Wyatt Earp

Can you please share when ...

• Sep 28, 2005 04:00 AM ET
• by Michael Ausiello

Question: Can you please share when HBO's awesome Deadwood will return? Any scoopage as well too, please.

Answer: Season 3 is debuting next summer, and try as I did to wrestle scoop out of Ian McShane (Swearengen) and Paula Malcomson (Trixie) at the Emmys last week, all they divulged was that Brian Cox was slated to start work as gay theater producer Jack Langrish the next morning, Sept. 19. "He's amazing," Malcomson raved. "And the writing for it is so great…. We need a gay man in Deadwood." Asked whether Swearengen will return to his pure evil ways after last season's detour to relative niceness, McShane said, "He's a mixture. He's not one thing or the other. But usually within the course of a scene he changes from one to the other. So, a kinder, gentler, more angry, v read more

What is a spaghetti Western? ...

• Sep 1, 2005 04:00 AM ET
• by Maitland McDonagh

Question: What is a spaghetti Western? And how does it differ from a regular Western?

Answer: The short answer is that spaghetti Westerns are Italian productions set in the American West. The longer answer involves a confluence of historical, economic and cultural forces. The popular reimagining of the American West began as the West was still being won, with pulp novels, Wild West shows and touring theater productions. Movies were the next logical step in the process, and their formative years followed so closely on the heels of the conquest of the frontier that real-life legend Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) lived long enough to act as an advisor on early Westerns. American Westerns ranged from simple adventure fables aimed at children to more psychologically and socioeconomically sophisticated stories. But by the early '60s, after more than 40 years of movies and TV shows, American Westerns were running out of steam. European read more