Amazon.com link
Author Gene Rhodes
Locale New Mexico 1910
35mm budget $15 million + points
Christopher 'Kit' Foy is in big trouble. The sheriff wants him killed. Henchmen lay a trap to murder him at the hotel barroom. But an old cowboy, a stranger in town, senses that something ain't right about four thugs loitering around the bar, especially when they heckle him to go to bed.
So, John Wesley Pringle loudly shuffles upstairs, gets his gunbelt and very quietly removes his boots...
EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL
The four in the barroom listened, grinning. When they heard Pringle's door slam shut, Applegate nodded and Creagan went out on the street. Behind him, at a table near the pool-room door, the law planned ways and means in a slinking undertone. "You keep in the background, Joe. Let us do the talking. Foy just naturally despises you. We might not get him to stay fifteen minutes. You stay back there. Remember, don't shoot till Ben lets him get his arm loose."
"Maybe Meester Ben don't find heem."
"Oh, yes, he will. Ditch meeting to-night. Ought to be out about now. Setting the time to use the water and assessing fatiga work. Every last man with a water right will be there, sure, and Foy's got a dozen. Max, you are to be a witness, remember, and you mustn't be mixed up in it. Got your story straight?"
"Foy he comes in and makes a war-talk about Dick Marr," recited Max. "After we powwow awhile you see his gun. You tell him he's under arrest for carryin' concealed weapons. You and Ben grabbed his arm; he jerked loose and went for his gun. Then Joe shot him."
"That's it. We'll all stick to that. S-st! Here they come!"
There are men whose faces stand out in a crowd, men you turn to look after on the street. Such – quite apart from his sprightly past – was Christopher Foy, who now entered with Creagan. He was about thirty, above middle height, every mold and line of him slender and fine and strong. His face was resolute, vivacious, intelligent; his eyes were large and brown, pleasant and fearless. A wide black hat, pushed back now, showed a broad forehead white against crisp coal-black hair and the pleasant tan of neck and cheek. But it was not his dark, forceful face alone that lent him such distinction. Rather it was the perfect poise and balance of the man, the ease and unconscious grace of every swift and sure motion. He wore a working garb now, blue overalls and a blue rowdy. But he wore them with an air that made him well dressed.
Foy paused for a second; Applegate rose.
"Well, Chris!" he laughed. "There has been a time when you might not have fancied this particular bunch, hey? All over now, please the pigs. Come in and give it a name. Beer for mine."
"I'll smoke," said Foy.
"Me too," said Espalin.
He lit a cigar and returned to his chair. Ben Creagan passed behind the bar and handed over a sixshooter and a cartridge belt.
"Here, Chris, here's the gun I borrowed of you when I broke mine. Much obliged."
Foy twirled the cylinder to make sure the hammer was on an empty chamber and buckled the belt under his rowdy.
"My hardware is mostly plows and scrappers and irrigating hoes nowadays," he remarked. "Good thing too."
"All the same, Foy, I'd keep a gun with me if I were you. Dick Marr is drinking again – and when he soaks it up he gets discontented over old times, you know." Applegate lowered his voice, with a significant glance at Espalin. "He threatened your life today. I thought you ought to know it."
Foy considered his cigar.
"That's awkward," he replied briefly.
"Chris," said Ben, "this isn't the first time. Dick's heart is bad to you. I'm sorry. He was my friend and you were not. But you're not looking for any trouble now. Dick is. And I'm afraid he'll keep on till he gets it. Me and the sheriff managed to get him off to bed, but he says he's going to shoot you on sight – and I believe he means it. You ought to have him bound over to keep the peace."
Foy smiled and shook his head.
"I can't do that – and it would only make him madder than ever. But I'll get out of his way and keep out of his way. I'll go up to the Jornado tonight and stay with the Bar Cross boys awhile. He won't come up there."
"You'll enjoy having people tellin' how you run away to keep from meeting Dick Marr?" said Applegate incredulously.
"Why shouldn't they say it? It will be exactly true," responded Foy quietly, "and you're authorized to say so. I'm learning some sense now; I'm getting to own quite a mess of property; I'm going to be married soon; and I don't want to fight anyone. Besides, quite apart from my own interests, other men will be drawn into it if I shoot it out with Marr. No knowing where it will stop. No, sir; I'll go punch cows till Marr quiets down. Maybe it's just the whisky talking. Dick isn't such a bad fellow when he's not fighting booze. Or maybe he'll go away. He hasn't much to keep him here."
"Say, I could get a job offered to him out in San Simon," said Applegate, brightening.
His eye rested on the clock over the long mirror. He stepped over to the show case, clipped the end from a cigar and obtained a light from a shapely bronze lady with a torch. When he came back he fell in on Foy's left; at Foy's right Creagan leaned his elbows on the bar.
"Well, I'm obliged to you, boys," said Foy. "This one's on me. Come on, Joe – have a hoot."
"Thanks, no," said Espalin. "I not dreenkin' none thees times. Eef I dreenk some I get full, and loose my job maybe."
"Vichy," said Foy. "Take something yourself, Max."
As Mr. Max poured the drinks an odd experience befell Mr. Jose Espalin. His tilted chair leaned against the casing of the billiard-room door. As Max filled the first glass Espalin became suddenly aware of something round and hard and cold pressed against his right temple. Mr. Espalin felt some curiosity, but he sat perfectly still. The object shifted a few inches; Mr. Espalin perceived from the tail of his eye the large, unfeeling muzzle of a sixshooter; beyond it, a glimpse of the forgotten elderly stranger, Mr. Pringle.
