PARKER FILMS • ONE-PAGE SUMMARY
The First Las Vegas
Before Tombstone had a fight, Las Vegas had a WAR.
- GENRE
- Historical Western
Crime Epic - COMPARABLES
- Tombstone ×
The Untouchables - FORMAT
- Theatrical Feature
or Limited Series - SETTING
- Las Vegas, N.M.
1879–1880
- WGA WEST REGISTERED
- U.S. COPYRIGHT APPLICATION PENDING
- PARKER FILMS LLC
When the railroad turns Las Vegas, New Mexico into the West’s wildest boomtown, a dying dentist named Doc Holliday and the fiercely brilliant Big Nose Kate try to build a respectable life, only to find the town owned by a smiling justice of the peace whose lawmen are the most dangerous outlaws in the territory.
Everyone knows the O.K. Corral. Almost no one knows the year before it, when Doc Holliday, Big Nose Kate, Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid all walked the same streets, in a town where the law was the gang.
The Story
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ACT I
End of the Track
July 1879. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe reaches Las Vegas, and money, whiskey and gunmen pour in behind it. Doc and Kate open a quiet dental practice on Center Street, a clean slate for a consumptive Georgia dentist with a warrant behind him. Then Wyatt Earp walks in, looks at Doc’s blood-spattered apron, and asks why he’s pulling molars for quarters when he could be dealing faro for fortunes. Doc rolls out the green felt, and The Holliday Saloon & Parlor House opens its doors, with Dodge City lawman J.J. Webb as his partner.
We went there to keep the peace, not to break it.
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ACT II
Under Color of Law
The town belongs to Hoodoo Brown: justice of the peace, coroner and self-made mayor. His gun-check ordinance disarms every man in Las Vegas except his own deputies, ex-Dodge City lawmen who rob and kill travelers and call it the law. Webb deals at Doc’s tables by night and wears Hoodoo’s badge by day. When a former army scout disrespects one of Doc’s staff, Doc settles it in the street: “Good night, Mike.” Now Hoodoo is watching. Kate, sharper than any man in town, organizes the merchants into the Las Vegas Vigilance for Peace Committee to force the courts to do their job. And after closing one night, Billy the Kid slips into Doc’s parlor with a bad tooth and a girl on his mind.
If you want to carry a gun in Las Vegas, you’d better be wearing a badge.
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ACT III
The Variety Hall
January 1880. Four drunk cowboys refuse to check their guns at the Variety Hall. In the gunfire that follows, Marshal Joe Carson dies on the floor, and Hoodoo’s gunman “Mysterious” Dave Mather kills one of the shooters and wounds another. The town that tolerated Hoodoo’s law now wants blood, and Kate’s committee, built on paperwork and due process, is being taken over by the very mob it was meant to prevent.
In those days a real man had to look out for himself, for nobody else was going to do it for him.
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ACT IV
The Windmill
February 1880. Torches in the plaza. Carson’s widow, eight months pregnant, fires the first shot, and the plaza windmill becomes a gallows. With Hoodoo’s empire cracking and the rope looking for more than outlaws, Doc gets Kate out of Las Vegas. They ride west with the Earps toward Prescott, and toward a town called Tombstone.
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ACT V
Prescott
The territorial capital is everything Las Vegas wasn’t. Under the watchful eye of Virgil Earp there is peace for the first time in a year. The cool mountain winter soothes Doc’s lungs and his soul, and the cards turn his way: a winning streak that fills his pockets while he rubs shoulders with the men who will shape the future of Arizona Territory. But peace doesn’t suit everyone. The new war is between Doc and Kate, the woman who calls herself his wife, and the question of whether a man headed for Tombstone has room for her at all.
Back in Las Vegas, the town keeps imploding. J.J. Webb sits in a cell facing the rope, and Hoodoo Brown, with vigilantes hunting him, slips out of town with the marshal’s widow, Mattie Carson. The railroad has brought something more dangerous than gunmen: land speculators stringing barbed wire across the old common ranges of the Las Vegas land grant. The families who have grazed that land for generations are watching the fences go up. They won’t be watching forever.
The Set Pieces
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The Earps Arrive
Wyatt talks Doc out of the dental chair and into the saloon trade.
Scene study, with audio -
“Good Night, Mike”
July 1879. Doc’s first killing in Las Vegas, on his own street, over his own rules.
Scene study, with audio -
The Midnight Patient
Billy the Kid at Doc’s door after closing, with a bad tooth.
A reported meeting, disputed by historians.
Scene study -
The Variety Hall
Four guns that won’t be checked. Three minutes later, the marshal is dead.
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The Windmill
A grieving widow, a torchlit plaza, and a town that lynches in the name of order.
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Off to Prescott
Doc, Kate and the Earps ride out of the ashes toward Arizona, and legend.
Scene study & dossier
Feature or Limited Series?
The story holds up in both formats. Here is what each one keeps.
| Theatrical Feature | Limited Series | |
|---|---|---|
| SHAPE | About two hours, five acts | Seven one-hour episodes |
| SPINE | Doc’s transformation from dentist to gunfighter | A town’s collapse, told through Kate’s eyes |
| KEEPS | Doc, Kate, Wyatt, Hoodoo and the major set pieces | Everything, plus the Earp family, Webb’s double life, and Billy the Kid and Governor Lew Wallace in Santa Fe |
| COMPRESSES | The Earp family and Webb’s subplot fold into the main line | Nothing; room for the full ensemble |
| ENDING | Prescott: peace, fortune and the first crack between Doc and Kate, closing on the road to Tombstone | Prescott intercut with Las Vegas collapsing, closing on the fences going up |
| WHY IT WORKS | Known names, a contained setting and a legendary ending already built in | Kate narrates her own true story, and every episode ends on a documented turning point |
The Series in Seven Episodes
- End of the Track. The railroad arrives. Doc and Kate’s clean slate. Wyatt’s temptation.
- Good Night, Mike. The saloon opens. Doc’s first killing in Las Vegas. Hoodoo takes notice.
- Under Color of Law. The gun ordinance. Webb’s two badges. Kate founds the committee.
- The Midnight Patient. Billy the Kid at Doc’s door. The governor’s broken deal.
- The Variety Hall. The marshal falls. The town turns.
- The Windmill. The mob, the rope, and Doc gets Kate out.
- Prescott. Peace, fortune and a new fight between Doc and Kate, while Hoodoo runs and the fences go up back in Las Vegas.
Where the Story Goes Next
The Road to Tombstone
1880–1881
Doc and the Earps head for the silver boomtown and the O.K. Corral, now carrying the full history of who these men were before the legend.
The Fence Cutters
1889–1890
The land war the railroad set in motion finally explodes. Masked riders called Las Gorras Blancas, the White Caps, cut the speculators’ fences by night to save the common lands, and their movement grows into El Partido del Pueblo Unido, the People’s Party. A true story almost no screen has told, in the same town.
Why This, Why Now
- A known ending, an unknown beginning. Audiences already love these characters. This is the chapter they have never seen.
- A female lead with her own voice. Kate narrates a true story she lived through and wrote down herself.
- Built from the record. Every major event is documented, down to the dates, the names and the dollar amounts.
- Production-ready. New Mexico film incentives, and a real Las Vegas that still has its historic plaza. See the New Mexico hub.
The Ask
Full script, lookbook and curated scene studies are available to qualified producers, studios and financiers.
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