drought through the whole seven years, every day, and I watched all these things happening to people I knew, including some of my own family. Even though the book is fiction on the surface, it’s factual at another level. I was trying to show what country people have to go through to produce food and fiber for the majority of us. However, I found that, at least the first two or three times it was published, I was preaching mainly to the choir because I was selling the books west of the Mississippi where people already knew this. Now, I have, in more recent times, gotten a somewhat broader spread of the book. Maybe I’m finally reaching somebody besides the choir.
AC: Who are some of the Western authors who you are reading today whom you feel are doing a good job of keeping the Western genre going EK: Well, I hate to get into too much detail, because I’ll always omit somebody. But we do have a number of promising Western writers today. A younger group. Mike Blakely, for one. Dusty Richards. Cotton Smith. Robert Conley, who writes mainly from an Indian point of view. Bob is half-Cherokee, and he’s done a lot of books on Cherokee folklore and history, as well as some good Western fiction.
There’s so many more. Here lately we’ve had some non- fiction books that have been highly important in the field. Joaquin Jackson has done two books about his experiences as a Texas Ranger. Scott Zesch, from Mason, has written a book about Indian captivity… children who were kidnapped by the Indians out of the hill country, mostly German kids back in the 1870s and 80s, and carried away, and what eventually became of some of ’em.
Mike Cox has just come out with a new history of the Texas Rangers in the 19th Century. And Robert Utley has had two books about the Texas Rangers—one in the 19th Century and one in the 20th Century.
There’s a lot of good work being done out there in the field—nonfiction as well as fiction. I think there’s a future, more so in nonfiction than there is in the fiction. Right now, the fiction Western is in somewhat of a slump. It’s cyclical, and of course I always hope it will come back around. At the very moment though it’s a pretty tight market. It’s hard for a newcomer to break in. It always was, but it’s extremely hard now.
BP: How would you describe the town of Crane?
EK: Well, it was a great place to grow up. For one thing, nearly everybody there was on a fairly equal economic level. There weren’t any rich people living in Crane. It was basically a working town, an oil-patch town. There was a community spirit that always impressed me, even though people were transient. A lot of these people were transferring from one oil field to another, and to another. And maybe the fellowship was more general among the oil-patch people, wherever they were, but in Crane, it was always our football team and our band. One person’s triumph was everybody’s, and one person’s struggle was everybody’s. There was a feeling of togetherness there that you don’t get in a larger community. There’s that blissful, together kind of a spirit. I hope it’s still there. I hope it is. I don’t get out there that often to know for sure.
BP: Maybe not as much as it used to be. I think it’s kind of fading pretty much everywhere these days, but it’s still somewhat there.
EK: Well, I think that in those days, because we didn’t have all the television and that kind of thing, we kind of leaned on each other for support and for news. We listened to each other. Visiting your neighbors was part of your life. Now, who does that anymore? We’ve lost some things that we should have held on to. But, on the other hand, we’ve made some gains. I had a triple-bypass, and if this [malady] had happened to me 30 years ago, I’d have died. So, I guess the good ol’ days didn’t have it all.
What Some of Kelton's Peers in the Westerns Field Have to Say About Him
“Elmer Kelton has a writing style that is so clear and clean that it makes for very good reading. I think he can portray the reality of the area, the physical and mental hardships in a way that brings it alive. Texas has produced a lot of great people, and Elmer Kelton is certainly one of its treasures.”
— Cotton Smith
“I’m honored to say good things about Elmer because he is one of my favorite people. There are writers who write fiction
who think, well, it’s just fiction. They don’t think things through or research enough to make it accurate. This is one of the major things that Elmer and I have in common. And Elmer is definitely one of the ‘real ones.’ ” — Don Coldsmith
“Elmer is one of the finest writers covering
the American West today. He knows his history and his territory first hand—a fundamental requirement for any great novelist.”— John Jakes
“The vote that was taken naming Elmer Kelton the ‘Best Western Author’ could have been taken in 2008 or 2028. The result would still be the same, and deservedly so. Elmer Kelton is truly the best in the field.”
— Johnny Boggs
Bradley D. Pettit is a freelance writer living in Crane, Texas
Elmer Kelton, named the “All-Time Best Western Author” by the Western Writers of America, sat down with me during a bookstore signing to discuss what it was like living and learning in my hometown, and his, of Crane, Texas. The interview is a portion of what was divulged by Mr. Kelton. Later, I will print the interview in its entirety.
