Two Prospectors

The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark

Sam Shepard, Johnny Dark, Chad Hammett, Chad Hammett

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780292754225
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Briefe

This collection shares decades of correspondence between the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of his closest friends—including personal photos.

One of America's leading dramatists, as well as an accomplished actor, screenwriter, and director, Sam Shepard's legacy includes immortal plays like True West and Buried Child, as well as memorable film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in The Right Stuff. Though Shepard remained an intensely private man, he wrote candidly about his life and work in letters to his close friend Johnny Dark. His former father-in-law, Dark became a surrogate brother to Shepard, and even an artistic muse. Two Prospectors gathers nearly forty years of correspondence and transcribed conversations between them.

In these letters, the men open themselves to each other with gripping honesty. Shepard's letters give us the deepest look we will ever get into his personal philosophy and creative process, while in Dark's letters we discover insights into Shepard's character that only an intimate friend could provide. The writers also reflect on the books and authors that stimulate their thinking, their relationships with women (including Shepard's anguished decision to leave his wife and son for actress Jessica Lange), personal struggles, and accumulating years.

Illustrated with Dark's photographs of Shepard and their mutual family across many years, as well as facsimiles of numerous letters, Two Prospectors is a compelling portrait of a complex friendship that anchored both lives for decades, a friendship also poignantly captured in Treva Wurmfeld's film, Shepard & Dark.

SHEPARD TO DARK

June 1, 1988—Virginia

[HANDWRITTEN]

Dear John,

Great to hear from you. I was beginning to wonder if you’d finally given up on our long alliance.

Sounds like all your pursuits are as strange & idiosyncratic as mine. Mostly now our lives are consumed by raising three little kids. It’s a 24 hour task with hardly any let-up. It runs the full gamut of emotions & the rewards & failure are absolutely immediate. Our little girl Hannah Jane loves singing—she loves to be sung to & told stories to. She’s at that age (2) where every story or song takes on mythic proportions. I’ve dug up a lot of my old Cowboy songs which she can’t get enough of—especially lines like “The Fiery & the Snuffy are rarin’ to go”¹—I take her out on one of my old Quarter Horses & we ride around the farm—she likes splashing through the creek on horseback. By the way—isn’t it great that Jesse’s working with horses up in Santa Rosa & making money on his own! I’m really proud of him.

Our little son, Walker, is just turning a year old & has just learned to walk (hence the name). He’s cut a bunch of teeth that go six ways to Sunday in his mouth.

Shura is a tall, elegant 7 year old now—playing violin & going to school.

Summer is now upon us. Very hot—in the hundreds. We’ve been planting lots of gardens. Vegetables & roses. In fact the activity is non-stop.

I’m trying to write another screenplay which I’d like to shoot maybe in the winter.² It’s a period Western in black & white—something I’ve always wanted to do. This production company is very happy with my last film so they say they’ll put up the bread for another one. I can’t believe I can actually make films now.—If you get a chance to see Wim’s new film Wings of Desire, try to see it. It’s incredible. All about Angels. The best thing he’s ever done & shot in beautiful black & white.

I don’t know what to say except occasionally I do miss those amazing days where we’d get stoned & just wander around through shopping markets or ride bikes or just stare at life & go on mental journeys. There was something so great about that time but I guess it’s gone. Hard to believe things just pass like that but I guess you just go on to the next saga of one’s life.

Hope all is well with you & Scarlett. Say hi to Jesse & O-Lan.

Your friend,

Sam

Notes

1. From the nineteenth-century cowboy song “I Ride an Old Paint.”

2. According to Shepard, the screenplay was for Silent Tongue (1993), the second film he directed. It starred Richard Harris, River Phoenix, and Alan Bates.

DARK TO SHEPARD

November 3, 1988

[HANDWRITTEN]

Sam

Although late—I wanted you to know I was thinking of you on your birthday. This is a birthday card. Happy Birthday Old Man.

It is doubtful that I’ll be in a position to meet you in New Mexico this winter owing to the time away from home it will take to drive and the money—which I’m saving to take Scarlett and Magic to Hawaii.¹ So more time will pass.

From time to time I meet people in “The Work” in the street and it amazes me how far into the past all that has receded. I guess it has taken another form altogether.

I send you the last episode in the section entitled “women” (which actually begins with my Mother.) Well—everything changes but this is what’s happening now. Try writing Cowboymouth today and see what comes out [Great idea: Hemingway is forced to re-write For Whom the Bell Tolls 30 years later.] Everyone’s New work is the re-writing of their old work. The ultimate on “calling yr shot.”

