and crossed to other continents over bridges of rock ...
They first knew man as the hunted knows the hunter,
for long before man saw horses
as a means to killing other beasts,
man killed them for meat ...
"...The alliance with man would forever be fragile --
for the fear he'd struck into their hearts
was too deep to be dislodged ...
Since that Neolithic moment
when a horse was first haltered."
"... there were those among men who understood this ...
They could see into the creature's soul
and soothe the wounds they found there ...
" ... For secrets uttered softly into troubled ears,
these men were known as The Whisperers ..."
Touchstone Pictures proudly presents the romantic drama, "The Horse Whisperer." Directed by and starring Academy Award(tm) winner Robert Redford, Academy Award(tm) nominee Kristin Scott Thomas, Academy Award(tm) winner Dianne Wiest, Sam Neill and presenting Scarlett Johansson.
Robert Redford directs and stars in this poignant story of 14-year-old Grace MacLean (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) who is emotionally and physically scarred after suffering a terrible riding accident while astride her prized horse, Pilgrim.
Realizing that the fates of her daughter and the horse are inextricably linked, Grace's mother, Annie (KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS), a high-powered magazine editor, launches an all-out campaign to find a "horse whisperer," someone with a unique gift for curing troubled horses. She learns of Tom Booker (ROBERT REDFORD) known to be a legend for this sort of work and packs up both Grace and Pilgrim to seek his help in Montana.
While Tom works to rebuild all the lives that have been shattered by the accident, love blossoms between the gentle horseman and the uprooted sophisticate, a love with both wonderful and tragic consequences in Touchstone Pictures' romantic drama, "The Horse Whisperer."
Touchstone Pictures presents, "The Horse Whisperer." Robert Redford directs the film from a screenplay by Eric Roth and Richard LaGravenese, based upon the novel by Nicholas Evans. The film is produced by Robert Redford and Patrick Markey. The executive producer is Rachel Pfeffer and the co-producer is Joseph Reidy. Buena Vista Pictures distributes.
ABOUT THE STORY
"The term ‘horse whispering' is a kind of euphemism for a state of being, a relationship between a human and a horse," says director, producer and star Robert Redford. "It is simply a way to be with horses that sends a message of understanding and compassion. Instead of beating a horse into submission, or using punishment as a tool, it's a way of developing trust and understanding. If you want the horse to do something, you begin by letting the horse know that it's okay to be a horse, not your version of what you think you need. It's about understanding who you are and respecting your place with one another. To have that kind of acceptance requires a certain degree of spirituality.
"For me personally, the most important things in approaching a film are having a good story, and having one that is character driven, rather than being driven by technology or effects or by outer forces," says Redford, speaking about his attraction to the project. "The elements of this story that interested me most were healing and consciousness. It was the issue of consciousness that interested me particularly with the character of Annie.
"Annie MacLean has an impressive and courageous energy, and I think that is a very attractive quality in a character," Redford continues. "Yet hers is a rather blind energy because it's coming from a place that she doesn't fully understand ... it is sort of an unconscious and undirected energy. That's a great place to begin with a character who is moving towards vulnerability and compassion and sensitivity. She doesn't understand herself initially, and I think in her case it was because there was no real center. There was something at the core that was missing that she needed to find. That's where consciousness comes into the character. She was driven by what was missing."
"It is very rewarding to have worked with Robert Redford for a number of years," says producer Patrick Markey, who recently produced "A River Runs Through It" with Redford. "I have come to appreciate how he cares so much about the stories that he tells. There aren't a lot of people in our business who feel that kind of connection and commitment so intensely."
Speaking about Redford's attraction to the project, Markey notes, "The story is set in a place that he obviously is very fond of ... The West, the inter-mountain West. And he wanted the chance to portray this ranching family and the values they hold dear as their lives are being somewhat invaded by this proto-typical east coast family."
"This film provided me with the opportunity to show the west not only as it used to be as a way of life, but as it still is in very, very small pockets," notes Redford. "The times we live in are changing so quickly and we mostly have a very synthetic existence. It's almost an anomaly to find real ranch life anymore, or to see it as a way of life where ranchers live in accordance with nature, reaping what they live on, crop by crop and season by season. It was interesting for me to focus on a family that still lives the way they lived 100 years ago, where they farm or ranch the land and yield a crop that sustains them. It was appealing to capture that realistically, not just in seeing technically how they do it, but as much about their behavior, their lifestyle and the ethic and philosophy of that way of life."
"There's a profound sense of family in this movie," says Patrick Markey. "There is a hint of healing and redemption that takes place and I think it comes from the Booker family and the way they are solidly rooted to the world of their ranch."
The origin of the story for the screenplay adaptation, and the novel upon which it was based, began with British author Nicholas Evans.
"I had heard about horse whisperers about two years before I actually got down to writing the book," recalls Evans. "While I was in the southwest of England staying with some friends, I met a blacksmith who mentioned that he had seen a horse whisperer once, and my ears perked up. I knew a bit about horses, but I had never heard this term before. He told me of a horse that had been stabled somewhere for a year while its owners were away. Although the horse had gone away a very friendly, easy, and loving kind of creature, when it came back it was tormented, traumatized, and a wreck. Then a guy was called in and, in the course of an afternoon, he transformed the animal into what it had been in the first place. I was intrigued and started to do research and I found out that this work is a phenomenon that goes back centuries.
"I was very moved by the story but I realized that it wasn't just about horses," Evans continues. "The story I wanted to tell was about a human who, like the horse, had become clouded and lost in the world, and how the love and care of another human being could, in certain situations, bring that other creature back from an abyss.
"I have always had a great love for the American West and I knew that is where I wanted to set the story," notes Evans. "In England, anything to do with horses is kind of oriented by class structure, and for this piece the characters of Tom Booker and Annie MacLean needed to be of equal stature."
