THE MUSTANG (2019) Production Notes

French filmmaker and actress Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre learned of the Wild Horse Inmate Program nearly five years ago after reading about the initiative, and she was immediately intrigued. De Clermont-Tonnerre had explored the redemptive power of animals in her short film Rabbit, about a therapist who entrusts a small white rabbit to a female prisoner through the Pet Partnership Program at an American correctional facility. The work being done with wild mustangs seemed to offer important benefits for both the animals and the inmates, and she was eager to know more.

VIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGES
(Video Reviews, Cast, Crew, Production Notes, Photos, Articles, & More)

Director's Statement
After reading an article about "animal therapy" taking place in various prisons around the world, I discovered the purpose of this so-called alternative rehabilitation therapy. The animal's unconditional love and obvious lack of judgment can reassure and slowly help a prisoner to learn how to become re-socialized.

Prisoners so infrequently experience tender physical contact that the intimacy and warmth of an animal acts as a soothing balm to the spirit, curing or softening anxieties. Additionally, the very notion of being trusted to take care of an animal encourages the inmate's sense of responsibility and purpose.

After spending time with several therapists and trainers in such facilities, I noticed with amazement that inmates participating in the program seemed much more at ease with their animal counterparts than the counselors running the program. I also came to appreciate the beneficial impact of these rather odd and unexpected pairings-frequently brutish men with their sometimes extremely sensitive horses.

My prior short-form work also dealt with lonely characters living on the fringe of society, all suffering from their circumstantial lacks of freedom. The subject itself has the potential for a great documentary; however, the poetic license that a fictional narrative provides seems that it can cut even deeper to the core of my character and main theme. These recently captured wild mustangs blatantly mirror the prisoner's internalized violence and yearning for freedom. Therefore, I could best describe the film as a poetic social drama incorporating some western elements.

I want to explore several ideas with the film: Is it the justice system's responsibility to ensure that a criminal will eventually be reintroduced safely into society, or simply to see their deserved punishment carried out during an inmate's long stay? Do people, even after committing severe crimes, deserve a second chance? Can we on the outside ultimately forgive extreme acts of brutality based on the degree of violence and/or the specific details surrounding the individual's circumstances? Perhaps more importantly, can the individuals in question ever forgive themselves? What is our innate human potential for redemption?

These questions are the driving force of the film's narrative style and structure. Nothing here is intended to be didactic or approached in an academically explicit manner. With the help of a fluid and agile camera, the audience is meant to fully immerse in the experience of the program as our protagonist experiences it. This is why so much screen time is devoted to the procedural nature of the inmate's daily routine with their horses. I aimed to balance an observational "docudrama" approach with stylistically heightened sequences in hopes to achieve a most delicate symmetry. Certain classical "prison" and "western" genre elements were introduced to initially grab the viewers' attention, but as the film progresses, its focus shifts less towards twists and turns and more in the direction of something truer, simpler, and ultimately, more character-driven.

At the film's conclusion, you are left with a character who, although he remains deeply flawed, has earned his "potential for redemption" more than any protagonist ever has...

A POWERFUL, POIGNANT SAGA OF REHABILITATION AND REDEMPTION

Wild horses have roamed the landscape of the American west for more than 300 years, descendants of animals imported from Europe by the first travelers to visit the Americas. Hunted for the slaughterhouse and near extinction in the last century, the remaining mustang herds have been protected by law since 1971. The Bureau of Land Management has determined that public rangelands in 10 western states can support 27,500 mustangs, but estimates place their numbers closer to 100,000.

To keep the population stable and prevent habitat destruction, thousands of horses are rounded up each year. Most spend the rest of their lives in long-term holding facilities. Some are euthanized and some are adopted. Since 1990, a few hundred are sent every year to the Wild Horse Inmate Program, where they are trained by inmates for sale at public auction.