Elmer Kelton: The Best Western Author and Western Man
by Bradley D. Pettit
Earlier this year, Elmer Kelton, one of Western literature’s leading voices, returned to his hometown of Crane, Texas, to lay to rest his friend and mentor of many years, Paul Patterson. Patterson was a cowboy, folklorist, author, teacher, and friend to the people of Crane, a small west Texas oil town located about 50 miles southwest of Midland. Patterson was known for his wry wit and kindness, but above all his lasting legacy is in the generations of students he influenced as a high school teacher. It was in this role of teacher and student that Patterson’s and Kelton’s lives first intertwined. Recognizing Kelton’s potential early on, Patterson forged a special bond with his young student, offering the future best-selling author advice on journalism, college, and life in general. I recently had an opportunity to visit with Kelton at his home in San Angelo, Texas, where he discussed what it was like growing up in Crane, the passing of his mentor, authors he admires, and what it means to be voted “All-Time Best Western Author” by the Western Writers of America.
Bradley Pettit: Let’s start with Paul Patterson. How do you best remember him?
Elmer Kelton: Well, Paul Patterson came to Crane to teach school in the fall semester of 1939. His brother, John, worked out on the McElroy Ranch with my father, Buck Kelton. And since Paul arrived in town a couple of weeks before school was to start, he decided to fill in his time and make a few extra dollars by working through the McElroy roundup. So, my first acquaintance with Paul was as cowboy Paul Patterson.
Then school started, and all of the sudden he was my teacher, and he was Mr. Patterson. So, the relationship then took on a little different aspect.
Paul taught Spanish and journalism. I took both, and I can’t say that the Spanish stayed with me too well, but the journalism definitely stuck. And I think Paul was responsible for giving me the idea that one way to get into writing, as a profession, was through newspaper work. He was a big influence on my decision to go to the University of Texas and major in journalism. In fact, Paul took a group of us journalism students from Crane to Austin one time for a scholastic journalism contest. That decided me on the University of Texas because, at that time, it was far and away the best journalism school in the state.
BP: You and Paul both served in World War II. When you both returned, it is my understanding that you two worked on a project together?
EK: When I got back from WWII, Paul had written a book while he was in the service and he asked me to illustrate it. Well, I drew the cartoons for it, and it got published with the cartoons. So, Paul was responsible—other than the newspaper work I did at school—for the first publication of anything that I did. We remained good friends throughout the rest of his life, which went on for a little over 60 years after school. And I just cannot give enough credit to Paul for a lot of the good things that have happened to me as a writer. Paul was always one of the best friends, and I consider him to be the nearest thing to a mentor that I’ve ever had.
BP: Where do you think you would be today if Paul Patterson hadn’t been an influence in your life?
EK: (chuckles) I might still be out on the Pecos River, holding down somebody’s ranch. Just out there waiting for some rain.
BP: What did you think personally of Paul’s writings, and did they influence your own in any way?
EK: Paul always had a touch of humor about him, and some of his stories were downright hilarious. They’d just kind of make you chuckle a little bit. For one thing, Paul was a great folklorist. He was able to capture the spirit of the time, place, and people that he wrote about. And, of course, he understood the cowboy. He understood him inside and out.
I only saw Paul perform the duties of a cowboy that one time during the McElroy roundup, but he was as good as anybody else. Except maybe for his brother, John, who perhaps had him skinned a little bit in that area (laughs). But Paul did do a little bit of cowboyin’ elsewhere. One time an outfit gave him a string of pretty bad horses, and one of the horses in particular kept throwing Paul off on his head. He used to say, “That ol’ horse gave me a burnin’ yearnin’ for learnin’.” So that fall, he went to Sul Ross State University to work on becoming a school teacher.
Paul was certainly not a professional cowboy, you know, but he was a competent hand. He could hold his own with the rest of ’em. In a lot of ways, we were the same in that respect. Even though I worked a lot on the McElroy Ranch, I considered myself more of an astute observer of the cowboy, rather than actually being a professional one myself. Paul was the same way.
But to answer your question, we didn’t really have the same writing style, but his influence as a teacher, mentor, and observer definitely had an influence on the way I came to write. Because, like I say, we remained friends until the day he died. He was always there to listen and offer advice. And I miss him. I miss him deeply.
BP: The Western Writers of America recently named you the “All-Time Best Western Author.” What does this award and honor mean to you?
EK: Well, I’m real proud of it, but I’m not sure I really believe it. I think of so many other great Western writers who have come along before me that I’m sure should have gotten that award instead of me. But I’m the one who is contemporary, and I’m getting to be one of the old founders, you might say. I joined that outfit when I was one of the kids, and that’s been so long now, I’m an old founder. But I appreciate the honor. But, I really have got reservations about it. Because I go back to people of an earlier time, like Will James and Ernest Haycox, and, of course, the more literary-type people, and that’s a whole different category. And I’d hate to have to stand up and make a jury believe I was better than them, because it’s just not so.
