This was written by Peter Phelps, the
Australian actor who played 'The Kangaroo Kid' in "The Exchange Pts.
1 & 2" about his time on 'The Young Riders.' His comments are different
to any others I've seen about the show, but in the interests of free speech,
I include it as a legitimate viewpoint.
Although I never grew up around guns (easy to do on the pacific northern beaches of Sydney), in the several shows I have done that required me to pack a pistol, a rifle, or hardware of some sort, I have always been reluctant to return the weapon to the props department. This is heightened when it involves one or more other male actors. I suppose it's what my feminist friends would call that testosterone/bonding/primal/penis extension kind of thing. To me anyway, it's playing - just like we did in our backyard knowing we were absolutely on a par with the Duke, Astro Boy or the Ringo Kid.
Not alone with this feeling of a return to the neighbourhoods of our youth, where unsuspecting parents and visitors to the outskirts of your fort were 'killed' with a mighty blast of water from a plastic gun, the guys on 'The Young Riders' had each purchased their own real weapons. This was Arizona, after all, and the show had been going for over two years. The main weekend activity for the boys was to either go hunting in the mountains with the locals, or play war games with weapons that shot exploding paint balls at living prey - their workmates.
This sport is now popular in every state in Australia. There are several variations to the game - team and individual forms - whereby nailing your opponent with a pint-pong-sized paint ball is the basic premise. The game has been known to bring out the homicididal maniac in normally placid people. A rule exists that if you are splattered with a round you retire as a 'kill'. On a recent trip to one of these 'killing fields' west of Sydney, my mate Tom Carroll, respected as the Zen-like menotrof surfing, let loose on anything that moved, alive, dead or otherwise - all while he was wearing fatigues covered in paint from the enemy - a sign that he was supposed to retire dead.
Becasue the series in Arizona was finishing its season when I was there, there was much cowboy revelry to be had. I have found the closest thing next to an Australian surfer's idea of a good time is thw cowboy's - the difference between the parties during and especially after a surf contest and, say , a rodeo, are few. The latter probably has more hats, the former more drugs. I was expected at that stage to be joining the cast as a regular, so the boys treated me as their own.. This meant discussions on what guns were the bestt o buy, where to buy them, what states wouldn't let them in, etc.
The most memorable party fo the many I attended took place at the Tucson Hilton inthe penthouse suite of actor Travis Fine, who played a deaf-mute member of 'the gang'. [!!! - the Publisher] Near the end of a particularly effective bottle of mescal tequila, he showed me the ins and outs of his lethal-looking automatic paint-ball gun. The only noticeable difference with the gun I had in my hands and ones I saw on telly that mowed down people in car parks was that this one had a top-loading magazine for the balls of paint. Travis wasn't content to just explain the workings to me, so he proceeded to load up the thing and fire indiscriminately into the hotel's pool, car lot, rooms and at people down below. Myabe it was all that frustration of trying to be understood as a deaf-mute on set, but any question I had on the gun's function were definitely answered. The hallucinatory effects of the Mexican cactus juice helped in goading us on to further heights of cowboy recklessness.
I got hold of the rifle and asked another actor present (whom I had 'shot' that day on set) where his room was below us. The hotel was shaped in a rectangle so that we were looking inwards to nearly all of the windows of all of the rooms. It took me about five shots, after four other window, to splatter my friend's window with a coat of Christmas-red veneer. As the adage goes, 'cowboys will be cowbboys' (or something like that). The rest of the cast and crew who owned these creative weapons of irresponsibility (all of them) withdrew hastily to retrieve their guns from cars, rooms, camera trucks and make-up trailers. The competition was on.
At htis point I remember thinking how cool the security was at htis place, becasue we had been gibing the Hilton a fab new paint job for at least half an hour. Not incredibly concerned, but still curious given this country's insatiable appetite for the ordered and the uniformed, I asked Travis (who was firing oncursing staff smoking cigarettes outside the kitchen) why were weren't being busted. Not missing a beat in his firing, he said it was probably because the manager was standing about twelve feet away, chatting up our show's make-up girl, and waiting for a crack at his staff below. I felt this might not be the last time I stayed in this joint.
As this rooftop firing range party was being held on a Saturday night, my fellow assassins were concerned that the gun shop might be closed on a Sunday and therefore they wouldn't be able to get ammo for the war games in the morning. So our Lee Harvey Oswald impersonations came to a close with enough piant balls to blast each other the next day.
The decision not to have me as a regular on 'the Young Riders' saved me not only the dilmma of having to choose which massive four-wheel drive hoon mobile, but also which paint-ball rifle to buy in Arizona. I has headed back to LA. Wielding anything resembling close to a gun on the streets back here would mroe than likely leave you in a hospital or a morgue, the result of a policeman's, gang member's, home owner's or little old lady's marksmanship.
From: Sex Without
Madonna, Peter Phelps, pp. 92-94