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Geronimo: An American Legend

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Wikipedia article




'Geronimo: An American Legend' is a 1993 historical Western film starring Wes Studi, Jason Patric, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Matt Damon in an early role. The film, which was directed by Walter Hill, is based on a screenplay by John Milius. It is a fictionalized account of the Apache Wars and how First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood convinced Apache leader Geronimo to surrender in 1886.

Plot



The film loosely follows the events leading up to the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. The Apache Indians have reluctantly agreed to settle on a U.S. government approved reservation. Not all the Apaches are able to adapt to the life of corn farmers, and one in particular, Geronimo, is restless.

Pushed over the edge by broken promises and unnecessary actions by the government. Geronimo becomes enraged when the US army along with Al Sieber slaughter a holy-man and a number of fellow Apache. Geronimo attacks the cavalry and escapes with 30 other warriors, who humiliate the government and army by evading capture time and again. The plot centers upon Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, the U.S. cavalry officer charged with capturing the elusive Apache leader with the assistance of a scout leader, Al Sieber, and a young officer, Britton Davis.

Gatewood is torn by a grudging respect for Geronimo and his duty to his people and his country. Brigadier General George Crook, charged with overseeing the forced settlement of the Apaches on reservations, has nothing but admiration for Geronimo. Geronimo eventually surrenders to Crook but later escapes, taking half of the reservation with him (after the earlier slaughter). Crook later resigns from the army in disgrace and is replaced by General Nelson Miles. Miles sets about punishing all of the Apache until Geronimo is captured or surrenders. In response to their ties with General Crook as well as their lack of success in defeating Geronimo Gatewood and the other officers of the 6th Cavalry are removed from the field and replaced with Miles' men.

General Miles realising that in spite of his tactics he too is not any closer to capturing Geronimo, approaches Gatewood with an offer to return him to the field and use his relationship with Geronimo to find the warrior and his fellow Apache and convince them to surrender. He orders Gatewood to offer Geronimo 2 years imprisonment in Florida with the offer of fresh land in Arizona and 2 mules for every warrior who surrenders. Gatewood retorts to Miles that they both know the Government has no intention of honoring this agreement. Miles offers Gatewood 100 men to take into the field, the younger officer counters with a request for 1 Apache scout and 3 men of his choosing.

The next day Gatewood, Sieber, Davis and Apache Chato set off in hunt of Geronimo but encounter a village of slaughtered Indians. Gatewood tasks Sieber and Chato with hunting down the men responsible, who will be selling the scalps for bounty. They stop at a bar where there are Texan bounty hunters with a Commanchero which Sieber quickly determines are the men they are seeking. When the Texans forcibly take Chato hostage and threaten to kill him for his scalp, Gatewood attempts to intervene and offers them money to resolve the issue. The Texans mock Gatewood for being a southerner and a shoot-out ensues resulting in the death of all of the bounty hunters. However, Sieber is shot and mortally wounded, his last words point to his surprise at dying in the act of trying to save an Apache.

Gatewood, Davis and Chato carry on the hunt for Geronimo and finally encounter his camp. Geronimo asks Gatewood if the young officer will break his word and lie to the Apache. Gatewood in turn declines to make General Miles' offer (knowing it to be false) and instead tells Geronimo what Miles will do to the Apache nation, should Geronimo not surrender. Faced with the grave reality, Geronimo makes peace with Gatewood and surrenders along with the remaining 34 Apache to General Miles. Gatewood is adjudged to be an embarrassment to the army for succeeding where they have failed (and doing so with 4 men rather than the countless thousands of troops General Miles has expended). Rather than receiving a medal and being honored for his bravery, he is transferred to a remote garrison in North Wyoming where the army hope he will disappear into anonymity. The final ignominy befalls Chato and the other Apache scouts, who are stripped of their status within the army, disarmed and sentenced to imprisonment in Florida along with the rest of Geronimo's warriors in spite of their service. Davis having become disillusioned with the army's ill treatment of the brave Apache as well as his fellow officers, requests to speak to General Miles. Davis tells the older man what they have done brings shame on the US army, when Miles mocks him for being an idealist who prizes the word of so-called "savages" over his orders, Davis responds stating he is ashamed and resigns immediately from the army.

