Open Mike - Inside Cowboy Spirit, 7/3/2012
CowboySpirit.TV - It's been a while since we did an "Inside Cowboy Spirit" post, but I'd like to think we've got a good excuse. We were in the heat of filming the Cowboy Spirit Movie and it's been one heck of a wild ride.
With this edition, I also take a new direction - one that is a bit foreign to me, but one that a number of people have encouraged me to take, and that is to begin to write these blog posts in the first person. To that end, the title, as you see, is prepended with "Open Mike". That's what you will see going forward - more open thoughts on my perspective of the journey we are taking with the creation of the films and books from Cowboy Spirit.
We just wrapped up filming this past weekend and I have to say the experience has been exhausting, exhilarating, and phenomenal. It was so wonderful to see the story that I started writing less than a year ago come to life through the work and dedication of such a talented and passionate cast and crew.
As the Director of the film, my friend and partner Bill Miller, and I were talking about after we wrapped on Saturday, we are complete cowboy filmmakers. We did everything we weren't supposed to do, or at least everything they "say" you're not supposed to do. We had kids in the cast. We had animals - including rodeo animals - in the film. We shot during a live event, shot through horrible stormy weather, and ridiculous heat and humidity. We worked on a shoestring budget. But somehow, by God's Will or otherwise, the marvelous cast and crew - age 7 to 70 - shot a feature film in 11 shooting days and brought this story to life. We're confident you'll enjoy it when see it. For complete ongoing details about the Cowboy Spirit movie, you can visit CowboySpiritMovie.com.
The movie, Cowboy Spirit, is a beautiful story, or at least I believe it is anyway, and I found throughout the filming, that the story I wrote was much more touching in its manifestation than I originally believed it would be when I set words to paper. Yes, it's a feel good story, but it surely seems that it moves people in meaningful ways along the journey to that good feeling. That means quite a lot to me, because although the Cowboy Spirit Movie isn't a period western, sequence-wise, it is the last in a series of books and films I hope to write over the coming years in which I hope to convey the spirit, or at least what I believe is the spirit, behind what we call the Great American Cowboy - a lowly laborer who did the hard, hot, and dusty work no one else wanted to do, and became a legend for it. Next year's project, Little Joe the Wrangler, will be represent the first in the series in terms of historical timeline.
Now that principal photography is done for Cowboy Spirit the Movie, we hope to even more actively engage our friends in the Cowboy Spirit community for feedback on the movie poster, screening locations, film festival suggestions, and the like.
Thank so much for being part of the Cowboy Spirit community. Please tell your friends about us.
-Mike Allison
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