French filmmaker and actress Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre learned of the Wild Horse Inmate Program nearly five years ago after reading about the initiative, and she was immediately intrigued. De Clermont-Tonnerre had explored the redemptive power of animals in her short film Rabbit, about a therapist who entrusts a small white rabbit to a female prisoner through the Pet Partnership Program at an American correctional facility. The work being done with wild mustangs seemed to offer important benefits for both the animals and the inmates, and she was eager to know more.

Undertaking a research trip, she flew from her home base of Paris to Nevada to learn first-hand about the Wild Horse Inmate Program, and what she discovered moved her. "The goal is to reconnect, is to learn patience, to tame your own violence and anger," de Clermont-Tonnerre says. "It's very therapeutic for those men to realize who they are. The horse trainer of this program will tell you, the horse teaches the man to know who he really is."

"I needed to find this way to tell the story," she continues. "I could have done a documentary, but I felt I needed a certain amount of poetic license to tell the story. It's a very cinematic story, very powerful. The poetry of the images, the silence, this invisible dialogue between man and animal needed to be on a big screen."

Crucial to the story's development was the support of the Sundance Institute. De Clermont-Tonnerre refined her script while attending the Director and Screenwriter Labs, a residential program held annually at the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah designed to help discover and foster new talent. The first draft of THE MUSTANG earned her the 2015 Sundance Institute/NHK Award, which was created to contribute to the world's visual culture and to promote cultural exchanges through finding and supporting emerging filmmakers. The project's development was also supported by the San Francisco Film Society Grant, whose past winners include Destin Cretton's Short Term 12, Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station and Benh Zeitlin's Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild.

As de Clermont-Tonnerre continued to refine various drafts of the screenplay, she was guided by a desire to authentically capture every aspect of the program. Dr. Kathleen O'Meara, a psychologist with the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, served as prison consultant on the film, and she took the writer-director to visit facilities including San Quentin State Prison, Folsom State Prison and High Desert State Prison. Together, the women also spent significant time with anger management therapy groups, restorative justice groups, and mustang rehabilitation programs at Northern Nevada Correctional Center and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center.

"I brought her into penal institutions where she met inmates and heard their stories," says O'Meara. "Most of them were stories of redemption, their life history, then their recovery process. One of the lines we heard a lot was hurt people hurt people. People who have been injured by other people tend to take it out on other people."

During those visits, the positive impacts of working with horses became readily apparent. "Some of the guys have maybe not been high achievers in any kind of way-they've underfunctioned given their intellectual capacity, they haven't accomplished very much," O'Meara says. "So, now, when they start working with horses, every day manifests in some form of accomplishment, whether it's getting the horse to pick up its feet or to take a handful of hey from the hand. That starts to reframe how that person starts to view themselves. They start to develop a sense of identity. 'I am a person who can accomplish something. In fact, I'm becoming a horse trainer.' For somebody who's maybe never had that kind of identity or self-reflection, it's very powerful."

De Clermont-Tonnerre channeled her impressions from those experiences directly onto the page, ultimately shaping a spare but powerful drama. THE MUSTANG homed in on the emotional journey of inmate Roman Coleman, a somber man with a violent, explosive temper that has cost him nearly everything. Halfway through serving an 11-year sentence for domestic violence, Roman's life is forever changed when he finds his way to the Wild Horse Inmate Program and is tasked with working with his fellow inmates to train recently captured wild mustangs.

De Clermont-Tonnerre's script captivated venerable French producer Alain Goldman, whose credits include the Oscar-winning Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose and whose company, Legende, was founded in 1992 to produce Ridley Scott's ambitious 1492: Conquest of Paradise. "Our French development executive had been following Laure's short film career and brought us the project," Goldman says. "What touched us all at Legende was the subject of redemption and how animals can help us find our own humanity."

Goldman adds: "From the beginning, Laure had clear conviction of what she wanted to accomplish and how she would accomplish it, which is always reassuring to a producer. The years of research she poured into the script and vision was clear not only on the page, but also in the way she pitched the idea."

