The Best Of The Texas Rangers

IN FICTION

- Allen Barra

Martin Scorsese once said, “More than 90 percent of directing is the right casting.”

Lonesome Dove is the greatest Western miniseries—no, to hell with the miniseries limitation: it’s one of the greatest Western movies ever made. And its greatness is because of its casting.

We know that Larry McMurtry wanted to cast John Wayne as Woodrow Call and James Stewart as Augustus “Gus” McCrae. This might have worked in, say, the way that Wayne’s star trip in 1969’s True Grit worked. But it wouldn’t have been great the way Lonesome Dove was great because Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall were not cast for their star power but because they were Woodrow and Gus.

Not to argue with Scorsese—our greatest director of Easterns—but only half of a movie’s success can be attributed to the actors. The other half is due to the script. McMurtry and William Wittliff wrote Lonesome Dove’s