In the final scene, Chato approaches Geronimo and tells him he was right to fight and that he too was lied to. Geronimo goes on to counsel the remaining renegades to not fall out with one another as there are so few of them remaining. He warns them of what lies ahead. Geronimo lives on for another 22 years and the US government fails to honour their promise (as predicted by Gatewood). He is never allowed to return home.

Cast



* Wes Studi as Geronimo

* Jason Patric as 1st Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood

* Robert Duvall as Chief of Scouts Al Sieber

* Gene Hackman as Brigadier General George Crook

* Matt Damon as 2nd Lieutenant Britton Davis

* Pato Hoffmann as The Dreamer

* Rodney A. Grant as Mangas

* Kevin Tighe as Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles

* Steve Reevis as Chato

* Carlos Palomino as Sergeant Turkey

* Victor Aaron as Ulzana

* Stuart Proud Eagle Grant as Sergeant Dutchy

* Scott Wilson as Redondo

* Stephen McHattie as Schoonover

* John Finn as Captain Hentig

* Lee de Broux as City Marshal Joe Hawkins

* Rino Thunder as Old Nana

Production



Development Carolco

Walter Hill had a development deal at Carolco. They approached him wanting to make a Western that focused on an Indian and Hill was enthusiastic. He initially considering doing a movie on Crazy Horse "but for various reasons I thought it was a little too difficult."[http://www.dga.org/Craft/VisualHistory/Interviews/Walter-Hill.aspx?Filter=Full+Interview "Interview with Walter Hill Chapter 8", 'Directors Guild of America'] accessed 12 June 2014

Eventually Geronimo was selected. ""I've been reading the history of the West for my entire life", Hill says, "and I felt the Geronimo story had never really been told."

John Milius was hired to write a draft. He was working on it in 1989. Larry Gross wrote a diary on the filming of 'Geronimo'. He recalls reading Milius' script in 1988 when Hill was working on 'Johnny Handsome'.

"I like Geronimo just as he was, a human predator", said Milius.

"Geronimo was a man who saw the history of his people wiped out", added Milius. "I love the Apaches and Geronimo was the ultimate Apache. But Geronimo was more than an Apache he was the essence of a misfit rebel and he would never give up. He was a troublemaker and I understand that. Even among his own people he was a trouble maker."

Hill said the title of the film should have been 'The Geronimo War'. "The conception was you make the film from the last time he came in and broke off and was sent away", he said. "The last time he broke off the reservations. This had been a recurring pattern. I thought that would be more accurate."

"We had a really good script, but I couldn't make any headway with it", said Hill later.

Development Columbia

In 1992 the movie was transferred from Carolco to Columbia. Westerns were experiencing a revival in popularity in the wake of the success of 'Dances with Wolves', 'Last of the Mohicans' and 'Unforgiven'. ""All of these Westerns are riding the backs of those", said Hill (other Westerns which would come out around this time included 'Tombstone', 'Wyatt Earp', 'The Quick and the Dead', 'Bad Girls', 'Maverick' and 'Lightning Jack').

According to Hill, Milius' screenplay was more inclusive of Geronimo's early years and Milius was reluctant to revise it so he had it rewritten by himself and Larry Gross. Gross worked on the project from six to eight months in 1992.

"This movie certainly presents a heroic view of Geronimo", said Hill. "At the same time, it suggests that the times were complicated ... The audience doesn't go to a movie for a history lesson; it wants entertainment. At the same time, they don't want something that trashes history; so it's a delicate line."

"Movies tend to develop a life of their own", added Hill. "We had to deal with Geronimo a lot better than what our original intention was. The more we found out, the more interesting the story became."

Among the changes were removing a sequence (based on historical fact) where Geromino surrendered to General Crook in Mexico in March 1886, pledging to return under escort to Arizona, where he would be disarmed and sent to exile in Florida; two nights later Geronimo got drunk and took off into the mountains again, going on a five month rampage until he surrendered once more. Milius said he thought the script was changed because "We don't want to see our heroes getting drunk and running off. We want to see them as wonderful freedom fighters." "History is fascinating, but history is not a good dramatist", said Hill.

