The Legend Continues

Rising from the ashes...or emerging from a pile of papers...is THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE, yet another western comedy melodrama in the grand tradition of SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE.

Grand tradition, my Aunt Petunia's pooting patootie. Boy, two productions of the same script in one year and all of a sudden, it's OUR TOWN. Never mind that it took 27 years for even a second show to get off the ground...

SHUT  UP, YOU! Ignore that snarky naysayer in my head. How the hell did he find his way into this blog?

THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE was my first solo effort as a melodrama playwright after Ed Thorpe and I wrote LA RUE'S RETURN for the Palace Showboat Theater stage at Pollardville. This is my homage to the masked western hero sub-genre which includes The Lone Ranger, Zorro and Marvel Comics' Two Gun Kid. Coincidentally enough, I had penned a Lone Ranger sketch for the previous show at the Palace, GOODBYE TV, HELLO BURLESQUE.

The Rogue had been a character I created out in the Pollardville Ghost Town but never got the chance to bring him to life on those mean streets, so I featured the character in another script called THE WRATH OF THE ROGUE or WHO IS THIS GUY ZORRO ANYWAY? It landed with a thud after I unsuccessfully submitted the script to Goldie Pollard, the producer and Mother of Us All at the Ville. The Rogue was more of a Zorro type complete with cape, mask and sword that glowed in the dark. It wasn't much, except for this exchange between the hero Brian Ryan and the heroine Georgia Washington after she discovers his secret identity. These were meant to be asides to audience.

BRIAN: If only she knew.
GEORGIA: If only he knew
BRIAN: If only she knew that I know that she knows.

Eat your heart out, David Mamet.

But I gave it another go a few months later, turning the new script into an origin story instead and a plot similar to a movie from my youth: THE LONE RANGER AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD. However, I needed a major element that THE WRATH sorely lacked: A good villain. What's an evil trait not seen in most melodrama bad guys. Well, I hear racism's pretty bad. How about a good old fashioned bigot? Alright, but what kind? Hey, it's the Old West, what say we have an ex-Confederate officer, a Foghorn Leghorn type, who wants to fight another Civil War and set things right again? And he can oppress the Indians at the same time? But what to call him? A name hit me from the deep recesses of my demented creative soul...Randolph Hitlear. Of course! A Kentucky Fried version of the worst villain of all time!

Once I had my villain, I was off and running. I knocked out a first draft in four days time. Within another week, I handed it off to Goldie and, saints be praised, it green-lit as the next production. I didn't have a sub-title at the time and reluctantly settled for GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK, also the name of a Chuck Norris film, one that my mom once mispronounced as BLACK GUYS WEAR GOOD, another concept entirely.  

(The saga of this particular production where I was chosen as the writer/director of the vaudeville section as well, is a tumultuous tale to be told another time. Let's just say in the most cliched of terms, "Be careful what you wish for.")

However, I will say that THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE, directed by Bill Humphreys, had its one and only run at the Palace Showboat for the first six months of 1981. I never got a chance to see it because I was in the cast. It has not seen the light of day since.

The personal triumph of SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE this past summer has given me the initiative to revisit this story that I had felt was beyond help. But a fresh perspective works wonders and I realized that I hadn't given the material enough credit. There was enough here for salvation and development, so I went ahead and expanded the story and characters to make more it more of a well-rounded story instead of an elongated sketch. Hence, THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE lives again and this time with a different sub-title: MASK ME NO QUESTIONS. I'm still only half-sold on this, but I have a feeling Chuck Norris might come after me for copyright infringement. Sure, he might pull a ham-string kicking me in the face at his age, but then again, I didn't need my face rearranged into a Picasso either.

Here's the story and yes, it's full of very obvious spoilers:

Hard times have fallen on the Clayfoot Indian tribe with the arrival of Randolph Hitlear, an ex-Confederate general obsessed with idea of starting a second Civil War under his leadership. To finance this effort, Hitlear searches for the Clayfoot's mountain treasure, the Tomb of Gold. With the help of his dastardly henchmen, Ashley and Rhett, Hitlear forces the tribe into slavery to dig for the gold including the Clayfoot leader, Chief Boyardee. His daughter, Fawn, is a mystic who has the ability to speak to the Great Spirits. From them she learns of a prophecy that states that "the dark cloud of evil shall ride a warrior of good who shall become a savior". With that thought in mind, Fawn seeks the help of Brian Ryan in nearby Parched Throat, Arizona, a handsome young lawyer who moonlights as sheriff of this one lizard town. Brian falls in love with Fawn at first glance, raising the ire of saloon singer Sugar De Spice who wants to put her claws into the novice lawman herself. When the sheriff agrees to help, a jealous Sugar, along with the weasely corrupt Indian agent Percival P. Pestt, inform Hitlear. Laying in wait for the sheriff, Hitlear gets the upper hand upon Brian's arrival and in the fracas, Fawn is killed. When Brian is left for dead himself in the desert, Sugar has a change of heart and rescues him. Back in town, Fawn's spirit comes to him in his delirium and empowers Brian with special abilities given to him by the Great Spirits since he is indeed the warrior of good in the prophecy. Brian dons a mask and adopts the persona of the masked avenger known as The Rogue. He catches up to Hitlear just as he enters the fabled Tomb of Gold and thwarts his plans once and for all, saving the Clayfoot tribe and the nation from this vicious war criminal. And the rest is legendary... 

Now THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE has been published by Off the Wall Plays. Performance rights are available.

