"A (Rewritten) Selection From "Saddle Up!"

Waxing nostalgically about old-time westerns returned to mind my unpublished – beyond my own personal printer – classic – if you can call something no one’s ever read a classic and if you will indulge me I will – I call Saddle Up!

Explaining to those unfamiliar with these occasional excerpts I inflict upon an unbidding readership, Saddle Up! is a compendium of imagined interviews with actors and otherwise – critters, tumbleweed, “The Wind” – who regularly appeared in the most popular genre of the day, playing the same roles so often they became identified with them, earning inclusion as “Experts” in this collected fictionalization.

Today’s sample derives from the subsection of the book entitled,

“Characters Certain To Be Killed”

Including “The First Indian Over The Wall”, “The Henchman Ready To Confess”, “The Galloping Cavalryman Carrying the Flag” and “The Good Guy’s Headstrong Younger Brother.”

A chapter that also includes,

“The Grizzled Prospector Who Strikes It Rich (Foolishly Blabbing About It In The Saloon)”

Ready to ride?

Then “Saddle Up!”

THE GRIZZLED PROSPECTOR:  “I didn’t mind gettin’ bumped off; if I don’t, there’s no story.  I had my fun along the way.  I’d do a funny dance when I hit ‘pay dirt.’  I got to sing drunk.  I’d get a chuck under the chin from some playful saloon girl. 

“Not bad for an old coot with no teeth. 

“I played the same part for ten years.  Then the roof fell in, and I was finished.

“They had to kill me; I got that.  If I had been bushwhacked along the trail or gunned down at the ‘Claim Site’, I’d have no beef. 

But that is not how it happened. 

“The scene begins with me workin’ my claim, hummin’ some old ‘folk ditty’ the producers don’t have to pay royalties for – ‘Oh, Susanna’, or somethin’.  Before you know it, this ‘claim jumper’ sneaks up behind me and he brains me with my own shovel.

“They’re supposed to come close, and put the ‘Sound Effect’ in later.  But this time, ‘Oh, Baby!’  I went out like a light!  When I woke up, I'd missed lunch!  

“They race me off to the hospital.  X-rays show a serious concussion.  There was talk about surgery, puttin’ a steel plate in back there.  Thinkin’ of my career, my longtime agent said ‘No.’ 

“You hit a steel plate with a shovel, it goes “Clang!”  You don’t want to hear ‘Clang!’  The movie audience expects ‘Thwack!’  No good throwin’ a ‘Thwack!’ in later.  There is this extended ‘”Clang!” Echo’ you just can’t cover up.

“Turns out, I had to give up work anyway.  At least as ‘The Grizzled Prospector.’  When I went back, they caught me wincin’ when I knew it was comin’.  What do they call in today?  (PAUSING TO THINK)  Oh yeah.  ‘PTSD.’

“Of course, there’s no ‘Workman’s Compensation’ for ‘wincin.’  I earned my keep, playin’ ‘Extras’ in card games. 

“I had ten good years.  Actually married a playful saloon girls.  She was ‘type cast.’   Ran off with a fella playin’ a cardsharp.

A LONG PAUSE.

“Y’know, I still don’t get it.  There’s plenty of gunplay in westerns.  But they don’t use actual ‘hardware.’ 

“A rubber shovel?  I might still be workin’.
 

A PENSIVE PAUSE. 

“I get headaches just thinkin’ about it. 

LOOKING UP AT THE INTERVIEWER.

“Got one right now.”

"I Miss The Old Westerns"

I know.

Nothing about them was true.

You don’t need the list.

I’ll say “Mistreatment of Indians” and I’ll leave it at that.

“Go West, Young Man!”  You know who said that?

Someone selling land in the West.  

Or some freelance phrasemaker in their gainful employ.

Still, for me, there was something about those old-time westerns, with their reliable scenarios:

Was there trouble in “The Unreal West?” 

Yer dern tootin’! 

There was no law west of… wherever there was law.  If you were a small rancher refusing to sell, a prospector who “struck it rich” and carelessly blabbed about it, or a crusading reporter in a town rife with corruption, things were likely to go bad for you. 

Real bad.

But when the dust finally settled,

The “Good Guys” won out, and the “Bad Guys” got shot in the hand.

And hauled off to the calaboose.

Kind of refreshing, isn’t it?

Compared to today, which feels like the chaotic middle of a western.

And we can’t seem to get to the “turn.”

Besides the comforting outcome of old westerns – plus the “thrill-packed adventure of it all –

There was an indomitable spirit in westerns, reflecting, perhaps, something actually real.

In earlier days, this land was rugged and torturously demanding.  But somebody – a lot of “somebodies”, most of them unknown to history – was determined to survive. 

And ultimately prevail.

And they did it.

