Don’t worry: as Yellowstone comes to a close, a thundering herd of new Westerns is taking its place
Yellowstone will be mercifully slaughtered in Season 5. Because Kevin Costner has a prior commitment to a big-screen feature, PRIDE Dances with Wolves II.
No problem. Jews from the plains of Brooklyn, Catholics from the mountains of Boston, and Buddhists from the wagon trains circled in Scarsdale are turning out authentic Western scripts to fill the void.
I can’t keep track of the new shows. I don’t want to. I think one series is called 1883. The other night at 3AM, I heard Cindy Crawford push a promo for a new series—“Billy the Kid, illegitimate son of Jesse James and Agatha, a bar maid...” I think I heard that. I’m checking on it now.
The main thing is all the characters on all the series have good teeth. Traveling bands of dentists are doing root canals, caps, and implants in their stagecoaches. The Indians pay with Buffalo jerky.
Aside from white men are evil and Indians are pure of heart, I believe every one of these shows will center on revenge. That’s what I’m hearing. Because Hollywood can still sell it. (Taken and Liam Neeson has been done how many times now?)
Kidnap, murder, revenge. Pour, stir, shake, spill, shatter, crush.
I’m on contract with National General Federated to produce a pilot for a series. I’m going at it with a twist.
In a Western town, the mayor, the sheriff, and the owner of the only saloon are pricking the residents with outrageous treatment of wanton murderers. These killers walk in and out of jail. No bail.
Then when the men of the town finally can’t take it anymore and revolt, 500 deputies bust them for insurrection and incitement.
The leader, who’s set to run for mayor, gets 20 years. He says he’s going campaign from jail.
Just so happens the nephew of the president of the United States is in town surveying land for a new railroad. He figures out what’s going on and decides HE’S going to run for mayor.
The series is really about the campaign and the election.
Near the end of the pilot, a traveling “doctor from Washington DC” arrives on the scene peddling bottles of patent medicine. People buy the concoction and start dropping like flies. The “doctor” says the deaths are coincidences.
I’m still looking for the revenge angle. It’ll come to me.
Right now, I’m working on the madam of the whorehouse in the hotel. She’s beautifully coiffed and wants to quit the profession and marry her old friend, a widowed sheep farmer.
In another time and place, he was a freelance assassin taking on assignments from bankers. He retired, bought a dog, and the farm. He pledged he would never kill again.
I’ve got him on slow boil. I figure by episode 5, when the sheriff’s men kill his dog, he’ll go to his buried collection of pump action shotguns and…that’ll be…the first thread of revenge. See? Easy.
They murder your dog, you can justifiably pile up at least 20 killings.
Hey, I’m all for it.