"C. Thomas Howell Ideally Suited to Star in Hallmark Western"
From a P.R. firm comes this subject line which reads to me like the start of a Richard Brautigan poem, only substituting the name of the once-promising star of The Outsiders and Soul Man (one of the worst movies ever made) for, say, Rommel:
C. Thomas Howell Ideally Suited to Star in Hallmark Western
Few actors are more qualified to star in a Western than C. Thomas Howell. Given his background as a former rodeo champion, C. THOMAS HOWELL is ideally suited to star in a Western. The former "E.T" star plays a land-grabbing town boss, opposite good-guy Luke Perry, in "A Gunfighter's Pledge," which premieres Saturday, July 5, on Hallmark Channel. After all these years, C. Thomas Howell is still in the saddle
Tommy, as his friends know him, was practically born in a saddle. He is the son of a bull rider-turned-movie stuntman. He grew up on his father's horse ranch. As a teenager in the early 1980s, he was a California junior rodeo champion. "I don't think it's a stretch to say that I was riding before I was walking," Howell says. "I pretty much know what being a cowboy is all about." Funny thing, though: Despite his expertise, he spends almost no time on horseback in the role of a land-grabbing town boss in "A Gunfighter's Pledge."
"I play a bit of a dandy in this movie," Howell notes. "That's happened to me before, where I'll be in a Western, but I'm sort of the city folk in the Western. So I'm either in a buggy or behind a desk….
In that shot, Howell looks sort of like Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, the great poker player who sliced and diced carrots with playing cards for a Reason DC HQ audience a while back. Check that out here: