The Life of Modern-Day American Cowboys

Factual America

19 May

Written By

Cowboys are as American as hot dogs and apple pie. But what is life like for the modern-day American cowboy?

Filmed on eight of the nation’s largest cattle ranches across ten states in the American West, Cowboys: A Documentary Portrait (2019) provides an intimate look at life in the modern world for this most American of icons.

A cowboy's life has always been one of solitude and hard work. This is still the case.

Even as they adapt to modernity, the modern-day cowpoke provides us with lessons in how to cope with isolation. But with cell phones and the internet becoming commonplace on the range, some long for the “good old days”.

The filmmakers behind this ode to the modern-day cowboy join Factual America to tell their compelling story. How did the filmmakers create such an intimate portrait? How did they gain ranchers’ trust while capturing the magnificence of the American West?

Director Bud Force is a former rodeo cowboy. His co-director, John Langmore, is a former working cowboy who spent five years photographing life on “big outfit” ranches.

Bud and John are joined on the podcast by Feli Funke, creative producer and author of Gathering Remnants - a Tribute to The Working Cowboy (2020), Emmy award-winning editor Lucas J. Harger and Ian McLeod of Cleod9 Music.

So join us, as we enter into the life of the modern cowboy...

“We’ve created this career out of trying to create cinematic footage in difficult conditions in the field. Whether it’s cowboying, ice climbing, or shooting scuba diving, you have to operate light and fast.” - Bud Force

Time Stamps:

02:56 - Today's subject.
03:36 - Introducing the guests.
05:24 - Film festivals and awards.
06:31 - What the film is really about.
09:14 - The first clip: A truck driver and the harsh realities of cowboying.
14:03 - What life is like for American cowboys today.
17:06 - Second clip: How cowboying has changed in modern America.
19:35 - How ‘the cowboy’ is still a necessary role for raising cattle.
24:40 - The lessons to be learned from cowboy culture.
27:28 - Third clip, and it’s testimony to the importance of trust and teamwork.
31:21 - The story behind the making of the film.
34:58 - Making the book ‘Open Range...’, and spending time on ranches.
36:29 - The different types of cowboys, and the difficulty of gaining access to authentic ranches. 38:44 - The risks involved with filming on one of America's largest cattle ranches.
41:26 - Bud's production company, and how they deal with difficult shooting conditions.
43:50 - The challenges involved with keeping the authenticity of the film when editing footage. 45:59 - The way the film is structured and why this format was followed.
47:34 - When Ian got involved with making the soundtrack for the film.
49:40 - The importance of having an outsider's perspective when working with footage.
52:14 - What the response from ranchers has been.
55:34 - The changes to production because of Covid-19 and the lockdown.
58:16 - Faced with these challenges, what would a cowboy do?
1:00:19 - How to watch the film and contact the team.

Resources:

Cowboys: A Documentary Portrait
Follow the film on Facebook
Follow the film on Instagram
Ultralite Films
Cleod9 Music
How to Draw out Authenticity in a Documentary Edit
Alamo Pictures

Transcript for Factual America Episode 14 - The Life of Modern-Day American Cowboys

Bud Force 0:01
Hey guys, thanks for joining us. This is Bud Force co-director and cinematographer for Cowboys. I am here with my co-director John Langmore, creative producer Felicitas Funke, Emmy Award winning editor Lucas J. Harger and our composer Ian McLeod from Cleod9 music.

Speaker 2 0:22
It's a life, it's a desire out here that not everybody has or understand or will ever understand.

Speaker 1 0:43
Cowboying, to me, it just seemed like if I didn't do it anymore, that, you know, something would be gone. Cowboy is not what you do. It's who you are. You know, it's just something in you.

Speaker 3 0:56
It's rough. Pay is low. Houses are rough. Hours are long. There's isolation and doesn't work for everybody.

Speaker 4 1:07
My husband said, I've always been a cowboy, never do nothing but be a cowboy. And you know, the money isn't important. I'm cowboy. I said, Okay.

Speaker 2 1:18
There'll be younger guys that come out and make it for a little while and then they, they just can't take the isolation. And it don't take long, once they get out here to know if they're gonna make it or not.

Speaker 5 1:37
They've been talking about the cowboy dying for a 100 years. But that same old time spirit is still in and it always will be.

Speaker 6 1:50
I think you have to like to suffer if you wanna really be a good cowboy

Matthew 1:59
Welcome to Factual America, a podcast that explores the themes that make America unique through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood and in every podcast it is my pleasure to interview documentary filmmakers and experts on the American experience. I'm coming to you from York, England in the United Kingdom. That's Factual America's studio in exile, also known as my kitchen. We are in Yorkshire. A place that, for those well you say Yorkshire in the UK, they know what you mean. For those of you, not to listeners all around the world, Yorkshire is a place known for its fierce independence and pride, some stunning natural beauty and self proclaimed as God's own County, which I think brings us nicely to today's subject because I think we've got a film that's, well, it's about what many would say, and myself included would call God's country and we've got people who live there joining us. So without further ado, I want to give a hearty welcome to our guests. We've got today the filmmakers behind Cowboys, a documentary portrait. So welcome to Factual America, guys.

Bud Force 3:14
Thank you.

John Langmore 3:15
Thanks for having us.

Matthew 3:17
There's we've got a we've got a Crowded House today. And it's it's going to be a lot of fun. So I'm going to ask, but force, the director and one of the directors and producers of the film to introduce the team, if you don't mind.

