Hitch Your Wagon . . .

In early 2005, ICM, the talent and literary agency, took on the project, offering it as a package to networks and production companies. The package included Geoffrion as writer. AMC took it as the network's first-ever original movie.

Trouble ensued almost immediately. As Geoffrion and Duvall tell the tale, Hill, a director best known for "48 Hrs." and other action hits, had his own team of writers immediately set about rewriting.

After shooting began last August, the Hill-Duvall feud grew more contentious by the day, becoming a battle of dueling scripts. "At one point I had 22 different versions of the script spread across my bedroom floor," Geoffrion recalls.

He sensed he wasn't wanted. "I think there were people there who thought I was Bobby's pet poodle," he says. Duvall stood by him.

Hill could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman for the production attributed the conflict to Geoffrion's inexperience. The first-time writer didn't know much about story arcs and plot points to keep a four-hour miniseries moving.

Somehow, through what Duvall terms "a daily process of anarchy," a movie got made. "The overall thrust, the vision, is ours," he says. "From A to Z, I think the acting's better in this, overall, than 'Lonesome Dove.' "

At 75, Duvall has two other movies coming out and says he has no intention of slowing down. "I'll work till they have to wipe the drool from my chin."

Geoffrion recently signed a contract for a prequel to "Broken Trail." Called "Daughters of Joy," it tells the true story of a San Francisco woman whose mission in life was rescuing young Chinese women trapped in the "yellow slave trade."

But the Virginia horseman remains reluctant to call himself a writer. He still has his day job, hauling horseflesh and even mucking the stables.