The film's narrator, Second Lt. Britton Davis, was a real officer who participated in these events. In 1929 he published a memoir of the time called 'The Truth About Geronimo.' The narration uses many quotations from Davis that featured in his memoir, like his description of the endless search for Geronimo's camp: "At times it seemed we were chasing a spirit more than a man." However it did not include Davis's personal assessment of Geronimo: "This Indian was a thoroughly vicious, intractable and treacherous man. His only redeeming traits were courage and determination. His word, no matter how earnestly pledged, was worthless."

"It's like 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid'", said Hill. "These characters are real, but certainly we're allowing legend to serve the truth. If I was doing this as a PBS documentary, I would do it a lot differently."

For instance, the script used the Turkey Creek massacre as the reason for Geronimo going off the reservation when it happened five years earlier. "No, it's not accurate", admitted Hill. "Is it authentic? Yes, it is."

"I don't think I ever had a movie where I was so concerned about trying to be fair", said Hill. "Usually you're just trying to be dramatic and you've got good guys and bad guys. In this movie, you try to valorize both sides. At the same time you have to be rigorous enough to say that both sides did terrible things; they did heroic things, they did terrible things. To suggest that there were only terrible things is wrong and to suggest that it was only heroic was wrong, too. At the same time you're trying to make it a theatrical two-hour movie."

Hill thought the cavalry officers "were the most sympathetic to the Indians of the Southwest. They knew them and understood that what was happening was a tragedy. They understood that the imposition of the reserve system was going to have tragic consequences. Yet, they were the ones being asked to carry out this policy. They were the ones being asked to fight, so there was this kind of conflict between feelings and duty."

The film greenlit by Columbia's head of production Mark Canton, whose brother Neil was the producer.

Casting

Hill says when he started pushing the script there was pressure to cast a white actor in the lead. He said, "The first thing I heard was, 'Why can't we have X or Y Caucasian put on makeup and play Geronimo? If you do that, we'll make the movie.' I said, 'You can't do that.' They wouldn't think of having a Caucasian actor play a black leader. The implications are just staggering ... That kind of casting became unthinkable after 'Dances With Wolves'. When the script got active again last fall, there was no question that we would have an Indian actor in the lead."

Wes Studi was cast in the lead after impressing in 'The Last of the Mohicans' (1992). The other star attached early on was Jason Patric, who Gross described as "a young actor everybody in Hollywood believes in, but who does few pictures and has never had a hit." He was cast in February 1993.

Gross says that although Studi and Patric were cast, "Columbia found ways of not letting Walter start the picture ... there is endless talk about casting and the script."

In April 1993 Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall committed to the film, making it seem more likely that it would get made. On 27 April 1993, Gross wrote in his diary, "more than any movie Walter has done in the 11 years I've known him, and certainly more than on our three previous films together, he not only knows how to make this film, but is including far more of himself his heart and soul and his convictions about life, so to speak." Gross added that "I think his inclinations and dispositions match the story and the material. His instincts will serve him. Walter deeply loves these nineteenth century people in a way I'm not sure he ever loves his modern characters. And his aesthetic commitments to reticence and suggestion in characterisation is truer to these people than in some other cases."

The part of Al Sieber was expanded when Robert Duvall was cast in the role. Under the deal, Duvall's production company, Butcher's Run Films, signed an arrangement with Columbia.

Duvall later called the film "a paid vacation", adding that he loved the role of Sieber. "He was one of the top Indian scouts and an interesting enough guy that you could do a whole movie about him, because he could out-track, out-scout, out-ride and out-hunt most Indians. They both feared him and liked him."

Gross said "I can truthfully say that we've had fewer bad suggestions from the studio on this film than on any I've worked on."

An original draft of the script included scenes with Mrs. Gatewood, but these were cut out for budgetary reasons.

Shooting

Filming started in May 1993. The film was shot in Utah, Tucson, Arizona, and Culver City, California. Filming locations in Utah include Professor Valley, Onion Creek, Potash, Dead Horse Point, Needles Overlook, Bates Ranch, Lawson Ranch, and Ruby Ranch Road.