Bud Force 3:33
Thank you, Matthew, and thanks for having us today. My name is Bud Force. I'm the co-director and director of photography for Cowboys. We've also got my co-director and photographer John Langmore, our creative producer Felicitas Funke, a German born filmmaker who goes by Failey, Emmy Award winning editor Lucas J. Harger from St. Louis, Missouri and my favorite music composer on planet Earth, Ian McLeod, out of Washington, DC.

Matthew 4:06
Good morning to all of you. Thanks for coming on board. I think, John, you haven't done them, Bud, you haven't done your justice. I mean, we've got, we've got a star studded cast here I think. We've got yourself. I mean, we've got, here on the show we've got a rodeo cowboy, search & rescue guy and a photojournalism person at Texas Aggie, and that's just you. We've got photographers, MBAs, gee, you know, lawyers, we've got filmmakers, we've got, we've got everything going on here. And I think it's going to be a, I'm really looking forward to this, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. So, today's topic is cowboys. And our guests have just finished, well finished in 2019 a film called Cowboys -a documentary portrait. The directors are Bud Force and John Langmore. And it's by "1922 films". We're lucky to have both Bud and John here today. And you guys have been, I guess making the festival circuit until obviously COVID-19 hit. But maybe you can tell us which festivals you've been to. And also I know you've won a few awards at those festivals.

Bud Force 5:24
Yes, sir. We had our world premiere of Cowboys this last October at the Austin Film Festival. And we were really thrilled we won the Audience Choice Award there. We've toured around the country to different festivals and private screenings since, picking up a few other Audience Choice Awards at the Lone Star Film Festival and another smaller fest in Texas called Rockport Film Festival. In addition to that, we've we've been in fests out further west, Sun Valley Film Festival, Sedona Film Festival and quite a few others, John?

John Langmore 6:03
Yeah. Now that's Prescott, Arizona. You know, places where Western culture is rich have really been drawn to the film. And then we've shown it to some cowboy crowds as well up in Elko, Nevada and in Amarillo, Texas around big working cowboy events, which is obviously exceptionally rewarding.

Matthew 6:24
What is this film really about? I mean, we know it's about cowboys. But what what do you see this film being about?

Bud Force 6:31
Cowboy is a documentary portrait. It's a snapshot of a specific culture at this moment in time, and that culture being Big Outfit, working cowboys. The term cowboy has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people in society, depending on who you talk to. And what we tried to do with this film is take it down to its most concentrated format of what that actually is, and then show how that culture is operating today, both as far as their personal lives and the actual work they do. So, you know, a cowboy can refer to a rogue politician, it can refer to a redneck in America, it can refer to a rodeo cowboy. Or it can refer to a family ranch working cowboy, or this Big Outfit cowboy that we chose to explore in this film. And we define each one of those separately, for instance, a rodeo cowboy that's more of an athlete or an entertainer from our perspective. A family ranch cowboy, while they work cattle in the same way, or in a very similar way to Big Outfit cowboys, it's also a different subculture. What we wanted to define was the American Big Outfit cowboy, and those are cowboys, both men and women who work on ranches. That are generally around 150,000 acres to over a million acres and work primarily horseback, you know, every day of the week.

Matthew 8:10
I think you raised some good points, the only I'll add another meaning to the term, definition for cowboy. If you're in the, if you're in England cowboys referred to cowboy builders and cowboy plumbers, it's basically guys who come in and do a down and dirty job and don't actually fix the problem. But that's, I know what you mean. And I think that's something we're going to be talking about in a few minutes about sort of the reality, the authenticity of cowboys, and I think that's something that comes through this film quite a bit, is about authenticity. That is a theme I want to talk about later, but I think what would be good is to go to a clip actually, so that our listeners can, first of all the sound in the in the music to this is amazing. And also just, I think it's a good illustrative clip that kind of gets this, gets the ball rolling in terms of what what we're talking about in terms of these, these individuals, who work on these Big Outfit ranches. So, I think now would be, maybe you can lead us in John.

Speaker 1 9:18
Yeah, so the clip you're about to show is kind of a classic cowboy story. You know, probably everyone, all around the world has wanted to be a cowboy at some point in their life. And so the, he was the Buckaroo boss at the time a guy named Ira Wines. He's since moved up to be the ranch manager. He told us a story about a guy from Missouri that was a truck driver and just again, like so many of us in the world, he decided he wanted to be a cowboy. And, so he got, Ira told him if he learned how to shoe a horse, he'd let him get a, get a job on the ranch and guy learned how to shoe horses and showed up with everything that was brand new and it did not take one day for that guy to find out that cowboying wasn't quite as romantic as it seemed in, you know, books or on TV shows. So that's, you know, anyone that's ever worked on a ranch has seen more than one guy show up all starry eyed and you know, leave where they can barely walk after a long day of trotting, and that's kind of, it's sort of, you know, it's the contrast of everybody's dream to be a cowboy versus the reality of what a really difficult way of life it is, which is, you know, a theme that runs throughout the film.

The crazy story. This truck driver from Missouri called me and was wanting a job. He told me he didn't know anything about cowboying, but he decided that's what he want to do for the rest of his life. About every three months he'd call me and want a job and I kept putting him off. So I finally told him, I said if you go to shooting school, learn how to shoe a horse, I'll give you a job. And in couple months he called me. He said I can nail a shoe on a horse. I said, all right, I made you deal. Get out here and I'll give you a job. And he showed up on the bus and everything he had was brand new. His hat was brand new, his boots were brand new, his settle was brand new. When we left the trailer that morning he was chattering like howler monkey about how he found paradise. We made a pretty big circle and come back up the river. At two o'clock that afternoon we were still trotting. We've trotted all day long. We got back here to eat lunch. It's about seven o'clock at night. We walked down to the cook house and I wished I'd had a video the way he was walking because he didn't want his pants to touch his legs because I'm pretty sure there was no hide left on. He said I don't know what you guys are made out of. But I'm going back to Missouri.

