I have spent a lot of time in Westworld, roaming the hills and exploring the town and various settlements nearby. I have hiked through the hills, roamed the streets of the old western town, visited the white church. I have been going there for over 30 years. By this I mean one of the main locations where season one and two of HBO’s Westworld was shot. All these things were real places located in a State Park called Paramount Ranch. I say “was” because, with the exception of the iconic white church, everything burned to the ground in the devastating Woolsey fire of 2018.
I went there as a kid for the Renaissance Pleasure Fair. They added a lot to the area for the television series Dr. Quin Medicine Woman from 1993 to 1998. The amazing thing is that even while they were filming Quinn you could still freely roam through the old western town on weekends. There was a full train station with train, an Indian village, cabins and other new buildings including Sully’s homestead, the school house, and the Spring Chateau Resort. There was even an old 1940s gas station that had been built for something. It was both a working set and a public park, and it was great fun to explore.
Right nearby is Malibu Creek State Park. From 1972 to 1983, it was the location used for the MASH television series. As they were filming the final episode, a fire swept through the area and destroyed most of the outdoor set. They incorporated the fire into the script as the reason the 4077th had to bug out. They also filmed the Planet of the Apes television series here. In 2008, they restored the MASH signpost and tent markers, and you can still see a rusted Jeep and a Dodge ambulance from the series.
They have been filming here for a long time. In 1927, Paramount Pictures purchased 2,700 acres of the old Rancho Las Virgenes, a ranch just west of the San Fernando Valley and east of Thousand Oaks. They used it as a movie ranch, primarily for Westerns. They built all sorts of sets there, including an early recreation of San Francisco. Some of the early films shot there include How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), and The Inspector General (1949). They shot Gunsmoke and The Cisco Kid and tons of other stuff there.
In 1980 the National Park Service took over a big chunk of it, and restored many of the existing sets. While open to the public, it continued to act as a movie location. The Western town was kept in good shape and has been used over and over again in scenes depicting a Western town. More recently it has been featured in American Sniper, Norbit, The Love Bug, Blast From the Past, Scream, The Lake House, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mentalist, Weeds, The X-Files, and Hulu’s comedy western Quickdraw. Once you have been there you recognize it all the time on television.
I have not been up there since the fire, as I felt it would be too heartbreaking. There are many ongoing projects to restore it, but the area was completely devastated, taking out the infrastructure as well. Electricity and water needs to be restored, native plants replaced. It will take many years.
What does any of this have to do with my novel? Belle and I had seen the first season of Westworld, but that was it. We have HBO again, so we watched seasons two and three, and were thrilled that a fourth and final season is in the works. It is up there with the best science fiction series for television ever made.
It was also interesting for me to watch as it has some similar problems to the ones I am dealing with in my story. The main characters, the robots, can’t really be killed, at least not easily in any meaningful way. They have the same issues I have of creating dramatic life or death situations with characters who we know are not actually going to die. Sure, main characters are probably not really in a life or death situation, but the television series Lost tore away our innocence, when main characters died on a regular basis.
While what I am doing is different, I found the approaches they took on Westworld to be interesting and inspiring. They were able to overcome somewhat similar problems effectively, and that encouraged me that I could do the same. The key is to find inspiration, not an exact idea to copy. Too much similarity would have been horrifying to me, as I am trying to do something different.
I watch a lot of action and science fiction movies. I enjoy the good ones, but most of what I watch are the bad ones, looking for ideas to parody in my novel. Yes, they are different mediums, but I am doing a lot of pop culture references and much of that is inspired by the movies. The novel is not intended to be comic, but the twisted take on familiar tropes is intended to be humorous, and my best source material for that is bad and mediocre movies.
For me, after watching so much bad science fiction, what Westworld reminded me of is what really great science fiction can be. The art of storytelling in Westworld is masterful. From the direction to the art direction to the actors, everyone is at the top of their game. Watching something like this makes me want to do an even better job on the writing. It encourages me as a writer to up my game.
I have not been doing any writing on the novel, as these have been difficult times, with some significant things to deal with. I recently lost two people very close to me. My dad died of throat cancer. It was just death roulette, as many other things were just as likely to take him. He had a lot of problems. How he lived as long as he did is a mystery. With my dad, he has been gone for awhile, at least mentally. He made it to 90 but not with his faculties intact. The man he was in the last few years bore little resemblance to the man he was. In many ways, his passing was a relief.
I also lost a very close friend to brain cancer. My friend is still technically alive, but most of the things that made her who she was are gone. That is harder. She helped with the initial editing of this blog, and helped with the editing of my The Greatest Adventure book. We loved to talk about writing. She was a romance writer and had written many short stories and a couple of books. She is no longer able to speak and can barely communicate. Those of us who know her really don’t know what is going on inside. She has lost all affect and is unable to display emotion.
I am also struggling with a sick cat that is not getting better, and being on what could be the precipice of World War III. These are stressful times. Unfortunately, stress makes my symptoms worse, so it has been a struggle.
I have continued with my other non-fiction book and have made great progress on it. I am fairly close to done with it, at least the first draft. It is a sequel to a major book that came in at some 425,000 words. That first one took fifteen years to write, while the sequel should be done in under three. It is encouraging to do the second one so quickly, as it is part of a series of five and I would like to finish writing the series before my own journey on this mortal coil ends. Part of the reason it is going quicker is that while I was doing the research on the first I was also compiling the research for the others, so I have tons of material that just needs to be whipped into shape.
The experience with my dad dying and dealing with the memorial and family getting together inspired another novel. The whole concept and story structure just flashed into my head. I will think about it awhile, but it may well get added to the list. It would be my first attempt at a semi-autobiographical work. Yes, I wrote my actual autobiography in my book The Greatest Adventure, but that focuses on the positive. This would be a bit darker, but also a comedy. I will let it simmer for while, but I think it potentially could get added to the list of books I want to actively work on.
It takes me many years to write a book, and I am working on many concepts at the same time. By the end of this year I hope to have six books actively in print. I had been struggling conceptually with the next non-fiction book in my list of books to actually start writing. I had a full outline, title, and I even figured out the cover art I wanted. Much of it was already written, recompiled from shorter articles I had written for various web sites. I just was not happy with the overall concept. In a flash recently, I saw what should have been obvious. I changed the focus, retitled it to a title that I actually already had a domain name for that I had used for something else but was no longer actively using, and just let go of the way I had been thinking about it. I actually was not all that enthusiastic about writing it but planned to go ahead anyway as so much of the work was already done. This new approach is for an entirely different market than I originally intended, and I am actually enthused about it now.
Even though work on the novel has slowed, I still write almost every day. I rough out concepts for future books, work on the one that is most active, and think about all of the others. They all move forward, albeit slowly. Writing books is not for instant gratification.