Billy the Kid | |
---|---|
Genre | Western |
Written by | Gore Vidal |
Directed by | William Graham |
Starring | Val Kilmer Duncan Regehr Wilford Brimley Julie Carmen |
Music by | Laurence Rosenthal |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | Robert M. Sertner Frank von Zerneck |
Production locations | Tucson, Arizona Sonoran Desert Sierrita Mountains Sedona, Arizona Continental, Arizona Cascabel, Arizona White Mountains Sabino Canyon Mescal, Arizona Redington, Arizona Mt. Lemmon San Pedro River |
Cinematography | Dennis C. Lewiston |
Editor | William B. Stich |
Running time | 96 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | TNT |
Release | May 10, 1989 |
Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, also known as Billy the Kid, is a 1989 American western television film about famed gunman Billy the Kid. It aired on TNT cable channel on May 10, 1989. [1]
Written by Gore Vidal and directed by William A. Graham, with Val Kilmer starring in the lead role of William Bonney a.k.a. Billy the Kid, and with a supporting cast including Wilford Brimley, John O'Hurley, Duncan Regehr, and Ned Vaughn.
Vidal said in his memoirs that he had written the original teleplay for The Left Handed Gun , starring Paul Newman as Billy the Kid, decades earlier, and always felt the studio had butchered the material when his television play was used as the basis for a theatrical movie, so he wanted to return to the story for a more accurate rendition. At the time of his original teleplay with Newman, it was thought that the real Billy was left handed. This was based on a photo of Billy that had been inadvertently flipped when printed. Years later, the error was discovered—Billy was right handed.
Val Edward Kilmer is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, he found fame after appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! (1984) and Real Genius (1985), as well as the military action film Top Gun (1986) and the fantasy film Willow (1988). Kilmer gained acclaim for his portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991). He was cast as a main character in films such as the western Tombstone (1993), and the crime dramas True Romance (1993) and Heat (1995). He portrayed Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (1995), and continued to star in films such as The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), The Saint (1997), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Alexander (2004), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), and The Snowman (2017). In 2022, Kilmer reprised his role as Iceman in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Vidal was heavily involved in politics, and unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives, and later in 1982 to the United States Senate.
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