Speaker 2 12:40
A lot of people have trouble with putting up with the hours. Some putting up with the elements. You know, there's the hot days. There's old dusty cold days. It's just part of life. Yeah.

Matthew 13:06
Okay, I think that was an excellent clip and illustrates what you were saying, John. I think, what I find about it, may probably haven't done done your film justice yet in terms of, you know, I definitely highly recommend people seeing this because it's, it's amazing the combination of the, the story, the cinematography, the music, and then just this, this insight into a way of life that many of us don't have any knowledge of to be honest. But let's separate the fact from fiction. I mean, obviously, you've already alluded to this, but, Cowboys, what does it even mean? They've been mythicized, a part of popular culture, people around the world have an image of what cowboys are, it's conflated with the Wild West outlaws, gunfights, shootouts, with Native Americans. What I mean, let's look, if we can look back briefly what was the reality for the American cowboy?

Bud Force 14:04
Well, today, the reality of the cowboy is, in many facets, the same reality, they've been living for quite some time, in some ways, all the way back to the 1800s, because things have changed so little. Some of these folks are still living four and five hours from the nearest town. They're in essence, living on the remaining vestiges of, of, you know, from heir, families with children, and husbands and wives who have to go out onto the desert and tend to thousands of head of cattle. So there's that aspect of it as far as the reality. But there's also the reality of even if you are four or five hours from town, you're still living in 2020. And there's still the internet and there's still social change, and there's all of these things that impact their lives. And so I would say, the reality of the American cowboy today is, is while they're still going out and working and living in much the same way that they have for generations, the manifestation of their work and their life is also having a change based upon, you know, today's society.

Matthew 15:27
So I think that's a good point to watch this another clip with this cowboy named Greg Snow from YT ranch in Nevada, who looks back at what way things used to be and how they have changed. Do you want to add anything to that, John?

Speaker 1 15:46
You know, the only thing I'd say is that as Greg points out, you know, cowboys understand that they're operating in a modern world, like Bud mentioned. You know, ranch managers are now sent off to seminars, you know, in big cities to learn how to apply new technology to raise cattle, you know, in the most efficient way possible. At the same time, everyone that's drawn to cowboying is drawn to it because it has this direct connection to, you know, a point in time 150 years ago and, and Greg's really, and I think the wagon is at the heart of, you know, what cowboys think about when they think about, you know, traditional cowboying on really big outfits, you know, what it used to be like, and kind of the vestige of that that still remains today. And Greg's kind of wrestling with, you know, how do you keep this part of the past that's so meaningful, and yet at the same time, embrace the future, and the wagon is, and the ending of the wagon is really kind of at the heart of that.

Matthew 17:01
Well then let's, let's watch that clip now.

Speaker 1 17:25
Arizona cowboys is a history but the cowboys are the hardest on excel. I guess what I'm trying to say, you know everything's moving forward. And I've read a lot of history in Nevada and Oregon, and then been lot in Arizona. I've always been intrigued with Arizona too, but you read about, you know, days gone by, you know how it was, and you know. My ideal time would have been right in 1900 the turn of the century. So I think a cowboy gets to fight in his head a lot. You know, he thinks about the way things used to be and and you're wishing it could be that way now and you're trying to make it that way. You know, when it's just not gonna happen or, you know, those guys didn't, didn't have to deal with some of the stuff you have to on ranches nowadays. I'd say for me, you know, I I'm the hardest on myself or, you know, turn on the cowboy, you know. I think there are a lot of guys that think that way. You know, they think, you know, you hear stories of what the old 25 wagon used to be, or the old Moffatt outfit, man, man, man. You know, the all that will snap me and I think God I wish to live back then, you know. It's hard to go back there. I mean, things are different, you know, they've got different logements, a lot of pressure from other outside groups, you know, and it's a, it's just a different day in time.

Matthew 18:57
Okay, I think that was an excellent clip. I think it takes us now to, we've already, we're already here, we're talking about modern day cowboy. You know the death of the cowboy, in his, in that way of life has been well, we've been talking about it for hundred years now I'm sure. And we're talking about the ranches you, these big outfit ranches, you highlight. They, I mean, let's face it, their share of the market is minuscule. But how do they, I mean, how do these guys keep surviving? How does this keep going on even though we keep hearing that cowboy way, cowboys are going to disappear.

Bud Force 19:35
One of the things we did not want to focus on in the movie is this idea of you know, it's a dying breed, or it's the last of the kind breed. As long as people eat beef, there will need to be some type of caretaker for that beef. And while technology has changed things and made certain aspects of beef production more autonomous, you still need the human element and will for the foreseeable future. So in essence, while the way of work of cowboys has changed somewhat and will change, the need to have cowboys will remain. They're not going anywhere. And these out this raise, some of these ranches are raising 10 to 15,000, head of cattle. And you can only use helicopters and ATVs and machinery to work those cattle to a certain extent. And in a lot of instances, even today, the most practical way to run an operation is to have horseback mounted cowboys.

