Brando Rides Alone (The Terra Nova Series)

Part critique, part witty polemic, this revisiting of one of the 1960s' most tortured and misunderstood productions finds a flawed masterpiece that survived multiple writers (including Stanley Kubrick), an egomaniacal star with no previous directing experience, and a virulent critical reaction to become, in retrospect, a crucial rethinking of the Western genre. Included is an excerpt from a screenplay cowritten by Barry Gifford and James Hamilton that retools Brando's characters into the hapless inhabitants of a noir Old West.

Barry Gifford's novels have been translated into twenty-three languages. He has received awards for his work from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, and the Writers Guild of America. The screen adaptation of Gifford's novel Wild at Heart directed by David Lynch, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit his website, www.barrygifford.com.