SONG OF THE CANYON KID (formerly known as SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE) or POEM ON
THE RANGE remains the best melodrama script I ever wrote. It represented the culmination of everything I had learned up to that point at
Pollardville, the place I had considered my "college". You see, I got to do everything I ever wanted to do in show business at the place we called the Ville-acting, writing, directing, producing, stand-up, singing, dancing, improvisation and so on and so forth. This included my apprenticeship as a stunt cowboy performer in
Pollardville Ghost Town all the way to my post-graduate studies as the writer/director/master of ceremonies on the Palace stage. It was the best time of my life and this show was pretty much my grand finale.
It began as a possible running character in the Ghost Town, though it never got out of the idea stage out there. The character of Two Gun Boris, however, did end up in one of the gunfights, since it w
as written specifically for Grant-Lee Phillips who was working there at the time. But I knew that The Canyon Kid needed to be the hero of a melodrama and so it began. Previously, I had co-written
LARUE'S RETURN with my best friend Edward (Max) Thorpe and had flied solo with THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE which Bill
Humphreys had admirably interpreted on the Ville stage. Ed had concocted the initial story for LA RUE before our collaboration while the script for LEGEND actually only took me a week . But SONG took a few years to put together. I had an idea here and an idea there, but nothing came together.
Then I hit on the idea of the albino hanging judge as a villain, probably inspired by Stacy
Keach's character Bad Bob from John Huston's LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN written by John
Milius. (Yes, I just mashed Bad Bob and Judge Roy Bean together and came up with an albino hanging judge. I always was the clever boy) Some of the early drafts involved a lot more about Judge Basil
Kadaver that, unfortunately, got lost in a fire. There had been a great scene involving the judge as a baby, throwing a hangman's noose over the side of his bassinet. I never could recover those bits nor could I muster up the inspiration to recreate them, unfortunately. The other characters that popped out of my head-Charlene Atlas, the female blacksmith and Two Gun Boris' hot as balls gypsy fortune teller sister,
Nastassia Kinky, more than made up for it.
I had a brilliant idea of an ending for SONG-a fight scene to beat all fight scenes, one that would involve every member of the cast and from everywhere in the theater-on stage, off stage, in the audience and so on. And so it was. The Canyon Kid fought Dalton
Doolin. The Mayor had it out with the Judge. Darla and her mother took on
Nastassia. And finally, Charlene punched it out with Boris. They all duked it out in the name of entertainment. It was my version of the BLAZING SADDLES fight and put this show over the top.
SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE opened November 6, 1987 and ran until May of 1988. What a great run and, if I say so myself, a great show as well. In 2013, I wrote a novelization of this script, re-naming it SONG OF THE CANYON KID at the same time the show was produced by the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville Theater in Oceano, California. Since then, it has played across the country in theaters coast to coast.
REVIEW OF SONG OF THE CANYON KID NOVEL
Performing rights for SONG OF THE CANYON KID are available for both professional and amateur theater companies. Royalties are $40 per performance with no script fees. To obtain a FREE perusal script, contact me, Scott Cherney at writtenbysc@gmail.com
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