Garner Rides Tall In Mcmurtry Miniseries
It took Larry McMurtry close to 20 years to see “Lonesome Dove” onscreen. It took James Garner another six years to play one of the characters.
McMurtry originally tackled the adventures of aging Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae in 1971, as a screenplay for a theatrical film to star John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda. Mainly because of Wayne’s resistance, the movie didn’t get made. McMurtry finally bought his own screenplay back from the studio, Warner Bros., and turned it into his acclaimed 1985 novel. Which in 1989 became a great miniseries.
The TV production starred Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow and Robert Duvall as Gus. But before that cast was assembled, Garner was in line to play Gus.
“I was really looking forward to it,” Garner said recently. “I was in Hawaii reading the scripts when my doctor called and said, ‘I don’t want you riding a horse.’ ” Garner, banged up from years of stunts on “The Rockford Files” series and other projects, agreed.
“I really regretted missing out on that,” Garner said, “but I have to say, Duvall probably did a better job.”
Luckily for Garner, the prolific McMurtry wrote a sequel to “Lonesome Dove,” which has inspired the five-hour “Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo,” that will air tonight and Tuesday on CBS. Though Gus is dead, Garner has found a place playing Woodrow. Asked if the new role is as appealing as the old one, Garner said, “I think so.
“Everybody wants to lump (the two miniseries) together, and I don’t think they should be lumped together. I think they should stand on their own as individual things… . It’s a different story, and the writing in this was marvelous. So, you know, I’m just as happy to do Call as I was McCrae.”
The new production - adapted from the novel by McMurtry and his sometime-collaborator Diana Ossana - is a much grimmer piece than the original miniseries, which tempered its violence and death with the great adventure of a cattle drive.
The events in “Streets of Laredo” are mostly about killing. Call is hired to hunt a train robber and killer named Joey Garza (Alexis Cruz). He recruits old sidekick Pea Eye Parker (Sam Shepard) but Pea’s wife, Lorena (Sissy Spacek), is none too happy about that.
The journey also involves a railroad man (Charles Martin Smith), Garza’s mother (Sonia Braga), a great tracker (Wes Studi) and figures from the legendary West, among them Judge Roy Bean (Ned Beatty) and John Wesley Hardin (Randy Quaid). And the array of finely drawn characters doesn’t end there - look for a wonderful performance from George Carlin as an old drunk named Billy Williams.
Directed by Joseph Sargent, “Streets of Laredo” is full of lovely moments. But it also is very violent - CBS has put a viewer advisory on the production - and its parade of death and mayhem may be tough for some viewers to take.
As for what the attraction was in the script, Garner describes Call in a way that sounds like Garner himself: “He’s his own man. He’s totally his own man, and he has a code. He lives by it. And he’ll die by it.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ‘LAREDO’ “Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo” airs tonight at 8 and Tuesday at 9 p.m. on KREM-Channel 2.