Speaker 1 20:49
Yeah, I was just gonna, you know, add to that. I mean, there's several points along the way. They talked about the cowboy dying. The first one was when the cattle drives ended, you know, that's the way of that's the end of the drifting cowboy. Then when barbed wire was invented, you know, that's the end of the drifting cowboy. There's as many big outfits today as there was when I was cowboying back in the 70s and 80s. And it's not a growing industry, you know, the world of big outfits, but it's not really shrinking. You know, most of the ranches that we went to for this film, were all around when I was cowboying, I worked on several of them even some of the same guys are still out there. And you know, today what happens is when a big ranch comes up for sale, usually because of the generation that built it passes. What happens a lot of times is someone that made their money elsewhere steps in and buys the ranch intact, and lets it still run with a full crew of working cowboys. They don't break the ranch up and thank goodness, you know, for those individuals that really want to sustain that way of life because I think most of them make those investments not to lose money, but they really do it to sustain, you know, something that's uniquely American. And that is a really rich tradition within the United States. And you know, guys like John Malone and Stan Kroenke, have all bought really big ranches. They all made their money elsewhere, and you know, invested a piece of it in ranches. So I don't, it's not dying. Like I say there is as many outfits, as many big outfit cowboys, as there was 45 years ago.

Felicitas Funke 22:38
So, my name is Faily and I'm the creative producer of Cowboys. And we had the pleasure of all traveling together to Elko, Nevada and attended the annual National poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada and Bud and John and I screened the film twice a day, and would always do a question and answer afterwards. And I have to tell you, that culture is very vibrant, very much alive, and Elko was packed. And we were presenting this film to a really tough audience. For us. I think we were more nervous about Elko than the Austin Film Festival. Because, Matthew, we were presenting the film to the pros. I mean, these people come off these big ranches. And they travel for days. And I mean, four days, they'll drive for three days with their wives, and children, and they'll, you know, get really put together and cleaned up and then they sit there and then they watch our film, and then they pass judgment. So I can tell you from my perspective, that I firmly believe that this culture was all of its tributes and assets, the respect and the authenticity and the resilience is absolute, vibrant and alive.

Matthew 23:54
I think that's a very good point Faily, and it takes me to the sort of next question I had, which is even looking ahead. And it's interesting you're saying about things have really sort of stabilized. I mean, I not to bore people, but I was even doing some research for this and came across congressional minutes, even from like the 1950s or 60s and the numbers they were talking about weren't very much different than what you've got, what you've got now in terms of sort of head of cattle and number of ranches and these sort of things. And as you say, you've got this very resilient, strong culture there and now we're in a world of Coronavirus, COVID-19. I mean, what are the lessons that we can learn from these people?

Felicitas Funke 24:39
Well, I think we should, we should look at the fact that ranches are a home for families. Instead of looking at the individual cowboy we should look at cowboys as a team. All cowboys that we have met and portrayed are team workers you cannot be a single cowboy out there, dealing with the cattle. It's about teamwork and respect and behind every cowboy stands a family. There are women out there holding it together, cowboys have to eat, you know they have to come home. There's children. There is the sense of community resilience and also independence because once you understand that it takes you possibly four and a half hours one way to run your kid to the dentist. There is just this different way of looking at life, you know, you are going to be on the ranch and you have to be prepared. Most ranches have generators. So once the power gets shut off, you know ranch is in the dark. So I think what we, what we learn is just being in sync with nature, understanding that nobody is going to come. You will not have a cell phone signal. And you need to be prepared, not in this crazy prepping sense. But just, you know, being prepared to deal with the weather, Matthew, you've seen, you've seen the seasons in the film. And that's that's what inspired me more than anything. The families running, running these ranches and, and doing it together and we've talked to women that, you know, ride out with the guys.

Matthew 26:24
I think that's a very good point I think it comes out loud and clear in the film, as one thing that did struck me was, I mean, yes, I am, yeah, born and raised in Texas, but I've very much the same stereotypical views of cowboys, I think. And it is this cowboy of a loner, and you watch this film, and it's, I don't see, they're always together. They're always having to work together in terms of everything they do. And as you say, it's not just them. It's a whole support network. And I think that's an interesting perspective you've brought to the film in terms of, you know, the families and that element of it. And I think it takes us to a good point for a clip and then also a short break for our listeners. This next clip talks about what it takes to basically, to be a cowboy or one of their family members in this sort of environment and, and maybe has, I think, lessons for us all as we are all isolated at the moment. What do you, what do you think Faily?

Felicitas Funke 27:27
Well, we're looking at husband and wife, Rick and Marsha Wald. And you can see in their body language that they are truly a team that has been welded together by decades managing ranches. So they manage a section of a very large ranch in New Mexico and their section is vast and huge. And Marsha is one of the few women that we met who are actually on payroll for the ranch and she, she rides out. Their days are incredibly long. New Mexico is pretty hot, they deal with rattlesnakes. And Marsha talks about the price that you pay when you move out onto these ranches, and what, what a test it is also for the relationship between husband and wife and it's, to me it completely compares to our current situation with with COVID. You just have to be able to trust your partner. It's all about trust out there and understanding that you will only be able to get it done if you work as a team and with your team. And I think that's, that's the thing that impressed me most about Marsha Wald, that quiet strength and the fact that she's very feminine. You know, she has not turned bitter. She hasn't turned harsh. You can see that the life out there suits her well, but she is, she's beautiful. She's stunning, but she's incredibly strong inside.

Speaker 1 28:57
When someone meets you, and you say you cowboy, they, they really have no idea what it it is the job is

Speaker 2 29:09
Person has to be pretty self confident to live out by themselves and you're alone a lot. You're not the limelight. There'll be younger guys that come out and make it for a little while and then they, they just can't take the isolation. And it don't take long once they get out here to know if they're gonna make it or not. Because it's, it's a life, it's a desire out here that not everybody has or understand or will ever understand. You know, Waddie Mitchell, he did a poem called What would I tell him? He's talking to his son. And trying to explain to him if the cowboy life was worth pursuing, worth doing. And I mean, it's a question that we've all asked ourselves.