Evans traveled throughout America doing research and meeting several modern day horse trainers who are renowned for their magic with horses, although most shun the moniker of "whisperers." Returning to England, he eventually sat down to write his book. After finishing only half of it, Evans was surprised by the extraordinary reception it received at a book fair in Frankfurt, and by its subsequent skyrocketing rise to the bestseller lists around the world.
"There is something about the story that connects with people across many different cultures and in many different countries," notes Evans. "I believe the story is about people feeling separated within themselves, and coming to understand themselves and being healed and unclouded. And central to the story is this character of Tom Booker, who is centered and connected. He isn't constantly looking into the future and worrying about what is going to happen, nor looking into the past and having regrets. He is a kind of healer and shaman who is brought in to solve a set of problems and heal wounded people."
The Horse Whisperer, was published by Delacorte Press in September, 1995, with a first printing of 600,000. The book immediately hit the New York Times Bestsellers List, quickly reaching number one. It was on the hardcover best seller list for a total of 37 weeks. The book has been published in 36 languages, and reached #1 status in 16 countries outside the U.S. Evan's novel has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, about five million in the United States alone (one million hardcover). The Dell mass market paperback edition was published in October, 1996.
Robert Redford and executive producer Rachel Pfeffer became interested in the story while the novel was still a work-in-progress, and they acquired the film rights. The screenplay adaptation based on Evans' novel was then written by screenwriters Eric Roth, who won the Academy Award(tm) for his adaptation of Forrest Gump, and by Richard LaGravenese, who was nominated for an Academy Award(tm) for his original screenplay of "The Fisher King."
"When you're making a film from the story of a book, there are two choices," says Robert Redford. "You can either replicate on film what is there in the book, or you can make it your own. I think if you're an artist it is inescapable to want to make it your own. Nicholas Evans respected that. It was something that I wanted to confront right off the bat and I think it was one of the reasons we got off on the right foot. I felt that there was a real connection when we talked about what it was we had in common in terms of how we saw the piece."
This is the first film that Robert Redford has directed and produced in which he has also appeared as star, and the multiple roles obviously presented a complex challenge. "Redford considered hiring another director for the project," notes producer Patrick Markey. "Yet he realized he was very connected to the material so he decided to act as well as direct. It is a difficult task to try to do either of those jobs well, let alone simultaneously with producing. It was certainly a huge challenge, but he had the vision and the passion of his convictions to carry him through."
"I have never been attracted to the idea of acting and directing at the same time, and I've resisted it until now," explains Redford. "It requires a certain ability to stand outside of yourself and watch yourself, and for me that's neither comfortable nor enjoyable. As an actor, I believe the craft is all about inhabiting the space that you're in, giving yourself up to the moment, and to the person that you're with or the situation that you're in. To me, focusing on that and being in that is what acting is.
"Directing is appealing in a different way," Redford continues. "Directing was closer to what I had done, and to what I started out to be in my life, which was an artist. You look at a scene and your own view of things widens to accommodate detail and peripheral situations. I didn't feel that it would be comfortable for me to have to widen the lens when I was acting with someone. And I was right. It wasn't easy.
"Directing ensemble scenes is very appealing to me, and acting in them is appealing to me," Redford says. "When you're working with good actors ... as all the actors in this film are ... then it's a joy. It's a joy to recognize that you alone aren't going to make that work, but rather that there are rhythms and energies coming together much like pieces of an orchestra do, and that the symphony comes from playing in that ensemble.
"I felt it would be comfortable to play Tom Booker because I understood a lot about him," says Robert Redford. "He is appealing because of what he does, how he does it and what he stands for in his own particular life ethic. He was an absolute product of the land and the West. I felt I could bring a lot of my own experience to that character."
"I think the role of Tom Booker is one that Redford has been cut out to play all his life," says producer Patrick Markey, who has had a long-standing association with Redford. "Tom Booker is a contemporary mythic western character. He's a man of few words, with a calm assuredness about everything he does."
"I think that people want to believe that a man like Tom Booker exists in the world," says Robert Redford. "I think in our culture, we've lost most of our heroes. Our mythology is getting away from us.
"I believe the term ‘hero' is relative, depending on who you're talking to and how and what they think it means," notes Redford. "I think that heroes touch something higher and they bring it back as a gift to the people, and then they are usually destroyed for it. To me, that's the history of heroism going back to mythology.
"Tom Booker is a hero because he heals and he saves the soul of something," Redford continues. "I think most healers would be considered in some way heroic. But it doesn't mean that they are perfect or that they themselves are not in need of some kind of healing. In my own interpretation of heroism, one of the things that interests me is that it always comes with some sacrifice. He enters the world and gets bruised and hurt like anyone else. He has a gift that he didn't ask for. It's just there and he uses it. And it takes him to a place where he has choices to make. I find that more interesting than the cowboy in the white hat who shoots ten people, blows on his barrel, moves on and plays cards. I don't buy that."
Casting has always been one of Robert Redford's special gifts as a director. The ensemble nature of this production gave him an opportunity to involve an outstanding group of actors in featured and leading roles. "We were so blessed with this cast because there was not a missing link in the bunch," notes Patrick Markey.
"To me, one of the intriguing aspects about the character of Annie MacLean is the nature of her business in journalism," says Robert Redford. "She is a magazine editor which gives her the ability to kind of bop into any place in the world, go right to the heart of a situation and presume to understand it completely. It is a kind of arrogance to take charge of something. Or try to. Or to get to the top of it. Or try to. But in truth, it was also part of who she was because she was making up for something missing. The fact that she struggles and fails, that she has to accept that she doesn't know certain things and then has to relax and give up and give over, was one of the appealing things for me about her character."
