Filmmaker John Sayles hasn’t made a feature effort since 2013’s “Go For Sisters,” but has assembled two acting heavyweights for his gestating Western “I Passed This Way,” featuring legendary old west lawman Pat Garrett.
The project heading to the Cannes Film Market has an impressive cast led by recent Best Supporting Actress Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) and Chris Cooper (“Boston Strangler”), with others such as Thomas Mann (“Kong: Skull Island”), Ted Levine (“Heat,” “Silence of the Lambs”), Ron Perlman (“Sons of Anarchy”), and Cameron Monaghan taking roles in the pic as detailed by Variety.
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Salyes is also behind the film script (based on Eugene Manlove Rhodes‘ “Pasó Por Aquí“), and the outlet mentions a synopsis for the Western as well. “Set in 1898 and turns on Ross McEwen, a cowboy who impulsively robs a bank and flees across the arid New Mexico Territory. As famed lawman Pat Garrett and his ambitious young deputy close in, Ross takes refuge at a remote Mexican homestead stricken by diphtheria. There, he faces a desperate choice: leave the family to die and escape to Mexico, or stay and nurse them back to health and go to jail. Ross must decide what kind of man he wants to be.”
Garrett, notably an outlaw himself, eventually switched sides to work on the side of the law (becoming almost as famous as Wyatt Earp for his exploits) and was tasked to bring in the infamous Billy the Kid, who may or may not have been killed by his former friend/cohort (there was a myth that Billy got away and was able to retire to a quiet life).
“Rhodes was a cowboy first, starting writing partly because the shoot-em-up movies he saw and dime paperbacks he read seemed so false, missed the key to the New Mexico he grew up in,” Sayles told Variety in an official statement. “In that dry and sparsely populated land, most people went out of their way to treat each other with repost and decency. If a stranger turned up at your ranch with an exhausted horse and an empty canteen, you offered food, water, and rest with no questions asked.”
Notably, Cooper has a longstanding relationship with Sayles, appearing in “Matewan,” “Lone Star,” “City of Hope,” “Silver City,” and “Amigo.”
The film’s producing team features Maggie Renzi, Alejandro Springall, and Nadine Luque, as it is being sold at Cannes by Latido Films, which is handling international rights, and UTA Independent Film Group is overseeing North American sales.
“I Passed This Way” is also a Spanish co-production Western and will be shooting in the Canary Islands and Almería, Spain, which is likely taking a direct page from old-school Westerns that would film in Italy and Spain, doubling for the American Old West landscape.
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