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of Crossfire Trail, Lonesome Dove and Conagher fame.

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Interview with
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Premiere:
Sunday, January 21
8 p.m.

Movie Factoid:
You Know My Name, staring Sam Elliott, harvested a 6.4 Nielsen rating in cable homes, making it the third most-watched original movie in TNT's historybehind two other Westerns:
The #1 rated western Last Stand at Saber River with Tom Selleck, and Purgatory with Sam Shepard.

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This is Part 2 of a two-part interview with Tom Selleck.Click here to read Part One.

Obviously finding the correct props for this film were important to Selleck. He is also very proud of the ranch work as depicted in Crossfire Trail, from rehabilitating the ranch to breaking horses, from gathering up strays to branding. He says in terms of authenticity, they went pretty deep. Selleck also mentions that Elsa Zamparelli (Last of the Mohicans, Dances With Wolves) handled the costuming and "did it extremely well."

But the six-foot-four leading man encountered two particular problems he usually faces when preparing for a western: finding the right horse and the right hat.

Hats are hard to figure out," says Selleck. "You know, you can get into periods, but every time you look at old pictures, you realize youre looking at a cowboy who dressed up. He took a picture of who he wanted to be, but thats not what he wore everyday. So hats more than anything, I think, you can take a certain amount of license with.

To me a western starts with a hat, in terms of when youre trying to figure out who the character is. And I had always heard John Wayne had said when youre figuring out a hat for your character, you must try it on in a full length mirror. Otherwise you get a hat thats probably either too small or isnt right or isnt in proportion.

The hat problem was quickly solved. As for finding the right horse, well, that became a little more complicated.

The other thing I did, which was really a lot of workand most producers wouldnt have allowed me to do this, but I know him intimately, because it was me Selleck laughs. Cowboys didnt ride the same horse all the time. And I desperately wanted to communicate what cowboys do, which means they had to have a string of horses.

To convey that on screen, Selleck rode four horses of distinct colors to ensure the audience could easily tell them apart. But working with a string of horses presented certain challenges when it came to filming.

If youre doing a movie, its very hard to run a horse into a mark and stop and talk for five minutes. You really have to know how to ride, and most of the people in this movie did, but it just complicates it, and complicates the filming and the film editing if youre on a different horse all the time. You know, sometimes in editing they transpose the scenes. If youre suddenly on the wrong horse, though, you cant do that.

We slip into a side discussion of mistakes discovered in scenes of other films. Selleck says they tried very hard to avoid errors when making this movie. He knows of only one exception that escaped their critical eye.

Well, I wont tell you where, but Selleck fesses up, there is one snippet of a scene where Im on the wrong color horse.

Selleck adds he was very pleased with filming Crossfire Trail in Canada, for several reasons.

The people up there are great. We were able to film what Id call a green western. I love doing hot, dusty westerns. And you see a lot of them because you get better weather in hot, dusty places. But this movie takes place in Wyoming, and when you see pine trees and snow-capped mountains... thats as much a part of the West as anything else. So I was thrilled to do a green western.

Selleck mentions that the cast and crew had been hoping for an Indian summer, and they got it, for the most part. Although, he recalls one particular evening when it looked like their luck had run out.

But the weather was a big challenge. Weather can cost you a lot of money. We had to say a little prayer one Friday night that by Monday the snow will have melted because we had nothing left to shoot, and because wed already shot the beginning of that particular scene in a town without snow.

However, they used the weather to their advantage whenever they could, and sometimes it worked out beautifully.

Brad Johnsons arrival in the town was shot in a snow flurry and that just added to the scene.

Is it possible Selleck and Simon Wincer will pair up again to do another western in the future?

Hes a great director, Selleck says of Wincer. You know, most people rank Lonesome Dove up there with some John Ford movies. Simon says he gets more attention from Quigley Down Under than almost anything else hes ever done, as do I. So, yeah, Id call him in a second and beg him to do another western!

Well, after seeing the beautiful job they've done with this movie, let's hope neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor snow will ever stop these guys from delivering to us many more great westerns!

...Or, to borrow a phrase from the film, "It's a gift."

Copyright ©2001 Taylor Sophia Fogarty.
American Western Magazine. All Rights Reserved.