Mid-Roll 30:27
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamopictures to keep up to date with new releases and upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests, and the team behind the production. And now back to Factual America.

Matthew 30:50
Welcome back to Factual America. We've been talking about cowboys with a little c. And now we're going to talk about Cowboys with the big C, you know I am not talking about the Dallas Cowboys. I'm talking about this film The Cowboys - a documentary portrait. I think it would be good to know what's what's the, there's a story behind this film. There's always a story behind the film. But I think this one's, this one's got a very interesting one. So who wants to tell me a little bit about whose vision was this? And how did this all get started?

Bud Force 31:21
Well, Matthew, it is a pretty interesting story and one that audiences have seemed to enjoy thus far at our festival screenings. I haven't heard of many films that have come together quite like this one, because it's such a unique story itself. And then the people who created the story kind of had to be in unique situations to be able to tell it the way we did. So I would say it's threefold between myself, my co-director, john and our Creative Producer Faily, at least at the initial conception. So for me, I grew up on a family farm I rodeoed for four years riding bulls and working on different ranches, around Central Texas. In 1998, I had a catastrophic wreck in a rodeo arena and I was in a wheelchair for six months and it just changed the trajectory of my life and my career at that point. So to keep a long story short, I eventually went into filmmaking. I own a production company called Ultralight films, and we produce documentary shorts and commercials mostly, but it kind of been a career dream to make a feature. And I wasn't sure of what I wanted to make a feature on and eventually took it down to cowboys and thought, Okay, I'm going to do this project on cowboys because I had never seen a documentary I thought was authentic. Going back to some of the reasons we were talking about before on how do you even identify what a cowboy is. So I moved to Austin five years ago. And in tandem, we starting this up and getting in touch with some big ranches we have here in Texas, the Four Sixes and Tung River Ranch and some of these you see in the film, I took out an office. And next to my office was this guy, John Langmore. Well, I meet him and realize that he spent the past five years working on this passion still photography project, going and shooting a lot of big outfits outside of Texas, both inside and outside of Texas, and also that he used to cowboy whenever he was a kid. So we start talking, I tell him about my idea. He jumps on board, and we say, hey, let's go out. And let's film a teaser that we can use to potentially grab investors and figure out how we're going to go forward. So we went out and we financed that six minute teaser. We filmed on four ranches, one in New Mexico, two in northern Nevada, and then one I went to in Texas, called the Morehouse ranch. And we put this thing out on social media. Well, Faily sees it and messages into us and says: Hey, I'm a German born filmmaker. I've made a documentary before on the cowboy, I've written and published a photo book on the cowboy. I've been working in the industry for 40 years. I love the cowboy. And I want to be part of this project. How can I get involved? So Failey signed on as our creative producer, bringing in elements like we saw a second ago about the husband, wife, couple children, other things into the film, and we got rocking and rolling for the next two years. Filming in, in 10 states, eight states, I believe.

Matthew 34:46
And so, I mean, John, were you, because you have this, this book you put out, I think is in 2018, Open ranch. Was this something, when you met Bud, is that what you were working on that at the time, is that right?

Speaker 1 34:57
Yeah, I was on the tail end of finishing that book, you know, the actual photographing of the book. So I had been out for about four years at that point, maybe had a couple of ranches left to go to, I started out saying I was going to go to 12 to, you know, complete the book. So, yeah, and I, you know, went back to places I knew from my early days and, and I thought about doing a film when I started on the book and, you know, wouldn't have worked during the two together because, you know, working as a photographer is a very, it's a very solitary pursuit and, and I did most of that writing out with the Cowboys. And, you know, it's a collaborative process on a film obviously. So, yeah, I was winding down when Bud came in, and when we met when he broached the idea and, you know, thought about it for a bit and thus began the collaboration and, you know, eventually joined up with Faily.

Matthew 36:02
And Faily, you, you to have done a book, put a book out on the cowboys. It was a gathering remnants tribute to the working cowboy, is that right?

Felicitas Funke 36:12
Yes, Matthew and you know back then the book is quite old and has become kind of a, an icon. It's a collector's item. I felt strongly in 2000 when we released the book and I had spent three years putting that book together and traveling to ranches. I felt strongly that there wasn't a distinctive difference between a rodeo cowboy, a Hollywood cowboy, and a working cowboy. And what I was after was the authenticity, the family ties and the biggest problem and John and Bud will explain this to you, is actually getting permission to come onto these ranches. Because these ranches are highly professionally run outfits and there is nothing worse than a person coming in with this notion of making a book or a film or whatever. They can put the crew at risk, they can get, they can get hurt, there is no place to put them up. So to, for us I believe because of John and Buds connection in the industry, their reputation and also my reputation in, in that field which is you know, which is a field that is very vibrant out there. It just takes time and eyes to see and you have to be willing to travel, and you have to have an invitation you can't just show up. You know, and these ranches, some of them are 1.2 million acres in the middle of Nevada. And you need, you need a proper invitation and without that, you know you can't get on so I think that's what motivated all of us to, to capture the authentic angle of what they do out there and they do it quietly and with pride, but they're definitely not seeking the limelight.

Matthew 37:56
It was, uh, would you say that was the the the biggest challenge you said, you know, you're talking about gaining access. Is that, would you say, was that the biggest challenge getting when you were getting started out?

Felicitas Funke 38:06
I think without John's and Bud's, it would have been absolutely impossible. See, they're both the real deal. And if you're not the real deal, you know, like nobody, nobody will have any interest in inviting you out. Because you could be presenting a significant hazard, because they'll have to continue their work. And if there's filmmakers out there, Bud with flying a drone, and he's masterful with a drone, but, you know, you can cause all kinds of wrecks and then there's no doctor.

