Scouting Montana’s Hi-Line
The following article was published in 2012 in Montana Magazine (now defunct)
Two weather-beaten log cabins and a one-room pre-fab squat among sparse prairie grasses about fifty yards from the south bank of the Milk River. The air smells like sage and dried cow dung with a hint of mud. Gray clouds are starting to drift in overhead. A dozen or so people wander around, peering though vacant window frames, inspecting scattered bits of machinery, and battling persistent mosquitoes. Most of them carry cameras.
This examination of the Earthboy place is just one item on the agenda of a group of filmmakers scouting for locations on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in northern Montana. They will also visit other home sites, meet with tribal officials, talk to local artists and teachers, and hold a regional casting call at Montana State University-Northern in Havre.
The idea that has brought them all here began with Ken White, actor, poet, and screenwriter. “Why aren’t you making a movie of this book?” he asked his friends Alex and Andrew Smith shortly after reading James Welch’s novel, Winter in the Blood.
The brothers Smith, writers and filmmakers raised in Welch’s adopted town of Missoula, Montana, were stunned by the obvious. Having grown up with James Welch as a father figure and mentor, they had a unique perspective on his work, as well as a powerful emotional attachment to his stories. Maybe it was a case of overlooking the obvious.
Although the Smith’s 2002 film, The Slaughter Rule, won numerous awards and has been shown on cable channels and in theaters around the world, subsequent projects suffered a fate common in the development world: they were shelved in a studio executive’s office. But White’s idea of turning Welch’s book into a feature film raised a firestorm of passion in the Smith brothers, the sort of passion that gets things done.
James Welch was born in Browning, Montana, and spent most of his boyhood years attending schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations. His mother was a member of the Gros Ventre tribe and his father was Blackfeet. After earning his B.A. from the University of Montana, he continued his study of creative writing in the university’s MFA program. Winter in the Blood was Welch’s first published novel (1974), but it garnered rave reviews. The esteemed writer Reynolds Price pronounced it “A nearly flawless novel about human life.”
Price’s review, which was printed on the front page of the New York Times, brought Welch instant fame and a leadership role in the Native American Renaissance literary movement.
Winter in the Blood tells the story of a sensitive, self-destructive young man who is haunted by memories of his older brother’s violent death, the inglorious demise of their father, and a chronic inability to fill the vast emptiness created by the destruction of his once-proud Native American heritage. Like the famous A River Runs Through It, Welch’s book (published two years before Norman Maclean’s) tells a tale in which one of two brothers dies.
Now, seven years after Welch’s own death, Winter in the Blood has traveled back to its origins, to Montana’s Hi-Line, to be told again — this time to a movie audience.
Several teenaged Indian boys goof around in a classroom in Cowan Hall at MSU-Northern in Havre. They hold script pages and read, they elbow each other and giggle — full of nerves and adrenalin. This is their first movie audition.
When Clinton Daniels steps inside the audition room he faces a row of filmmakers seated at a long table. Also there: a video camera operator, a stills photographer, and René Haynes, casting director for Eclipse and New Moon in the trendy Twilight Series, as well as Into the West and The New World, among many others. After encouraging Daniels to relax and “have fun,” the camera rolls and Haynes asks a series of questions: What’s your name? How old are you? (15) How tall? (5’ 11”) Can you ride a horse? (yes) On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the best, how well do you ride? (uhm, maybe a 3)
Daniels performs well, so they keep him longer than some of the other would-be actors. He reads again, but this time a casting assistant throws in lines that aren’t in the script, expecting Daniels to improvise. After he passes that test, Haynes asks him to get mad — to “explode.” That turns out to be a challenge — Daniels has been conditioned by his elders to control his anger. But after three tries, Haynes seems satisfied that he has the potential to unleash his emotions.
Haynes looks like she’s having fun. “I’m a big advocate for filming in Montana,” she said just before the auditions began. “There’s a lot of talent here. And any chance I can get to come back to Montana, I’m on that plane!”
Haynes graduated from CMR High School in Great Falls, and then went on to study Theatre at the University of Montana. In the mid-1980s, a casting director she was assisting enthusiastically recommended Haynes, saying “she was great with the people.” Consequently, she was hired to cast extras for War Party, which was filmed in Browning in 1987. Success with that project led to other jobs, including a Kevin Costner film. In 1989, Haynes worked on location casting and extras for Dances With Wolves. Shortly after that she moved to L.A. where she is now known and respected as a Native American casting specialist.
Maybe that scenario will repeat itself during the production of Winter in the Blood. Andrew Smith, who is an associate professor in the School of Media Arts at the University of Montana, has recruited top students and recent graduates to work on the film. Today, some of them are helping with the casting call.
Although the Smith brothers, who will co-direct the film, seem fully engaged in the casting process, larger issues are also on their minds. The most pressing, of course, is financing: how to raise 2.5 million dollars during an economic downturn. But, they have pulled together a powerhouse production team that includes the award-winning Native American author Sherman Alexie as an associate producer, Chris Cronyn (Fatal Attraction, Thunderheart) as a producer, and L.A.-based Heather Rae as an executive producer. Letters of interest from actors of note — David Morse (The Hurt Locker, Proof of Life, The Green Mile), Julia Jones (Twilight: Eclipse), Chaske Spenser (plays Sam Uley in the Twilight Saga), Gary Farmer (Smoke Signals, Skins) — have also strengthened their pitch to investors. A partnership with Big Sky Film Institute means the project can receive tax-deductible contributions.
And, the Fort Belknap tribes, the Gros Ventre (traditionally known as the White Clay People) and Assiniboine (traditionally known as the Nakota), are doing everything they can to help make the movie happen.
During this location scout, the filmmakers are looking for specific sites. They need to find a corral, a house with just the right mix of wear and care, a family graveyard, an old hut, and a two-lane highway near pastureland. Their guides — Ivan Wing, tribal range rider; Cutt Adams, tribal land department; and Olivia and Nona Main, two White Clay students — lead a caravan of vehicles across the reservation. They stop at the Earthboy Place, the Cochran Place, the Stevens Place, the Welch Place, White Bear Dam, and Snake Butte. The sky is vast. An enigmatic emptiness, bursting with life, stretches from horizon to horizon. At every place there is another heartbreaking or hilarious story. It’s easy to imagine a James Welch novel unfolding here.
If schedules and finances and passions come together in just the right configuration, it could happen. In a few months, residents of Fort Belknap and the small towns strung out across Montana’s Hi-line may start to see some strange goings-on. There, in the wide-open spaces of authentic Big Sky Country, they might get a glimpse of film crews working to capture the literal and metaphorical distance and introspection written into Winter in the Blood.