Speaking about the casting of the starring role of Annie MacLean, Markey adds, "Kristin Scott Thomas is finally being recognized as the wonderful actress that she is, having achieved such acclaim from her performance in ‘The English Patient.' And in this film, she presents a perfect and enigmatic foil for Redford's character."
"Initially, I think Annie refuses to believe in the impact that Grace's accident could have on her life and on Grace's life," says Kristin Scott Thomas, speaking about her character. "Annie has always been used to being in complete control. It has been her driving force, to gain control and get to the top. As the story goes on, and especially when she gets to Montana, little by little she kind of surrenders and starts to move with life. It's in making this trip and working with Tom Booker, and in watching the horse getting healed, that she begins to accept the evidence of what her life is made of and to deal with it in a different way.
"In Montana, there is so much space and a kind of rarity of people," Kristin observes. "There are so few people there, that relationships tend to be more precise and more concentrated and more direct. Certainly in New York, people appear to have a reputation of being direct and up front and aggressive. In the West, I think that people also get to the heart of things, and in a more human way.
"It is really an extraordinary luxury for an actress to be able to take a character and have her change completely within a film," says Kristin, speaking about her attraction to the role of Annie MacLean. "I think it's a very optimistic film, and a really great family film that parents and children can share. It deals with serious circumstances and serious matters, but there is the hope that we can manage to get ourselves out of the most severe situations and come out smiling. I'm very excited about taking my kids to see it because I think it's the best film that I'm in that they will be able to see."
Speaking about working with her on-screen daughter played by Scarlett Johansson, Kristin Scott Thomas says, "Scarlett is a very young actress, but she's not inexperienced. She's born to be on a movie set. It's extraordinary. And I thought we worked well as a mother and daughter. There was definitely a chemistry there which was a relief, because it's not at all easy to play a mother. And I shouldn't think it's very easy to play a daughter either. It's a very intimate relationship that is difficult to cheat on.
"Working with actors like Sam Neill and Dianne Wiest, Chris Cooper and all the others was great, because, like the filmmakers, they weren't flashy," adds Kristin Scott Thomas. "It was all very simple and to the point, much like the film. It was just direct and unvain, which is what I liked about it. Working with people like this, and with the cinematographer Robert Richardson, it makes you feel very safe. You know the film is going to look beautiful, and I think that the imagery in the film is as important as the story itself."
"When you're working with an actor, the joy comes when you ask almost anything of them and they say ‘Let's go for that ... Let's try that,'" says director Robert Redford. "You give them a challenge and a good actor will love it. And Kristin loves to act. She is an actor through and through."
"Redford is really great, and a wonderful director," praises Kristin Scott Thomas, speaking about her director and co-star. "I don't know how he did both things ... he just switched hats. It was a completely different experience for me, because he makes you do things that you wouldn't dare do with any other director. He encourages you to really show feelings without the fear of being indiscreet. He made me a braver actor."
"Redford is a wonderful director to work with for a great many reasons," agrees Sam Neill, cast as Annie's husband, Robert MacLean. "I personally like the kind of detail and precision that he works with. He is always ready with new ideas and is very receptive to the collaborative spirit as well. And he is always looking for the contrary, you know, the position that is not a cliché, which I really respect. He is interested in character and people and in all the oddities that are embodied in people. I suspect that probably has a lot to do with being an actor himself.
"There are a lot of people in this film that I admire very, very much," Neill says, speaking of his attraction to the film. "And Robert Redford, I think, is really one of the preeminent directors of our time."
Starring in the film as Robert MacLean, Sam Neill plays a lawyer who is devastated by his daughter's accident, and who discovers he is in danger of losing his family. "The best drama often has to do with terrible things happening to pretty ordinary people," Neill observes. "I think that Robert MacLean finds reserves in himself as a result of these terrible incidents and this terrible accident that happens in the beginning of the story, and I think he deals with them with a particular intelligence and with an absolute sense of commitment and loyalty.
"I think one of the central themes in the film is that of a kind of injury or wounding, or even mutilation, and then a healing," continues Neill. "And wounds can heal. From Robert MacLean's point of view, the possible loss of his family, and even the absence of his family is, almost metaphorically, like having a limb taken away from him. It is painful and brutal and disabling.
"Every family has its own dynamics," says Neill. "In the MacLean family, the father and mother have different relationships with their daughter. Grace is going through a period of her adolescence when the relationship with her mother is changing. Annie has this kind of fierce intelligence and an unwillingness to compromise. A successful life often involves more compromise than we'd like to admit, and I think Robert MacLean is able to do that."
"Sam Neill really anchors the character of Robert MacLean," says producer Patrick Markey. "As the apparently uncaring successful businessman, Robert MacLean could be the sort of guy you would dismiss in an instant. But Sam is such a marvelous actor and he gives that character a great deal of resonance. You have empathy for this guy who doesn't quite know what to do in these difficult circumstances. It was so important to cast an actor who could bring that kind of gravity to the role."
Markey has praise as well for Dianne Wiest, the two-time Academy Award(tm)-winner who is cast as Diane Booker, Tom's sister-in-law and the contented ranch wife who sees the arrival of Annie and Grace as a serious threat to the emotional balance of her own family. "Whatever Dianne does, she breathes such life into it," says Markey. "Her performance is so interesting and multi-layered, and she gives the Double Divide ranch a compelling matriarchal presence and sense of solidity."
"I felt that what might be fun for Dianne would be the challenge of assuming a role that may not be familiar or comfortable to her," notes Robert Redford of his casting of Dianne Wiest. "Dianne is an extraordinary actor and I knew she would go there, and she did. She was a joy to work with."
"At the beginning of production, I asked Robert Redford what he would recommend that I read," recalls Wiest. "My only impressions of the West had come from movies."