Mixing reality and fiction – though to what degree I am entirely uncertain –

I am watching Northwest Passage, starring Spencer Tracy.  Tracy plays Robert Rogers, leader of “Rogers’ Rangers”, a colonial reconnaissance adjunct to the British army during the (pre-Revolutionary) “Seven Years War.”  The assignments were dangerous, their outcomes harrowingly in doubt.  But listen to this.  One random example of the indomitable spirit I was talking about.

Deep in “Indian Territory” and cut off by the enemy French, the Rangers are stopped at a raging river.  No boats.  No bridges.  No way of traversing the stymying terrain.

Do they give up?

Not hardly.

Rogers suggests the idea of forming a “Human Chain” across the river.  And when he is told it’s impossible, Rogers confidently retorts,

“It may never have been done.  But that does not mean it can’t be.”

“And they all drowned in the river.”

No.  They constructed a “Human Chain” and they crossed it.

Despite the admitted atrocities in “Winning the West”, regular people did stuff like that. 

And I say, “Hats off!”

Not meaning to trivialize by comparison, but the amount of writing required for a single season of television episodes, the stress of maintaining a standard and delivering on time… what we – and others like us – did on a weekly basis was, in its way, similarly impossible.

But it did not mean that it couldn’t be done.

Who knows?

Maybe the message in those westerns kind of rubbed off on me.

Just a little.

Say, Buckaroos and Buckarettes, if you’re interested in checking some of them out, here’s a list of my favorite westerns.  It is not a complete list.  A film I hadn’t considered appears on TV and I go, “Yeah, that too.”

But it’s a start.

My Top Ten List of Favorite Westerns:  (In no particular order, after the first eight.)

Red River

High Noon

Shane

Stagecoach

My Darling Clementine

The Westerner

Winchester ‘73

Dodge City

Buffalo Bill

Rio Bravo

The Man From Laramie

Okay, my “Top 11” list.

The Plainsman

My “Top 12.”

Drums Along the Mohawk

My “Top 13.”  But that’s it.

She Wore A Yellow…

I said that’s it!

Okay!

(Note:  There are also some good ones from “after”, like Unforgiven, Wyatt Earp and The Outlaw Josie Wales.  And a TV movie called Open Range.  But the new ones get cynical, and I prefer “Simplistic Illusion.”)

"Flashes Of Gertrude"

That was my mother’s name.  Anna’s daughter Golda is named after her.

During a recent phone conversation with my brother, I related two anecdotes about our mother, a habitual exercise, to rekindle her memory and flesh out some specifics.

I have mentioned these stories in the past.  But if you stick around, I will reveal a fresh recollection that recently flew in from nowhere.  I love when that happens.  It means the mental “machinery” is still cranking.  To what end, I have no idea.  But it’s cranking.

This first tale is somewhat larcenous.  (Although ultimately harmless.) 

I am returning from England, age 23, having floated home with my accumulated possessions on The Queen Elizabeth I, disembarking in Manhattan.  When my mother flew down to meet me, she got one look at my threadbare attire and immediately took me shopping at Macy’s.

Shirts, pants, and later, in the ”Accessories Department”, a belt.

We proceed to the back of the back of a long line, ready to check out at the “Accessories Department” cashier.  It was taking forever, the queue of purchasers moving agonizingly slowly.  Suddenly, the new belt clutched firmly in hand, my mother turns on her heels, and heads for the door.

“Mom”, I called out, with palpable concern, “did you pay for that belt?”

“Not yet”, she replied, casually exiting the premises.

Later that day, lunching at some famed but affordable New York eatery, we order our meals, and then, flaunting my nascent “adult independence”, I order a beer.

My mother had never seen me drink alcohol before.  (Besides a sip from the Seder Cup at Passover.)  If she’d been a fly on the wall at the Horse and Groom pub in Hampstead, she’d have seen me drink beer every night.  But she wasn’t.  She was a worried mother in Toronto.

This was definitely a “First.”

The food is delivered to our table, along with a tapering glass of amber imbibement, which is set down on a supplied coaster before me.

After carefully studying the “Forbidden Liquid”, my Mom says,

“You know, I haven’t had beer in ages.  Would you mind if I took a small taste?”

“Bon vivant” that I am, I magnanimously say, “Sure”, and I slide over the glass.  

In an unguarded instant, my mother picks up the beer glass, raises it to her lips and begins to drink.

And drink.

And drink.

And drink.

Finally, with a satisfied “Ahhhh”, my mother sets the glass on the table, sliding it back in my direction.  My reaction to what I have just witnessed is a hybrid “surprised, amazed, astonished, and incensed.”

My glass of beer was now entirely empty, save for a mere thimbleful of residual liquid, sitting sudsily at the bottom.

“Good!” she pronounced, and began eating her lunch.

My brother enjoyed those two stories, which he was unaware of, being a participant in neither event. 

Now the third story…

Which is less a story than a retrospective observation, which came to me recently out of the blue…

When my brother and I were old enough to be left alone, my mother and her friends would make regular pilgrimages to New York, attending the hit musicals of the season.  My Fair Lady.  West Side Story.  The Music Man. 