BP: Who would you nominate as the “All-Time Best Western Writer”?
EK: I’d have to give that a lot of thought. You’d have to consider, first of all, what that writer was trying to accomplish; whether he was more of a literary writer, or more of a popular-entertainment type of a writer. In the more popular field with a literary touch, I’d say Ernest Haycox would be hard to beat. Of course he comes from another era. And because I’ve still got so many friends in the field, I’d hate to try to name one of the contemporaries, because I would certainly forget about somebody I shouldn’t.
I’ll also mention Don Coldsmith. Don writes books from an Indian point of view, somewhat like Bob Conley, except Don’s not Indian himself. But he’s another one whom I consider one of the top writers in the field today. Another one I’d have to think about would be A.B. Guthrie, Jr., who wrote The Way West and The Big Sky. He’s another one who I would seriously consider for having been the best, both in the entertainment side of it, as well as the literary side. The Big Sky is kind of a dark book, in a lot of ways. The Way West is a little bit more cheerful. And then he wrote, in later years, before he died, a sequel to both of them, with some of the same characters out of both books. It was the bleakest Western I think I’d ever read. Nobody came out of it alive. I mean, at the end of it, everything was dark and getting darker.
Which brings me to Cormac McCarthy. He’s probably the best contemporary writer. All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian, which is probably the most brutal book I know of in the field. Cormac McCarthy is probably the best-known, most widely accepted literary Western writer alive today. And, of course, you can’t overlook Larry McMurtry. The most outstanding thing he’s done from the standpoint of popularity is, or course, Lonesome Dove. You could make a pretty good case for Larry instead of me for this best writer thing. I think he’s a wonderful writer. He’s got a wry wit. He’s got a very dark view of things. Most of his characters come up at the end of the story with an empty sack. There are a lot of good ones out there.
BP: Who do you think might be responsible for getting you involved in your interest with the Western writing genre?
EK: I can’t pin it down to any one thing. My mother taught me to read when I was five. We lived out in the country, so there wasn’t a whole lot else for entertainment but to read. I loved reading. I got started on the Western books fairly early because, growing up around cowboys, I related to the Western story very strongly. I guess my early influences were writers like Will James, who did Smoky and a lot of other horse and cowboy books, J. Frank Dobie, the folklorist, and Zane Grey, who wrote those grand, old-time Western adventure stories.
Later on I kept up with more contemporary writers. And when I began to try to write professionally, I studied people like Ernest Haycox and Luke Short, who were at the top of the ladder at that time in that field. I studied them to try to learn how they did it. I tried to figure it out: “Why did it work? How did he do that?” I learned a lot of things from these writers who never knew they’d taught me anything.
BP: Did any of your earlier work resemble some of the writers you were analyzing at that time?
EK: Oh, sure. You know, you start out trying to be a carbon copy of someone else until you finally begin to develop your own style. And then you try to avoid being a carbon copy of anyone else. It’s like a young artist copying the old masters to try to get a feel for how they did it. And then, eventually, you develop your own way. That’s basically what I did. I tried to emulate those people, but then gradually developed my own voice.
BP: What piece of writing would you be able to say, “That’s all me there. That’s the voice of Elmer Kelton.”
EK: Well, the first novel I had. I’d written short stories for a number of years, and published a good many of ’em before I ever tried a book. The first book was Hot Iron, and I think by that time it was beginning to come together. I think where it came together best in those years was probably my first real hard-cover book, The Day the Cowboys Quit. From there, I kind of graduated into a little bit more literary-type Western than my early work had been. The only problem I see is that I probably peaked with The Time it Never Rained and The Good Ol’ Boys, which are now both more than 30 years old. So, if I peaked that far back, where have I been since then, you know? I kind of worry about it from that standpoint, if that was my best work. But, I have to admit, it probably was.
BP: If you feel that you’ve peaked, is that a large reason for why you wrote your autobiography recently? EK: I think that I had a lot of pressure to do that memoir through my publisher and my agent. I had resisted it because I didn’t think my life, in itself, had been all that interesting. So when I finally decided to do it, I thought, “Well, I’ll concentrate more on people that I knew than on myself.” So, a good part of that book is about other people. It’s more about my times than it is my life. But I enjoyed it once I finally got started. I felt it was worthwhile. At least my descendants will have something to go by, at least they’ll know where I was coming from.
