A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove

By John Spong, Jeff Wilson and Bill Wittliff

A photo-filled behind-the-scenes journey into the creation of the book, the miniseries, and the world of Lonesome Dove.

Widely acclaimed as the greatest Western ever made, Lonesome Dove has become a true American epic. Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel was a New York Times bestseller, with millions of copies in print, and the miniseries has won seven Emmys.

In this treasury, John Spong talks to forty of the key people involved, including author Larry McMurtry; actors Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, D. B. Sweeney, Frederic Forrest, and Chris Cooper; executive producer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff; executive producer Suzanne de Passe; and director Simon Wincer. They and a host of others tell lively stories about McMurtry’s writing of the epic novel and the process of turning it into the miniseries Lonesome Dove. Accompanying their recollections are photographs of iconic props, costumes, set designs, and shooting scripts. Rounding out the book are continuity Polaroids used during filming and photographs taken on the set by Bill Wittliff, which place you behind the scenes in the middle of the action.

Designed as a companion for A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, Wittliff’s magnificent fine art volume, A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove is a must-have for every fan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780292745803

Book preview

A Book on the Making of

LONESOME DOVE

THE SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES

This series originates from the Wittliff Collections, an archive and creative center established at Texas State University in San Marcos to celebrate the cultural arts of the region.

BILL WITTLIFF

Series Editor

A Book on the Making of

LONESOME DOVE

Interviews by John Spong

Color Plates by Jeff Wilson

Photographs by Bill Wittliff

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

INTERVIEWEES

For Julie

—JOHN SPONG

Eternal thanks to the Cast and Crew and to all the other Boys and Girls who had a hand in the Making of Lonesome Dove.

—BILL WITTLIFF

Copyright © 2012 by the University of Texas Press

Text copyright © 2012 by John Spong

All rights reserved | First edition, 2012

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:

Permissions | University of Texas Press | P.O. Box 7819 | Austin, TX 78713-7819

http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Spong, John.

A book on the making of Lonesome dove / interviews by John Spong ; color plates by Jeff Wilson ; photographs by Bill Wittliff.

— 1st ed.

p. cm. — (The Southwestern & Mexican photography series)

ISBN 978-0-292-73584-2 (cloth : alk. paper) —

1. Lonesome Dove (Television program : 1989) 2. McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. 3. Television producers and directors—Interviews. 4. Television actors and actresses—Interviews. 5. McMurtry, Larry—Interviews.

I. Wilson, Jeff. II. Wittliff, William D. III. Title.

PN1992.77.L65S77 2012

791.45'72—dc23        2011049659

ISBN 978-0-292-73948-2 (library e-book)

ISBN 9780292739482 (individual e-book)

PAGE 2 Larry McMurtry’s original script for The Streets of Laredo

PAGE 3 Opening page of Lonesome Dove with Bill Wittliff’s notations

PAGES 4–5 Hat Creek Cattle Company sign

PAGE 6 Contact sheet

PAGES 8–9 Filming

PAGE 10 Gus, Ben Rainey, and Jasper

PAGE 13 Texas Ranger badge

PAGE 14 Jake, Gus, and Call

PAGES 16–17 Call riding herd

CONTENTS

OUR EPIC

THE BOOK

THE MINISERIES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CAST

CREW

Larry McMurtry, 1987

OUR EPIC

CONTEMPLATING THE SWEEP AND SPRAWL OF LARRY MCMURTRY’S Lonesome Dove from the vantage of twenty-seven years, it’s easy to forget that the story is fairly simple. Sometime in the late nineteenth century, two graying, retired Texas Ranger captains, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, embark on a final adventure, their unlikely goal to push two thousand head of cattle north from the Rio Grande and become the first cattlemen in the Montana territory.

But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would describe Lonesome Dove so modestly. It is the great hero myth of Texas, the state’s favorite depiction of itself and the world’s favorite depiction of Texas. Since its publication, on June 13, 1985, more than 2.5 million copies have been printed in the United States; the 1989 miniseries, which is the way most fans first came to the story, is the best-selling western DVD of all time. But the better measure of Lonesome Dove’s import is anecdotal. If you know a Texan named Gus under the age of twenty, odds are he was named after McCrae. I know two such kids—and one is a girl.

To some, Lonesome Dove is a novel, the achievement that turned McMurtry—an author of moderately read books that had been made into great movies—into one of the most popular and respected writers of the twentieth century. To others, it’s Austin screenwriter Bill Wittliff’s miniseries, the finest western film ever produced. Some would describe it as an epic journey of distinctly American ambition; others consider it a universal depiction of loyalty between friends. One fan will say the story belongs to the endlessly charming Gus, that everything you need to know about living and loving is contained in his portrait. Another will argue that it’s the story of ramrod Woodrow Call, a man who abided by the code of the time, who refused to allow himself to feel and wound up alone. The wildly varied interpretations point to the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Lonesome Dove, the thing that distinguishes it from mere entertainment. It’s at once a celebration and a critique of the myth of the Texas cowboy, a reflection of McMurtry’s lifelong ambivalence about the people and the place that shaped him.

Continuity polaroids, props

Continuity polaroids, props

It’s a story that makes such an impression that you remember not only its substance but where you were when you initially took it in. I first read Lonesome Dove in 1989, through the weeks that followed my college graduation. Every time I’ve picked it up since it has taken me back in time, not to the Old West but to an inflatable pool in a front yard in Waco—and the sense of limitless possibilities that I recall aren’t Gus’s and Call’s, but my own. Then, as I watch these familiar characters go about their living and dying, I remember why I love the book: it’s the best depiction of a friendship that I’ve ever read, an 843-page expansion on a comment Dizzy Gillespie made after his friend Charlie Parker died: He was the other half of my heartbeat.

When I compiled this oral history for Texas Monthly in the spring of 2010, I talked to dozens of people involved in the creation of the book and the miniseries, as well as to critics and scholars. But I also talked to fans. There’s an archive devoted to the miniseries’ production housed in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State