Finding the right actor to play Roman was paramount. The character begins the film as a sullen, sad, brutally angry man who has spent time in solitary confinement locked away from the general prison population. As he tentatively builds connections through the program, Roman's old wounds and new feelings begin to surface-the guilt and pain he carries with him, the gratitude he feels for a lifeline to the outside world, the hope he begins to experience for a possible future.

Flemish actor Matthias Schoenaerts had been building a reputation as a gifted actor long before his breathtaking turn in the Oscar-nominated 2011 Belgian drama Bullhead. But his work in that film, in which he starred as a cattle farmer who becomes hooked on steroids after suffering an unspeakable childhood trauma, cemented his status as an unparalleled talent. Since then, he's continued to deliver indelible performances in such films as Rust and Bone, The Drop, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Danish Girl and A Bigger Splash, among others. Schoenaerts had the right kind of intensity and gravitas to portray Roman as he evolves over the course of the film-he also has a flawless American accent.

"We needed an actor who could portray both the ruggedness and sensitivity of the character," explains Goldman. "Matthias is physically imposing-one could believe he is incarcerated in a Nevada prison-but he is also extremely approachable in his performance. In Europe, he is already known for playing these types of roles, as he did in Rust and Bone and Bullhead."

For his part, Schoenaerts says he was drawn to the story's real-world relevance and its philosophical underpinnings. "There's this weird ambivalence between the horrors of prison life and the poetic nature of what goes on in that program, which is man reconnecting with himself through nature. Roman is a person who comes back to life. The horse brings him back to life, back to himself."

When the program's chief trainer Myles notices that Roman is able to approach a particularly aggressive mustang, the grizzled veteran is struck by the instant connection between man and animal. In this key supporting role is none other than Hollywood legend Bruce Dern. The two-time Academy Award-nominee says he was "knocked out" by de Clermont-Tonnerre's script.

"Basically, what the movie is is two adversaries," Dern says. "Is the man going to train the horse and break him, or is the horse going to break the man? If he breaks the horse, he has to have the horse end up really liking him or loving him. He's got to learn respect for the horse, wild animal or not. In that way, it's kind of a love story. That's what I love about it."

Dern adds: "I became an actor because I was interested in what makes us do what we do and behave like we do, particularly in times of stress, and that's what this is. It can't be more stressful for the inmate-he's got to go back to the prison population and live-yet in a few months or years, he'll be out and have to readapt."

De Clermont-Tonnerre says Dern was the ideal choice to play Myles in the film. "He has this humanity and kindness and fragility," she says. "He also has this very stubborn and tough way about him, this natural authority that actually defines Myles as this father figure. He adds so much. He had this lightness and this humor that the film needed."

Roman begins working with the buckskin, but just like his would-be trainer, the mustang is a wild creature, aggressive and hostile, fearful and anxious, mistrustful of almost everyone. Fortunately for Roman, gregarious and experienced inmate trainer Henry, played by actor Jason Mitchell, decides to offer his assistance.

"Henry Davis is a hell of a horse trainer and not such a violent guy," Mitchell says. "He's more of a vibrant guy. The relationship with Roman, it starts off a little strange because Roman is a standoffish guy, and Henry has such an explosive energy. He's sort of found happiness already because he's dealing with this horse trainer work, and Roman is just a very awkward person. I might tease him a little bit. I might give him sort of a hard time, but I want him to succeed, and he's actually trying, which is something that I respect."

To play the role, Mitchell, who portrayed late rapper Eazy-E in the Oscar-nominated 2015 music biopic Straight Outta Compton, did have to overcome a certain amount of trepidation. "I was terrified of horses," the actor says. "My whole life, I've been completely terrified of horses. I won't even walk on the same side of the street as a horse. I totally respect it and think it's a beautiful animal, but the fear was real, even as a grown man. I figured out Henry's basically the best trainer, and I'm like, this could be a time as a man I could conquer a fear."