BP: Well, in all truth, sir, I can’t totally agree that you’ve peaked. I think you’ve got a few great ones left in you. Just look at that wall behind you. I mean, you’re still putting them out, they’re still selling, and people still love them.
EK: Yeah, well, I’m not going to try to downgrade my later work, but I guess that The Time it Never Rained, that was the most personal book to me because it was about a period when I was a reporter in livestock and farm news. I reported that drought through the whole seven years, every day, and I watched all these things happening to people I knew, including some of my own family. Even though the book is fiction on the surface, it’s factual at another level. I was trying to show what country people have to go through to produce food and fiber for the majority of us. However, I found that, at least the first two or three times it was published, I was preaching mainly to the choir because I was selling the books west of the Mississippi where people already knew this. Now, I have, in more recent times, gotten a somewhat broader spread of the book. Maybe I’m finally reaching somebody besides the choir.
AC: Who are some of the Western authors who you are reading today whom you feel are doing a good job of keeping the Western genre going EK: Well, I hate to get into too much detail, because I’ll always omit somebody. But we do have a number of promising Western writers today. A younger group. Mike Blakely, for one. Dusty Richards. Cotton Smith. Robert Conley, who writes mainly from an Indian point of view. Bob is half-Cherokee, and he’s done a lot of books on Cherokee folklore and history, as well as some good Western fiction.
There’s so many more. Here lately we’ve had some non- fiction books that have been highly important in the field. Joaquin Jackson has done two books about his experiences as a Texas Ranger. Scott Zesch, from Mason, has written a book about Indian captivity… children who were kidnapped by the Indians out of the hill country, mostly German kids back in the 1870s and 80s, and carried away, and what eventually became of some of ’em.
Mike Cox has just come out with a new history of the Texas Rangers in the 19th Century. And Robert Utley has had two books about the Texas Rangers—one in the 19th Century and one in the 20th Century.
There’s a lot of good work being done out there in the field—nonfiction as well as fiction. I think there’s a future, more so in nonfiction than there is in the fiction. Right now, the fiction Western is in somewhat of a slump. It’s cyclical, and of course I always hope it will come back around. At the very moment though it’s a pretty tight market. It’s hard for a newcomer to break in. It always was, but it’s extremely hard now.
BP: How would you describe the town of Crane?
EK: Well, it was a great place to grow up. For one thing, nearly everybody there was on a fairly equal economic level. There weren’t any rich people living in Crane. It was basically a working town, an oil-patch town. There was a community spirit that always impressed me, even though people were transient. A lot of these people were transferring from one oil field to another, and to another. And maybe the fellowship was more general among the oil-patch people, wherever they were, but in Crane, it was always our football team and our band. One person’s triumph was everybody’s, and one person’s struggle was everybody’s. There was a feeling of togetherness there that you don’t get in a larger community. There’s that blissful, together kind of a spirit. I hope it’s still there. I hope it is. I don’t get out there that often to know for sure.
BP: Maybe not as much as it used to be. I think it’s kind of fading pretty much everywhere these days, but it’s still somewhat there.
EK: Well, I think that in those days, because we didn’t have all the television and that kind of thing, we kind of leaned on each other for support and for news. We listened to each other. Visiting your neighbors was part of your life. Now, who does that anymore? We’ve lost some things that we should have held on to. But, on the other hand, we’ve made some gains. I had a triple-bypass, and if this [malady] had happened to me 30 years ago, I’d have died. So, I guess the good ol’ days didn’t have it all.
What Some of Kelton's Peers in the Westerns Field Have to Say About Him
“Elmer Kelton has a writing style that is so clear and clean that it makes for very good reading. I think he can portray the reality of the area, the physical and mental hardships in a way that brings it alive. Texas has produced a lot of great people, and Elmer Kelton is certainly one of its treasures.”
— Cotton Smith
“I’m honored to say good things about Elmer because he is one of my favorite people. There are writers who write fiction
who think, well, it’s just fiction. They don’t think things through or research enough to make it accurate. This is one of the major things that Elmer and I have in common. And Elmer is definitely one of the ‘real ones.’ ” — Don Coldsmith
“Elmer is one of the finest writers covering
the American West today. He knows his history and his territory first hand—a fundamental requirement for any great novelist.”— John Jakes
“The vote that was taken naming Elmer Kelton the ‘Best Western Author’ could have been taken in 2008 or 2028. The result would still be the same, and deservedly so. Elmer Kelton is truly the best in the field.”
— Johnny Boggs
Bradley D. Pettit is a freelance writer living in Crane, Texas
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