The Hawk

Issue date: 9/19/07 Section: Entertainment

Casey Affleck is "The Cowardly Robert Ford."

Infamous. Legendary. Notorious. This is how the man called Jesse James is remembered.

The story of America's first outlaw, while fascinating and exploitative, bears little resemblance to historical truth. In reality, James was just another low-life criminal who robbed, terrorized, and murdered those who got in his way. The 1870s brought about sensational news articles following James and his gang, turning the criminal into a high-profile celebrity. So who was the real Jesse James? Historically, he was an angry Confederate soldier who went on his rampages as a way of getting back at a country he no longer respected. In the eyes of those who admired him the most, he was a man who played by his own rules; a true symbol of the seemingly unattainable freedom that so many Americans craved.

One of James' greatest admirers was the young Robert Ford. He was devoted to his idol; no one ever imagined that he would be the one to bring down America's most wanted man. What caused Ford to shoot James in the back? What happened between the two friends that caused one to not survive the night? These questions may never be answered.

Warner Brothers Pictures provides an inside look into this legendary mystery with the film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Brad Pitt as Jesse James and Casey Affleck as Robert Ford, the movie opens on Sept. 21 in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Toronto. It is based on the novel by Ron Hansen.

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Hansen attended Creighton University and majored in English. Following graduation, he served as a Lieutenant in the US Army for two years, mostly at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., and then enrolled in the prestigious Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. There, he studied under John Cheever and John Irving, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1974. He is also a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

His love of writing came from a sentimental piece of familial history.

"My great-grandfather later published a reminiscence about his cross-country journey [from Denmark to Utah] in The Journal of History and [my family] treated it with such reverence that I couldn't help but be impressed with the power of writing and the capacity to have one's voice heard long after one's death through the printed word," he said.

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