Mitchell says he was also excited by the opportunity to work with Schoenaerts. "When I met him, he was explosive like I'm explosive," Mitchell says. "He loves to laugh like I love to laugh, and he likes to hug like I like to hug. He's just that guy. He matches my energy. He's like this white Belgian version of me. So, I was like, This guy is cool. He also is a veteran in the game. He is somebody I can not only watch and really learn from but also not have the fear to approach him and ask him these different questions. That's the great thing about working with him and Laure. They both have this very open mind to what could be. "

After the initial false start, Roman develops a bond with the buckskin, whom he names Marquis. The deep connection he forges with the animal, coupled with his anger management classes and his ongoing work with a prison psychologist, played by Friday Night Lights' actress Connie Britton, helps him slowly quell his inner demons. But away from the farm, Roman faces different trials. He strives to reconnect with his estranged 16-year-old daughter, Martha. Visibly pregnant, she pays Roman an unexpected visit to ask him to sign emancipation papers so she may legally sell her grandmother's house.

For Martha actress Gideon Adlon-who enjoyed a breakout performance in last year's raunchy teen comedy Blockers-THE MUSTANG offered the opportunity to tackle a weighty and meaningful dramatic role. "Martha is a very common case, a teenage girl forced to deal with adult situations and become an adult before her time to do so due to certain circumstances that have plagued her young life," Adlon says. "Martha knows what she wants. She is strong-willed and independent. She still loves her father deep down. At the end of the day, he's the only family she has left."

Roman senses that Martha is headed down the wrong path, but given what has transpired between them, he simply doesn't know the best way to try to connect with her from behind bars. "Their relationship is infected with guilt," Schoenaerts says. "It has been completely destroyed by guilt and violence and emotional imbalance and pain. Suddenly, there's a new contact that is being re-established, but at the same time, it brings up the past and what happened in the past is pretty hard to overcome. It makes it almost impossible to rebalance that relationship between these two people."

Roman is also pressured by his cellmate to steal the horse tranquilizer ketamine from the farm-which Henry does to mollify one of the prison's gangs. In terms of depicting the uglier realities of incarcerated life alongside the joys and benefits of the Wild Horse Inmate Program, de Clermont-Tonnerre turned to some of the actors she cast in smaller supporting roles who were themselves graduates of the program. Thomas Smittle, William Adams and Michael Cameron Smith play men working alongside Roman under the supervision of Myles. The insights they provided, she says, were invaluable in giving THE MUSTANG additional dimension and grounding the story in truth.

"Those former inmates helped me so much to deepen the story and the characters," de Clermont-Tonnerre says. "They were inspiring. They went through this journey, they found themselves at peace, and today are completely redeemed. It added so many layers to the story to work with these people and to have their guidance."

Smittle is now a professional horse trainer living in South Dakota who does seasonal work at Return to Freedom, the California sanctuary founded by THE MUSTANG executive producer Robert Redford that gives safe haven to wild horses and burros. Smittle began consulting with de Clermont-Tonnerre early in the screenwriting process, and when it came time to shoot the movie, he was hired on as a horse wrangler behind-the-scenes, in addition to playing a fictionalized version of himself.

"I wasn't sure about it because the only films I'd worked in previous to that were documentaries," says Smittle. "I hadn't done any acting, but Laure said, 'I wrote the part for you. I just wrote you into the script, so you just basically have to be yourself.'"

Despite his initial misgivings, he was impressed by de Clermont-Tonnerre's commitment to telling this important story and agreed to appear on screen. "It was encouraging that they were serious about recreating something that seemed realistic from our point of view," he says.

Adams began serving time when he was just 24 and was the leader of a prison gang before becoming involved with the program. Now, he lives with his wife and daughter in Nevada, working as a horse trainer and co-owner of a pizza restaurant. "It helped me work on my anger so much, actually being able to break myself down in that pen and be humble in front of this horse. You're aggressive in prison. You're the tough guy. In that ring with that horse, you can't be the tough guy. If you're the tough guy, he's not gonna be your friend. Now, I have something I can do in life instead of just being a criminal. This movie, it's got a real good outlook on life and real true stories in it."

