{"id":5743,"date":"2013-11-01T13:45:55","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T21:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canyoncountryzephyr.com\/blog\/?p=5743"},"modified":"2013-11-01T13:47:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T21:47:29","slug":"nytimes-the-fretful-birth-of-the-new-western-lonely-are-the-brave-kirk-douglas-ed-abbey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canyoncountryzephyr.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/01\/nytimes-the-fretful-birth-of-the-new-western-lonely-are-the-brave-kirk-douglas-ed-abbey\/","title":{"rendered":"(NYTimes) ‘The Fretful Birth of the New Western’ —Lonely Are the Brave & Kirk Douglas & Ed Abbey"},"content":{"rendered":"

AN EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0 KIRK DOUGLAS<\/a> was worried. It was 1961, and this actor-producer had recently gambled on a big history picture, \u201cSpartacus.\u201d<\/a> He had fired the director \u2014 Anthony Mann \u2014 after a week of shooting, replacing him with Stanley Kubrick. Mr. Douglas thought the picture had turned out well, but it still hadn\u2019t been released. Meanwhile he had encountered a paperback novel \u2014 \u201cThe Brave Cowboy,\u201d by Edward Abbey<\/a> \u2014 and optioned it through his production company, Byrna. And Byrna, which had a production deal with Universal, commissioned a screenplay, by Dalton Trumbo<\/a>. ..Mr. Douglas was gambling again, but playing a good hand. The material \u2014 the story of a modern-day cowboy who breaks into jail to rescue his best friend \u2014 is original for a western, and gets better as it goes along. Its screenwriter was talented and hard working. (Blacklisted and jailed after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Trumbo had for 10 years written scripts under assumed names, winning an Oscar for one of them as Robert Rich. Mr. Douglas went to bat for Trumbo on \u201cSpartacus,\u201d promising him a screen credit with his real name.) And Trumbo had solved the story\u2019s two biggest problems: Why was the hero\u2019s best friend in jail in the first place? And why wouldn\u2019t he leave?<\/p>\n

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