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Thunder Over the Prairie
The initial dream was to be a stand-up comic. I’d grown up watching Totie Fields, Joan Rivers, and Phyllis Diller and couldn’t imagine anything better than making people laugh. I worked my way through college at the University of Arizona doing stand-up, and it was there I learned how easy the aforementioned women made it look. Different from prizefights that pit people against one another in the presence of paying spectators, comedy pits the fighter against the paying customers, with silence as the killer and the detonation of laughter as the victory.
You tried hard to forget the sets when no one even chuckled and relived the sets where the audience was happy and doubled over laughing. I’d had a couple of those kinds of sets and was feeling pretty good about my chosen vocation when it happened.
I settled into my seat on a bus I was taking from one part of Tucson to another and started working on a few new jokes when the guy sitting in front of me turned and pointed at me and said in a loud voice, “Oooo, you are so funny.” I smiled, thinking he’d obviously seen one of my routines. I got up and said, “Thank you, thank you so much.”
A few moments later, that same guy turned to the woman sitting next to him and said, “Oooo, you are so funny.” The man said the same thing to everyone on the bus. I was the only idiot who got up and said, “Thank you, thank you so much.”
Life is a long lesson in humility.
Somewhere along the way, I decided to give up the life of a stand-up comic and accept an opportunity to write about the history of the American West. Which is not as much a departure as one would think.
One of the books I had the privilege of writing with my friend Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi) was Thunder Over the Prairie: The True Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the Greatest Posse of All Time. The murder took place in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1875, where future legends of the Old West, Charlie Bassett, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Bill Tilghman were the lawmen and set off to track down the killer.
Not long after the book was released, I received a call from Emmy Award-winning director and screenwriter Walter Hill. He was the talent behind one of my favorite Westerns entitled The Long Riders. Hill wanted to let me know how much he liked the book and that he wanted to option it and adapt a screenplay based on the work. I was thrilled, but my mind raced back to the guy on the bus who told me, “Oooo, you are so funny.”
The problem, of course, is that once you’ve been publicly humbled by a man complimenting an entire bus like he’s handing out mints at a restaurant, you develop a very specific kind of emotional callus. So, when Walter Hill says, “I love your work,” a small voice in your head immediately whispers, “Yes, but does he say that to everyone?”
I resisted the urge to ask him if there were other authors in the room he’d like to compliment before I got too excited. Instead, I did what any seasoned, battle-scarred former stand-up comic would do – I stayed seated.
Because whether it’s a comedy club, a crosstown bus, or a phone call from Hollywood, I’ve learned one very important rule: never stand up and say “thank you” until you’re absolutely sure you’re the only one they’re talking to.
I’d like to think I’ve learned a little something from all of this. This month, you have a chance to win a copy of Thunder Over the Prairie. If you’re interested, you can visit www.chrisenss.com and enter. And if you happen to win… well, feel free to say, “Oooo, you are so funny.” I promise to stay seated.
