page_title: Joe Kidd
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Kidd / Production
caption_attribution_description: The Pima County Bank at Old Tucson Studios is robbed daily.
context_page_description: Joe Kidd is a 1972 American Western film in Panavision starring Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall, written by Elmore Leonard and directed by John Sturges.
  The film is about an ex-bounty hunter hired by a wealthy landowner named Frank Harlan to track down Mexican revolutionary leader Luis Chama, who is fighting for land reform. It forms part of the Revisionist Western genre.
context_section_description: Eastwood was given the script by Jennings Lang, written by novelist Elmore Leonard. Originally called The Sinola Courthouse Raid, it was about a character inspired by Reies Tijerina, an ardent supporter of Robert F. Kennedy, known for storming a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico in an incident in June 1967, taking hostages and demanding that the Hispanic people have their ancestral lands returned to them. Leonard depicted Tijerina in his story, a man he named Luis Chama, as an egomaniac, a role which went to John Saxon. Robert Duvall was cast as Frank Harlan, a ruthless land owner who hires Eastwood's character, a former frontier guide named Joe Kidd, to track down the culprits and scare them away. Don Stroud, who had appeared alongside Eastwood in Coogan's Bluff, was cast as another sour villain who encounters Joe Kidd.
  Directed by John Sturges, who had previously helmed such westerns as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Hour of the Gun (1967), filming began in Old Tucson in November 1971, overlapping with another film production, John Huston's  The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, which was just wrapping up shooting. Outdoor sequences to the film were shot near June Lake, California, east of Yosemite National Park. The actors were initially uncertain about the strength of the three main characters in the film and how the hero Joe Kidd would come across. According to writer Leonard, the initial slow development between the three was probably because the cast were so initially awestruck by having Sturges direct that they surrendered authority to him.   Eastwood was not in perfect health during the film, suffering from symptoms that suggested a bronchial infection, in addition to having several panic attacks, falsely reported in the media as his having an allergy to horses. During production, the script for the finale was altered when producer Robert Daley jokingly said that a train should crash through the barroom in the climax, and he was taken seriously by cast and crew, who thought it was a great idea.
  It was one of several movies where Saxon played a Mexican.
caption: Sets on the Old Tucson Studios outside Tucson, Arizona.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S410", "Image DateTime": "2005:03:20 15:43:23", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "1600", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1200", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/160", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:03:20 15:43:23", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:03:20 15:43:23", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "117/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "181/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "237/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "622", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "453", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "40000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "40000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}