Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
If “Reservation Dogs” tells a comedic, myth- and spirit-filled story of life on the reservation, the debut film, “War Pony,” from Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, is the dramatic version, telling a darker story.
The feature debut from the directing partnership of Keough and Gina Gammell, “War Pony” won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It is set for release by Momentum Pictures in the United States starting July 28.
“I feel like the movie itself built up organically,” executive producer Pte Cante Win Poor Bear, Oglala Lakota, told ICT in a Zoom call with cast members. “It’s the same with the script. It was a gradual, organic process. Plus we had an amazing casting director … Most of the crew and the cast is from Pine Ridge, except for one from Rosebud.”
Keough, who is the daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley, served as co-producer and director with Gammell. The two also served as co-writers along with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy.
A collaborative work, Keough heard the stories of life on the rez from Sioux Bob and Reddy, who served as extras in the film, “American Honey,” she was making. Fascinated by their first-hand experiences, she went to Pine Ridge and developed the movie from there.
“This film has an energy and a spirit of its own, and it started with intention,” Poor Bear said. “Because of my role in the tribe and my family in the community, I took them all straight to the Black Hills … And we set intentions at one of our sacred sites. We took Riley and Gina to see all the elders from one end of the reservation to the other
“The elders all said, ‘Yes, go ahead, you can make the movie.’”
Drawn from real life
The storyline follows two Oglala Lakota boys, 12-year-old Matho played by LaDainian Crazy Thunder, and 23-year-old Bill played by Jojo Bapteise Whiting, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
With no male role models, young Matho takes his cues from his unpredictable, meth-addicted dad. He makes bad choices out of lack of maturity and experience that will most likely impact the rest of his life.
Meanwhile Bill, with face tattoos and two baby boys by two different women, finds life to be a constant slow-drawl hustle – selling puppies, charging stranded motorists, and working on a turkey farm.
The cinematography is gorgeous with glowing sunsets and vast plains that contrasts with the trailers and broken-down cars. The story gets a boost from the non-professional local cast.
Frank and Bill are the main characters, with the storyline drawn from childhood experiences of Sioux Bob and Reddy, as told to Keough and Gammell.
“There was one whole summer where Gina and Riley were there,” Poor Bear said. “And we got to know them, too … .They were pulling stories not only from their own experience, but from the relatives that were involved in the movie as well.”
Poor Bear says the casting director, Eléonore Hendricks, lived in a trailer on the reservation to get to know the community and families. The cast hopefuls came to workshops that were advertised on fliers posted in the community or were recommended by those already involved.
“You have to realize,” Poor Bear said, “that when you work with Indigenous communities, they’re dealing with a lot of trauma. So we have to create spaces for our Indigenous relatives to feel safe enough to come and step into this script or step into this role. And she was just incredible in that process.”
Whiting, who plays Bill, said the character was not unfamiliar to him.
“For me, I don’t have no acting experience or anything at all, and I wouldn’t say the movie is about me,” Whiting said. “It was a character that had similarities to me. We’re both different people, but there’s certain things in this character’s life or actions that are more similar to me, so I can act it out. There’s stuff where I didn’t really feel I needed to act because I’ve already been in positions like that. It was muscle memory, where I’ve already done it before.”
Whiting continued, “And I think that’s what makes me so good at acting, because I’ve been in positions, and I’ve been in situations, to where I’m able to think or I’m able to react fast. But not only that, I’ve been through a lot. So acting and playing this character was one way to release all my trauma in a positive way, versus going out and being negative.”
Crazy Thunder plays a boy who is facing a difficult time in his life and who was difficult to play onscreen.
“Just like JoJo said, it’s a lot of the stuff that we’ve been through in the past that brought the characters to life,” Crazy Thunder said. “More from seeing my friends go through stuff like drug addiction and drinking. There’s not many resources or opportunities where we come from. Honestly, when I was asked to do this a year before I actually did it, I didn’t go to the casting call because I just wasn’t in the right headspace. I wasn’t mentally prepared.”
He said the work was harder than some might think.
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“With acting, it may seem easy, but you’re going to get put in a position where it’s going to bring back something that happened in your past and it’s going to pertain to you and you have to choose how you want to react,” Crazy Thunder said. “You can be mad, you can choose to engage and be happy, or you can cry, you can be sad. But where we come from, you have to be a certain way. If you cry, or if you are vulnerable, you get looked down on, you know? So it felt good just to release emotions and not be shunned on.”
One issue the casting dealt with was the long delays between the writing in 2015 and the beginning of filming years later. They didn’t want actors aging out of their characters.
“The actors, they came later,” Poor Bear said. “We didn’t start getting the actors until four years later. Hendricks spent that whole year before production gathering all the cast members. For JoJo’s part, he was an older character. LaDanian was the younger character, so the younger group of kids, we almost missed the timeframe because of the pandemic.”
Making a splash in Cannes
The film group went from the intense production on the reservation to the high-pressure glamour of Cannes, France.
“As soon as we got to Cannes, the first thing I did was circle everybody up,” Poor Bears said. “I brought sage. Every generation was represented because my son was with me, we had the younger generation, the adolescents, we had the aunties and the grandmas, it was beautiful to be able to do that. We prayed and sang. Our culture went with us, too.
“Then what made it so beautiful was that a lot of the relatives that went to Cannes, on behalf of ‘War Pony’, were direct descendants of relatives the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show took to France in the late 19th century.”
It was a strange moment for tribal members and Native entertainment. But the film was a hit.
“There was a nice trip there and back,” Crazy Thunder said. “The people there really took us to and liked our movie. They let us know that when we came out after the screening. We had a standing ovation. That was really nice. It was like five minutes straight.”
Critics have been raving, too.
“A moving experiment in collective narrative filmmaking — an example of how stories can honor instead of exploit,” wrote Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter
“South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation has often been depicted in film but rarely from the inside. Gritty, realistic, ultimately triumphant,” wrote Jake Coyle of The Associated Press.
“Terrific. The tenderness, wisdom and instinct to survive is beautifully observed,” according to Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian
Working with the high-profile Keough – who had just gone through a dramatic time with the death of her mother and a public fight with her grandmother over Graceland – was the easy part, Poor Bear said.
“Riley became an entity almost,” Poor Bear said, calling her “one of the most famous women in the world.”
“She became family so fast. I don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “It wasn’t like she was this big movie star; she wanted to be my friend and talk to me. I think she just fell in love with how we live and what we do down here and the energy around us.”
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