Tombstone Rashomon

I’ve been waiting for the DVD release of Tombstone Rashomon ever since I first heard about the movie, which was during its production. The movie stars my friend Eric Schumacher as Doc Holliday. It’s directed by Alex Cox, who directed Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, and tells the story of the infamous gunfight outside Tombstone’s OK Corral from the perspective of several of the participants in a style similar to Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon.

The gunfight at OK Corral is a tale worthy of a Rashomon-like treatment. It’s a difficult historical moment to understand because the people involved were tangled in so many ways. It wasn’t as simple as the Clantons vs. the Earps as many filmed versions would have you believe. Both sides had dealings that seem both shady and noble, and self-interests muddied up the lines of who was on what side at various points leading up to the affair. I researched the Earps and the Clantons quite a bit for my novels Lightning Wolves and Owl Riders. When I wrote Lightning Wolves and decided the Clantons needed to be part of it, I knew I was writing a period of history before the arrival of the Earps and Doc Holliday. So, my research focused on the family and their allies in the days before Tombstone’s founding. The events set up in that novel prevented Tombstone’s founding, which meant the two factions never came together and the gunfight never happened, but that didn’t prevent Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday from seeing business opportunities in Arizona Territory in Owl Riders. Eric’s research into Doc’s character for Tombstone Rashomon helped inform my portrayal of Doc.

The movie imagines that time travelers arrive in Tombstone the day after the gunfight. They interview Doc Holliday and his girlfriend, Kate Elder, along with Wyatt Earp, Sheriff John Behan, Ike Clanton, and a saloon owner named Hafford. I especially enjoyed Christine Doidge’s performance as Kate. In real life Kate was a Hungarian immigrant and Doidge played up that aspect. In Hungarian, there are not separate words for “he” and “she” and Kate gets flustered and often just uses “she” for both. Kate also seems to relish how this bothers people and refers to Doc as her “wife” even though there are separate words for husband and wife in Hungarian.

Eric played Doc Holliday as an educated man who will do anything he can to succeed in life and make a buck. As in real life, Doc was wracked with tuberculosis and Eric gives a moment that made me more sympathetic to his plight than Val Kilmer’s understated take in the movie Tombstone. The suggestion is made that Doc became a drinking man to dull the pain of the terminal disease. Of course, the movie is all about unreliable narrators.

At times, the film becomes almost impressionistic, mixing modern elements into the historical. There’s always a danger of this confusing an audience, but it can also be interesting to let it be a way of seeing older events through the lens of more familiar, contemporary icons. The film also literally takes you back in time by starting at modern Boot Hill just outside Tombstone, Arizona with tourists taking selfies in front of the Clantons’ tombstones and then dissolving back into the past.

In addition to Eric, I was excited to see Rogelio Camarillo in the film as Billy Claiborne. He was the sound man when we filmed the book trailer for my novel The Astronomer’s Crypt. I was also delighted to see Bradford Trojan as Tom McLaury. I had a bit part in the movie Revenge of Zoe, which starred Bradford and Eric Schumacher. I’m still looking forward to that movie’s DVD release!

If you’re fascinated by the history surrounding the gunfight at OK Corral or would just like to see a non-traditional take on a western film, I recommend ordering a copy of the Tombstone Rashomon DVD. While you’re waiting for it to arrive, check out the links to my books below. On the page for The Astronomer’s Crypt, you’ll find the trailer that Eric and Rogelio helped me make.

• Lightning Wolves
• Owl Riders
• The Astronomer’s Crypt

March Madness

No, this isn’t a post about basketball. It’s more a look back at the first two weeks of the month, which have felt more than a little crazy and hectic. I spent the first weekend of the month at Wild Wild West Con at Old Tucson Studios, which was, as always, a great experience. Panels went well and we sold a lot of books. I then went home for a day, unpacked from the convention, and repacked for the Tucson Festival of Books and a shift at Kitt Peak. I spent the next three days at Kitt Peak, then went down to the Tucson Festival of Books where I had more awesome panels, albeit fewer book sales, returned to Kitt Peak for a night and a half of work, then finally returned home.

Since returning home, I’ve been proofreading some projects that I’ll talk about in more detail in the coming weeks, restocking books for El Paso Comic Con, and doing a little work around the house. One nice thing about how my schedule has worked out this month is that I’m off work for the week of my daughter’s spring break. So, we’ll be taking a short trip to spend a little time together, see some sights, and visit friends around New Mexico.

