Hey, friends. Barbarella here. A new Western, Place of Bones, rides into theaters and on digital Friday, August 23, 2024. Unlike the Westerns of yesteryear, this one is female-led, with Audrey Cummings in the director’s chair and Heather Graham shining in the lead role as a mother who, along with her daughter (Brielle Robillard), must fight for survival when a gang of outlaws, led by Tom Hopper, arrives in the area.
I’ve been a Tom Hopper fan ever since he won me over with his enticing portrayal of Billy Bones in Black Sails. He earns additional adoration from me through the way he injects subtle humor as villain Bear John in this film. I find myself laughing at moments that I’m fairly certain weren’t intended to be funny, yet he fires wit like a true sharp-shooter with a faint exasperation about him that’s just funny. However, he’s not the only one who offers something more than just delivering what’s written on the page. Corin Nemec, Brielle Robillard, and Heather Graham also add an extra something that gives insight into their characters and adds a bit of snark to the exchanges.
I had the opportunity to speak with Audrey Cummings, and I sometimes like to break the ice with a question about Muppet-casting on remakes. While she placed Kermit, Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear in the lead roles of Calhoun (Corin Nemec), Pandora (Heather Graham), and Hester (Brielle Robillard), I took a completely different approach, thinking it would be fun to have Statler and Waldorf as Pandora and Hester, essentially heckling Calhoun, who would be played by Beaker because the expression and noises Beaker makes would just work in all his scenes. (Welcome to another glimpse into my weird brain.) Anyway, after the ice-breaker, I moved to the topics that people may actually find more interesting. Check it out!
Barbara: How did you get your hands on this project, and what appealed to you about it?
Audrey: I'm in Canada, in Toronto, and the script went to a production company in Montreal, and they were looking for a strong, female, genre director who could pull off a lot of these kills and stuff. They got my name through several people, apparently. They sent me the script, and I connected with it immediately because I've never seen a female-led Western like this, and I've always wanted to kind of explore the 1800’s, the old Western frontier. Getting the chance to do it with two super-strong female leads was just really appealing to me.
Barbara: What is your favorite Western, speaking of Westerns?
Audrey: Oh my gosh, there's so many good ones. Actually, a really interesting newer Western that is really good is Old Henry. Shocking, but good. And then Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone films, and even lots of the Western TV now, like “Yellowstone.”
Barbara: Regarding casting, did you court specific actors for their roles, or how did you get this great cast?
Audrey: I know I lucked out. Oh my God. We sent the script to Heather, and she read it and fell in love with the character right away. She was a “yes” right away. Then we sent the script to Tom Hopper, and he loved the character as well. And he was really cute because he's like, “Oh, ever since I was a kid, I dreamt of being a bad cowboy, like the bad guy.” He loved it. Actually, it's kind of funny; his wife is in the industry as well, and I think she sometimes helps him read scripts and stuff. He was saying that his wife read it, and she was like, “Oh my God, I love this script, too.”
I didn't know much about the UFC, and I didn't know what a big star Cowboy [Cerrone] even was. I was just like, “His name is Cowboy?” He was fantastic, so down to earth and so cool. He loved his role. And then Brielle, who played Pandora's daughter, Hester, that was a bunch of auditions that came in. The second I saw her, she was the one for me. I was very lucky that she actually even looked like Heather because I was going solely off her performance.
Corin played Calhoun. Calhoun was a really tough, challenging role to play. I think it was intimidating for a lot of actors because you have to really be able to act to play that role well. Corin knew one of the producers, and he is like,”Oh my God, I love this role so much. Let me get myself on tape for the director.” He put himself on tape, and I was like, ”Holy crap!” I was wowed by that guy. I mean, truly, he was able to go from vulnerable to terrified to angry. I mean, he brought all kinds of beautiful subtleties to everything. These nuances that he was bringing to the table for his role were just…I mean, he did such a great job.
And then everybody else, I mean, Zach [Keller] auditioned for Little Pete, and he won me over right away, as well. And Gattlin [Griffith]. Oh my gosh, Gattlin – he’s fantastic, and he also does stunts, as well, so he did all his own stunts, which was very lucky.
Barbara: You have guns on set, and I've got to ask, how has the tragedy from the Rust set impacted filmmaking with guns now?