Matthew 38:38
It's an interesting point. Do you think that's one reason we've had so few documentaries about this?

Bud Force 38:43
I mean, absolutely. And I'll just speak about it from the like, operational aspect. And then, John, please chime in on everything else. You know, if you're out there filming, you just can't raise up a tripod or like Faily said to her point, you can't just do a flyby on the drone over 1000 head of cattle. You know, you could cause a major stampede, you could hurt people, you could kill people, you could kill yourself. You can't just walk behind a horse with a camera and get kicked in the head and your camera operators and your recording equipment and everything else you kind of have to manage in the field and make sure you know you're operating in a safe manner is also very complicated. And so, because of that, we handled it with a very, very small footprint. It was myself another of two alternating camera people that we would bring out so it would be myself and one other person shooting and running audio. And then John shooting still photos. And that was all we had to film this entire project. And we each kept our gear in, confined in a backpack. Each one of us had a backpack we would usually ride around on side by side, all terrain vehicles because we couldn't ride horseback and film. And we would get in strategic locations and we would film the work. And then, as far as the lifestyle stuff, you know, we would try to maintain, again, a small footprint. And I think, as far as documentary filmmaking goes in general, you, you try to be a fly on the wall, you try to be as unassuming as possible, you're not part of the story. And so whenever we would film we just hung out in the background, we would capture those quiet moments of Joanne Young and her children playing on the tire swing. And the same goes as far as interviews themselves, you know, if you're going to sit and you're going to interview a crusty old cowboy, or a shy wife on a ranch, who's, who's socially distant, always, just because of where she lives four and a half hours from town. You have to tackle those interviews in a very tactful and respectful manner.

Matthew 40:59
And if If I may say I mean, yes. And yet you still captured. I mean, the cinematography on this is amazing. There's just some amazing scenes that, you know, you would expect more from a fixed rig or something you know, and you guys have, given the challenges you faced, I think it's amazing what you were able to the what you were able, to get in the can.

Bud Force 41:21
Well, appreciate it, Matthew. And so, like I was saying beforehand, our day job production company is called Ultralight films. And the reason for that is it's based off of the backpacking term of being light and fast. So we've kind of created this career out of trying to create cinematic footage in difficult conditions in the field, whether it's cowboying, or shooting ice climbing, or shooting scuba diving. It's, it's just you you have to operate light and fast and what we've experienced in the past decade is this renaissance of technology and communication and how we can grab this content, the drones were flying, when folded up are the size of a coke can, you know, and you can and yet there shooting 4k 12bit highly cinematic footage, the cameras we use are tiny, and they're getting smaller. And so what it's created is this opportunity to go out and create this type of documentary. And because we had the access through the ranches that John brought to the table, that I brought to the table and some folks that Faily brought in, we were able to get in intimately on those interviews as well. And I think the welding of it all at the end of the day, just really played out very, very nicely.

Matthew 42:39
I'd like to bring Lucas in at this point. Lucas, you're still with us?

Lucas 42:44
Yep. Yep, I'm here.

Matthew 42:45
Okay. Because I think this is, so I guess Bud and John and Faily, you'd been filming for about two years. Is that right? Is that when you came in Lucas?

Lucas 42:56
Yeah, I think it was roughly about that time. John and Bud reached out. And I want to say they probably had like 70% of the footage, maybe a little bit more. And so we had the opportunity to kind of like all land, I watched through all the footage that they had gathered at that point. And then we started wrap , wrap our heads around, you know, what else was needed to tell the story. And so yeah, it was about 70- 75% of the way through principal photography.

Matthew 43:24
I mean, I know, I also know this, an article that you, a great article, I want us to, there'll be a link to it, I'm sure in the show notes. Its this how to draw out authenticity in a documentary edit. You also say you'd like to be in from the very beginning. So you weren't in from the very beginning, they'd already had 70%. So, what challenges did you face and what did you find when you when you started looking at the footage?

Lucas 43:49
I mean, you know, when once I started, I'm from Michigan and had not real, I've never really been, you know, in contact with anything like what they were shooting and presenting and portraying. And so for me, it was a process of like, just diving in, researching, learning as much as I could, before the footage hit my desk. And then once the footage hit my desk, it was really, you know, following the vision and the, and the unique angle that John and Bud and Faily wanted to take on the film, right. And so it was a process of watching what was there, filtering it through the lens of the the goal of the film, right or the unique angle of the film. And then John and Bud and myself got together for three days, three, four days and just started to, you know, go through and just do a paper, a paper outline, just one page paper outline, and we just talked through everything and we really all got on the same page and made sure we're jumping off of the same diving board, right. And then it was, just, you know, bask in the glory of all of this footage. And it was a process of just watching, rewatching, putting stuff next to itself and trying to develop that authenticity within the edit itself, because the footage was authentic right. But it's so easy for footage to be improperly put together, that then breeds in inauthentic film. And so, you know, my level of authenticity that the edit started to take on was a direct correlation and a direct response to the authenticity that was in the footage and in the moments that they captured.

Matthew 45:40
Did you also have a role in the sort of the structure because it's an interesting sort of structure that we're looking at, in terms of its force. It's what, four seasons intermixed with some other storylines. Maybe you could say a little bit about that, or whoever was behind that idea?

