Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for (Read details) Red Headed Stranger DVD Willie Nelson 1986 Rare Classic Movie at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products! Red-Headed Stranger Photos View All Photos (7) Movie Info. Shay (Willie Nelson) moves out West to set up his new home in Montana so that he can spread God's word. But when his wife. Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. Making a movie of Red Headed Stranger, his 1975 chart-topping country album, was a powerful obsession that wouldn’t let go. From the beginning, its story of love and violence in the Old West was unfolding as a movie in his mind, says Willie Nelson. He dreamed of portraying the preacher-turned-killer on-screen. Red Headed Stranger is a 1986 American western drama film written and directed by William D. The film stars Willie Nelson and Morgan Fairchild. It is based on Nelson's album Red Headed.
The Red Headed Stranger rides again at Luck Cinema's kickoff, thriving Austin rapper Ladi Earth can't be categorized, and more music news
By Rachel Rascoe, Fri., July 12, 2019
Lost Western flick Red Headed Stranger never made it to DVD. Following a limited national release in 1986, the onscreen adaptation of Willie Nelson's groundbreaking album by the same name isn't on any streaming platforms. Despite critical shrugs, the drama's Wild West set lives on as Nelson's far-out event venue of Luck, Texas.
Where a stage typically sets up for the annual Luck Reunion music fest, Saturday night presented a newly digitized edition of Red Headed Stranger on AlamoDrafthouse's Rolling Roadshow mega-screen. The first-ever 'Luck Cinema' event also remembered recently departed Austinite BillWittliff, who wrote, directed, and co-produced the movie with Nelson, who stars as a troubled preacher-turned-outlaw.
In a post-screening Q&A with the legendary country songsmith, moderating journalist Andy Langer offered: '[Wittliff] was one of the few people, allegedly, that could give you direction and you would take it.'
'Well, I was acting like I was taking it,' quipped Nelson in an evening of good-humored one-liners, some seemingly because the singer couldn't hear the questions too well.
Ahead of the sold-out showing, fans had an hour to wander the picturesque ghost town set. Offerings included movie memorabilia from Texas State's Wittliff Collections and CBD-infused coffee from Nelson's growing cannabis biz, Willie's Remedy.
In Red Headed Stranger, the star acts out a pretty fair approximation of his real life rough-riding cultural mystique, naturally a bit more trigger-happy. The plot moves slowly and gets pretty flimsy, but watching the gun-slinging proceedings where they were shot proved extremely special. And at this point, every opportunity to see the 86-year-old star in person is worth a drive.
After onscreen Nelson settles down with a single mom played by Katharine Ross, the real guy emerged on the front porch of his old-timey 'gambling hall.' When asked about his viewing experience, he said: 'I was thinking, who is that old bastard?'
Nelson offered quite a few golden nuggets on his acting game: 'I never looked at myself as an actor – I'd react a lot,' 'I grew up singing with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and all those guys – I felt like I was a singing cowboy before I could sing, or ride a horse, but I acted like I could,' and, finally, 'Acting is a whole lot easier than golf.'
With a number of Red Headed Stranger collaborators in attendance, Sonny CarlDavis, who plays goofy villain Odie Claver, offered the best anecdote. After prepping for a particularly dramatic jailhouse scene, Davis obliged Nelson's ask of 'Hey, you wanna burn one?'
Back on set, Davis recalled: 'We do a couple of run-throughs and Bill Wittliff takes me aside. He says, 'You've been on the bus, haven't you? Well don't look so happy, you're getting thrown in jail!'
The conversation recapped the movie's notoriously rocky road to actualization. UniversalStudios gave the green light on a $14 million version starring Robert Redford ('he chickened out,' explains Nelson), then HBO took a whack. Finally, Wittliff and Nelson struck out on their own with $1.8 million in fundraising.
Slim finances called for a family affair. Nelson's daughter Lana designed all the costumes and his grandson Bryan Fowler took the leading child role. Of her dad's lifelong hustle, Lana said: 'He's the hardest-working guy on the project. He puts in the most hours, the most worry, the most energy, so everybody else has just got to do it too.'