Wiest received several books, among them The Solace of the Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich and Riding the White Horse Home by Teresa Jordan, as well as another by photographer and ranch woman Barbara van Cleve. "These are remarkable books about remarkable women," Wiest says. "When I went out to the location, Bob Redford suggested that I meet with Marie Engle who, along with her husband Keith, operate the ranch where we filmed." He said he felt that Marie was ‘The real thing.'"
"The Engle family was really a model for the Booker family in the film," notes Robert Redford of the real-life ranchers on whose property most of the filming took place. "The Engles embody everything about the Bookers. They actually live on a ranch in a pretty remote area. They live hand to mouth and season to season. Their whole livelihood is dependent on what they're able to yield in a season from their crop and their stock, and their behavior and their lifestyle and mannerisms are all tied to that."
"It was amazing meeting Marie. She embodied all the ranch women I had just been reading about. She is a woman of great knowledge, kindness, and beauty," says Dianne Wiest. "The depth of her feeling for her property, and the work that she does daily with her husband were extraordinary to me ... it's work that is so, so hard and which they do with such devotion and such love.
"I learned so much from Marie," Wiest continues. "I didn't understand how someone could be so devoted to the land, and not look at it with a sense of ownership. I know they see the beauty in the land, but they are also part of it all their lives and for generations. They work and make their life from it. I was really stunned by it all, and by the incredible nurturing in the men. You think of cowboys as being rough. But they birth the calves, they doctor the calves, and they do it with as much tenderness as any woman.
"I felt so grateful and so much richer for being a part of this life," notes Wiest. "And what privilege to work with Robert Redford and the rest of the cast. The film opened my eyes to a new world and it will remain with me."
Co-starring as Grace MacLean is Scarlett Johansson, who was 12-years-old when the film began shooting and turned 13 in November, 1997. "When I was three, I used to tell my Mom I had a fire in my brain to act," says Johansson of her unusually early choice of careers. As Grace MacLean, Johansson was faced with the challenging role as the cheerful young girl who loses a leg in a terrible accident. Losing her spirit as well, she then has to try to work through a complex and troubled relationship with her mother.
"The role of Grace MacLean is a great part for a young actor because Grace is so central to the story," says Robert Redford. "Her condition and her situation dramatically drives the whole piece. I felt that the character should be urban. There's a lot of attitude in urban kids and they tend to appear smarter than others, and certainly more sophisticated and edgier and a little more cynical.
"When the story begins, the relationship between the mother and daughter is particularly dysfunctional," continues Redford, discussing the interaction between Annie and her daughter Grace MacLean. "Yet they are both cut very closely from the same cloth. Parents sometimes get the angriest with their kids when they show signs of being just like them. Parents don't want to look at that, so they get mad at the kids like it's their fault."
"I think the film is about a group of people who are healing throughout the story, and kind of renewing themselves," says Johansson. "Grace is a very sensitive character. She's very smart and very fragile. She's from New York and very quick, but you have to be careful not to take her sarcastic humor as being mean. When she gets out West in Montana, the difference for her is that it's hard to hide things."
Chris Cooper co-stars as Frank Booker, Tom's brother and Diane's husband. "A little more than 20 years ago I had a small cattle ranch in Kansas, two sections where we ran Hereford cattle," says Cooper, comparing his personal experience with that of his character. "My father and I didn't do as much work with horses, but we dealt a lot with cattle, so it came back to mind as being second hand. And there were a lot of similarities to the characters who were cast in this film with the people that I knew at that time. It had a comfortable, healthy feeling.
"When I first went to New York it literally took me two weeks to step out of my apartment," says Cooper of his arrival on the East coast, prior to his starring roles in Broadway and off-Broadway productions. "I think that goes hand in hand with the armor that you put on yourself to survive in urban life. It has its own reality. When I went from the city out to the location, it was a huge release, but it had its own reality too. You can't pit one against the other. They're totally different existences."
"One thing I didn't want to get into with the film was pitting the West against the East," notes director Robert Redford. "I am a westerner in heart and nature, but there is a lot I find attractive about living in a sharp, tough, urban area. It sort of rounds out your own existence and development."
Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones plays the role of Liz Hammond, the Connecticut veterinarian who finds Pilgrim after the accident, and seeing his nearly fatal injuries recommends to Annie that the horse be put down.
"I think Liz begins as a foil for Annie," says Cherry Jones of her character's relationship with Annie MacLean. "As a vet, Liz has the desire to do the right thing by the horse and destroy it. Yet, she begins to appreciate the way Annie is making the connection between Grace and the animal, so it is with a certain hopefulness that she sends them off on their way to Montana.
"In my career, I had never really wanted to go from stage to screen because it's such a completely different technique," says Jones, who is one of the most acclaimed actresses on the New York stage. "But as I've grown older in the theater, I think my work has simplified, and suddenly I'm fascinated by the simplicity of film and what you can do with the tiniest moments. It's that simplicity which fascinates me now.
"I also had my first film stunt in this film," relates Jones with excitement. "I had to appear to bop the distraught horse Pilgrim in the shoulder with a hypodermic needle, and then to be thrown into the river. I was very macho in the way I threw myself into that river and I was really trying to give it my all. Bob Redford came up and gave me a pat on the back afterwards, and I said, ‘God, that was so much fun.' He said ‘It's fun doing your own stunts, isn't it?' And I was so tickled that I was talking about stunts with Robert Redford.
"Robert Redford is a masterful storyteller," says Jones with glowing praise for her director. "The common denominator in all of his films is a tremendous sense of purpose and a beautiful fullness of character. There is a generosity of spirit in the telling of his films which hearkens back to the best films of the heyday of American filmmaking. And I witnessed it the very first day he came to my trailer. Each day before each scene, he made it very clear how we fit into the story on that given day, and in helping us to understand we were then free. That's great directing. It was something I never expected from a film director but, because he's an actor, he understands the importance of helping us understand the world."
