Blackwater Draw: The Making of Billy the Kid | Video

From Palladium Pictures: Before Billy the Kid was an outlaw, he was a headline.

Blackwater Draw: The Making of Billy the Kid examines how journalism shapes the first draft of history and how truth can be left behind when reporting hardens into legend.

The gunfight at Blackwater Draw made Billy Bonney infamous, but a single newspaper helped decide how he would be remembered. Long before radio, television, or social media, legal labels like outlaw, lawman, and criminal were often assigned after the fact by those with the power to tell the story.

Filmmaker Dugan Bridges investigates how power, corruption, and competing narratives shaped the story of Billy Bonney, revealing how journalism can expose injustice — or just as easily entrench it. Through dramatic reenactments and investigation, the film traces how reporting can fix a narrative even when the truth remains contested.

This film is the first release in a new slate of original documentaries from the Palladium Pictures incubator premiering this season on RealClearPolitics.

The events at Blackwater Draw were never fully settled. The story was.