Suddenly, This Summer

It began with a frog and ended with a deer.

Such was the summer of 2014, definitely one for the archives. Book-ended by two separate Cherney Journeys, the months between May and September became one extended round trip, one I'd gladly sign up for again.

In May, THE PERILS OF FRANCOIS, the first play I'd written in almost 2 1/2 decades, began its run in Nashville, TN courtesy of the Mel O'Drama Theater for my new friend, producer Mel Roady. This was one mind-boggling experience that prepped for the rest of the season.

This was immediately followed by a return visit to Denver (relayed in the blog: THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE RED) to visit my beautiful Coloradan family who resides there with a grand birthday celebration for my three year old granddaughter Aefa.

In June, SONG OF THE CANYON KID (re-titled from SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE to coincide with the book of the same name that no one seems to want to read but if you did you would laugh your spurs off if that's your idea of a good time) premiered at the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville in Oceano, CA for a summer-long run.

At the same time, the Footlight Theatre Company in Northern California's Jamestown planned to produce SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE under its original title at the end of August. Both shows had the same identical closing dates.

Visited in Oregon by more family members from down Santa Barbara way-my step-daughter Tracey and now sweet sixteen granddaughter Kardena-was a sweet week-long visit that had been a long-time coming but so very nourishing for the heart and soul. Just before their stay with us, they had traveled to Oceano to see THE CANYON KID, something else to boost me into the stratosphere. Kardena's favorite gag in the show was one I didn't write, a Harry Potter reference. Oh well.

Many had suggested that I find some way to see the show myself, either in Oceano or Jamestown. I actually didn't think it possible. Somehow that desire had been sent out to the universe because a trip indeed was in my immediate future.

I've known Ed Thorpe for most of my born days. We met in 6th grade at Grover Cleveland Elementary in Stockton and have been not just best friends, but the brothers we never had...and we both had brothers. We've shared laughs, tears, anger, up, down, overs and outs...including a woman. I devoted an entire chapter of my first book IN THE DARK to Ed who I call Max and who calls me Max because we're Maxes to the Max. He's also the one responsible for my foray into melodrama in the first place. He brought me out to Pollardville where we were both gunslingers, asked me to co-write our first melo LA RUE'S RETURN and arranged for me to attend the grand finale reunion when the Ville closed once and for all back in 2007.

Max felt I should see my show and made it a point to fly me down there in order to do that very thing. It is one of the finest gifts I could ever imagine. I don't know how I warrant all this love and generosity from people. It's not false modesty and me playing Harry Humble. I am honestly baffled. Grateful, but confused. It was Max's intention that we head to Oceano which involved me flying into San Francisco and the two of us driving down in our own version of an Alexander Payne road movie.

At the same time, my wife had decided that this would be a good time to visit her mom and sister in the Bay Area, so we made arrangements to depart PDX within minutes of each other-she on Southwest landing in Oakland, me on Alaska to SFO. And we made it just in the nick of freaking time. Nothing like an ass full of stress to start the weekend right.

So Max greeted me at SFO once I landed and down Hwy 101 we drove, yapping up a storm the entire way and not shutting up until he dropped me back the airport Sunday night. We relived the past, even those things of which we dared not speak.We mulled over the present. We outlined the future. Most importantly, we repaved our common ground which over time was well-worn, full of potholes and needing some necessary repair. I got my brother back and Max got his.

Once we hit Pismo Beach, our base of operations, the world pulled back into focus. It wasn't the town, per se, it was the beach...the California coast that I longed to be near again. The sound of the waves breaking is my mantra, my safe place when life begins to go south. The Oregon coast, beautiful as it is, can't hold a hourglass of sand next to the state of my birth.


The Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville in the main attraction of Oceano, maybe running a close second to the Dunes, the only state park in California where vehicles can be driven on the beach, bu tit certainly is the most popular business known all over the Central Coast. When we arrived Saturday night, it was an event that had to be documented, so I posed wherever I could. Standing before the window display of my show) featuring a stuffed version of The Canyon Kid's horse Thunder), Nova Cunningham, the artistic director of the Great American who chose my script, approached  and greeted me with open arms. She brought me into the theater before the show where the cast was warming up with vocal exercises and introduced themselves one by one. What a good looking group this was and surrounding me around the swell set of the THE CANYON KID. This was the set I didn't have when my show premiered back in '87, that's for sure. No wonder I looked like a proud papa in those shots.

As the show began, I noticed the changes they made right away. Additional songs were obvious as well as some altered lines (more than just Harry Potter references). This made my mind race back to a time at Pollardville when Tim Kelly, one of the most prolific melodrama playwrights in the the business, had been flown up to Stockton for the opening night of THE RATCATCHER'S DAUGHTER. it was one of those miracle opening nights when nothing worked all Hell Week long, but once we got in front an audience, the magic happened. When I met the author in question, I was so giddily excited that I grabbed my copy of the script to show him what we-actually mostly me-had done to it.

"Look! We cut this scene and that scene. We turned this character into a male. This character here we just cut completely out. Totally unnecessary!"

I asked him to sign it for me and handed it to him. Stone faced, he scribbled the name "Kelly" and thrust it back at me.

Oops.

Well, whatever goes around... Thirty years later, here I sat watching SONG OF THE CANYON KID minus a character, lines changed, songs added and I could not have been more delighted. Their adaptation was wonderful, doing justice to the material and giving life to a show that not seen the light of day in this century. Lee Anne Mathews' direction ran circles around mine. Her staging of certain scenes, particularly the attempted hypnosis of The Canyon Kid by Nastassia Kinky (Emily Smith) became a delirious tango in her hands and choreographed brilliantly. Some of the changes improved the show, while others, to be frank, did not. (My fight scene kicked major ass. Nyah!) But the cast was top notch all the way. Andy Pollock and Christine Arnold totally embodied The Canyon Kid and Darla Darling. There is an extension to their first scene together that was not in the original 1987 script. I added it later when I published it and has never been performed. I had to wipe a tear from my eye because in their hands, it was pretty damn touching if I do say so myself. But I have to say that the show was sent into the stratosphere by Katie Worley in the role of Charlene Atlas. She totally transformed this character, hysterically stealing each scene to the point that I couldn't wait for her next entrance to see what she do next. I would have to say Katie gave the best interpretation of anything I've ever written and one of the finest comic performance I've ever seen on the stage. And to top it all off, she'd only been with the show for a couple of weeks after her predecessor had to leave the cast unexpectedly and Katie, a veteran Great American performer, Amazing. When the curtain fell on SONG OF THE CANYON KID, I leapt to my feet and gave this fine cast a triumphant standing ovation I believed they deserved. I was probably clapping for myself as well. My step-daughter Lindsay would call this "a victory lap".

It turns out that the cast have triple and sometimes quadruple duties at the theater outside of performing. They seat the audience, run the concession stand, then when everyone has cleared out, they clean the auditorium. There's no way in hell we would have done that back at the Palace Showboat. Maybe these guys are paid better, but I personally it to be a major pain in the ass to be the Major Domo before I stepped out on stage as MC. Sure, they are probably paid far and above whatever we were making, but still...

After being treated as King for a Day-or Night, rather- I gave my hail and farewell to these fine folk and hugged each and everyone of them  I even sought some of them out just say they too could have a genuine Scott Cherney embrace. They really were quite a special bunch. Damn kids anyway. The evening ended in true California style at the In-n-Out Burger drive-thru for a Double Double after show dinner.

The long drive back to the Bay Area on Sunday afternoon culminated when Max and I wrapped up the weekend with a huge honking steak dinner before we made our goodbye. We went our separate ways, but forever entwined in true brotherly bond that was reinforced with cement by the incredible gift of his for which I am eternally grateful.

I returned to PDX with a smile on my face that some day may have to be surgically removed, Hopping on the Economy parking lot shuttle in front of the terminal, I, along with my fellow weary travelers, were welcomed back to Portland by our driver, Bob, whose voice sounded like an older version of Chris Farley's character Matt Foley character. It was apparent that he couldn't wait to back to his van down by the river. And for some reason, he decided to toss in a little shuttle driver humor along with the ride.

"What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eye deer."

While the other passengers chose to ignore this, but I just had to chuckle. Yep. I was back in Portland alright.

I drove home in my wife's VW Bug and was just around the corner from I where I live when something slammed up against the car on the driver's side. It was louder than it was forceful since I didn't lose any control at all of the steering. I didn't see a thing and thought I ran over something, but I checked the mirrors and saw a flash of brown fur galumphing away and disappearing into the night.

Apparently it was a no eye deer.

