Ride Lonesome, the fifth film in the "Ranown cycle," is both the best and most representative of the whole series, which has been called "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking." Director Bud Boetticher captures the alienation and loneliness of an America faced with the Cold War and the daily threat of nuclear annihilation. Shot in seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism.
Veteran screenwriter Kirk Ellis brilliantly unpacks the themes, narrative, visual language, and editing in this seminal film. In Ride Lonesome Ellis not only shows how this one film embodies a turning point for the Western, but he also explores the unique vision and contributions of director Boetticher and his writing partner Burt Kennedy.
Veteran screenwriter Kirk Ellis brilliantly unpacks the themes, narrative, visual language, and editing in this seminal film. In Ride Lonesome Ellis not only shows how this one film embodies a turning point for the Western, but he also explores the unique vision and contributions of director Boetticher and his writing partner Burt Kennedy.
Ride Lonesome offers fresh insight into the careers of screenwriter/director Burt Kennedy and legendary film auteur Budd Boetticher, as well as a blow-by-blow account of the making of Ride Lonesome, one of the great American films. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Western movies.'--W. K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film
Kirk Ellis provides an accessible and erudite account of how, in a perfectly aligned set of creative associations, the filmmakers came to produce Ride Lonesome, one of the truly great Westerns. For anyone interested in Budd Boetticher or the genre more generally, this is an essential study.'--Peter Stanfield, coeditor of 'Un-American' Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era
Kirk Ellis is a two-time Emmy Award and two-time Humanitas Prize-winning writer/producer who wrote and produced the acclaimed event series John Adams. Among his many other credits are the Emmy-nominated Into the West and the Emmy Award-winning Anne Frank: The Whole Story. Formerly cogovernor of the writers’ branch of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and past president of the Western Writers of America, Ellis splits his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Palm Springs, California.
Introduction. Ben Stride, Matt Brennan, Ben Brigade, and Jeff Cody
Chapter One. "A Man Can't Be Too Careful in This Country"
Chapter Two. "A Man Can Do That"
Chapter Three. "Ain't Right for a Man to Be Alone"
Chapter Four. "A Man Should Have Something to Belong To"
Chapter Five. "Fancy Running into You in All This Empty"
Chapter Six. "She Ain't Ugly"
Chapter Seven. "I Almost Forgot"
Chapter Eight. "That Figures"
Chapter Nine. "At Least It's Somethin' to Do"
Epilogue. A Movie for Mister Boetticher
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Chapter One. "A Man Can't Be Too Careful in This Country"
Chapter Two. "A Man Can Do That"
Chapter Three. "Ain't Right for a Man to Be Alone"
Chapter Four. "A Man Should Have Something to Belong To"
Chapter Five. "Fancy Running into You in All This Empty"
Chapter Six. "She Ain't Ugly"
Chapter Seven. "I Almost Forgot"
Chapter Eight. "That Figures"
Chapter Nine. "At Least It's Somethin' to Do"
Epilogue. A Movie for Mister Boetticher
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