Lucas 45:58
Yeah, we, we talked a lot about structure and there was, there were some broad strokes to structure like the seasons and, and developing kind of this, you know, I want. So there was that top line structure. But then as I started to get into the footage, I started to notice these heartbeats and these sub-lines and these deeper, these deeper emotions that I was feeling as I was watching this footage. And so, I kind of started to, to put it into my head like a dolphin swimming through the ocean where the top line like these four peaks that would kind of come up are the seasons and then we'd go down into what the emotion of that season, what emotion can we communicate through that season. And so it was like, the practicality of the cowboy in the emotion of the cowboy, the practicality of the cowboy and the emotion of the cowboy. And so it started to create kind of this drumbeat, this rhythmic movement through the film where it, I think it gives the audience something to latch on to that they, they feel taken care of and safe. To be taken into this part of the world that for, I would say the vast majority of the audience, has only ever seen this romanticized version of. And so, that kind of, you know, dolphinesque structure was something that started to seep out through the footage.

Matthew 47:19
And speaking about emotions, I want to bring in Ian McLeod now. Ian, we almost forgot about you. You're like Kevin from Home alone. We almost left without you. But we got you here in the end. And when did you get involved?

Ian McLeod 47:35
I came in right near picture lock. I've known Bud for a long time, and I knew of the project as it was going along. And we had some preliminary calls, as Lucas was assembling the rough cuts. So we had some time which was nice to establish a tone for the soundtrack, but we really truthfully didn't come in to start scoring until picture was locked and Lucas had assembled a picture lockup.

Matthew 48:03
And how did you approach that subject? Because, do you have any connections to the West?

Ian McLeod 48:07
Personally, I don't at all, my only connection to the film was Bud and having a close relationship with him. But just like Lucas, I kind of took it upon myself to, to learn a lot about the cowboy culture and not just read books, but watch a ton of films and really dive deep into the the nature of the subject. And I do have to say this, it wasn't just me, just like the the team here and how collaborative the film was with all these stellar people. It was the same with the score. I wasn't the only one to score it. I had an amazing team behind me and they can't join this call right now. But those people are Matt Sedivy, Suvo Sur, and as a unit we dove deep into the subject and ultimately scored the film.

Matthew 48:50
I think it's, I think, it's excellent. I mean, it's, I know, those who've, we've already had three clips, if you can really listen, I mean, the sound's great on it, and then when the music comes in. It's very evocative, I think would have been very easy to be cliche, but you've avoided that. And it's I think, feels to me distinctly Western without mimicking what we already think of, in terms of like, you know, the music from big Westerns or Copland. Or even Moricone or someone like that. I mean, I think it's a, its it's own p, it stands, it stands on its own. And I think it's, I think it really, I mean, we've talked to sound guys would always say this, you guys, we always forget about you until, you didn't, we get to this point and realize you can't make a movie without it. And I think it's, it's very well done.

Speaker 1 49:38
Yeah, no, I might just add how important it was to the film, to have people like Lucas and Ian, that, that weren't that familiar with the cowboy world to offer a more objective view of what really resonates, you know, as opposed to I mean, I think people that are familiar ensure that the authenticity runs throughout the film, but pulling out those pieces that really resonate, you know, to the outside world. Because the film is largely going to be for the outside world, even though we care about what the cowboy world thinks about. It made a huge difference in terms of how the film turned out. I mean, it's really dramatic how their input played into what made its way into the film and how it was structured. You know, if you just left it to people that were intimately close to the cowboy world, it would have turned out very different.

Lucas 50:38
Yeah, I mean, I think absolutely, that, that is as I've experienced the film with like, like Failey was saying, once there is like a, like a legit big outfit cowboy watching. It's a totally different experience. Because you are making it for these two different groups of people. And you know, like the last dance, a documentary series out there right now, is giving audience members who lived through the last dance and lived through those championships that the bowls went on. It gives them a chance to reminisce. And they'd be like, yes, that is, that's what it was like. But then it's also introducing Michael Jordan to an entire group of kids who just grew up on LeBron James. And so that, you know, that is kind of the pole of the film where it, we had such a desire and john and bud were at the tip of, and Faily were at the tip of the spear of like, this has to be authentic for the cowboy. But then also, you know, the, handle behind the spear is like what's driving the film forward is, but it also has to pull in people that have no idea about this universe. And so it's kind of a two hander, which was an interesting line to walk. It was an exciting line to walk but a super challenging line to walk in the edit because it was, you know, you have these two vastly different audiences that you want it to both be impacted in a significant way after watching.

Matthew 52:00
And, and as you said, it's for a much wider audience. But you've, I think you've already said something about this. But the response from the, from the ranchers and cowboys, they, how they've felt about the film?

Speaker 1 52:14
Oh, they warmly embraced it. Yeah. No, they, you know, I think a perfect case of that is we showed it in Fort Worth, and a young guy in the back stood up, you know, he's wearing a cowboy hat, he took it off, kind of, you know, put it on his chest and just said: Hey, I want to thank you guys for telling our story the way you told it, you know, it's we've never really seen it told that truthfully, and I just want to thank you. And, you know, of course, that's, you're never going to get higher praise than that or anything more meaningful as a filmmaker than hearing from the subjects of the film that they appreciate the way you've told their story.

Felicitas Funke 52:54
So Matthew, what I noticed, being European, is the incredible politeness and the impeccable manners. And when we first started meeting and thinking about this, it's in John, it's in Bud. It's in all the cowboys that I've ever met in my whole life. And when John was just describing that somebody will stand up in the back and take their hat off before they speak to you. There is just so much respect. And there are manners that for me as a woman are just absolutely amazing. They're all like Renaissance men. It's, you are, I was treated like gold throughout, throughout the whole film, my previous documentary, and while I was doing the book, I have never felt safer in my life than in the company of these people out there on horseback or on these, on these large ranches. So that's something that I certainly would never, you don't find men like that in Europe, in a nutshell.

