Western Stuntman, Actor Gets Back on the Horse in N.M.

By Reel N.M. DAN MAYFIELD Of the Journal

It’s been rumored that guys like Neil Summers are living in New Mexico.

For 42 years, he’s been one of Hollywood’s go-to guys for stunts, specifically horse stunts in Western films. You know the guy who gets shot and falls off a horse in every Western? That’s Summers.

“It’s all I’ve ever done. Forty-two years,” Summers said. “I grew up watching all the cowboys on TV. I just wanted to be a cowboy in the movies. I had no interest in staying inside. I started working as an extra and they eased me up.”

Summers has been an actor and stunt man since he was in the John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movie “McLintock!” in the early 1960s.

These days, though, he’s a New Mexican actor doing day-player roles in films like “Love Ranch” and the big film opening next weekend, “Appaloosa” with Ed Harrris and Viggo Mortensen, which was shot last fall in Santa Fe.

“I used to have a house in Santa Fe, and it’s been my thing to retire here,” he said.

But retirement came early.

“The last five years, the income tanked because of the reality crap,” Summers said. “It’s all nonunion. We’ve been biting the bullet over there, and with New Mexico’s 25-percent rebate, stuff is pouring in here.”

So, he moved to where he wanted to retire anyway.

From “McLintock!” to “The Shawshank Redemption,”"The Greatest Story Ever Told,”"True Grit,”"Death Valley Days,”"Young Guns,”"Quantum Leap,” and “The Quick and the Dead,” he’s done it all.

The highlight of his career was a four-year stint as a stuntman and actor on “Gunsmoke,” where he played many of the town’s characters and often fell off horses.

Of course, Summers hasn’t only acted in Westerns. He was in “Mars Attacks” and co-starred in “Bad Girls” with Drew Barrymore.

But he’s a first-degree cowboy movie fan, not just an actor. He’s written two books on cowboy movies and has one of the largest collections of Western movie memorabilia in the world. A portion is in the Gene Autry Museum.

He has pictures signed to him from John Wayne, Gene Autry and every famous cowboy you can imagine.

In “Appaloosa,” he plays one of Randall Bragg’s (Jeremy Irons) gang members.

“The three of us are in a saloon raising hell and Viggo and Ed Harris come into the saloon. I’ve got some dialogue with Harris and then I get thrown out of the saloon doors,” he said. “I’m the only guy that lives.”

Gay film festival

This weekend, the sixth annual Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival kicks off. The festival has become one of the largest film festivals in the state, attracting almost 5,000 folks to its week of screenings.

This year’s showcase screening, the feature documentary “Eleven Minutes” by Albuquerque native Rob Tate, is at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday at Winrock Theater.

Tate, who graduated from Albuquerque Academy in 1982, has spent the last 25 years in the film and television business in New York City: “When I was in New Mexico with a lot of my Academy friends, we made Super 8 movies. I’ve been doing that ever since. I tried a foray into acting in New York, and that was kind of ridiculous. I went back to what I used to do all along.”

“Eleven Minutes” follows Jay McCarroll, a fashion designer who won the first season of the reality TV show competition “Project Runway.”

Bravo hired Tate and Michael Selditch to do a follow up to the show called “Project Jay,” because McCarroll was a fascinating reality-TV star.

“Michael worked with ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,’ and we made this oneoff special,” Tate said.

As Selditch and Tate got to know McCarroll, they realized there was a featurelength documentary in the designer.

The pair spent 18 months with McCarroll and watched his star rise from “Project Runway” through the production of his first fashion collection.

“Eleven Minutes” has been on the festival circuit and was recently picked up for distribution, Tate said.

But “Eleven Minutes” is not the only big-time project Tate has been working on.

For the last three years, he’s been a producer and head editor of the PBS show “Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie,” for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards.

“I can’t be in New Mexico for the festival because I’m in Turkey filming for that show,” Tate said.

The schedule for the Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is dense, so go to www.ClosetCinema.org for a complete schedule.

‘Bordertown’ on TV

It looks like the Jennifer Lopez film “Bordertown” will finally get seen.

This weekend, the premium cable channel Showtime has been running “Bordertown” and will feature the film on Monday at 8:45 p.m. and again Friday at 8:45 p.m.

The film was made in Albuquerque three years ago and used the newsroom of the Albuquerque Tribune. Though it featured an allstar cast, including Lopez, Martin Sheen, Cate Del Castillo, Antonio Banderas and superstar musician Juanes, it was a flop.

“Bordertown” tells the story of a reporter — who in the eyes of newspaper reporters doesn’t act at all like a newspaper reporter — trying to solve the mystery of young women’s murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Critics said the plot cheapened the seriousness of the real-life crimes it’s based on.

(c) 2008 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.