Medical Preparedness and Response for Bombing Incidents (MPRBI) Course Description

called The Brav
e Cowboy. It ha
d fine reviews
and small sales. In 1958, my first book of short sto
ries was published

and a second bo

ok, a biography. Long John Dunn of Taos, was scheduled. During this scattering of time and dreams, I was sitting in the Taos Inn drinking beer with Abbey. We were both broke. His lovely, ex-model-now-artist wife was waitressing therein and paying for our foamy beverages. We were lamenting the fact that Kirk Douglas had paid him only twenty-five hundred dollars for the film rights to his noted novel. The film would be titled Lonely Are The Brave. In my deep appreciation for his wife

• 's generosity, I firmly sug
• gested he should take some of her painting
• s to the Albuquerque production office and rent them for set decor
• ations. He did it, and they were paid $200. That may not seem lik
• e much, but beer was only 25 cents a bottle. I ha
• ve seen the film several times, but have failed
• for certain to identify any of her paintings.
• About the same time they were wrapping Lonely Ar
• e The Brave I finished my own contemporary cowboy nov

el The Rounders

. Before its publication, it was submitted to MGM in manuscript form. Director Burt Kennedy found it in a "slush" pile. By a miracle he read it and loved it. This single, accidental action would eventually lead to several pictures and uncountable millions of dollars for New Mexico. Burt took The Rounders to Fess Parker - a world hero at the moment because of his Disney role as Davy Crockett. Fess loved it. When he called me to come to Hollywood to discuss optioning the book -- with Burt Kennedy directing it - my history, Burt Kennedy's history and a good part of the history of the making of Westerns in New Mexico would be forever altered. Parker optioned The Rounders and I was talking to Kennedy with great enthusiasm about its prod

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uction. Suddenl

y Burt was out. William Wellman was in. Wellman came out of retirement to direct and oversee Tom Blackburn's script. Then it all fell apart from personality clashes amongst the principals. Four years later it would be back in Kennedy's domain. He and producer Richard Lyons would make it. Burt and his location crew met me in December of '64 in Santa Fe to look for New Mexico locations. They liked the ranch south of Santa Fe, then owned by Alva Simpson. The first part of the location scouting was successful. The next day we were to look between Santa Fe and Las Vegas for a small town and high-country locati

ons near Pecos. That night it
Minimum class enrollment - 24

snowed ove

r a foot in Santa Fe and even more to the east. Our

car got bogged down on the highway and had to get pulled out by a road crew. Kennedy's tight time schedule forced

the film

• makers to head southwest to Sedona, Ariz., for locations. I was deeply disappointed. So was Burt. The Rounders was released in 1965. The effort was not los
• t. Over the years, he would return to make three pictures in New Mexico. I must digress and return to my second Hollyw

ood action. D

uring those years I was simply trying to survive to write more books and have as much fun as circumstances and the frail human body would allow. Unbeknownst to me

, an up-and-coming young

• Classroom seating for up to 30 participants with an additional "breakout room" (near the primary classroom) capable of supporting at least 1/2 of the original class size for small group activities and exercises throughout the two day course.
• A screen suitable for viewing at any angle by the entire class.
• A dry-erase marker board or chalk-board.
• director, Sam Peckinpah, was disappointed that he did not get The Rounders for him

self. He did get advance galleys of my

next novel. The Hi Lo Country, and called my youn

• g agent, Peter Thomas,
• to get me to Hollywood to negotiate for t
• Certificates of completion for all course participants.
• he film rights. He told Peter, "I want to meet the S.O.B. who wrote this book, face to face." We did. I

naturally had no idea what would occur from these early, fateful and fruitful meetings, but somehow, amidst both our youthful madness, Sam and I remained friends from then until he died. The film industry in New M

exico was ready for a new jump-start. These early meetings with Kennedy and