Audrey: I've heard they've started using blanks again, which is good. When we were shooting, we still weren't in that sort of environment where people were okay coming back to using blanks, so we were using guns that you couldn't put any bullets in or anything like that. They were called replicas. And we had some lessons on [them] because each one of them had different guns, and some of them [use] bullets, some of them are ones that you would put black powder in with the balls, and so it was just understanding how each gun fires, what the kickback is, how much smoke, how many sparks come out. The actors had to work on the kickback themselves, and then the fire and the smoke we had to do afterwards, which looks great. Pandora's gun, for example, it's called the Colt something or other, and it was the gun at the time that had the most power, so her gun, we had to make sure had the most sparks and the most smoke coming out of it, and it had to be very cinematic and dramatic for her gun, so we really worked hard [on that] in post.
Barbara: The place looks very remote where you are. How remote was the actual location where you shot?
Audrey: We shot an hour outside of LA in a place about ten minutes away from Santa Clarita, in the mountains. We found a ranch that had an existing ranch house and everything, but it was not built in the 1800’s. So we found this sort of back lot on his land, and we built the farmhouse and the barn for the production.
Barbara: Oh, okay. That's cool. How long did that take?
Audrey: The construction, I think they worked super fast. It was a couple of weeks to get that thing up and running, and then we had to dig into the mountain to put the lights and all kinds of stuff. So there's a lot of work that went on. They had tractors opening up the space for the house and the barn and stuff. So yeah, I mean, it was a build for sure.
Barbara: How long was the actual shoot?
Audrey: Oh my God. Very limited. We had fifteen days. It was a fast one to get done, but we did so well, Our cinematographer was Andrzej Sekula, who did Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. I was so lucky that he came three weeks ahead of time, and we lived in the house, not the ranch house that we built, but we lived in the preexisting one on the set. We stayed there for three weeks before shooting, and we just walked through the mountains every day, finding our shots, finding our angles, and letting the whole space just speak to us. I've never worked that way before. Usually I'm designing on paper, so this was a really unique way of doing prep for the movie. And as you can see, the movie's gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
Barbara: So that's a good segue. I feel like you learn from every project you do. What did you learn from making this film?
Audrey: I learned a lot about hustling against nature, because we were shooting, and it was raining and raining and raining. It was when LA was flooded, and they had mudslides. It was just crazy. The set was wet. It was just complicated, just trying to get the set prepped over and over and over again. We would shoot, and then it would rain, and we'd have to tarp the whole thing, but the tarp didn't really work, so the sets got really wet. It was a fifteen-day shoot that took us basically two months to get through, because we would shoot, we had to stop for the rainstorms. We had to let it dry. We would shoot a day or two, it would rain again. Also, another learning for me was just a different genre that I hadn't directed before: the Western genre. That was really exciting, and I'd never worked with horses before.
Barbara: I've heard horses can be divas. Were the horses divas?
Audrey: Well, the black horse, which are two horses; they're John Wick's horses. They were really well-trained as a brother/sister, and they swapped them out. When one horse gets tired, the other black horse comes in. So they were great. But one horse, I wanted to ring its neck, because what I've come to learn is that horses are pack animals, and this was the alpha horse. Because Cowboy’s really good with horses, they gave him the most difficult horse. But when you see them, all the cowboys riding in line, Cowboy’s not the first one who's riding in line, so that horse was really angry because he wasn’t leading the pack, so he was bucking Cowboy and just being really aggressive with him and not wanting to do anything. I literally want to strangle that horse's neck. But he bucked Cowboy at one point really hard, and Cowboy ended up with this black bruise from his groin all the way down to his knee. That horse was really rough on him. And I mean, kudos to Cowboy. He just kept going, and he was in pain. He was in pain for a lot of the shots. Poor guy.
Barbara: What aspect of the movie makes you feel the most pride?
Audrey: Everything. I mean, what we had to overcome to deliver this film was ginormous, and we delivered a film that is awesome. It looks beautiful. The acting is fantastic. The finale is amazing. If I can pat myself on the back, all my kills were really good. I feel very happy and proud of this film and what we all accomplished despite all the challenges that came our way. For sure.
You can check out Place of Bones with its beautiful cinematography and nuanced performances on Friday, August 23, 2024. You could check out the trailer here, but be forewarned, it's full of spoilers.