Smith, who is now a firefighter, echoes many of those sentiments. "The Horse Program changed my life completely," he says. "It's making you so you're not so paranoid about people and things around you because you're dealing with a 1,200-pound animal. If you can deal with that, you can deal with people all day long, you know? I wanted to better my life and make my family proud instead of being a black sheep."

"It's very touching to have these ex-inmates who were part of the program with us," Schoenaerts adds. "It grounds the project that we're trying to make, and it helps us to believe in what we're doing as well so that it's not all make-believe. It's not just a group of artists trying to make something they think is relevant. We're actually having real people with us that went through it, and they exude that. They're very generous and gentle, but in everything they do, in everything they say, they exude that past, and that helps us as actors to really stay grounded and very connected to the material."

To round out the cast with real-life experts of color, de Clermont-Tonnerre cast two "Compton Cowboys," Kenneth Atkins and Keith Johnson, equestrians from south-central Los Angeles who advocate horsemanship as a positive influence to keep at-risk youth off the streets.

Atkins began riding as a child with his father at the Equestrian Center in Burbank, eventually joining The Compton Jr. Posse an organization founded by Mayisha Akbar dedicated to keeping kids "on horses and off the streets." His experience teaching novices to ride served him well on THE MUSTANG. Remaining calm is the first rule of spending time around the animals. "As soon as you get all antsy and tense, they'll feel the same way," Atkins says of the horses. "As long as you're chill, the horse is going to be chill."

Johnson plays Elijah, a shy inmate who is incarcerated for attempted murder. "He's not really good with people, but he's amazing with horses," says Johnson, whose relationship with the Wild Horse Inmate Program dates to when Johnson was a child in California and his grandfather adopted two horses from the program. Still, he says his experience on set enriched his understanding of the power of the initiative. "I learned a lot from some of the ex-inmates in the movie about the program, how it's affected them and made them better people in life," he says.

At its heart, THE MUSTANG offers a humane message about hope, about second chances, about human transformation. Roman Coleman's story might be fictional, but the experiences depicted on screen are rooted in truth. The film serves as an inspiring testament to the power of rehabilitation to offer real redemption.

"This film is about sincerity, and pureness, and care, and respect, and therefore, love, because they're all manifestations of love to some extent," Schoenaerts says. "Those elements are the only things that really matter in life. That's what that horse ends up teaching each one of these inmates, which helps them move on in life, and move on with themselves, and move on with their families. After you've been in this horrific place where distrust is standard, where disloyalty is omnipresent, to overcome that and to rebuild yourself, you need a profound experience of love."

Concludes de Clermont-Tonnerre: "It's about how natural and simple a connection can be, how an animal can repair the soul of a broken man. It's a love story between a violent offender and a wild horse. It's how the impact of an animal can teach this inmate to be a man and a father. It's about connection and love and empathy. It's about learning, patience, respect and trust."

*****

BRINGING THE MUSTANG TO THE SCREEN

THE MUSTANG writer-director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who filmed her short Rabbit at Rikers Island, felt that it was vital for the production to be housed in an actual prison to capture the authenticity she was seeking. After consulting with officials at the Nevada Department of Corrections, however, it simply wasn't feasible to use of the state's active prisons. Instead, the film was shot almost entirely at Carson City, Nevada's Nevada State Prison, a decommissioned detention facility located just miles from Northern Nevada Correctional Center. (The round-up sequence that opens THE MUSTANG was shot on location in Utah.)

Originally constructed in 1862, Nevada State Prison was the state's only prison until 1961, and the site offered the filmmakers exactly the sort of environment they had been hoping to find. "You feel like people were there yesterday," de Clermont-Tonnerre says. "It was very helpful for us and for the actors to set up the right tone because there's something that you can't build or that you can't create. The atmosphere is absolutely inimitable."

Matthias Schoenaerts adds: "I'm glad we're able to shoot in a real facility because the walls have absorbed a massive amount of energy and life. I came to walk here at night all by myself just to experience or feel the energy. The place is really alive."

