I thought Monte Hellman was over and done. After all, the last film the guy made was 1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, not the most auspicious finale for the man who brought us The Shooting and Two Lane Blacktop. Sometimes Hollywood takes people like Hellman and eats them up – and sometimes it magically brings them back.
Hellman is making a new movie, and he’s got some powerful patrons: Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson are producing it for him. The movie is Desperadoes, a western from the guy who wrote the book Brad Pitt’s upcoming The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is based on. Desperadoes is about the Dalton Gang, and it’ll be filming in the wilds of Canadia this fall. There will certainly be a Warren Oates-shaped hole at the center of this film, no matter how good it ends up being. We’re rooting for you, Monte.