New
Jesse James movie based on book by
SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) -- Deacon Ron Hansen,
who serves in ministry for the Diocese of San Jose, is also a novelist and
English professor, and recently received a professional compliment about his
writing from actor Brad Pitt.
“He said, ‘Hey, man, great book,”’ Deacon
Hansen told Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper.
“He was a really nice guy, very generous
and gracious,” the novelist said, adding: “I was prone to like him.”
Deacon Hansen met Pitt on the set of “The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” a movie starring Pitt
as the paranoid post-Civil War outlaw and based on Deacon Hansen’s 1983 novel
of the same name.
What Deacon Hansen appreciates even more
than Pitt’s compliment is the movie’s faithfulness to his story.
The director, Andrew Dominik, who spotted the book at
a
“What Andrew did with my novel was go through it with highlighter and take all the parts he
wanted right out of the novel,” Deacon Hansen said. “Even the action
descriptions were taken right out of the novel. There wasn’t a single thing in
the script that didn’t appear in the novel, which is strange and wonderful for
an adaptation from an author’s point of view.”
Jules Daly, a member
of the film’s production company, wrote in an e-mail: “Andrew gives great
accolade to all aspects of Ron’s writing. For me, Ron delved so deep within the
characters, the culture and the landscape -- so deep that one wonders when
reading how he conceived of this time, place and story, almost as though he had
known it himself.”
Pitt, who also produced the film, became
involved with the project because he had wanted to work with Dominik and agreed to play James for less than his normal
fee, making the movie feasible on a $30 million budget.
The novel’s hero is Bob Ford, the
19-year-old kid brother of one of James’ gang members. Ford killed James in
1882 by shooting him in the back of the head while James was tidying a picture
with a feather duster. Ford, played by Casey Affleck, had reason to believe
James intended to kill him and that the crime boss might have been planning the
deed to take place in conjunction with a robbery the gang had scheduled the
next day.
In real life, Ford became a celebrity who
toured the country. The public, reveling in the blood and guts of James’
career, initially elevated the assassin to the status of hero for eliminating a
public menace but later turned on him for shooting a man in the back. A popular
19th-century tune branded Ford as a “dirty little coward.”
The Ford story, like all Deacon Hansen’s
novels, has a Christian theme. His characters cope with the forces of good and
evil and his settings dramatize the moral struggle.
“A lot of people would
be surprised you could find a Christian idea in a story about Jesse James, but
I think it’s implicit in the text,” he said. “A lot of times it’s about
recklessness, ambition, ego and how those can really ruin your life, and I
think a lot of times there is this sense of peace and redemption operative in
most of my books.”
Born into a Catholic family in