Western music legend Don Edwards, who lives in Weatherford, Texas, plays the role of Smokey, the Bookers' number one ranch hand. Edwards, who also sings in the film, has appeared in several television shows, but "The Horse Whisperer" is his first feature.
"The character that I play in this movie is a cowhand by the name of Smokey," says Don Edwards. "Tom Booker is really his mentor. I think this character is somewhat akin to the way I am in life. I'm kind of a quiet guy and I'm not real outgoing as such. I've been around ranches and cowboys even though I don't consider myself a cowboy because I don't draw my wages that way.
"I think my character believes in the very same things that Tom Booker believes in, and so we're quite compatible in that sense," continues Edwards. "We have these very traditional values and are kind of purists, as such. You know, just like in real life, I'm a total traditionalist and a purist with my music.
"When they came to me for the part of Smokey, I had no idea that there would be music incorporated, especially my own, being this traditional type of Western music that I do," says Edwards, who had to reschedule numerous concert dates to accommodate "The Horse Whisperer" filming schedule. "I've been in this business, singing and doing my music, for almost 40 years as a profession, and to get a chance to work with somebody like Robert Redford ... well that is just the epitome of where you could go. I had never given acting a thought, not that I was being a smart aleck or anything, it was just too beyond my belief. I'm just a cowboy folk singer, you know, but that's what they wanted. It was amazing to me, and it still is to this day. To have worked in a picture of this magnitude, it was quite a thrill."
Eleven-year-old Ty Hillman, who comes from Sterling, Colorado, made his acting and motion picture debut as young Joe Booker, the son of Frank and Diane, and Tom's nephew. Located through the Colorado Junior Rodeo Association, Hillman was a good horseback rider and was familiar with ranch life. "We brand every year just like the Bookers do, and the riding and roping ... I do all that stuff," Hillman says, who also turned out to be a natural on camera.
Close in age to Grace, young Joe befriends her. "He kind of gets her out of her shell," says Hillman of his character's relationship with Grace. "He likes her, and I think that's the way I understand him."
Already an experienced calf-roper, Hillman spent hours during his off-camera time learning how to trick rope from legendary horseman Buck Brannaman and stuntman Cliff McLaughlin. "Being in a movie was pretty cool," Hillman adds. "Everyone was real nice, and Robert Redford made it really fun. I'd like to be in movies when I get older. I don't know if I will, but I hope I do."
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Principal photography began on location in Saratoga Springs, New York, with the filming of the accident sequence which opens the story. The Upstate New York location was one of the few places in the region where snow still clung to the ground, yet truckloads of ice still needed to be brought in to make more snow for the tricky scenes where a truck skids around a corner, careening into two young girls on horseback.
The production also filmed in Washington County for scenes set in the MacLean country house, and at a horse farm near Ballston Spa. Since the Roosevelt Baths in Saratoga Spa State Park were undergoing restoration, the location's temporary vacancy provided an opportunity for the production to capture scenes in the hospital where Grace is taken after the accident.
From there, the company moved to the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan for scenes in the MacLean family apartment. The Museum of the City of New York on Fifth Avenue was used as the exterior of Grace's school. Annie MacLean's office was actually the office of Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine.
The majority of the story takes place in the West, and the selection of the location for the fictitious Double Divide Ranch was one of the most crucial decisions for the filmmakers to make. Producers Robert Redford and Patrick Markey knew the Montana area well from their production of "A River Runs Through It." The nature of the area supports both some of the finest trout fishing in the country, and at the same time, acres of horse and cattle ranches.
"Montana serendipitously ended up being the location that we chose after a very extensive search," says Patrick Markey. "We looked at three hundred ranches around the West, continuing to narrow it down until we chose the ranch owned by Keith and Marie Engle. Obviously, the spectacular landscapes of Montana offer visual elements that can't be denied, or compared."
Markey, who has had a home in the Livingston area for several years, has taken time to learn just such an appreciation. "There are places in the Rockies that are more post card beautiful," Markey says. "When you see them, it's very apparent why people would go there. Montana presents itself in a different way. Its beauty is actually deeper than that. There is such a ruggedness to it and a humbling power to its beauty. You just have to be in it for a bit to understand."
The principal location chosen was the working cattle ranch of the Engle family which is located about an hour from Livingston, Montana, where the cast and crew were based. While the daily life of the ranch continued throughout production, each day it seemed as though a small occupying army moved in with trucks, lights, trailers, a large catering tent, and a lot of city folk unfamiliar yet fascinated by the way of life they saw unfolding around them.
"With today's filmmaking technology, there are all kinds of ways you can make anything look good with filters and optical treatments and so forth," says Robert Redford, discussing his approach to the cinematography with director of photography Robert Richardson, A.S.C. "The truth is that the real West is pretty powerful and quite beautiful just the way it is. I was more interested in trying to show it in a way that would make you feel it changing, to let the clouds come and go and color a scene accordingly.
"The visual style of the film played a huge role in the making of ‘The Horse Whisperer,'" continues Redford. "The visual aspect is very important to me because I was an artist, yet I didn't want to put it out there and brandish it or headline it. You want to make it sort of seamless in a way that the audience will be able to experience something and feel it, rather than feeling urged to comment on it. Robert Richardson and I spent a fair amount of time up front discussing the concept of the use of light and the compression as well. The film actually has a one-eight-five matte when it starts, and it opens to a two-thirty-five as it makes the transition to the West. As the seasons change and the space opens to the West, we included more light and color."
"There is something about the combination of the drama of scale from the plains and the mountains that is unique to Montana," begins production designer Jon Hutman while discussing the visual aspects of production design and the choice of locations. "For the opening of the film, we wanted to synthesize the East coast environment into something very spare and structured and minimal, in order to very succinctly define where Annie and Grace were journeying from. But as they made the transition, we were looking for a life-altering sense of space that would be initially overwhelming to these characters. The environment in Montana wasn't just a backdrop for the story, it embodied the power of Tom Booker and also the power of the land and place, which is also what the story is about.