To big ending applause, she added: 'It's all for people that love him, because he loves them too.'
100% Pure Organic Ladi Earth
Built with a free beat off YouTube, 'Water' was Michaela Taylor's first stab at songcraft. The 2017 track got her invited to debut live as rap pseudonym Ladi Earth, and it's since ended up on Natasha Lyonne's Netflix sensation RussianDoll. Taylor now heads for her first headlining show, July 18 at Stubb's Indoors, shared with L.A. artist Nick Jordan.
'A lot of shit that comes in my life, I don't really look for it,' admits 24-year-old Taylor. 'I have little visions and just be like, 'Oh, that'd be cool.' Ladi Earth isn't a character, so it's easy, because it's me.'
The statement holds true in her getup when we meet at a coffee shop: sky-high lashes, turquoise hair, and a bikini top. The night before, she read The Cat in theHat at a Stripped Storytelling event wearing only the hat, whiskers, and tie. After growing up in the small town of La Marque, Texas, Taylor relocated locally for college and found her niche performing at gallery events.
'I was always doing art shit – I used to take pictures, wanted to direct, and for a while I was DJ'ing,' she says. 'I change every day. I think that's why my songs never sound the same.'
Still, Taylor lands a recognizably smooth, hazy magnetism in her rap-sing hybrids. She rattles off the point of origin for songs across EPs – 'Pussy Mouf' came after a friend's new love interest wouldn't eat her out and 'Water' evolved when a spiritual medium advised against taking long showers. Concerning latest 'Essentia,' Taylor says, 'I was masturbating hard as fuck around that time. I was just vibrating.'
Missing the nuance in her sexual themes, guys often message the artist about collaborating on what she calls 'instructive twerk songs.' A twerk teacher herself, she's not into bossy, hard-hitting raps. Instead, she'll go for 'something with dope-ass bass, where they're using their voice as an instrument.'
'Sometimes I feel like social media pressures me to fit in a certain category and that's when I'll struggle,' Taylor adds. 'I make my best music when I haven't listened to music in a couple of days, because it's just purely me.'
Crosstalk
Jon Dee Graham was hospitalized for cardiac arrest following a July 4 performance in Chicago. Tuesday, the Skunk and True Believer turned heavy songwriter revealed, via Facebook: 'I was only dead for a little while! No really, my heart stopped & they had to revive me, but I'm feeling better.' He's booked to play Saturday at the Saxon Pub.
Pleasure Venom shared a shocking rejection email from London venue the Underworld Camden. According to the punk band's Instagram post, booker Patrice Lovelace wrote: 'We try to avoid bands that play into too much identity politics tbh... I feel really uncomfortable about bands playing the race card to sell themselves as something unique.' She also attacked the band in social media comments. Lead singer Audrey Campbell responded: 'This simply put is discrimination. Period.'
Ryan 'Rhino' Walker, longtime bassist of local groups like Bad Mutha Goose and Rockbusters, died of a heart attack on June 30. In 1992, the Chronicle said of the latter act: 'Rhino powers the groove machine with his mighty thumb,' also noting his 'Satan-simulated background vocals.' Walker, who moved to Austin in 1980, wrote us a 2016 letter to the editor complimenting: 'Stuff like this in the Chronicle is why I canceled my American Snakeoilsman subscription decades ago.'
As preacher Julian Shay, Willie Nelson sobers up a besotted sheriff, played by R. G. Armstrong in a scene that both enjoyed in the scorching Texas heat.
Life Magazine
August 1987
article by: Cheryl McCall
Making a movie of Red Headed Stranger, his 1975 chart-topping country album, was a powerful obsession that wouldn’t let go. From the beginning, its story of love and violence in the Old West was unfolding as a movie in his mind, says Willie Nelson. He dreamed of portraying the preacher-turned-killer on-screen. Universal Studios optioned Red Headed Stranger but eventually let it slip into “turnaround” — Hollywood limbo. So Nelson acquired the rights and spent the next five years shopping for financing. With fellow Texan Bill Wittliff – screenwriter and co producer of Country, Raggedy Man and Barbarossa — Nelson plunged into the risky business of doing their own producing.
