Where does a Boston boy learn to ride a horse like that?
I wish there had been some commentary on the dvd. So many questions.
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http://swansonpetersonproductions.com/equine-film-stars
Scroll down, almost to the bottom of the page, just past Black Beauty.
Thanks cawslg0307!!
"Justin was in All the Pretty Horses. To film a stirring scene, the actors and crew had to be ready to handle rambunctious steeds themselves. More than a month before production began, Matt Damon and Henry Thomas, as well as Lucas Black and Penélope Cruz, began intensively training horseback skills, trying to build in a few weeks the kind of familiarity with equines that John Grady Cole and his pals would have had since childhood.
“Henry and I came down to Texas a month early and rode horses every single day for five weeks straight,” Matt Damon explains. “We worked with wrangler Rex Peterson. Every morning Rex and would take us out and we’d ride, pretty much for eight hours.”
The actors were put through regular drills, as they perfected the art of working in sync with the animals. “It was all about controlling the horse and feeling totally confident,” explains Damon further. “Part of the training with Rex was that you had to saddle the horse in the morning, unsaddle him at night and carefully brush him. The point of it all was to feel at home on the horse, to understand that unspoken aspect of being a cowboy and horseman, that bond with animals, and have it look as authentic and natural as if it’s something you’ve been doing all your life.”
Despite the weeks of hard work, Damon gives the majority of the credit to the horses themselves. “They’re better actors than we are,” he says. “They’ve been in hundreds of movies and nothing ruffles them. They’re used to guns being fired near them, hundreds of people milling around, cameras, cranes, food, what have you. They can handle it all.”
When the actors were finally deemed acceptable horsemen, ready to handle their end of things, Billy Bob Thornton took several days to shoot the horse-breaking sequence. Damon and Thomas alternated in the action with their stunt doubles, Richard Bucher and Mike Watson. Bucher and Watson rode the most ferociously bucking broncos, often being thrown to the ground. But Damon and Thomas endured their share of spills as well."
http://swansonpetersonproductions.com/equine-film-stars
..I'd go to middle earth and look for Unspoiled Monsters. Then move to the country.