Rick Padilla and JPS Brown have been collaborating since 2011.
Well-known western writer and Patagonia resident JPS Brown (Joseph Paul Summers Brown) has written 15 books, more than 200 short stories and received two lifetime achievement awards for his contributions to southwestern literature.
Now 88, he has a long history in the Patagonia area. Born in Nogales into a family of ranchers, he is related to many of the founding settlers of the region.
Brown is first and foremost a cattleman and a cowboy. He received a scholarship as a heavyweight boxer (he even sparred with Rocky Marciano) to study at Notre Dame University, where he earned his degree, spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and worked as an alpine rescue instructor, a gold prospector, cattleman, a stuntman and a movie wrangler. His first book, Jim Kane, was made into a 1972 movie “Pocket Money” starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin.
Rick Padilla, Brown’s business partner, also has family roots in this area Padilla is a filmmaker who left Hollywood to move back to southern Arizona in 2010. In Hollywood he had worked as creative associate for Hal Ashby, the film editor/director that garnered Oscar nominations for his work on “In the Heat of the Night,” “Being There,” “Coming Home,” “Shampoo” and “Harold and Maude.” Padilla and Brown began working together in 2011.
Padilla has completed a screenplay for an upcoming movie based upon Brown’s recent book, “The Spirit of Dogie Long,” a coming of age adventure. Padilla said, “Dogie Long represents how one should live their life on this earth. It transcends film genre. It could take place here, in Siberia, anywhere. Everyone of all cultures and age can have a connection to his beautiful story.”
“Joe and I brought John Forbes into the company as a partner,” Padilla said. “He was the missing piece. John’s music credits and talent are incredible. John produced the Dogie Long audio book with Grammy winner Jan Smith (Mama Jan) and brought in Grammy winner Ray Kennedy to produce the music album for Dogie Long, “A Cowboy Operetta.’” Padilla decided to reverse engineer what he had learned in Hollywood, and create a new business model, which would be to digitize the books first, create audiobooks, music albums, and then make them into films. “We are well into it,” he said.
Padilla met Brown after reading two of his books. Years later, they discovered strong family connections. Like Brown, Padilla’s family cowboyed in the area and has roots on both sides of the border. The Padillas were among the first vaqueros in Arivaca. This was during the same time that Brown’s family, early settlers in Arizona, was ranching. Years later, Brown’s father and uncle rode horseback for U.S. Customs in Arivaca to stop bootlegging – the bootleggers were Padillas. Brown’s dad and uncle did not arrest the Padillas but drank the booze and partied with them in the mountains. Padilla says, “I’m doing the best work of my career, because I’m home where I belong.”
Padilla explained that he has been influenced by Ashby’s philosophy of movie making that the story is the priority—the “search for the truth of the human condition,” and that Brown writes novels with this at the core of his stories. “I realized Joe’s genius. He is the real Indiana Jones of cowboys! It is unreal what he has done and lived,” Padilla said.
“Joe knows that the real cowboy heroes are not as they are portrayed in this Hollywood version, but are often fifty miles away from any other human. They risk their lives against beast and Mother Nature on a daily basis. There is no box office, applause or audience.
“He is considered by many to be the Hemingway of western writers,” and “some literary scholars have described the opening pages of The Forests of the Night as the best beginning of any novel ever written. In the introduction to the French version of that book, local author Jim Harrison wrote that ‘JPS Brown is the restorer of the great American quest,’” Padilla said of Brown.
Brown’s stories being developed for film also include the “The Forests of the Night,” and “The Outfit,” about Brown’s time spent on Art Linkletter’s ranch. “Cowboys Fly,” based on Brown’s unpublished autobiography and memoir of his family’s life here on the border spanning over 150 years, is being developed for TV. “His books were better for film than those from anybody I had ever worked with,” Padilla said. “Adapting and directing Joe’s work into films is humbling and an honor. I feel blessed.”