Despite the pleading of his wife, Connie, Nelson stubbornly mortgaged property to raise $1 million for the 1879-style wardrobe, props and three Western sets. Friends and neighbors pitched in. Towns were built on land adjoining his private golf course outside Austin, turning the place into a studio back lot. Wittliff virtually ignored his book publishing business, Encino Press, to take on the chore of writing, co-producing and directing. Together, Wittliff and Nelson assembled a crew and pruned more than $11 million from Universal’s original $13.5 million budget.
Willie Nelson sprays on a little water as he and Morgan Farichild head west. Says the TV acress, “My character just doesn’t have the pioneer spirit.”
They signed a native Texas, Morgan Fairchild, to play the preacher’s faithless wife and Katharine Ross (star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), 43, as his salvation. The actresses agreed to defer half of their fees. As the cameras rolled, LIFE went on location with Red Headed Stranger.
“If Willie Nelson is going to kill a woman, anyone in America would forgive him for killing Morgan Fairchild in this movie,” — Morgan Fairchild
“In a funny kind of way, I just simply stepped into Willie’s dream,” says director Bill Wittliff. “It’s become an obsession for me, too. I couldn’t walk away from it.” The writer fleshed out the record album’s story of stern frontier morality with a script that explores the theme of love lost and regained against a backdrop of sin and redemption. The preacher saves a derelict town from spiritual squalor but pays a terrible price — everything he cherishes in life. By the time his rage is spent, a dozen people are dead. Nelson says he’s not the least contrite about killing two women in this film.
Red Headed Stranger Cd
“If you like the song, the violence is there,” he says. “You can’t take out violence anymore than you can take evil out of books. It’s all part of life.” Adds Nelson, “This movie covers a lot of territory — from spiritualism to lust — and takes a man all the way to the bottom and back to the top. It does it to a preacher — which is a little bit unusual.”
Also unorthodox is the casting of Nelson’s grandson, his band’s drummer, the bass player and a bodyguard in speaking roles. Says Wittliff, “It’s really a homegrown deal. We pulled people off the sidewalk, from restaurants, stores or wherever we spotted them for this.” His Encino Press assistant, Connie Todd, put aside her publishing duties to audition more than 350 local folks. “When we found someone with a spark, we’d work with him or her for several hours,” says Wittliff. The creative gamble has paid off with lively performances from an Austin security guard, a waitress and a computer programmer.
Red Headed Stranger Movie Dvd
It’s a measure of the loyalty Nelson inspires that his cast and crew are willing to endure 14-hour days on a location as hot and fly-ridden as Calcutta. What’s more, they are remarkably cheerful about it. Explains bit player Bo Franks, a cohort and gun collector, “I’m doing this for free. Everybody is here because they want to be part of Willie’s dream. We’re busting our butts because we wouldn’t think of letting him down.” From the Austin hatter who made and donated dozens of period hats to the realtor who lent a 19th century water drilling rig, friends contributed what they could.
Says his daughter Lana, ‘Daddy has set such a good example for everyone that you don’t want to be the one to goof it up.”
As the end of the shooting approaches, day drags into night and exhaustion and tension mount. Mistakes are made, lines misbelieved, and the horses — spooked by gunfire — are edgy.
Red Headed Stranger Full Album
The only uncooperative member of the cast during the whole 39 days of shooting was a balky pony. “Willie, we got a problem here,” crackled a walkie-talkie. “The horse wants to know what his motivation is for pulling the plow.”
Red Headed Stranger Song
Nelson drinks cups of coffee and cracks jokes. Scenes are repeated until all the angles have been filmed. At 5:30 a.m., they break. Twelve hours later, after filming the preacher and the wife traveling west in a covered wagon, Wittliff and Nelson say the magic words, “That’s a wrap!”
Red Headed Stranger Movie Stream
The film opens next month, with Willie Nelson singing Red-Headed Stranger songs throughout his movie.