Fortunately, I was unharmed. Unfortunately, the car has a broken fender, a severely dented door and a broken headlight. Bambi? I haven't a clue. Couldn't find him, but somehow I think he was going to feel that bump the next day.

And just like that, summer ended and fall fell.

Curtain

Tales from the Ville: Super Chicken

 

My last act as a long-time gunslinger for Pollardville Ghost Town involved a road trip up to Jamestown for an event known as the Gunfighter Rendezvous. Basically, it's a Shriner's convention with guns or a cowboy version of Comic-Con. The visiting gunfighter groups from around the state differed from us-a merry band of goofballs, clowns and miscreants-in their whole approach to the concept of wild west shows. They were re-enactors, not unlike those Civil War buffs that play out the Battle of Gettysburg in some Wal-Mart parking lot near East Bumfuck, Texas. These folks were historically accurate in every way-costumes, speech, demeanor-and their shows were deadly dull to the bone. This made up the bulk of those attending the Jamestown Rendezvous. Then there was us, dressed in our finest thrift store gear, parading about the proceedings like a bunch of rodeo clowns on happy juice.


Needless to say, we weren't very popular with the other groups. As for the audiences watching our shows, well, let's put it this way. No one yawned. Instead they laughed and laughed often. We provided something the others weren't: ENTERTAINMENT. (Well, at least our interpretation of the concept in this context.) It sure beat the hell out of sleeping through their version of Gunfight at the OK Corral. It was the kind of crap that kills Living History.

(Not the Pollardville version of that legendary Tombstone tale of which I did not take part. That was lean and mean...and about a half hour shorter.)

The big to-do at these proceedings involved a recreation of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, the attempted bank robbery by the Jesse James gang that ended in a massive shootout. All the gunfighter groups were to participate in this re-enactment,even us. Well, once the shooting started, it didn't let up. I, for one, didn't go down with one shot. Naturally, I had just been winged and kept firing long after the James boys were long gone. Hey, I didn't come all this way to be merely atmosphere. I wanted to change history. But when the gun smoke cleared, reality reared its ugly head. We were just playing Cowboys and Indians or Good Guys and Bad Guys  or as we used to call it in my neighborhood, Guns.

"I got you!"

"No, you didn't! I got you first!"
"Nuh-uh!"

Some things never change. Boys will always be boys.

The Pollardville Gunslingers' main show that day took place on, naturally, Main Street not far from the Jamestown Hotel. We picked the perennial "favorite" gunfight known as SADDLE DROP, the first skit most of us at that time learned as soon we strapped on a gun belt. We chose this because it utilized all the gunslingers we brought along, specifically the "3 free shots" gag we had added over the years. At one point, the sheriff tells his adversary that he probably couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, so he allows the varmint three tries to take him down. The first shot could be a guy standing off to the side holding a filled paper or strofoam cup with his finger covering a hole near the bottom. When the shot is fired, the finger is removed and water pours out of what looks like a bullet hole. It is then that the first victim of collateral damage falls to the ground. (This was Bill Humpheys' gag.) The second shot, a squawk is heard as a rubber chicken is flung up in the air and into the middle of the street. The last is a trick bullet that nails about four to five cowboys that drop to the street one after the other.

The only problem was that we forgot the rubber chicken. Steve Orr, who didn't participate in this particular year's Rendezvous but came up to support us, came to our rescue. He told us not to worry and went into the local market to make a purchase: a whole raw chicken from the meat counter . When the second shot was fired, a squawk rang out and Steve, standing off to the side, lobbed that poultry into the air. It landed smack dab in the middle of the street....SPLAT! Right on cue.

Neil Pollard, who also had  been visiting that day, checked out the carcass after the gunfight.

"You know, it shame to waste a chicken like that. I should bring it back to the restaurant," he said.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Neil wasn't kidding.

That late afternoon, John Himle, the legend known as JT Buck and I hopped into his car and headed down  Main Street out of Jamestown and back to Stockton. I was only a passenger, not in control of the situation, much as I had been the whole weekend. To tell you the truth, I was just another body. The time had finally come to hang up my six gun once and for all. The fun had gone out of it way before this trip and I wasn't just going through the motions, I had just been showing up.In true Himle fashion, John popped in a cassette of the COLORS soundtrack with Ice-T on the title track, rolled down the windows and cranked up the volume. Sure, it was an ass move but the absurdity of it made me smile. After all, what were cowboys but the gangbangers of their time? As we low-rode out of town , all eyes on the street-gunfighter, tourist, resident- glared at us as we passed.. I rode with my friend Buck into the sunset, a ill-fitting, but somehow appropriate to this, my last round-up as a Pollardville Ghost Town gunslinger.

