Writing about Larry McMurtry’s recent death and reading tribute articles and the such spun me off into reading and re-reading some of Larry’s work I had sitting around, starting with one of his slim non-fiction volumes, A Literary Life: A Second Memoir. He commented that he first started to feel like he really was a writer with his fourth book, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. That was the first of his books I bought and read at the time of release, and that overlap of me becoming his reader at the same time he became a writer spurred me further down the rabbit hole.
I bought another copy of All My Friends… and visited with my “old friend,” Danny Deck, again. While I was busily enjoying reliving Danny’s sojourn in Hollywood, I discovered another favorite Texas author, Bud Shrake, had just released a novel posthumously, Hollywood Mad Dogs, based on his days as a Texas writer in Hollywood. Obviously, I had to buy that book and launched into it shortly after Danny Deck drowned his second novel in the Rio Grande again.
Both McMurtry and Shrake employ a rollicking, loose, easy-to-read writing style that I love. The plot moves along briskly through mundane, then bizarre scenes with crisp, larger than life characters taking the stage to say their lines and play their parts. The writer is, inevitably, rather hapless in both stories. The novelist creates whole worlds — in Hollywood, the screenwriter is just a hired hand, easily replaceable.
I especially loved reading the chunk in Hollywood Mad Dogs when the main character, Rick Swift, describes how he decided to try screenwriting after watching Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and thinking he could write a better story. I had read where that really was the specific motivation for Bud to take his first swing at scriptwriting. Before he was through, he would end up writing movies for Willie Nelson & Kris Kristofferson as well as Cliff Robertson and Steve McQueen.
And that brings us back to that first screenplay that Bud Shrake wrote. I had just discovered his 1972 novel, Strange Peaches (a strange tale, indeed), after finishing my full immersion in McMurtry’s early works. I delighted in finding another contemporary Texas novelist I enjoyed reading, so, when I heard that Shrake had written a movie, I knew I had to see it.
Kid Blue, starring Dennis Hopper, hit theaters in 1973, when I was a freshman at UT.
I went to the theater on the Drag to watch this weird little western. Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Peter Boyle, and Janice Rule were just a few of the folks in the cast — even “Papa Walton,” Ralph Waites, plays a part in this film.
Basically, it’s the story of a notorious young outlaw, Kid Blue, trying to go straight in a small Texas town.
Trying is the operative word, as he finds it difficult to fit in. He has no real skills and fails at various jobs, including wringing chicken’s necks. He makes one good friend but quickly meets his natural enemy, the local lawman.
Simpson: My name is Simpson. John Simpson. My friends call me “Mean” John Simpson.
Kid Blue: What should I call you?
Simpson: Sheriff.
By the time Kid Blue’s best friend’s wife seduces him and his old girlfriend shows up to blow his cover, he realizes he can’t reform. So, with the help of a trio of beleaguered Native Americans, he resorts to his prior profession: robbery. The whole thing culminates in a wonderful wild West chase scene, complete with the pill-popping preacher’s experimental flying machine.
Wacky and witty, the film was definitely of its time — dubbed an “acid Western” — and used the smiling-sneering tone of the 70s with sly undertones of overthrowing all conventions of the standard Western.
Well, it pretty much died a quick death at the box office, and it would disappear for years. But I remembered parts clearly and continued to quote a couple of passages for years, like the Sheriff’s introduction and the explanation of the sole product if the town’s one factory, ceramic ashtrays.
When I went to hear Bud Shrake speak at a book signing in 2007, Kid Blue had remained completely unavailable all those years. He said he had no idea if it would ever be available again. He’d only seen it once since the time of the original release, several years previously on a late-night satellite movie channel from somewhere in East Asia.
Well, now it is available for rental and purchase — less than $10 on YouTube or Amazon. Of course, I bought it so I could watch it whenever I get a hankering. And reading Shrake’s novel based loosely of his time in Hollywood has sure given me a huge hankering.
Simply put, it’s not a great movie, but it is great fun.
Guess what’s coming up in the home theater tonight!
Buller's back porch 