Val Kilmer wasn’t quite sure what to make of his “Comanche Moon” character’s belief that he was not a man but a flea.
Kilmer plays Capt. Inish Scull, an off-kilter New England aristocrat and war hero. Scull is captured by Mexican bandit Ahumado, whose trademark is torturing into madness those who displease him. Scull is suspended over a cliff in a wicker cage, where he captures birds and eats them raw to stay alive. And when he’s tossed into a viper pit, he reacts by believing he is a flea.
In this six-hour CBS miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s novel, which bridges the years between “Dead Man’s Walk” and “Lonesome Dove,” Texas Rangers Gus McCrae (Steve Zahn) and Woodrow Call (Karl Urban) must rescue Scull.
Kilmer said when he first read the script, he felt compelled to call McMurtry to make sure he had understood the character correctly.
Kilmer, who owns a ranch not far from Santa Fe, N.M., said there’s harshness to the land, and filming the miniseries in and around his ranch brings an element of realism to the production.
Then there was the thrill of working with rattlesnakes. In his quarter-century of living in New Mexico, Kilmer said, he’s grown used to the slithering critters, but acting with them raised new concerns.
“These were real rattlesnakes, and you never saw a crew move so quickly as it did the day a box of them fell off the golf cart,” Kilmer said. “In my scenes, I was down in the pit with just a wrangler with a pole and a glass partition. I’m around snakes a lot where I live, but you really pay attention when there are 25 of them next to you.”
Australian director Simon Wincer, who directed the original “Lonesome Dove,” said the miniseries is for people who love the kind of offbeat characters McMurtry creates.
“Inish is eccentric,” Wincer said. “I love that his character is typical of McMurtry. When you expect his characters to turn right, they always turn left. And that’s the joy of it.”
Producing a western comes with a unique set of challenges. Wincer said he was lucky that Kilmer, Zahn and Urban were accomplished riders.
“Still, everyone came back bloody sore at the end of the day, so we told them to wear women’s tights under their jeans. It’s an Australian cowboy tip,” Wincer said.
The tights were the only comfortable garb on the set. Linda Cardellini, who plays Gus’ “true love” Clara in the film, appreciated the attention to detail, right down to using parts of the old “Lonesome Dove” costumes in the film.
“We were filming in July, and it’s hard to concentrate when you are working in that kind of heat,” Wincer said. “The ladies were so hot in those corsets, which were so tight they couldn’t eat. But there’s a certain carriage when you are wearing those clothes, and the body language is different, and I didn’t want to lose that.”
Cardellini agreed. “There’s just something about getting into those costumes and being on those (western) sets. You get the immediate connection with those characters and understand what it was like living in those times. It allows you to believe you are that character.”
Even if that means being a flea.
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