(Click to enlarge in new window)
Yep, that's me and my Valkyrie, Deerslayer, above. Not Bronson's Sportster, but it rides well.                  Why "Deerslayer"?  read why here
L-R: Monument Valley, 2001; RedRocks Colorado 2003; Studio June 2004;
Eastbound, E. of Monument Valley on Hwy 163 Utah, friend on his Valkyrie in mirror, 2001; Deerslayer, Night Lights, 2009

This is not a stagnate page:  I get lots of emails asking if the Bronson sets are still available.  Yes they are - I keep them in stock all the time - already packaged, they just need a receipt and priority mail label.    Cheers...

Please email me if you find any broken links.  Thanks

OK.  Before we get started here, I just want to provide a quick blurb about me, so you know who you're dealing with.

James Bronson was my hero - I was 18 at the time Then Came Bronson was first on the air, working in a foundry in Racine WI.  About the time Bronson was cancelled my draft "greetings" arrived from Uncle Sam.  I survived two tours (PCS & TDY) to bomb Vietnam and did not re-enlist.  (Michael Parks "Re-enlistment Blues" on his Long Lonesome Highway album is special for me).  I had studied photography by correspondence school during the war, and was hired as Tucson studio manager for Chromalloy Photo Industries (a national studio chain), on seperation. We won several awards for Best Portrait Photographer and Most Improved Studio in ongoing nationwide company competitions.  After moving my new family back to WI a few years later I opened my own photo studio and remained open for eight years.  We acquired a reputation for innovation and the highest quality mise-en-scene photography available in the Racine-Kenosha area in the years we operated, and published several technical papers sharing those innovations.  Meanwhile, I had 10 years to use my GI Bill for college - or lose it.  So I did - acquired a BS degree in Applied Computer Science - yep, that makes me a degreed "scientist" FWIW ! (LOL).  Moved to Colorado in '87, and went to work in the computer world.  Worked as a tape hanger, a tech-support geek supporting Olivetti PC's (bet you thought they were all in India, huh? Well they pretty much are, now), a programmer, systems analyst, Oracle DBA, then a Sr Software Engineer at Sybase.  And of course, web site developer, and building and supporting our computer systems here at Horseapple Ranch. 

OK, so what?  Well, I applied my education, and strong backgrounds in photography and computers to fixing up these Bronson videos.  More on that below.  BTW, it has come to my attention that one of my twenty-something customers (I mean youngish, I've sold many hundreds of these Bronson packages) has re-packaged my work and is reselling it.  Doesn't surprise me, in fact I expected that, since these videos are in the public domain.  It would be nice if she had the ethics to not plagiarize my work adding value to these old videos, but nowadays... oh well.  Going forward I have added more features she doesn't have - and I have "fingerprinted" the files.     And I don't make impossible claims - she "increased the resolution" among other bogus claims.  Yeah - you can increase the pixel count - but that does no good if the increased resolution wasn't filmed in the first place!

OK, enuff of that.  Now on to Then Came Bronson!

Now, more detail:

Remember Then Came Bronson? Once in a while television comes up with a gem in all the - OK let's face it - garbage on the air. Then Came Bronson was a diamond. Too bad it lasted for only a season - 26 episodes and the pilot. I read that Michael Parks wanted too much to continue, so the network suits pulled the plug. That year I was working in a foundry, 18 and just finished high school, having received my draft notice to show up for Vietnam. I used to call in sick every Wednesday (?) so as not to miss Bronson.

Here's a few reviews from readers over at imdb.com:

From "Owlwise" :

Searching for America & one's own self, 4 June 2002

The sort of show that simply wouldn't make it to television today, "Then Came Bronson" told quiet, lyrical, sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic stories about a young man traveling through America in search of personal meaning; unlike many attempts at this theme, the show was never heavy-handed, offering intelligent, often quirky character portraits of the people Jim Bronson encountered. The viewers always came away with a rewarding, thought-provoking experience. It's a pity both the pilot film & the individual episodes aren't available on video or DVD. Shows of this caliber may be born of their particular time, but their substance is timeless.

