Have you seen that Ethen Hawke and Pedro Pascal are staring in a western short by Pedro Almodóvar with a title inspired by song lyrics? I’m loving the poster but the idea of these two in a half hour western together is just achingly brilliant. I can’t wait to see it.
And talking about westerns, I have been playing around with ChatGPT, seeing how it does on the blog writing front and chatting to it about it’s storytelling abilities. Whilst it can emulate storytelling it tells me it is unable to replicate the human emotion that people inject, it can understand story and write stories and does a pretty decent job from what I’ve seen but having had these chats with it and asked it to edit for me and write a few different things -I even asked it to rewrite my writing as if Anne Rice and Neil Gaiman had collaborated on it, which was quite interesting to see- I’ve decided I won’t ask it to write stories for me. I’m not against having it help with other parts of the process though. And one thing I found particularly interesting was that if you provide it with samples it can analyse your writing and tell you your style. Sometimes it’s hard to define your own style -let me know if you want to read what it said or if you’ve tried it too and got some interesting results.
I did include a blog post I asked it to write for me at the end of this post, in case you were curious.
Strange Way of Life
Premiering at the Cannes film festival in May, those of us not attending (my invite must have got lost in the post) will have to wait a little while longer to feast our eyeballs on it.
After twenty-five years Silva rides a horse across the desert to visit his friend Sheriff Jake. They celebrate the meeting, but the next morning Jake tells him that reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their friendship.
–Strange Way of Life, IMDb–
Writing a Neo-Western Horror with ChatGPT
If you’ve been here a while you know that I quickly jump between novels and scripts when I’m writing, I have two projects on the go –The Long Undead written as K.T. McQueen (a novel) and Wild Stone written by my alter ego Cathy Hewitt (a script)- and I’ll happily bounce back and forth between the two depending on my creative mood.
Wild Stone is a female lead Neo-Western Horror that I asked ChatGPT to outline using the 22 point method (which is how I usually plot) and after a bit of note taking and question asking (of myself in terms of making sense of what the A.I. had produced) I came to the conclusion that it could be pretty interesting. I decided to put it into SoCreate’s new script writing program and learn that at the same time (what do I get myself into?) but not before I asked ChatGPT to write the opening image as if it were Quentin Tarantino. I’m umming and ahhing about making a YouTube series about the whole process, I went so far as to have ChatGPT suggest the first ten episodes and management companies that I could possibly send my script to when it was done. Interestingly, one company on the list keeps coming up for me, including in one of those online match you as a writer to a management company things, so I’ll be looking more into them (I followed them on social media).
I’m enjoying playing with ChatGPT, I’ve asked it to write a number of things for me including The History of Horror-Westerns below and asked it to match my writing style from what it had read from me already. How do you think it did?
The History of Horror-Westerns
Horror-westerns have been around for almost as long as cinema itself. The earliest Westerns, like “The Great Train Robbery” and “The Searchers,” laid the groundwork for the genre, establishing the archetypal hero and the rugged landscape of the West. As time went on, filmmakers began to experiment with these archetypes, introducing elements of horror to the traditional Western formula.
One of the earliest examples of this was the 1959 film “Curse of the Undead,” which combined the classic Western story of a gunslinger with the supernatural horror of a vampire. From there, filmmakers continued to explore the intersection of horror and Westerns, with films like “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” and “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” pushing the boundaries even further.
In the 1960s and 70s, the horror-western genre began to take on a more serious tone, with films like “The Wild Bunch” and “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” exploring darker themes like violence and mortality. The 1970s also saw the rise of the spaghetti Western, a subgenre of Westerns made in Italy, which often incorporated elements of horror and surrealism.
As the 1980s rolled around, the horror-western genre began to enter a new phase, with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” and “Near Dark” infusing the classic Western formula with the punk rock energy of the era. From there, the genre continued to evolve, with films like “Bone Tomahawk” and “The Wind” pushing the boundaries of what horror-westerns could be.
In conclusion, the history of horror-westerns is a rich and varied one, with filmmakers continually pushing the boundaries of the genre and experimenting with new forms of storytelling. Whether you’re a fan of classic horror-westerns or modern-day mashups, there’s always something new to discover in this exciting and ever-evolving genre.
Horror and Fantasy Author – Also writing as K.T. McQueen. Love Western Horror, cowboy boots, my cactus Collin, & my Demon Cat.
Moths – I hate moths, the way they flutter at your face!