Matthew 54:00
We may have to edit that for European listeners. But, but no, I've no, I think that's, think it's a fair point. I think it's, that's why I find this, this film so compelling because I think it turns a lot of, some people have some stereotypes, about cowboys in the West. And I think it turns some of those on their head and also your inputs in terms of we won't go, don't really have time to go into that much discussion, but the whole section that you had with the young woman, what's her name? Joanne or who's the, I mean, I thought that was excellent. It was, I told my daughter there's this woman who lives four and a half hours from the nearest town, forget big city, but nearest town and my daughter's like, that sounds amazing. You know, but, I think you know, that's but instead my daughter spends all her life in her room. But the I think the, I think that's an interesting perspective, that is well that's that's come to this film, I think, you know, I don't have my headphones on. I don't have a producer in this studio, except for maybe my children, who're telling me to wrap up, but if we do, we are kind of coming into the end of this call. And I just wanted to quickly get on to, let's you know, it's not even the elephant in the room, I mean it's, your all filmmakers. What are the, you know, let's face it, we're in the middle of all of this different forms of lockdowns and quarantine, some of you are probably coming out of them right now. By the time this releases, maybe some more will. But what are the challenges are you facing through this whole crisis?

Bud Force 55:34
Well, from my perspective, and Lucas and Ian and I work together regularly outside of this project, but from my perspective, we were lucky coming into COVID because we had been heavy on production for months on multiple projects. I mean, almost up until the day that everybody went on lockdown. And so now we're in post editing on, on many on three films, I think, three commercial spots. And we will be in, that'll continue probably throughout the summer. So for us, it hasn't been a huge change. There was a little bit of slow down, as far as you know, everyone's starting to work from home and all of that. But once the agencies and our clients kind of got used to that system, then we started rocking and rolling again.

Lucas 56:29
Yeah, I mean, I think for post I can speak a little bit more intelligently about the post world. I think it, that the post industry is going to change pretty fundamentally, not as an exclusive result of COVID. But as in, you know, an energized result of COVID, because the chain change was already happening. The Internet - people were discovering the internet, which is crazy to say, but not being in New York, and L.A. was always a conversation and then it has slowly started to change as these places discovered the internet and so now, this is pushing it. And so I think the post industry is going to change pretty significantly to where location is going to be irrelevant. There's a lot more collaboration online. And there's a lot more... There'll be a such a larger pool of talent that people can start to incorporate into their films because they've built these workflows. And so I see the post industry changing pretty pretty extensively on the other side of this and I think that there will be a new normal in post to what extent and to, you know, yeah, I mean, to what extent we'll see but there are workflows and systems being set up that will not go away soon, for sure.

Matthew 57:54
And I may give the last word on this to Faily. The thing that strikes me is, maybe, for all of us, people used to talk about WWJD, what about WWCD? What Would Cowboys Do? Given, faced with these challenges? What is, what would a, what does the working cowboy say how we should face all this?

Felicitas Funke 58:16
Well, there's this old saying that you have to cowboy up. You know, we're in this together and I think it has made us better as a team. And out there on these vast ranches, I would assume that if we had the privilege to travel right now, I would believe that life is pretty much, pretty much unchanged. I know that, that Bud works on cattle on the weekends and that he and his family are extremely prepared. And other than, you know, being being pretty remote in Idaho, as I have been for 23 years, I'm used to solitude. I love the teamwork, but I think what we learn from these guys is to just, you know you got to keep going, and you got to pay attention to the people that you love and take care of the animals.

Matthew 59:08
I think that's a good way to come to a close, if you don't mind. I just want to give another big round of thanks to the filmmakers. As you mentioned, it's, I really don't want to single any one of you all out, you're all, it is truly a collaborative team effort I can see. And it's, it's been great having you guys on. Just to remind our listeners the film is Cowboys - a documentary portrait. Bud Force, one of the directors and cinematographer, we've had John Langmore and his also director, producer and his still photos are throughout the film. We've had Faily and her creative energies in this, we've got, we've got Lucas who brought the structure to the whole, to the whole film and then also Ian who's lent his musical talents along with his team. So I just want to give you another thanks for being on the show. It's very much appreciated. Where, if people want to follow you, we're going to have some notes. We'll have things in the show notes. But what's the best way? How are they going to see this film? Or is that still a working progress?

Bud Force 1:00:19
Well, Matthew, folks can go to www.thecowboymovie.com, thecowboymovie.com. And on that website, we have an updated list of our current screenings. We also have links to both our Instagram and our Facebook pages that people can go to, and we're keeping social media updated with with everything as we progress into our distribution. So right now we, we have signed with a distribution agency who's working on broadcast and platform distribution both nationally and internationally. And we hope to have the film out in some form or fashion on those fronts in addition to blu-ray and DVD in the coming months,

Matthew 1:01:06
Okay, well, you've, you've heard it here. Do follow the social media and we'll definitely be on the lookout for, whether it's broadcast or VOD so that we will, I was lucky, I've been able to see it, see the film in full but for those, for everyone else, so that they can finally see this picture. I just want to remind our listeners to please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. Feel free to get in touch with any questions you have or comments or suggestions for future topics. And this is Factual America signing off.

Factual America Outro 1:01:48
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo pictures, specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the shownotes for more information about today's episode, our guest and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures, to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals we're attending and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk

The Life of Modern-Day American Cowboys

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The Life of Modern-Day American Cowboys

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Connect with Lucas J. Harger:

Interesting Reading from Factual America:

Transcript for Factual America Episode 14 - The Life of Modern-Day American Cowboys

The Hart Family Tragedy

I Am Not Your Negro: Racism in the US

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