Be of good health and cheer. Scarlett & I send Birthday

Love

John

Notes

1. Magic was Johnny’s girlfriend for a few years in the late 1980s.

SHEPARD TO DARK

October 3, 1989—Virginia

[HANDWRITTEN]

Dear John,

Funny—I was thinking of you too, right about the time your letter arrived. Must be the weather. Those crisp Fall days when we’d be aimlessly stoned, wandering the streets of Mill Valley & goofing on anything that happened to jump into our heads. Those were some high times! I was thinking, last time I was up there, that we’d just somehow miraculously fall back into that way of being with each other but I guess everything changes. Still it was good to see you & Scarlett, although there’s a sadness in it that I can’t seem to get over. How we all just become separate from each other, after all that time of being so close.

I’m having one hell of a time with my writing lately. Can’t seem to finish anything. I’ve got four incomplete plays on my desk & seven stories—but nothing is finished.

The kids are all in amazing form. The girls both going to school & Walker T-Bone discovering he’s a boy—crashing around making airplane sounds & diving into the furniture.

We’ve had 32 inches of rain this year so horse activities have been cut back to a minimum. Trying to get some Foxhunters started for the winter season.

I have to return to L.A. on the 14th thru the 16th of this month for a re-shoot of Defenseless.¹ I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny—if you want to give me a call down there. I really don’t want to leave the farm now that Fall has arrived but I guess I have to go. It would be great to see you if you happen to find yourself in L.A. around then.

Love to Scarlett & keep writing those juicy autobiographical memoirs—they’re great!

Your pal,

Sam

Notes

1. Defenseless (1991) was directed by Martin Campbell and starred Barbara Hershey, Mary Beth Hurt, and Shepard.

DARK TO SHEPARD

October 11, 1989

[HANDWRITTEN]

Dear Sam

Got your letter—nice letter and yes I puzzle over the same fate that befell us, first being in one life and then suddenly in another, hardly ever seeing each other, speaking or writing. I think we achieved a kind of openness of communication [. . .] by the proximity of us living in the same house, passing from room to room etc. [. . .] we generally pursued our own varied interests which have always been dissimilar from each other.

I too—always hoped, (after you left) that each time we met (here, Santa Fe, Virginia) we’d fall back into those great states—ie: that incredible horse ride we took—stoned—on the desert in N.M. or—stoned—sitting in the bedroom in Santa Fe contemplating shooting up the new wall with shotgun or—stoned—at the gun show and later in the upstairs room of the house in Iowa that time I came with Sharon.

So at first of course I kept pushing for us to get loaded and (therefore crazy) when I first came to Santa Fe—which must have been unsettling for Jessica and maybe the reason she didn’t want me to visit.

But for the most part I never could understand why we couldn’t manage to be free somewhere for a day or days at a time as on that proposed trip we were one time going to make camping out, riding the highways [. . .] instead . . . we always met “by the way,” always with other people. Even last train visit to Virginia, we were never once alone away from Jesse or people in the editing room. Or here . . . aside from 1/2hr meeting in Denny’s, never just you and me walking the beaches or hiking or riding or swimming all day alone because it needed to get worked in with Jesse and Sandy and other obligations.

And now, due to one thing and another I can’t smoke anymore and don’t drink yet I refuse to believe we can’t somehow hit those states between us on the natch and I still feel that one day we will be able to meet in some “neutral” place and just amble around digging things and each other the way we used to do because my feelings for you, my admiration love remains intact in spite of limitations of time and situation so regardless of “how long” I’ll never let us lose touch.

Me and Scarlett are taking a trip at the end of November. From here up to Reno—through Donner pass, down other side of Sierra thru Owens Valley to Big Pine, visit friends there then on to Shoshone in Death Valley arriving Thanksgiving. Two days there and then down to Palm Springs to meet up with my girlfriend Magic who’ll be there having just come off a week’s hike in the desert. Then over to (don’t know how to spell it but it’s pronounced ‘Oh-Hi’) where Krishnamurti foundation & library is (that’s where he died) and then home. Having both Goldens with us the whole way.

So in honor of the trip I just bought a beautiful little 38 police special Smith & Wesson. Very small & light. Undercover like the kind the cops wear tied to their ankles or down the back of their pants.

I may have mentioned am reading for first time Moby Dick and don’t laugh if you haven’t actually read it through word for word but I think still it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever read. One of those pieces you can’t imagine a human writing.

I wanted to tell you about my trip to Arizona to see that first love of mine—of which I told you a bit over the phone last time. But it’ll keep.

Meanwhile I am writing away at the never to end Bio.

“An old jazz piece was on the player. Marion and I started dancing. I laid her back on the white marble table, where the vet used to kill the dogs, and pulled her pants down. She held on to the sides of the table while I ate her but I was drunk and im...