Only Mr. Pringle's fighting face appeared, and that but for a moment; he laid a finger to lip and crouched, hidden by the partition and by Espalin's body. Mr. Espalin gathered that Pringle desired no outcry and shunned observation; he sat motionless accordingly; he felt a hand at his belt, which removed his gun.
"Happy days!" said Foy, and raised his glass to his lips.
Creagan seized the uplifted wrist with both hands, Applegate pounced on the other arm. Pringle leaped through the doorway. But something happened swifter than Pringle's swift rush. Foy's knee shot up to Applegate's stomach. Applegate fell, sprawling. Foy hurled himself on Creagan and bore him crashing to the floor. Foy whirled over; he rose on one hand and knee, gun drawn, visibly annoyed; also considerably astonished at the unexpected advent of Pringle. Applegate lay groaning on the floor. Pringle kicked his gun from the holster and set foot upon it; one of his own guns covered the bartender and the other kept watch on Espalin.
"Who're you?" challenged Foy.
"Friend with the countersign. Don't shoot! Don't shoot me, anyhow."
Foy rose from hand and knee to knee and foot. This rescuer, so opportunely arrived from nowhere, seemed to be an ally. But to avoid mistakes, Foy's gun followed Pringle's motions, at the same time willing and able to blow out Creagan's brains if advisable. He also acquired Creagan's gun quite subconsciously.
"Let me introduce myself," said Pringle. "I'm Jack-in-a-Pinch, Little Friend of the Under Dog, see Who's This? page two-thirteen. My German friend, come out from behind that bar – hands up! – step lively! My Mexican friend, join Mr. Max. Move, you poisonous little spider – jump! That's better! Gentlemen, be seated. Right there, smack, slapdab on the floor. Sit down and think. Say! I'm serious. Am I going to have to kill some few of you just because you don't know who I am? I'll count three! One! two! That's it. Very good. Hold that! Register anticipation!" said Pringle with emotion.
"I'll get square with you!" gurgled Applegate, as fiercely as his breathless condition would permit.
"George – may I call you George? I don't know your name. You may get square with me, George, but you'll never be square with anyone. You are an isosohedronal catawampus, George!"
George made a motion to rise, but reconsidered it as he noted the tension of Pringle's trigger finger.
"Don't be an old fuss-budget, George," said Pringle reprovingly. "You won't need to arrest me, for I'm hitting the trail in fifteen minutes. But if I wasn't going – and if you had your gun – you couldn't arrest one side of me. You couldn't arrest one of my old boots! Listen, George! You heard this Chris-gentleman give his reasons for wanting peace? Yes? Well, I hate peace! I loathe, detest, abhor, and abominate peace! I'm growing younger every year, I don't own any property here, I'm not going to be married, I ain't feeling pretty well anyhow, and if you don't think I'll shoot, just try to get up. Just look as if you thought you wanted to wish to try to make an effort to get up."
Obviously, you need to be a genius at adaptation. Gene Rhodes was a brilliant novelist, with spendid dialogue and roaring good surprises in a deceivingly compact 64-page tale of Old West courage and heroism. You'll need stunts and wranglers. The cinematographer has night-for-night scenes and difficult Steadicam set-ups.
Your best bet for funding is German TV co-production.
Suggested Cast
Eric Braeden
as John Wesley Pringle
Ryan Reynolds
as Chris Foy
Scarlett Johansson
as Stella Vorhis
Daniel Baldwin
as Bell Applegate
Eric Braeden
as John Wesley Pringle
Ryan Reynolds
as Chris Foy
Scarlett Johansson
as Stella Vorhis
Daniel Baldwin
as Bell Applegate
Amazon.com link
Author Ayn Rand
Locale somewhere in the future
Super16 budget $3 million
The story of Anthem is told entirely in the first person, an ideal (almost uniquely ideal) piece of literature to render first-to-last frame in 'subjective camera' first person POV, with only brief glimpses of the main character or none at all except for the final climax of discovery.
Subjective camera has been used by Hitchcock, Kubrick and other fimmakers as a device of suspense, to keep a character hidden while showing us what he sees or does. Robert Montgomery (Lady in The Lake, 1947) attempted the only full-blown continuity of subjective camera, and it flopped because Montgomery shot the picture with a huge 35mm Mitchell on his shoulder. You can do much, much better with an Aaton Super16 and fast Cooke primes.
EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL
We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must also write, for – may the Council have mercy upon us! – we wish to speak for once to no ears but our own.
Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall.
Possible fly in the ointment: Rand's agents Curtis Brown claim that Anthem is in the public domain in the USA, but not anywhere else. See this exchange of correspondence between Curtis Brown and Project Gutenberg. Nothing to stop you from making and releasing Anthem in the USA, where most of the money, Rand devotees, festivals and critics are, and asserting copyright on your adaptation.
Suggested Cast
Taylor Momson
as The Golden One
Taylor Momson
as The Golden One
GeoCities archive link
Author Wolf DeVoon
Locale Costa Rica
DV > DVD budget $300,000
Legendary anarcho-capitalist Wolf DeVoon left us a tantalizing screenplay that sets up a spy thriller/murder investigation, ideal for low budget digital video on the beach in Costa Rica. But like Raymond Chandler's final unfinished novel Poodle Springs, another screenwriter will have to conceive and write the third act of Pelada Red. If you're up to the task, the script is yours, because DeVoon was philosophically opposed to copyrights. The biggest challenge in low-budget production will be casting the hero, his sidekick, and an equally brilliant bad guy.
Need tips on directing? read DeVoon's First Feature
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