"The Engle's ranch is a real working ranch that has been in their family for a couple of generations," Hutman continues. "We chose it because of the river and the mountains and the vistas, and there is a look and a feeling of reality to that ranch. The land also has wonderfully varied qualities that allowed us to incorporate other nearby locations to create the complete environment."
The filmmakers and production designer Jon Hutman chose to create and build their own ranch house for the Booker family as well as the adjacent Creek House, both along a river. "In the story, there is a specific physical connection between the two buildings," Hutman explains. "Building our own house also meant that we could make the rooms big enough to shoot in. It was like having the best of a real house with the best of a set. And constructing it on location allowed us to the freedom to incorporate the environment into the shots as we wished."
Hutman came to his design of the Ranch House after scouting over 100 actual ranch houses as possible locations for the film. "We knew that we wanted just a very simple, classic ranch house," continues Hutman. "To me, one of the more important qualities for this house had more to do with the set dressing ... what I think of as showing ‘the rings of the family tree.' We wanted to convey the quality or sense that several generations of the Booker family had lived in this house over a period of time, to give the environment a reality and weight and a rich history. So you see that there are original cabinets and then others remodeled in the ‘50s or ‘60s. The fireplace has a wood-burning stove inside it because that is just a more efficient update. For Tom Booker's room, we wanted to create a place that had an ascetic spareness without making him monk-like."
In addition to the ranch house and Creek House, Hutman and his crew also built a picnic area along the river, and two round pens for work with the horses. An existing barn and small corral were used for the branding scene, a sequence that allowed horseman and accomplished ropers Buck Brannaman, Curt and Tammy Pate, Ty Hillman, Mike Boyle, Rex Peterson and the company's wranglers to ride and rope on film.
Another of Hutman's challenges was the recreation of the Little Bighorn Battlefield monument as a stop along Annie and Grace's drive to Montana. Hutman's version was built not far from Livingston in an area much like that of the rolling terrain of the actual monument which is far to the southeast on the Crow Indian Reservation.
Costume designer Judy L. Ruskin also seasoned her designs with the flavor of the authenticity of the Double Divide environment. "The approach was in how to represent an American ranch in the contemporary West," says Ruskin. "The ranchers wear predominantly American-made clothing from Levis, Wrangler, Woolrich and Carhart, with Justin Boots and hats by Bailey. I believe that people working on ranches try to support American products, so that credibility is seen through the wardrobe.
"Don Edwards plays ranch hand Smokey and his clothing is very similar to everyone else's, but his style is very much his own," Ruskin notes. "He makes his own ranch-hand crease, the way he's been wearing it for years. And the way he buttons up his shirts is very proper and old-fashioned and charming."
Ruskin worked in conjunction with Calvin Klein and his top designers such as Tim Gardiner to create a custom-made wardrobe for Annie MacLean, Kristin Scott Thomas' character. "For the New York sequences that begin the story we used a different color palette with somber winter colors to express the tone of the story. Scarlett Johansson's character, Grace, dresses in clothes that reflect the evolution she goes through. Initially you see her expressing her individuality and her spirit for life, and then she protects and covers herself as she is adjusting. As she gains more confidence, she begins to express herself again."
Bernie Pollack has designed Robert Redford's wardrobe for over 20 films since 1965, including the westerns "Jeremiah Johnson" and "The Electric Horseman." "In The Horse Whisperer,' Tom Booker is pure, a man of the soil, but he's got another dimension to him in that he's a real healer," says Pollack. "For Tom Booker, I wanted to incorporate some distinctive style, but I was also careful to stay true to the essence of Booker's code as a rancher, a healer, and an intentionally simple man."
Pollack had much of Tom Booker's horse-work clothing tailored to the style he defined for the character and had most of the accessories custom-made. Redford's hats were made by physicist turned hat-maker John Morris of the Rocky Mountain Hat Company in Bozeman. Morris also makes hats for technical advisor Buck Brannaman.
Master saddle-maker Chas. Weldon of Billings, Montana, created saddles, chaps and hand-tooled belts finished with sterling silver buckles from the historic studio of Edward H. Bohlin. Weldon has been making tack, custom saddles and chaps for Buck Brannaman for 17 years.
"When Buck became involved in the movie and the need for custom tack arose, he had the production company contact me," says Weldon. "I don't usually have time to make chaps much, but for this movie I ended up doing a lot of zippered shotgun chaps, tooled belts and tooled spur straps." Weldon's shop is a one-man operation, and the usual waiting list for a Weldon saddle is three to five years. He and Brannaman designed a special saddle tree that is the foundation of the unique Vaquero-style roping saddle that Redford uses in "The Horse Whisperer."
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Following the New York portion of filming and a brief hiatus to allow the snow to melt in the West, production resumed with the company moving to Park and Sweet Grass Counties in Montana in early June. The run-off of melting snow was still substantial, and the crew faced flooded sets and soggy ground for several weeks, keeping an eye on the high water in the neighboring rivers which were swollen above flood stage from the immense snowpack left behind by the winter of 1997.
"We were essentially chasing the seasons for most of the shooting schedule," says producer Patrick Markey. "Although it was one of the wettest summers on record in Montana, in a way, the weather served us very well. We were able to hold that lush green look that signaled the beginning of spring throughout our shoot, when it usually only lasts a month." The production did have to contend with some ground flooding and with thunder and lightning and accompanying winds that were strong enough to knock down tents. Yet, producers Redford and Markey credit their excellent crew with the determination to press on through all circumstances.
"Director of photography Bob Richardson is a real leader on set," notes Markey of the production's cinematographer. "He is a marvelous cameraman and artist with so much energy for the filmmaking process. He keeps everyone focused and on their toes and he attracts a top-notch team around him as well."
