Ten years ago, I went back to the Old West.

“The Bulleteers” was a film directed by Emmy-winning director Kyle Roberts that was filmed in 2016 and screened at Comic-Con International in 2017. Written by Sean Thiessen and me, the film aimed to take an Adam West-style “Batman” humor into the Old West.

The film was created for Oklahoma City’s 48-Hour Film Race.

We shot at the Simpson’s Old Time Museum in Enid — a perfect frontier street that came with one warm trade-off. To keep the air conditioners out of the audio, we had to kill the AC in the middle of a summer heat wave. So if you see anyone sweating – it was real. 

It’s also one of the only times I’ve ended up on camera. I play one of the cowboys who gets zapped in the sci-fi saloon brawl. I was a little too energetic in leaping to the floor, and as the adrenaline wore off, I absolutely felt it on the drive home. Kyle also let me ‘direct’ a scene – I called ‘action’ and stood in his spot in the scene where he makes his cameo! 

From The Oklahoman at the time: “The Bulleteers” won Best Oklahoma Director at Woodward’s Twister Alley Film Festival; Best Comedy, Best Supporting Actress (Alissa Ford) and Best Poster at Wild Bunch Film Festival in Arizona; and Best Short Film and Best Actress (Edna Garcia) at the Urban Action Showcase in New York City. At Oklahoma City’s 48-Hour Film Race, it was named Audience Choice and took home five total awards.

We had a really tremendous cast: Edna Garcia, Alissa Ford, Cate Jones, Collin Place and Jason Leyva were the principal players. Collin was the bad guy, “Todd,” aka the Death Devil. Jason was the town sheriff. Edna played the sheriff’s daughter, secretly the town’s hero, the Speeding Bullet (I wonder where we came up with that?), who recruits a brainy scientist and a hard-charging horticulturalist into her posse, The Bulleteers.  

“The Bulleteers’ was also one of the only times I worked as an adult with my friend Steve Jones of Digital DK, who I worked with back in high school on the school’s news videos. He’s gone on to many bigger things post-highschool, including his own Emmys, so it was exciting to get to be on a 48-Hour team with him as well. Chris Hoyt, now of Ctrl+N Studios, was also part of the all-star team on this production.

The film drew solid crowds in its festival run and screened both in Times Square and at Comic-Con International. Some have told me it’s their favorite of the short films I worked on. It was certainly a lot of fun.

Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about comics, film and entertainment for more than two decades. He is the former features editor of The Oklahoman newspaper and is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Oklahoma.