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Chinese oater kept veteran horseman busier
than usual
By BILL WHITAKER
By now, veteran Abilene horseman Ray Boeshart has served as
wrangler on several recent westerns, including "Bad Girls"
and "The Good Old Boys."
So what is he proudest of?
Answer: A Hong Kong-produced western finished down in Del Rio
and Brackettville early this year, complete with martial arts
faster than any speeding bullet, badder-than-bad Anglo villains
(complete with outrageously bushy eyebrows) and a Chinese hero
who nearly turns back an Indian attack single-handedly.
"A western to them is more like Hopalong Cassidy,"
Ray told me prior to a little chili supper at the William O. "Doc"
Beazley White Horse Center at Hardin-Simmons University the other
night, during which the film was screened.
"For this movie, it had to be all action," he said.
"No one would ever walk a horse in this film and there was
little talk. I mean, it was all action all the time."
Don't bother looking for "Once Upon a Time in China, Part
6," in local video outlets. At last report, this Chinese
western was being distributed only in Far East markets, though
Ray and wife Aileen did manage to latch on to a video copy of
the film, complete with subtitles.
Incidentally, while the Chinese talk in their own tongue in
the film, others talk English - including the Indians.
"Actually, it turned out to be more of an adventure than
we thought," Aileen Boeshart said of the $200-a-day shoot
in Texas' dustier regions. "They told us they only needed
Ray for about a week and we ended up staying 11 weeks. I immediately
had to go back and get more clothes."
NO HOLLYWOOD GLAMOUR
Known far and wide as an expert horseman, low-key Ray Boeshart
has lent his services and meticulously trained horses for several
westerns, including "Bad Girls" (about prostitutes going
on a shooting spree), "The Good Old Boys" (directed
by its star, Tommy Lee Jones) and "Substitute Wife"
(with Texas native Farrah Fawcett).
"To be in the movies is not glamorous, it's hard work,"
Ray said after his latest western. "I'd get up and harness
the horses at 4:30, even though they might not use them till after
lunch. Or they might not use 'em at all. Or they might just have
Indians chasing after me."
While he's enjoyed working on films the past several years,
work on a Chinese-produced western starring martial arts star
Jett Lee promised to be more interesting than most. For one thing,
filmmakers arranged for Ray to drive a stagecoach during an Indian
attack and act out his own demise. "Yeah, I get killed off
in an Indian attack at the beginning of the film," he said.
"That's when I get my one line. I get to bend over and say,
'Ahhh.' And that was it!"
Not only was the Chinese film crew meticulous in matters of
costuming, they also wowed wranglers when it came to special effects,
including high-flying martial arts fights, staged with the discreet
use of cranes and harnesses just out of the camera's eye.
"Everything had to be runaway horses and martial arts
fights," Ray said. "Of course, the white people were
the bad guys. And they had this crane behind Jett Lee and there
was a wire on him, and anytime he'd leap up during a fight, he'd
always outdo the other guy."
And no wonder.
DRAWING THE LINE
Ray said there wasn't much in the way of action scenes the
Chinese were unwilling to try. Responsible for longhorn cattle
used on the set, Ray had to help mount a huge stampede through
the town that upsets a windmill made of balsa wood.
Even more dangerous was a huge explosion that toppled a hangman's
gallows, seriously injuring one stunt man and reportedly blowing
out every window in the late Happy Shahan's famed Alamo Village
movie set.
"I don't think Happy would have been very happy about
that," Aileen said.
What's more, during the frantic stagecoach sequence being shot
in a rugged locale by Devils River, a wheel broke and a rock managed
to catch the axle, stopping the coach but not the horses, which
continued on, dragging Ray Boeshart wildly through the dust.
Ray later went to a hospital for X-rays. Luckily for a 77-year-old,
he broke nothing.
"The doctor in the ER couldn't believe it," Aileen
said. "He said Ray must have been in remarkable shape. He
didn't have one black and blue mark on him. When the stage hit
that rock, Jett Lee jumped off but Ray held on to the reins and
went flying like a saucer.
"But Jett was the first one back to see if Ray was OK,"
she said. "After that, the Chinese called Ray the 'Iron Man
of Texas.'"
Ray's true loyalties surfaced when the Chinese ordered a couple
of scenes so dangerous he refused to do them. Fiercely attached
to his family's horses - buckskins Reno, Waco, Pecos and Sierra
and paint horses Bandit and Gringo - and unwilling to use them
in any scene too perilous, he noticed no other wrangler on the
set consented to such scenes, either.
One of those scenes involved horses racing at top speeds near
a cliff overlooking a 65-foot drop.
Beyond that, though, it was a friendly shoot, even if, among
other things, the huge cultural gaps left Ray and Aileen Boeshart
overdosed on Chinese food.
"It didn't take long because, for one thing, the Chinese
food was prepared by <I>Italians,"<I> Aileen
said. "Now, we can get some pretty good Chinese food in Abilene.
But a lot of things they had on the set we didn't recognize at
all and, well, we just weren't going to eat it!"
Before the shoot ended, star Jett Lee signed a photo of himself
and handed it to a West Texan whose knowledge of horses and livestock
he came to admire during the 11-week shoot.
"Only problem is, it's in Chinese," Ray said, "and
I don't know what it says!"
Bill Whitaker, who noted that Ray Boeshart fixed his chili
with beans for his mini-premiere at the Doc Beazley horse barn,
can be reached at 676-6732. E-mail Bill at WTWARN@aol.com.
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Copyright ©1996 or
1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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