Hitch Your Wagon . . .

Geoffrion is a native Virginian who grew up around horses and made them his career (aside from stints in business publishing). He and his wife of 36 years, Danielle, own stables near Duvall's ranch. The men forged an easygoing, natural friendship unimpeded by Duvall's star status.

"When he and Sharon split up, I wound up spending more time with him," Geoffrion says. "We'd go blue fishing on the bay and then, when I could get away, I'd go on location with him."

He started screening a portion of the avalanche of scripts that come Duvall's way. For "Gods and Generals," the Civil War epic with Duvall as Robert E. Lee, Geoffrion read a number of books about the Confederate general, looking for details of habit, appearance and personality that Duvall could incorporate into his portrayal.

Brown eyes, for example. When the actor found out Lee's eyes were brown, Geoffrion tracked down a Wal-Mart optometrist who was willing to open his office on a Sunday and outfit the blue-eyed actor with brown contacts.

"Broken Trail" owes its origins to a connection Duvall made a few years back. "Bobby collects characters," Geoffrion says, meaning real-life characters.

One was an elderly Nebraska rancher named Waldo Haythorn he had met while filming "We're Not the Jet Set" in 1975. Geoffrion enjoyed knowing such old-timers; Duvall suggested a meeting. Geoffrion stopped by one morning in 2002 during a Midwestern horse delivery trip and had breakfast with Haythorn.

More than a year later, Geoffrion and Duvall were having lunch at the Rail Stop restaurant in The Plains, shortly before the actor and his new (and fourth) wife, Luciana Pedraza Duvall, were leaving to spend the Christmas holidays on their ranch in Argentina. Geoffrion happened to mention a story Haythorn had told him about his grandfather, a British immigrant named Harry Haythornwaite, who fulfilled a government contract in the 1880s to drive a herd of 700 horses from eastern Oregon to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

"Write it down," Duvall told him.

"You better do it," Duvall's wife urged. "Bobby doesn't do that for most people."

Geoffrion's phone rang at 8:30 the next morning. "How much you got done?" Duvall wanted to know.

The horseman started writing, although it didn't come easy. "I kinda came to the dance late," he says. "I'd written ever since I was in high school, but I never felt comfortable with it."

He got down a 23-page outline. "Then I just started writing it," he says. "I didn't have any particular knowledge, any books, any guidelines. I was just writing the story. Then it just kind of morphed into a screenplay."