CLICK HERE FOR A FREE PREVIEW OF LEGEND OF THE ROGUE AND TO INQUIRE ABOUT PERFORMANCE RIGHTS

Like the title says, the legend continues...

Tales from the Ville-Hi Yo, Silver!

In honor of the debut of NOW THAT’S FUNNY! The Comedy Sketches of Scott Cherney on Amazon Kindle (on sale here), I hereby present this excerpt for your edification concerning a very pivotal time at my dearly departed Home, Sweet Home-The Palace Showboat Theater at Pollardville. It all revolves around what was my best produced piece, The Lone Ranger Rides Again. 

Nostalgia’s a funny thing. It usually puts a warm golden light on our memories to conveniently make our past a lot more significant than it really was. That really doesn’t apply in this case. It’s hard not to look back at Goodbye TV, Hello Burlesque as a pivotal moment in time for everyone and everything involved with the Palace Showboat at that point. GTV, HB, the vaudeville The Lone Ranger Rides Again was written for, set the standard for just about every show that followed it. For one thing, it represented a definite changing of the guard at the theater. Many of those who had been responsible for the development of the standard Pollardville formula decided it was time to move on. That’s when the new kids on the block moved in and with them (or us, as the case may be), a new sensibility. As a result, the bar was raised for on what this theater was capable of with just a little bit of imagination and throwing off some of the shackles of the past.

Bill Humphreys, who conceived and directed this show with Goldie Pollard, brought some of his professional experience in stage and television production to the Ville and turned the olios into a full multi-media experience combining both film and video elements with live-action for the very first time on that stage. Like moths to a flame, this show, as well as the melodrama that preceded it, Seven Wives for Dracula, a better than usual script by Tim Kelly and directed by D.W. Landingham, attracted pretty much what I would call an artists’ collective of actors, writers, musicians and, well, artists. We all congregated in a harmonious convergence in what I unashamedly refer to this as our “Renaissance period”. (Whew!) Okay, maybe some of that is nostalgia speaking again, but the truth of the matter, or the proof in the pudding, was what ended up on that stage and that end result was sensational. We all went to the next level. The music was better. The choreography was better. The makeup, the costumes, the sets-painted by an actual artist, Karen Van Dine…all better than they ever were before. And the cast matched them every step of the way. On top of all that, it was the first show to not only utilize original material but also actually encouraged the creation of such material. That’s where I came in. It all stemmed from the previous production when I helped Bob Gossett punch up the melodrama The Downfall of the Uprising or Who Do the Voodoo? with a bunch of new gags. I tried to do the same with the vaudeville, but, with one exception, was shot down every time. When GTV, HB came along, I was welcome with open arms by both Bill and Goldie, the rest being history.

Goodbye TV, Hello Burlesque traced the world of entertainment back in time from the television age through radio and ending up in the burlesque era. The Lone Ranger Rides Again obviously fit into this middle section. As far as the origin of this sketch, I honestly do not remember. It’s the only one that I’m a little hazy about how it actually began. Perhaps it had been the result of just another idea jam session. I don’t know. But, a few years ago, I caught a rerun of an old Dean Martin Show on TV Land or something. On this episode, Dean and Orson Welles were recreating a radio show. Orson read the script leaving Dean with all the sound effects. Now this must have stuck in my head because I remembered seeing this sketch as a kid. In case you’re wondering, the only thing I retained was a variation of the stairs gag, so I didn’t really steal anything.

Everything clicked on this sketch and it evolved into something even more wonderful than what existed on the page. It began with a kid listening to the radio and changing the channel as a medley of radio show themes and commercials played. When it ended up on “The William Tell Overture” (AKA The Lone Ranger Theme), the audience went nuts every single time. Then the curtain opened on that great set of a radio soundstage from the 1940s and that superb cast took my words and spun their own magic for the next ten minutes. I can say without hesitation that this was the best sketch I had written and certainly the best produced.

The cast-Bob Gossett as The Lone Ranger, Ed Thorpe as Tonto, Cory Troxclair as McGuirk, Lisa Smith as Annabelle, Paul Stolberg as Zorro (who originally came out of the bathroom in the end, a gag I never liked which is why I changed it) and Bill Humphreys as the Director all contributed to its great success each and every performance. Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the real star of this bit. Jim Walsh became an absolute superstar in my eyes as the Sound Effects Engineer. His timing was immaculate and his energy non-stop. When he got to the aforementioned stair gag, he ran in place, counting down with each finger. The biggest laugh of the night. This was Jimmy’s best show all around from his performance as Renfield earlier in the Dracula melodrama to singing “Hot Patootie” (from The Rocky Horror Show and the very first rock ‘n roll number at the Ville) to just about everything he contributed to this production-on and off the stage. Small wonder why we used to call Jimmy “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business”. Never mind no James Brown.

Without a doubt in my mind, Goodbye TV, Hello Burlesque remains one of the best experiences I’ve ever encountered in this business we call show. More than that, it solidified for me that Pollardville was more than just a theater, but a way of life. It became a surrogate family not only for me, but pretty much for all of us who stayed there throughout the years: One big nurturing, often dysfunctional but ultimately supportive family.

How could we not? After all, we had a place to call Home.
And that ain’t nostalgia talkin’ neither.





Now THAT’S Funny! is available on Amazon Kindle for just 99 cents. Also available in paperback and download . For more information, head on over to http://www.scottcherney.com/ . Tell ‘em I sent you.