Arthurian Themes In Old West

Starting with his blockbuster "Urban Cowboy," writer Aaron Latham has become known for his re-interpretations of the standard Western.

The trend continues in his latest book, "The Cowboy with the Tiffany Gun," in which he transports the quest for the Holy Grail to the plains of Texas.

Latham, who is married to CBS News' Lesley Stahl, is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. He wrote "Code of the West," and is also a contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire and The New York Times.

"The Cowboy with the Tiffany Gun" is Latham's second Western with Arthurian themes. He tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith that once he finished the first book, he immediately had the idea for a second.

He says, "It was about 20 something years ago when we were doing 'Urban Cowboy,' the movie, that it occurred to me, finally, that I was thinking a lot about cowboys."

The author says he always liked the story of the quest for the Holy Grail. There are several versions, but Latham was inspired by the story of Sir Percival and the Fisher King. Like Sir Percival, his novel's character, Percival (nicknamed Pyg), is striving to get his hands on the Grail, which is represented by the axe in Goodnight's gravestone.

Latham also says he wanted to write a book about a quest — and he says the story of Holy Grail is the best quest book of all time. He explains Percival's quest is to find the axe, find his father, find a way to become a man in the literal and figurative journey.

He notes the cowboy is the American version of a knight. "The cowboy's really the American knight - the man on horseback, larger than life; he's got a tall hat; he's got a gun; he's armed. So I was trying to figure out how to dramatize the idea that the cowboy is an American knight. And it seemed to me that King Arthur is a rancher who would do that," he says.

In all stories about knights, they have a special sword, he explains, "Excalibur being the most famous. They all had some story about how they got their special sword. And I thought, 'Well, my cowboy in this book should have a special gun.' And I did some research and found out that -low and behold - Tiffany used to make guns."

According to Latham, the cowboy comes back when the country needs him, and it may explain the renewed interest in the mythical figure. He says whenever America is unsure about itself and its future, the country turns to cowboys.

A Texan, Lathan says, "I loved writing about that part of Texas, West Texas, which is where kind of the last of the real cowboys are or still entrenched, where they more or less invented what we think of as the cowboy culture today."

Latham is working on a new musical — his previous work was "Urban Cowboy: The Musical," which played briefly on Broadway.

"I had a great time doing that. It's always more fun to be doing a musical, be doing a movie than it is to have done it," he says with a laugh, "So now the same team that did that, whether they like it or not, were coming back with a musical."