Brokeback Mountain Truck Perfect Vehicle to See Alberta Scenery

Screenshot from CBC TV video about the Brokeback Mountain truck tour.

CBC.ca posted an article about 2 men who recently toured Alberta in the truck from Brokeback Mountain:

Bob and Jeff Welsh, a father and son from Indiana, won an auction on eBay for a tour of the Brokeback Mountain sites in the 1950 pickup truck used in the movie.

"Great scenery ... lot of friendly people and absolutely stunning," Jeff Walsh said after spending Saturday touring the Kananaskis area where the mountain scenes were shot.

"It was really interesting now that on some of the scenes we've looked at how close they were to the roads. So you know there was just a couple of scenes where we had to walk off on a trail and not for a great distance," he told CBC Radio.

The article also mentions the father's enjoyment of the trip:

"I'm a little 76-year-old guy. In 1950, I had a truck just like that ... brand new ... $1,100. But at any rate, I enjoyed riding in the truck — I enjoyed driving the truck — brought back old times."

The tour was also the perfect way to spend time with his movie-loving son.

On Sunday, they visited the Rockyford and Carseland areas, where the bank, rodeo and bar scenes were filmed.

Check out this link for the full article and a video (Real Media) from CBC.

Broken Trail Encore Presentation

In case you missed the first airing, the Walter Hill-directed AMC movie, Broken Trail, will air again on July 18 at 8PM/7C.

The movie, starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church, was filmed in Alberta, Canada.

In addition, AMC will air Open Range, also filmed in Alberta, on July 16 at 8PM/7C. The feature film stars Robert Duvall and director Kevin Costner. Click here to see the trailer in QuickTime format.

Image © 2006 and courtesy of AMC.

Johnson Talks About Moondance Alexander

Don Johnson, in the Calgary area filming Moondance Alexander, spoke to the Calgary Sun regarding the film and his past role as Miami Vice detective, Sonny Crocket.

From the article:

In the meantime, he’s preparing to wrap Moondance Alexander this week. The production, which has been shooting for the past month in High River, Okotoks and around Calgary, finds Johnson — as a down-and-out ex-horse show rider who mentors a young girl named Moondance Alexander (Kay Panabaker) — far removed from the cocaine-fuelled glamour of Miami’s seedy underworld.

Which is, he adds, the idea.

“I was looking for a family picture so my young kids can see it because a lot of my stuff they can’t.”

Moondance, which producers are intending for the big screen, is being directed by Michael Damian, an ’80s teen idol, thanks to his role on The Young and Restless and co-stars Lori Loughlin (Full House) as Moondance’s mother. The size of the project — low-budget independent or large-scale Hollywood fare — “has never really mattered,” Johnson says. “For me, I just enjoy the work. Like I said, this was a sweet film my kids could see.” For the actor, the shoot marks a return to Calgary where he’s previously headlined such productions as the 1989 thriller Dead Bang and the 2003 TNT movie Word of Honor.

This past weekend, he reports, “I did my obligatory trip to the Stampede. It was great. I say obligatory because I’ve been there half a dozen times, I think, so it’s like an annual sojourn at this point. I enjoyed it. Every year it gets better and better.”

Check out the full article at this link.

Ridin' the Dusty Trail With Robert Duvall

The Chicago Sun-Times talks about Broken Trail in its Entertainment section.

From the article:

Writer Alan Geoffrion strived to make Broken Trail as genuine as possible, right down to the "therapeutic papers," people dying of tick fever, and a lamb shepherd who wears a mishmash of fur around his shoulders.

"He even had cowboys read it and check it for authenticity," Duvall says.

Duvall and Geoffrion pitched it to Hollywood as a movie, but studios didn't bite. They ended up at AMC, where Duvall was happy to be, but he had to fight to keep others from turning the miniseries into a nail-biting adventure.

"They kept saying it needed a 'B' plot. I'm not sure it needed that. We had a lot of problems with the rewrites. They would rewrite, and then Al and I would come in at night and rewrite the rewrites.

"The thing was going off in another direction, with gunfights and action. This is a character-driven piece, so we had to make sure we could keep it on track that way."

The dialogue isn't filled up with a bunch of throwaway cliches, although Duvall's character has a few lines of wisdom to dispense, like "Never use money to measure wealth," and "It's a great life, when it ain't rainin' or snowin'."

Read the full article at the link above.