Great Show, and a Great Guy, 13 May 2006
Author: dbking-2 from United States

I must have been in the summer of 1969 when a friend of mine said that he had heard that they were filming an episode of Then Came Bronson near by. We were born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. So the 4 of us jumped in the car, I was to young to drive but my friend wasn't, along with my cousin who was visiting from Utah away we went to find Bronson. In the mountains of Colorado during the summer they film a lot of movies so we had to go from Hotel to Hotel in Canon City to find him, finally some one knew where he was in a rented house in some neighborhood that I couldn't find again if I had to. We pulled up in the driveway and out he came, he was friendly beyond what any of us could imagine. We sat with him and watched the Johnny Cash Show and ate carrot sticks. He was such a great guy to be so kind to a bunch of kids, none of us has ever forgotten the day or the guy. I think that the show was so popular with young men because this guy was free, just going from town to town helping people, meeting people, but it was all so simple then our generation thought we could save the world. You live on Michael, live on brother.

Snapshot of the late 60's, early 70's, 2 March 2006

Author: mishippp from United States

Then Came Bronson was seminal and what I remember most about it (since I was 12 when I saw it for the first time) was the notion that you could lose yourself in America by simply getting on a motorcycle and disappearing. The imagery was perfect for young guys like myself who were watching people come back from Vietnam, utterly broken by the events of the period. The theme of "no ties" was utterly appealing to many people who felt that any connection to the "establishment" was empty and devoid of the satisfaction one could get from simply getting lost and "being free." The main character was far less hardened than other similar leading dropouts of the same genre (Fonda, Brando, Hopper) and far less psychedelic than guys pushing the "trippy" side of late 60's America. Bronson was more of a workin man's dropout and that's what I loved about him. And the mountain climb was unique. I think a whole generation of dirt-bikers caught the bug after seeing this movie for the first time.

Very cool, man.

Then Came Bronson was important to me (more on that below), so I set out to find the show and put it in my library. I had also heard many of his songs - he is a talented singer - my brother had two of his 1969-era records. I wanted the songs too.

So I searched the Internet for TCB info - for several years now. I found the movie and series has never been remastered, and has never been offered for sale by any large production company who owns it and has the resources to restore the old film. The pilot movie was broadcast by the Speed Channel on Thanksgiving 2005. Several years back, Turner South broadcast the series, and some enterprising fans captured it with their VCR's. This has been the only source for the show series that I can find. I've also found that some of the online sellers are selling some poor quality copies. Not surprising given the variance in equipment, operator skills, putting more than 3 hours of video on single-layer DVDs which adds compression tokens, and the practice of repeating generations of tape copies which degrades video with each subsequent generation. So I set out to produce the best videos possible and make them available to my brothers who loved Bronson and were profoundly influenced by his odyssey.

I found a good set of VCR copies, recorded as SP and not later than the 3rd generation, of a cable broadcast from Turner South. All the copies I found, came from the TNT network, as they apparently used to own the series but have not and are not producing it for sale - in spite of multiple requests from many people. In fact, I have a copy of an inquiry & response on a forum on superstation.com, where a viewer requested purchasing TCB, and TNT told him to search on the internet to find copies, as they won't be producing them for sale.

OK, so I have a lot of video equipment and software, and the technical background to use it. I converted the videos to MPG2 format (DVD quality) while adjusting the brightness, contrast, color saturation, and hue, as these 38-yr old videos need fixing. I ran the resulting MPG2 files through a video editor and removed the transitions to/from commercials. I had previously collected Michael Parks music from the period - which was only released on vinyl, has been out of print over 30 years. But I didn't have all the tracks from both albums, and I wanted CD quality which the tunes I had, weren't. So I searched for the albums "Long Lonesome Highway", & "Closing the Gap" ,from 1969-70. Not available anywhere including I-Tunes, the record publishers, and other online sellers. Only available on old records in used music stores.  I got lucky and found MINT UNPLAYED copies of both from a record broker.  You may recall, even brand-new vinyl recordings still have a bias tone, background noise, pops & clicks.  So I remastered the albums to CD quality with  a DAK mixer and their software, removed all the vinyl blems, and normalized the volume to max, short of clipping - they all have the same volume.  I collected episode guide info from Wikipedia, and created 3-episode screens that display the guides while playing one tune per guide. I bundled the episodes into 3-episode groups, each group with it's appropriate guide - and created a menu for each group while creating the files that your DVD player needs. I also created a complete episode guide for the pilot movie disc that displays while the Parks' '69-'70 songs play. You can scroll through the guide with your FF button. And three other Bonus Features on the movie disc - Searching for Bronson that plays with a clean copy of "Re-enlistment Blues" - viewer reviews of TCB with Parks' tunes, and a slideshow of pics from the series and the movie, also with Park's tunes. Here's screen snaps of the pilot movie disc menu and the episode 7-9 menu:

