And on the soundtrack? Something like the opening theme to “Big Valley” or “Bonanza.” It’s expansive, generic western music rather than, you know, chase music. One of the stock characters, the grumpy one, cries with alarm, “He’s going to get us all killed!,” at which point we get a distant shot of the chase: beautiful sandstone buttes dominating the background, while in the foreground, careering down a dusty path, pursued, comes the stagecoach. The driver tries to outrun them while his second, the shotgun messenger, exchanges gunfire with the bad guys. What about composer John Barry? There’s an early scene where recent law-school grad John Reid (Spilsbury) is on a stagecoach to Del Rio, Texas, with a few other stock characters, and the coach gets attacked by bandits. Spilsbury didn’t write the horrible lines he says-credit four screenwriters, all of whom kept working-and he didn’t even say the horrible lines he says, since his voice was dubbed, replaced, with the flat line-readings of James Keach, Stacy’s brother, who would not only keep working in the industry but eventually marry actress Jane Seymour, she of the crooked, sexy smile, which is the type of fringe benefit only Hollywood can offer. Spilsbury didn’t photograph it, either, in the washed-out, grainy fashion of 1970s movies: László Kovács did that, and by the time of his death in 2007 he was a legendary, beloved cinematographer.
But he didn’t direct “The Legend of the Lone Ranger”: William Fraker, who would go on to direct many TV movies and TV series, did. But now that I’ve actually seen the movie, 31 years later, I wonder if everyone wasn’t a bit hard on Mr.
The above line, written by my father, is one of the greatest cuts I’ve ever read. from Bob Lundegaard’s review of “The Legend of the Lone Ranger,” Mpls. “According to the press kit, ‘Klinton Spilsbury comes to the role with no acting experience whatsoever.’ And he leaves in the same pristine fashion.” The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020)
0 kommentar(er)
