Ron Howard crosses the line!!! Leaves THE ALAMO!!!

Hey folks, Harry here... Ron Howard has left THE ALAMO as director, and now the project sits in limbo awaiting a director to step in and helm this enormously budgeted Ron Howard, Russell Crowe, Ethan Hawke and allegedly Billy Bob Thornton film.

Now, I've remained pretty silent on THE ALAMO for a while now. For a Texan, that's kinda hard to do. I love THE ALAMO, it's a major part of history, a good deal of my father's stories from his childhood and well... It is hard to be a native Texan and not have a fondness for the Alamo. I've been silent for a long time on this mainly because Ron Howard had called me up and talked with me at length off the record to discuss the project. I learned quite a bit about the project, and was adamant in my discussions with him that they were headed in the wrong direction.

Now that he has left as director and somebody new might be coming aboard... I feel it is absolutely necessary to say... DON'T MAKE THE ALAMO MOVIE THAT RON WAS MAKING!!!

John Sayles had an ambitious enormous project in mind for THE ALAMO... The title aside, the film wasn't so much THE ALAMO as it was TEXAS! The film was going to cover all sides of the politics of the Alamo... Sam Houston and Santa Ana... The smaller battles that led up to the Alamo, as well as the battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its freedom till that dark day it joined the United States (heh... sorry... Texan humor there)

Basically... This is applying the structure that Michael Bay and company applied to PEARL HARBOR.... As well as what Steven Gaghan did on TRAFFIC. A flaw with both films for me was scattering the story so wide, that ultimately the focus was lost. I didn't care about Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett... due not only to their bad dialogue, but the lack of focus upon them.... And in TRAFFIC, while the acting was superb, the direction superb, the scattershot non-focused story left me not caring as intensely about the overall message of the film, which due to so many elements was lost on the vast majority of the intended audience.

Ron Howard once had a great idea for an ALAMO film... When Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH was reissued, he wanted to do that type of Western. Something brutally tough and hard. A film about a bunch of men motivated out of personal profiteering learning and dying for something greater in the greatest NO-WIN SCENARIO of all time. A siege film of hopeless odds. Something that would bury great siege movies like ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 or ZULU and ZULU DAWN. Desperate military situations like WAKE ISLAND or intimate nature of fighting and dying together in a closed quarters situation like Wolfgang Petersen's DAS BOOT.

With Steve Gaghan working away on THE ALAMO - I'd love to see the film focused, scaled down and become that great story that it is. There is a lot to be told that hasn't been. Characters in the Alamo like Juan Seguin, the Alcalde of San Antonio that was one of the chief leaders of the stand -- he survived when he bravely went for help, only to come back to the lifeless walls of the Alamo after the walls fell and the men were killed. Unfortunately we don't have a John Ford or a Sam Peckinpah working in film today. Somebody that could have focused and made THE ALAMO a great film, instead we're more likely to get a bloated so-called ALAMO film that wants to be more, but in trying, succeeds less.

They've been building the sets for this movie outside of Austin... I have to say, in the direction this project has been headed, I'd rather see them rot. That's coming from a film lover and a Texan. Remember The Alamo, but don't marginalize it. The Alamo is remembered for the men that died defending it to the last man. Unfortunately... Revisionist history and legend killers run Hollywood, not the dreamers of yesteryear. So Hollywood... Disney, REMEMBER THE ALAMO or... FORGET IT!