Feedback below about the current TCB pkg in reverse chrono order: 
I deleted last names & domains to protect their privacy.

3. A Famine Where Abundance Lies

6. Amid Splinters of the Thunderbolt

9. Your Love is Like a Demolition Derby in My Heart

12. A Long Trip to Yesterday

15. Sibyl

18. That Undiscovered Country

21. The Mountain

24. The Ninety-Nine Mile Circle

One more word about Quality: That's the watchword around here. We have a great reputation & I intend to protect it. Notice the discs look labeled, each with graphics I created from stills on that episode set. BUT THESE DISCS ARE NOT LABELLED - THEY ARE PRINTED DIRECTLY BY A HI-RES PHOTO PRINTER, DIRECTLY ON VERBATIM PRINTABLE DISCS!!!! It's not a good idea to put labels on DVD's. You know how you remove a label? Heat it up with a hair dryer or heat gun. Guess what your DVD player does. It has a laser and it makes the discs warm. Over time, and repeated heatings, the adhesive is likely to degrade and the labels come off. Inside your player, if you're unlucky. So don't put labels on your DVD's, or buy them that way.

On "Get it Fast" - Place order by 11:00AM MT for overnight 3:00pm delivery by Fedex.

Returns: We will replace any DVD that is defective & doesn't play, at our expense, if the playing surface is undamaged. If you damaged them - we will still replace them but there will be a fee prorated on the pkg price.   I'm being as thorough as I can, so you know what to expect - and that's what you'll get, no surprises. These discs are region free, and they are play tested - so once the package is opened, they are not returnable.

Here's a question "Greg" wrote in - posted here as you might have the same question:

Q: Hi! I like you have loved Bronson since I was 13! I was lucky enough to tape it back in 89 from TNT and then in 02 put it to DVD. I can't believe it has not come to DVD. I'm always looking for better than what I have. Mine seems to be around an 8 in quality. But no chapters.....commercials still in! I'm always unhappy with the ones I try. Yours sounds like you have put some time into this! Guess i'm asking if you think this will top what I'll already have! THX Greg

Nov-12-07 A: I don't think TCB will be officially released to DVD now, as it's gone to Public Domain. Yep, I've read lots of disappointing reports on what's out there. I set out to make a set as good as it can be - my goal to make the best and I worked on it for weeks. Started with VHS tapes I'd say were about 8. Then converted to MPG2 while correcting colors - brightness, contrast, saturation & hue. Used skin tones to set the hue, adjusted contrast and brightness together with a goal of having the contrast cover the full range of the scene - in a sunlight scene, usually 7 stops. That is, set the brightness and contrast together so I got fully black blacks and completely white highlights. (I have photog experience, owned a studio for 9 years, was also the Tucson studio manager for CPI.) Saturation - good color so it looks natural, not psychedelic or like hand-tinted B&W. I did this with each episode seperately as they varied from each other, and sometimes varied within the episodes. I removed all the "dead air" left over from the last editor's incomplete removal of the commercials.

Yeah, I believe this set is better than what you have, for the color correction, menus and extra features I included, as well as no commercials. Two of the episodes I'd say are a point down from the others, with some waviness on the top 15% of the screen - episodes 17. The Gleam of the Eagle Mind, and 18. That Undiscovered Country