Robert Redford was extremely dedicated to realizing his vision for this film with an accurate presentation of horses and horse handling. Unlike many films with horses which center on racing, "The Horse Whisperer" is as much about the animals as characters, and about their relationship with people, as it is about the human characters it portrays.
Producer Patrick Markey notes, "We wanted to approach horse training in the right way, just as we did with fly fishing in ‘A River Runs Through It,' so that when people who knew something about horses would go to see the movie, they would come away saying ‘You know, those guys did a pretty good job with that horse work.' And for both films, we really sought out the best people we could find to instruct us and guide us, and to make sure we had our methodology correct."
The extremes of action required by the story demanded that the horses be well-trained and familiar with the surrounding chaos of the filmmaking process. Renowned Hollywood trainer Rex Peterson brought his brilliant trick quarter horse High Tower, to play Pilgrim as he goes through the traumatizing accident and its savage result. Peterson considers his horses to be actors in the films in which they appear. He had a total of five horses, each trained to do specific tasks, to accomplish what director Redford needed for the complicated scenes, and to make certain the horses had enough time to rest when they needed it.
Head Wrangler Mike Boyle was responsible for the entire remuda (supply of mounts) and making certain there were enough doubles for High Tower. "I'm a Hollywood wrangler and I believe that you use professional people and professional livestock," says Mike Boyle. "High Tower was the foundation of the whole picture for us because of the things we had to do. All the rest of the horses have been great too, but I do believe High Tower is one of the greatest trick horses in Hollywood, and maybe one of the greatest of all time."
When it comes to the sequence for Pilgrim's accident, it is strictly the magic and illusion of filmmaking that will leave audiences thinking they have seen a harrowing crash. A representative of the American Humane Association (A.H.A.) was on the set every day that animals worked, both in New York and in Montana.
"The filmmakers for ‘The Horse Whisperer' made the two most important decisions that you can make to protect animals that are appearing in motion pictures," says Gini Barrett, Western Regional Director of the A.H.A. who also visited the ranch set for several days. "They hired well-trained animals, and they gave the animal actors and the trainers adequate time for preparation. That sets the foundation for everything that follows."
The black horse in the accident scene, the one called "Gulliver" in the film, is Rex's horse Justin—also known as Docs Keeping Time. He is the same horse who played the title role in the relatively recent film version of "Black Beauty."
While portraying Tom Booker, Robert Redford rides five different horses during the course of the film. "Redford could ride anything that we brought in," notes head wrangler Mike Boyle. "Some of the other actors needed a little brushing up. I think Scarlett Johansson started out pretty scared, but she's one of those people who doesn't say she's scared or show fear. And she made a two hundred per cent change and improvement. She got to where I could put her on any horse on the set and she could just lope off and have fun."
At one point in the story, Tom Booker says, "I help horses with people problems." It is a revealing point of perspective for a healer of damaged horses, and is all part of the art of what some refer to as "natural horsemanship." With Robert Redford and the other filmmakers' desire for authenticity of representation, they asked Buck Brannaman to work with the production as technical advisor.
As close to being a real horse whisperer as they come, Brannaman was a key model for the Tom Booker character in Nicholas Evans' novel. Brannaman is a horseman who conducts over 40 clinics a year all over America and in Australia, and has been starting horses for over 15 years, usually working with over 2,000 a year. His unique methods of dealing with young colts and troubled older animals has earned him international recognition.
"When we started doing research, Buck's name kept coming to the top of the list," notes producer Patrick Markey. "He is the third in a line of horse trainers who use this particular methodology. Eighty-year-old Tom Dorrance was the grandfather of the movement followed by Ray Hunt, now in his sixties, who mentored Buck. Buck is the forty-year-old heir apparent to this training approach.
"Buck is all about establishing a very intimate and trusting relationship with the animal and then never violating that trust," says Markey, who, along with Redford, attended several of Brannaman's seminars. "He shows the owner of the animal how to get the best results from their horse by having the horse trust them, as opposed to being afraid of them. Without sounding too new-agey, people tend to pass on whatever is troubling them to their horse. The horse acts up as a result of them transferring this baggage. Buck shows them how to deal with that stuff themselves and how not to put it onto the horse. He unlocks those secrets from people's psyches all the time.
"I am thankful to have had Buck with us," Markey continues, speaking about Brannaman's continuous role with the production as technical advisor. "I just know that as long as he was right there, off camera, things were going to be done the best way possible."
Markey also noted that Brannaman became very savvy about film over the period of the summer. "Buck and his number one man, Curt Pate, started suggesting shots and ways of covering scenes," says Markey. "They saw different approaches to using the camera around horses, that sometimes ended up being more effective than what we had chosen to do, and they didn't know anything about our business before starting production."
Brannaman, who grew up in a foster home near Norris, Montana, says he always wanted to be a cowboy. Inspired by his loving foster father, who Buck called "the real deal," he began riding at a very young age, and began performing trick roping with his brother when he was 6 years old. Eventually he met Ray Hunt, who became Brannaman's mentor.
"My day job is that I ranch a little bit on the side," says Brannaman. "But for real, I teach people how to work with their horses. I do colt-starting horsemanship clinics, work with problem horses, much the same as with the story in the movie, only I usually have to do it all in a weekend.
"What I have in mind when I'm working with a horse is to consider how the horse got into the situation he's in," Brannaman explains. "If he's troubled or scared or worried or upset, I try to understand what got him there. Sometimes they just start out that way. Sometimes it's a result of poor handling. But if you can understand what got the horse in trouble, and you think of it from the horse's point of view, the solution is there as well. Every horse is an individual, just like every human. You really have to understand them from the inside, and then the outside kind of takes care of itself."
