UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, January 13, 1997
11A
Selleck stars in classic Western
By Dennis Anderson The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — For the legions of fans who still mourn the passing of John Wayne and pine for the vistas of John Ford's classic Westerns, the question is this: "Why don't they make 'em like they used to?"
Shot under a vast blue sky in a rugged New Mexico canyon, *Last Stand*, which premieres at 7 p.m. Sunday and is rated TV-PG, looks like a Western from the time when The Duke was getting the drop on bad guys in sagas like *The Searchers* and Rio Bravo.
The pair combined talents with a formidable cast and crew to create Last Stand at Saber River, a small-screen treat that offers big-screen pleasures for Ted Turner's TNT network.
With the rugged and straight-shooting Selleck, the story has Leonard's essential ingredients for classic material — a hero and a landscape.
Hollywood could learn a thing or two about one of the screen's most beloved genres from the likes of Tom Selleck and tough-guy author Elmore Leonard.
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These days, for every big-screen Western hit like Tombstone, there's a mega-budget miss like Wyatt Earp. The uneven track record makes studios jittery about rustling up $30 million or more for the genre.
"i wanted it to be a definitive Western," said Selleck, who teamed with Michael Brandman as executive producer. "In the world of feature films, we had no money at all, but we had the cast."
But Leonard knows the territory.
He wrote the classic Westerns *Hombre* and *Valdez* is *Coming* before becoming a bestselling crime writer.
Scripted and produced from a Leonard paperback published in 1958, Last Stand at Saber River has wild horses, a runaway wagon, two Carradine brothers wearing black hats and a frontier wife played by Suzy Amis who makes Ma Joad look like a wimp.
Yup, as in David and Keith Carradine from The Long Riders. They even got Harry Carey Jr., who saddled up with Wayne and Ford four decades ago in The Searchers.
Indeed, Last Stand was delivered for a pittance by studio standards. About $5 million or so, guessed Leonard, who's gotten his own digs in at the Hollywood system in Get Shorty, his comic sendup of larceny in Tinseltown.
Leonard puzzles over why Westerns need to be as expensive as action movies laden with car crashes and spaceborne special effects.
For Selleck, making large-scale entertainment on a lean budget became a matter of professional pride.
"I think all that money gets in the way," he said. "As soon as the star demands so many millions, everybody else gets in line."
Because of the production's scale and remote locale, Selleck, Amis and the Carradine brothers did most of the riding and stunts in *Last Stand* and had "some of the great days of our lives," Selleck mused.
"All actors want to make Western," he said. "They grew up on
them, and they don't make enough of them."
"I think they're good for kids," he added, "especially when they're in the classic mode. They should involve a moral dilemma."
Selleck plays Cable, a Civil War veteran from the losing side who's trying to get his life and family back together in the Old West. He's a man with a secret that's poisoning his marriage as the war is ending.
Selleck, who won an Emmy as the laid-back shamus of Magnum, P.I., is no stranger to the big Western. In Montana, antique rifle enthusiasts hold an annual black powder target competition named after the sharp-shooter he played in Quigley Down Under.
Now, in Lost Stand at Saber River,
Selleck and Leonard blend their
skills like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
The Carradines play ranchers who want to run Cable off the land he's staked out with his wife, Martha, the screen's most ornery pioneer wife. Heck, she's even a gunsmith and at one point, a deadlier shot than Selleck.
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