Photo by John Langmore, producer on COWBOYS.
Craig Rullman, who spent some time chasing cows horseback in BIG country, scouted out this forthcoming documentary — COWBOYS. Breathtaking.
Told in the cinematic tradition of classic westerns, this feature-length documentary (release date 2018) offers the opportunity to ride alongside modern working cowboys on some of America’s largest and most remote cattle ranches. COWBOYS documents the lives of the men and women working on “big outfit” cattle ranches – some of which are over one million acres – and still require a crew of horseback workers to tend large herds of cattle.
Narrated through first-hand accounts from the cowboys themselves, the story is steeped in authenticity and explores the rewards and hardships of a celebrated but misunderstood way of life and the challenges that lie ahead for the cowboys and ranches critical to providing the world’s supply of beef.
Filmed on locations across the American West, COWBOYS features historic ranches in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada.
Some things from the trailer that I love:
• The recognition of the refined, sophisticated aesthetic — especially of the Great Basin Buckaroo. Life as art; art as life.
• The sense of wanderlust — the desire to see what’s over the next ridge. THAT, in a nutshell, is the frontier spirit. It’s was never really about “bringing civilization to savage lands” and it’s not about material gain, though many of those hard-bitten men, then and now, felt compelled to pretend that it was. Which leads me to…
• Self-conscious romanticism. Yes, it’s true — men are the great romantics of our species. In fact, I don’t much trust a man who ain’t. And if you can’t romanticize your rough, low-pay way of life, why would you do it?
• The revival of the cow camp. I always love it when the old, traditional way of doing it turns out to be the most effective and efficient way after all.
• The country. Ah, the country…
Photo by John Langmore, producer on COWBOYS.
The Cowboy as a symbol is problematic for those of us who have plunged deeply into frontier or borderlands history. People all over the world conflate anything “frontier” with “cowboy” and it gets annoying. At least to pedantic bastards like me. (Whenever I see some reader referring to the Glanton Gang in Blood Meridian as “cowboys” I reach for my scalping knife). But, really, it doesn’t matter (much); men who work cattle are natural-born frontiersmen, whether they are Scottish Highlanders, Australian stockmen, Mexican vaqueros, Hawaiian paniolos, Argentinian gauchos or American cowboys and buckaroos.
It looks like this film has done them right, and I look forward to watching it.
And in tribute, a favorite Ian Tyson cowboy song…
Thom Eley says
Excellent commentary! Can’t wait to see the documentary. Ian Tyson did a visit to some cow camps mainly in Canada but it is on VHS and not DVD.
JimC says
I remember seeing that.
Craig Rullman says
Many of the large traditional ranches in Nevada never gave up camps and wagons, and still havent. Economically it just doesnt make sense to do it–The Spanish and IL come immediatey to mind, and the Ca/NV borderlands outfits I worked on. We didnt run a wagon but we did maintain camps where I was privileged to live. I see a lot of Nevada in the preview here and am very much looking forward to seeing this film. Cowboying as a profession is hard work, and the pay is terrible, but you will see things and so things no one ever sees or does. I miss it each amd every day.
JimC says
We really need to mine those years for song material.
Matthew says
Science Fiction writer Jack Williamson actually traveled in covered wagon during his childhood in the early twentieth century. He would live into twenty-first century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson
You’d think he’d turn out as a Western writer.
JimC says
Interesting. Science Fiction, too, is about what’s over the next ridge.
Matthew says
For a long time, a common criticism of a science fiction story was that it was a “western in space.” Meaning that you could substitute six guns for ray guns and have the story.
Nowadays, the Space Western is kind of a subgenre of it’s own. The most famous was the TV show Firefly, though my personal favorite was for the anime Cowboy Bebop which mixed sci-fi, Western, and Crime (among other genres.)
Of course, the Cantina scene in Star Wars is basically a western saloon.
JimC says
It will surprise exactly no one that Han Solo was my favorite Star Wars character.
Matthew says
It shouldn’t surprise anyone since you’ve mentioned it here before 🙂
JimC says
Well there ya go.
J.F. Bell says
What I find fascinating is for all the ink, film, and vinyl spent on cowboying comparatively little actually addresses the work. To clarify, there’s a whole lot of entertainment out there in which the characters are cowboys and very, very few that I’ve run across that are actually about the work itself. Presumably gunfights and range wars screen better than de-worming and stretching fence.
Still hard to beat John Erickson for writing about the modern stock trade, though. Probably because he has a knack for writing about de-worming and stringing fence and, so far as I’ve read, has managed to avoid getting into too many gunfights in his time afield.
As for historical cowboys versus movie cowboys versus the cowboy myth…that’s a whole other post.
JimC says
X-ring. Elmer Kelton wrote it pretty real, too.
Matthew says
Steve Hockensmith’s novel Holmes on The Range is a mystery novel on a 19th Century ranch. While it is primarily a humorous mystery, it does show the actual work cowboys do including deworming.
JimC says
I hear that book is a hoot.
Matthew says
It is.
Saddle Tramp says
Looks like a good ‘un for sure for all the above reasons and a flank nudge from the trailer! Can’t wait to see this one!! It just feels right…
john roberts says
I love that pistol attached to the saddle rig. there has to be a deeply functional reason for that.
JimC says
The butt on that pistol’s been knocked around some.
Jerry says
I remember cowboys in Gunnison used .22 pistols for rat shots to move stubborn cows.
Love the great Serengeti-like movement of the herds captured here.
JimC says
That drone footage is sweet.
John Langmore says
Friends of Frontier Partisans,
I sure appreciate all the interest in the film and the photos (to be a book in a couple of months). I can assure you my single wish is to tell the story of the big outfit cowboy authentically. I know you and all the cowboys will let us know if we’ve done so when the film comes out.
Thanks again for the interest.
Sincerely,
John Langmore