.
You were expecting "Happy Trails"?

The Canyon Kid Comes Home

The Footlight Theatre Co. production of SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE opens August 29 in Jamestown,

CA, not far from whence it first reared its white Stetson way back in 1987 at the Palace Showboat Dinner Theater at Pollardville. This is as close to home as the show's been for 27 years.

And after all, that's the real theme of this show: Going home. I had put melodramas in my rear-view mirror a long time ago and yet, I returned to my favorite, LONE PRAIRIE, and wrote a novelization of it as a lark. It turned out to be the project that rekindled my love for writing, comedy and yep, melodrama. An e-mail out of the blue from the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville in Oceano got my show produced for the first time in the 21st century. So I sent out to few other companies and lo and behold, here's the Footlight Theatre Co. ready for the second production of this script this summer.

Now I've got a total of three scripts ready for the big time, LONE PRAIRIE, LA RUE'S RETURN, my first co-written with Edward Thorpe and a punched up version of my first solo show, THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE or MASK ME NO QUESTIONS. (New sub-title. It used to be GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK, but I don't want my ass kicked by Chuck Norris. I don't care how old he is. He can still rip my lower intestines out with his bare hands and make me play jump rope with them)

Whatever goes around, comes around and I'm enjoying the ride.


This is the front of the Palace Showboat program.
Obviously, I didn't design this. The title isn't very prominently displayed. Neither is my name.  Goldie's name is. Hmm...
It also calls the play "A Western Fairy Tale". That's about as accurate as calling SAW a slapstick romp that's fun for the whole family.
And what in the name of Sam Peckinpah is up with that cowboy? Who is he supposed to be? Give him a golden earring and a head scarf underneath that hat and it could be Two Gun Boris...or Charlene Atlas before a good scubbin' and waxin'
I'm not sure what that stain on the program is. It could be from Pollardville fried chicken.
Yeah I can say all this now, but I treasure this like a Picasso.
 But that was then...

 
And this is now.
This is the latest incarnation of this show, quite different than the first in many ways. Read this from the Footlight Theatre Co. press release.

Hurst Ranch and Footlight Theatre Company have teamed up to meritoriously bring to life the world of Wild West Melodrama!  Set at the striking Hurst Ranch  with its beautiful vintage grounds, audiences are sure to have an outrageous, side-splitting laughter filled evening full of all sorts of knee-slappin, toe-tappin old timey fun!

Every performance begins with a train ride into the "town" of Dirt Clod on the Hurst Ranch Railroad, where guests can arrive in town and belly up to the bar at The Dirt Clod Saloon.

An 1890s style musical vaudeville shows begin at 5:45, featuring performances by  local old timey bands including Faux Renwah, The Lava Cats and more.

At 6:00 pm, with the ringing of the dinner bell, a 3 course gourmet Western BBQ is served up by The Historic National Hotel of Jamestown.

Romp-stomping action and non-stop hilarity ensue after dinner around 7:00 pm, just as the sun begins to set over the beautiful "Dirt Clod Lagoon"!!  In classic melodrama fashion audiences will get to boo and hiss the villains, sigh and swoon for the sweet heroine and cheer the brave hero!! 

And the next generation of actors portraying those wackadoodles I wrote many moons ago include:

Michelle Tennant as Charlene Atlas

Alexis St Onge as D and Richard Carr as The Canyon Kid

Valerie Smusz as Nastassia and Aaron Bennett as Two Gun Boris

Susan Chapman as Honey Darling

Rounding out the cast (those MOP-Mit Out Photos) are Art Delgado as Basil Kadaver, Anthony De Page as Dalton Doolin and Don Pierazzi as Mayor Darling.

So that's the story, glory.
Song of the Lone Prairie or Poem on the Range
Aug. 29-Sept, 20 in Jamestown, CA
And it was written by...
Hang on a second. Let me look at the poster again.
"By Scott Cherney."
WHY IS MY NAME STILL SO SMALL?
Sigh...
Everything old is new again.