Juggling all these events, projects, and even my two careers in the last two weeks has certainly brought to mind the aphorism “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” I don’t know how lamb-like the end of the month will be, but I hope it’ll be a little quieter than the beginning. Of course, all these projects also make me feel “mad as a March hare” at times.

In keeping with the season, I watched Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon this week. In the movie, Toshiro Mifune turns in a delightfully manic performance which reminded me more than a little of his work in Seven Samurai. It was also a delight to see Takashi Shimura, who would also go on to play in both Seven Samurai and Godzilla. My reason for watching the film is that my friend Eric Schumacher was recently in a film called Tombstone Rashomon which tells the story of the gunfight of O.K. Corral from the eyes of several witnesses, much like the original Rashomon. Eric played Doc Holliday. A picture of him in the role on my wall has been serving as an inspiration for the Doc Holliday scenes in my forthcoming novel Owl Riders.

Although Owl Riders isn’t yet available, the second edition of my novel The Solar Sea is set to release on the first day of spring, March 21. You can get a sneak peak and preorder the ebook today at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BHFS2WV/

7 Samurai 7

Last week, I had the pleasure of announcing the release of my novel Lightning Wolves. One of the characters in the novel is a former samurai named Masuda Hoshi. I didn’t just introduce this character because I thought the idea of a samurai in the wild west seemed cool. He provides a bridge to the next novel in the series, The Brazen Shark, which is set in disputed territory between Russia and Japan.

A couple months ago, I learned about an anime series that retold Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai in a steampunk setting called Samurai 7. Yeah, the titles can mess with you, especially if you try discussing both at the same time, hence the title of the post! All in all, it was a nicely done series. For those who may not be familiar with the source material, Seven Samurai tells the story of a small village plagued by bandits who steal their crops. The villages go to the city and hire samurai to protect them. The only catch is that villagers can only pay the samurai in meals. As a result the group they recruit is a mix of tired war veterans and young men, anxious to prove their worth. It’s a wonderful tale inspired by Kurosawa’s love of American Western films. I find it fitting that Seven Samurai was remade in the United States as The Magnificent Seven starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, and Eli Wallach.

Samurai 7 expanded the story of Kurosawa’s original movie considerably, providing more background about each of the characters and adding a new story arc about merchants using the bandits as puppets to rule the land. The steampunk elements were largely incidental, but added some nice visual styling to story. The animation was generally good, although there were three episodes where it looked like a less talented company did some fill-in work. I also had something of a suspension of disbelief issue in that the samurai were so easily able to defeat mecha and advanced guns with swords, but if you can let that slide, it’s fun to watch.

As to which I liked better, the anime or the 1954 film, I’m going to go with a somewhat heretical choice and say that overall I enjoyed the anime more. The reason was simply that there was more time to develop the characters. There’s no question that Seven Samurai is a masterpiece of film making, but it is limited by its, admittedly lengthy, three-hour run time and the period that produced it. Although I liked the samurai Kambei and Kyuzo better in the movie, I liked the arc they went through in the series. What’s more, Seven Samurai has almost no meaningful women characters. The only ones are the farmer’s daughter Shino, who serves as a love interest for the young samurai Katsushiro, and a grandmother who wants vengeance on the bandits for killing her son. Samurai 7 introduced Kirara, a strong-willed water priestess who recruited the samurai. Also, a farmer’s wife captured by the bandits who has no lines in the Kurosawa classic is given a real part including exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome in Samurai 7.

One element I found interesting in comparing the two versions of Seven Samurai was that many of the things that made the anime compelling seemed based on ideas introduced in The Magnificent Seven. The water ceremony of Samurai 7 evokes the fiesta where the gunmen are welcomed in The Magnificent Seven. The western adaptation also introduced the idea that one of the heroes betrayed others in his past. In Seven Samurai the bandits are essentially anonymous, but in the other two adaptations, we get to see them as individuals with problems of their own.

It’s hard to say how all this will influence my new novel, if at all. At the very least, it inspires my creativity. If you want to meet my samurai character, Masuda Hoshi, pick up a copy of Lightning Wolves. It’s on sale for 50% off all this month as Smashwords. Just use the code SSW50 at checkout. If you prefer print copies, they’re available at Amazon.com.