On 9 May, Gross wrote that "Walter has some leeriness about Jason Patric's proclivity for a lot of takes." He also wrote that "grappling with Jason's angst and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his acting method is Walter's biggest 'problem' on the movie and also, of course, his richest creative opportunity. Jason's potential is so enormous that it is frustrating not to have full, unstopped access to it. The name we can't but help invoke in comparison is Brando."

Gross says there were some concerns from the studio that the Indians were not sympathetic enough. "But we're not telling the story of the spiritual Sioux", wrote Gross. "We're telling the story of the Apache; the Spartans, not the Athenians. Their art was war."

The character of Sieber was meant to ride off into the sunset at the end of the movie but during filming Hill felt that the running time was going to be too long and so decided to kill off the character. "If I'd known I was going to die I might not have done the movie", said Duvall. "I've died nine times in films." Gross says the scene where Sieber runs into the bounty hunters was Hill's homage to Cormac McCarthy's novel 'Blood Meridian'.

Gross says that Walter Hill put a dance scene in the movie because John Ford once gave him advice that "you have to put songs and musical numbers in these things."

Hill shot the film with an unusual combination of a wide screen and long, telescopic lenses to produce huge landscape filled with small, but carefully defined, human figures."I also thought this is a little more metephysical, I suppose that somehow looking back it would all look a little more dreamlike", Hill said. "With this kind of tobacco look that we use I used tobacco filters a lot I thought that it might seem like you were watching something that was actually taking place 100 years ago."

Reception



Walter Hill later expressed dissatisfaction with the title:

It should have been called 'The Geronimo War' ... It's as much about the Army as it is Geronimo. That came out of my reading of historical accounts, and realizing that so much of what we think we know about the Indian campaigns is wrong. The Army is generally depicted as the enemy of the Apache, but in many cases, the people who were most sympathetic to their plight were those soldiers.[http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/09/walter-hill-hollywood-interview.html Jon Zelazny, 'Kicking Ass with Walter Hill', The Hollywood Interview, 8 Sept 2009 accessed 12 Jan 2012]


Another film on Geronimo came out around the same time, a made-for-TV movie show on Ted Turner's movie channel. It was produced by Norman Jewison who said "We've got a subject whose life was full enough to warrant several films."

Awards

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound (Chris Carpenter, Doug Hemphill, Bill W. Benton and Lee Orloff).

Critical

The film received mixed reviews from critics but was praised by Native American groups. Philip French of London's 'Observer' called it one of the greatest Westerns of all time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 48% with an average score of 6.2/10 based on 21 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "'Geronimo: An American Legend fails to stir the soul, though its sweeping visuals and historical ambitions mark an intelligent change of pace for director Walter Hill.

Box office

On 17 December 1993 Gross wrote in his diary that "the opening numbers are not good and I feel the dull roar of 'Geronimo' not making money at the box office."

The film was a box office bomb, earning only $18 million on a $35 million budget . The movie dropped to number 7 the following week.

According to one pair of writers:

The film was no 'Dances with Wolves'. It cost about $50 million, boasted no major stars, no love story, and a meandering storyline. It was hard to see how the studio ever expected to make its money back and it didn't come close. Columbia had not shown 'Geronimo' to Jason Patric ... before the premiere at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Theater in Beverly Hills. That turned out to be a mistake. Patric was so dismayed by the way the film turned out that he ran out of the theater and into his limo. He had himself driven around for a while as he raged abot the sheer awfulness of the movie. Then he pulled himself together and went back to the premiere. 'Geronimo' lost $40 million far more than 'Last Action Hero' without a fraction of the fanfare.


Hill blamed this poor reception on the screening of the TV movie. Hill said, "I don't think there are a hell of a lot of movies where you can take basically the same story, show it to 50 million people and bring yours out a week later and think that you're going to do great. What can you say, `My Geronimo has better locations?' "

The film was admired by Quentin Tarantino who said "I thought with 'Geronimo' he [Hill] went to a really fantastic place. Everybody talked about how boring it was. But I didn't. I thought he made a really great classic Western and America just wasn't worthy of the privilege."

See also



* 'Geronimo' (1993 TV film)

References




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