When she came home, she would – almost ceremoniously – hand me the souvenir Playbills (the official programs) from those iconic musicals.

That much, I always remembered.  (Along with the fact that I don’t have them anymore.)

But here’s the “new thing” that suddenly popped to my consciousness.

The programs she’d brought back for me were invariably in collectible “Mint Condition.”

Unstained.  Unwrinkled.  Un-dog-eared.  Un-rolled-up-like-a-telescope.

Despite the inevitable travel “wear-and-tear”, those souvenir programs were impeccably pristine.

It was like she was giving me a present.

It recently occurred to me, however, that it was perhaps more than a present.

It was a subliminal signal.

Sometimes, it’s hard for people to say things straight out.  Complicated feelings prevent communicating directly.  But, looking back at those perfectly preserved programs, my mother was secretly telling me something.

In the area of approval, acceptance, encouragement and support.

As in,

“I can’t say it out loud.  But I get it and I’m there.”

It is a little late, I suppose, but I truly appreciate that gesture.

Way more than her protectively chugging down my beer.

"Judd Apatow - Comedian"

My daughter Anna suggested I watch Judd Apatow’s stand-up comedy special on Netflix.  She thought I would like it because she liked it and we like a lot of the same things.  (Note:  Aware of his vast show biz connections, during our overlapping stints on The Larry Sanders Show, I asked Judd if he could get Anna tickets to a “Stone Temple Pilots” concert, which he did.  Her enthusiasm for Judd’s Netflix performance may be sweetened by “lingering gratitude.”)

I liked about thirty percent of Judd Apatow’s stand-up comedy special.  (A little less, but he may have relatives reading this.)  My lukewarm reaction boils down to one thing, but I shall “flesh things out” to make this blogitorially sufficient.  (Such is my need to satisfy self-made arrangements.)

Searching for the name of Judd’s special – it is called Judd Apatow:  The Return.  (Not as exhilarating as The Magnificent Seven Return.  The “Return” here refers to Apatow’s trying to be a comedian earlier in his career, giving it up, and 25 years later, he’s back.  He could have easily – and more accurately called it, “Judd Apatow – I’m Big and I’m Doing This!”)

Anyway, during my research I discovered a review of Apatow’s Netflix special that said pretty much what I would have said. 

– Successful writer-producer-director posing, less than convincingly, as a “loser.” 

– A comedian, who admits in his act that “Muppet Master” Jim Henson found he lacked warmth, and then convincingly demonstrating that in his performance.  (Even in close-up, he somehow felt “distant.”) 

– His inability to relate emotionally to the audience.  Finishing reading a poem he wrote about his parents divorce when he was 15 and receiving a genuine “Awww” from the audience, Apatow shoots back, “Don’t be sad – I’m rich.  I’m very rich.”  Rather than saying, “Sympathy from strangers.  How heartwarming.”  Sorry, I am an incorrigible rewriter.  (Most particularly of myself.  It was originally, “Sympathy from strangers.  How sweet.”)

The obvious critiques have already been made.

Here’s what most likely was not. 

In reverse order of importance.

“Two”…

People aren’t always the most astute judges of who they are and what they do best.  In his concert, Apatow reveals his desire to become a comedian since he was ten.  An understandable aspiration.  (To some of us, more than to others.)

Being a comedian has obvious appeal.  You are up there alone, people listening intently and laughing real hard.  That is rarely the case till you’ve made it – and not even always then – but that’s the idealization.  You are the indomitable center of attention. 

You are a lion tamer, with people.

Nobody – I don’t think – ever dreams of becoming “a great identifier of talent with an uncanny gift for getting the most out of their abilities.”     

Judd Apatow is an “okay” comedian, but an unparalleled genius at the other thing.  Well, not entirely unparalleled.  Lorne Michaels is an arguable equal, neither of them, circus performers, but both brilliantly adept at running the show.

Okay, so that’s “Two” – he dreamed of becoming the thing he wasn’t, unaware of, or possibly disinterested in, the valuable thing he actually was.

It happens to the best of us.  B’lieve me.

Now,

“One”… because it’s what matters…

Call it “smashing conventional boundaries” or being “a deplorable ‘Potty-Mouth’”, Judd Apatow stakes his comedical claim, following in the outspoken footsteps of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. 

“Unfiltered” is funny.

Nothing is sacred.

The thing is, “Nothing is sacred” isn’t enough.

You must also be scrupulously careful picking your targets.

That’s what the best comedians do.

And the less skillful comedians do not.

Borrowing a philosophical model:

(It is arguable that)

All hilariously funny things are “forbidden.”

But not all “forbidden” things are hilariously funny.

You have to work harder than that. 

The crucial ingredient:

“Judgment.”

Even when you are “knocking down walls.”

Judd Apatow did not consistently exercise that judgment.

Which may have been his problem as a comedian all along.