If proof was needed that the Western is back big time in Hollywood, one would only have to have been near the Four Corners area of the Southwest this summer when director Simon Wincer said his production of "Lightning Jack" was "rubbing shoulders" with "Wyatt Earp," two "Geronimos" (one a Columbia feature, the other a TNT movie) while the cast and crew of "City Slickers II," a Western of sorts, rode in close behind.
Just this month, as "Wyatt Earp," one of two current movies about the legendary lawman, wrapped outside another location near Santa Fe, N.M., cameras started to roll a few miles away on "The Quick and the Dead" starring Sharon Stone (fully clothed) and Gene Hackman (his third Western in two years).One more indication: Because the makers of "Return to Lonesome Dove" couldn't rope enough saddles or holsters from Hollywood's prop houses with so many other horse operas shooting at the same time, the miniseries propmaster had to buy dozens of new ones and rough them up with sandpaper and blowtorches to make them look distressed.
"Tombstone" director George Cosmatos, who is half-Greek/half-Italian and grew up in Italy with an image of America as a nation awash in Coca-Cola and cowboys, says the appeal for him was to film a story of the Old West when "women were women, men were men and love was love."
Whatever the cachet of spending long dusty days ropin' actors and fussin' with the hassles of moviemaking out in the middle of nowhere U.S.A., the proof of audiences' thirst for Old West adventure will be how many of them are hits when they come 'round to the local theater. - JANE GALBRAITH
- It hits you like a slap in the face: Momma is fat. Momma is so fat that she rarely leaves the couch in her living room, so fat that her son and his friend secretly shore up the floorboards in the living room, so fat that people stare at her on the street when she finally decides to leave her Iowa farmhouse to do some police business in town.
When Iowa-born Peter Hedges sold the screenplay of his book "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" to Paramount Pictures, he brought a videotape of a January 1992 "Sally Jessy Raphael" show with him when he met with director Lasse Hallstrom. Darlene Cates, a 500-pound woman from Texas who had not left her house for five years, was a guest, and Hedges wanted to make sure Hallstrom understood exactly how big the character of Momma needed to be.
Cates plays the horrifically overweight matriarch of the family in "Grape." She presides over a brood that includes Johnny Depp as the title character, Leonardo DiCaprio as his retarded younger bro-ther, and two sisters. But it's Cates, in all her undeniable bulk, that the audience cannot take its eyes off.
"There was this immediate draw to her," said Hallstrom, who previously directed "My Life as a Dog" and "Once Around." "There was nothing stereotyped in the real Darlene, because she was so sweet, she had such a wonderful self-irony and such a wonderful sense of humor - and you could tell from that brief interview on `Sally Jessy Raphael.' She was this wonderful personality in this disguise of her own body."
"It was in June (1992)," Cates says, talking from her home in Forney, Texas, remembering when Hollywood came calling. "I couldn't believe it when the phone rang and it was Gail Levin and she said, `I'm a casting director and would you like to do a movie?'
"I didn't say anything for a long time - so long, as a matter of fact, that she began to think I wasn't interested at all, which I set her straight real quick," she said in her light Texas drawl.
For Cates, 45, the answer to the question for the ages - "Do you want to be in pictures?" - was only another step on the road back from severe depression. Just three years before, her weight problems (she currently weighs about 500 pounds, she says) had her on the verge of suicide.
"I mean, obviously I never intended - just like I said in the movie - I never intended to be this size," Cates said, an edge of sadness in her voice.
Cates married her husband, Bob, a career Marine, at 15 and had her first child, daughter Shari, at 18. Between her three children and her husband's frequent absences overseas, Cates continued to gain weight. "It can sneak up on you so stealthily."
But it was an infection related to a Dalkon shield, and subsequent mandatory bed rest for two years, that led to her true weight crisis. When she finally recovered in 1985, she found that she could no longer stand under her own weight.
"I became very depressed," she said. "I wouldn't leave the house except to go to the doctor. I would sit there with a handful of pills and not have the courage to take them and not have the courage to live either."
Cates did not leave her house for five years. Finally, her doctor prescribed Prozac, she earned her high school diploma and joined TOPS (Take Pounds Off Sensibly).
The television show found Cates through the national office of TOPS only a few days before they needed her on the show. "Every fiber of my being was saying `no,' " Cates said about being asked to go on the show. "But something a little bit deeper said, `OK, you've asked for help, maybe this is it.' "
Cates ultimately went on the show twice, and Hedges was given a tape by an acquaintance.
Hallstrom fell in love with Cates immediately and though several other people were auditioned, he said, "Darlene really had no competition there."
"The way I knew I got the part," Cates said, "was that (Hallstrom) called me and said, `Hi, Darlene, this is your director, Lasse.' " - MARISA LEONARDI
- The town is atwitter that this season's hourlong hit drama "NYPD Blue" on ABC has among its rotating cast of characters one by the name of Det. Greg Medavoy, played by actor Gordon Clapp.