Yet Brannaman resists the term Horse Whisperer. "Because of the popularity of the book, and now with the film coming out, it's hard to find someone who isn't a horse whisperer these days. I'm not offended by the term, but the way I see it, if I went around telling people that's what I was, I'd be a phony anyway. So I'll leave the labels to everyone else. I don't think I need that."
Brannaman lives with his wife Mary and their daughters Riata, Lauren and Kristin, near Sheridan, Wyoming, and has a full schedule of clinics throughout the year all over the country. In spite of that schedule, producers Redford and Markey prevailed in their efforts to bring him on board as technical advisor. "I felt like they were really interested in doing it right," says Brannaman. "I know this was maybe my only opportunity, and the horses' opportunity as well, to have fine horsemanship represented. They were so interested in it happening right that I really couldn't resist the temptation to help them tell the story. Movie audiences are very sophisticated, and a lot of horse people know good from bad. And I think it worked out well."
Make-up is also required at times for animal actors in films, just as it is for human actors. Since several animals might double for one horse character, minor color corrections are sometimes used to match the socks and blazes of the animals for consistency. In the story, Grace's horse Pilgrim goes through a horrendous and nearly fatal accident, incurring debilitating and horrible wounds. To achieve the illusion of this effect, makeup artists Gary Liddiard and his son Dennis Liddiard used state-of-the-art techniques and artistry.
"During the accident, Pilgrim gets big gashes on his nose, in his chest and all over his body," explains Dennis Liddiard. "We started by taking big plaster impressions of the horse, and then we built some prosthetic pieces with the simulated gashes in them that we then fit onto the horse. We made several prosthetic pieces to show the various stages of healing. The additional challenge was that we had to create these prosthetics for as many as six different horses, because different horses were trained to do different stunts for various scenes in the film.
"There was also a branding sequence in the film," continues Gary Liddiard, who has been Robert Redford's chief makeup artist since ‘Jeremiah Johnson,' and who has been working with his son Dennis for almost a decade. "We didn't actually brand calves while making the film. The wranglers caught the calves and then we got to shave the brand patterns while they were squirming all over the place. It doesn't hurt or harm the animals, but I will say it was as much work as anything else a make-up artist does."
The Liddiards also created the prosthetic pieces for Scarlett Johansson, whose character Grace MacLean loses part of her leg in the riding accident. Gary Liddiard worked with Novaco, a company that makes prosthetic legs for real amputees. They took impressions of Johansson's leg and built a shell that fit over it. In preparation for her role, Johansson met with real amputees and was intrigued and amazed at the versatility of sports and lifestyles that amputees pursue and succeed in.
"I was amazed at the technology for prosthetics that exists today," says Johansson. "I met a boy who showed me how he works with his leg and how to walk up and down stairs. I watched videos and read books about different people's stories and it was amazing to me how amputees play baseball and ride horses and go swimming and dancing, and are very, very good at what they do." As Grace MacLean, Scarlett Johansson does attend the barn dance that is held at the Double Divide Ranch.
The young singer who is performing with the band at the dance is newcomer Allison Moorer, who sings her own composition "A Soft Place to Fall." "Allison is one heck of a songwriter," notes music supervisor John Bissell. "When we listened to Allison's demo, she wasn't yet signed to a label. Finding her was one of the most serendipitous moments you can imagine."
Finding the source music that would best suit the barn dance scene was only a small part of the work that Bissell did in his approach to creating the soundtrack songs with producers Robert Redford and Patrick Markey. "We began by asking Redford about what musical feeling he wanted with the Western music," says Bissell. "And Patrick Markey had a very strong love for this type of music to begin with."
"The approach to music on this film presented some intriguing opportunities and problems," observes Robert Redford. "Since it has a big look and an epic quality, it would seem to automatically suggest that you put a big score over it. Even though I've been affected by them sometimes, I have never been interested in scores that would lead you as opposed to being a part of the experience. I was intrigued by the idea of introducing Western songs to the film because there's a purity to it that seemed fitting."
"I've always loved the purity of Western music," says Markey, who notes that his musical influences came from the forms of pure country music which have roots in the transplanted Scottish and Irish culture of Appalachia. "Indigenous western music is about ranching and living in the wide open spaces. It's about wrangling cows for a living and the difficulty of that life, and at the same time the tremendous intrinsic rewards that come from that life.
"For the soundtrack, we wanted to create a special album as a tribute to Western music," Markey continues. "Along with established icons of Western music, we wanted to invite other artists to participate by crossing over into the Western realm ... specifically seeking musicians who have a love for the purity and honesty of Western music and who embody that in their work. Don Edwards, who co-stars in the film as Smokey, has this incredible reverence and knowledge of Western music, and he is carrying on the tradition of the singing cowboys lament as the ranching lifestyle disappears."
"A lot of people don't understand that Country music, at one point in time, meant country, meaning rural," explains Don Edwards. "It was string band music. Western music, on the other hand, is not necessarily about cowboys. It's about the West and about the lifestyle. It talks about these traditional values. We don't necessarily sing about dysfunctional relationships. We talk about the outdoors and nature and things like that. Cowboy music was basically the folk music of the cowboy. They were narrative ballads, like poetry set to music of old Celtic tunes, generally from Scotland or Ireland where the bulk of it came from.
"Western music was written music," says Edwards, continuing his explanation of the difference in the genres. "The music that the filmmakers decided to focus on for the soundtrack is very much akin to the subject matter of the movie. They are both rooted in the culture of the West and its traditions and the values. I didn't think that modern Country music would have fit with this project. So when they came to me with their idea for asking some artists to crossover into the Western realm, I said ‘Well hey, I'm all for this.'"
In addition to the soundtrack songs that Bissell worked to coordinate, film composer Thomas Newman collaborated with the filmmakers to compose his original score for the film.