Says Jason Mitchell: "You go outside, and it's desert land for miles and miles and miles. It's eerie, you know. It makes all those different factors that you think you had to factor into your performance not even a factor because it's real. It feels real."

The challenges of shooting at a decommissioned prison were also quite real for the crew. For starters, none of the buildings had electricity, so the production brought in electricians to ensure the lights and the electric doors would work properly. The size of the cells, too, was initially cause for concern for director of photography Ruben Impens (Beautiful Boy, The Broken Circle Breakdown), but he eventually came up with a way to shoot the small spaces that conveyed just how confining they feel. "We embraced the fact that you feel the history on the walls," Impens says.

Together, de Clermont-Tonnerre and the cinematographer developed a visual language for THE MUSTANG that juxtaposes inherently cinematic landscapes and vistas with the grim, close reality of Roman's world. "We didn't want to make it like a complete documentary feel because it's a fiction movie, and we wanted to make it bigger than life," says Impens. "But it has this side, this documentary, very realistic approach for some scenes. Next to that, we were looking for the poetry and the beauty that comes with these animals. The prison we were shooting in-it was like a big studio for us. There is visually beauty to it, and at the same time, it's terrifying, all these barbed wired wires and double fences. The color palette of the movie, these orange jumpsuits, the orange-blue combination with the cream of the landscape, it's very beautiful and interesting."

Adds de Clermont-Tonnerre: "Visually, I wanted to see those hundreds of wild horses being surrounded by the barbed wires of a prison. I thought it was so odd, the contrast, and visually unique. You're surrounded by the Rocky Mountains of Nevada. And then, nested into this valley, you have this very rigid prison. Then, you have this unpredictable movement of animals inside this prison with those men."

It fell to Paris-based production designer Carlos Conti, whose credits include The Motorcycle Diaries, The Kite Runner and On the Road, to modify the look of the prison and to oversee the design of the set's prison farm, which was constructed with the same materials and in the same layout as the active prison facility nearby.

"This was perfect, this location," says Conti, whose team prepped the film in just four weeks. "We were very anxious to get the permission just to visit this place. And then we decided to do everything here, the courtyard, the cells. In this prison, we have this modern area, and we have all this abandoned area behind the prison. We could build all the pens for the horses. We could connect the prison with the horse area, and that was very interesting for us."

"Carlos is an immense talent who really took to immersing himself in this world with Laure," notes producer Alain Goldman. "We took him to a few active American prisons so he could absorb the texture and reality of what a working prison feels like: the odd industrial colors, the cheap murals, the items of a lived-in prison cell. The prison we filmed in was very stark and neutral, so his team's main task was to add some color and visual interest without sacrificing authenticity. With his design, he also wanted to support the difference between the outside world, which has more natural colors of blue and green, with the interior of the prison which is more fluorescent, harsh and unnatural."

For costume designer April Napier (Lady Bird, The Cell), the key question centered on how to differentiate the characters when so many of them would be wearing standard prison-issue uniforms. Using some of the extensive research de Clermont-Tonnerre had gathered during her years of working to complete the script and conferring with consultant Kathleen O'Meara, Napier began to formulate her approach.

"Because you're handed a uniform, you have to then find your own place inside of it to embellish it, or the way you wear it, to claim your own identity," Napier explains. "Jason wanted to wear a hoodie so that he could be more street about it. Then we have Tom, our Native American actor, who has his beautiful, long braids, and he wears a bandanna. And then each of them also chose a special necklace that they might have. Matthias has his beautiful hand-knotted rosary."

Her color choices were specific-orange and blue. Although orange is typically only worn by inmates during prison processing, Napier took a certain amount of creative license with the costuming, realizing how vibrant the orange would appear on screen. "We decided to keep the orange in here for visual reasons," says Napier, "then to change them when they go out into the corral working with the horses. That's when we put them in blue-jeans, shirt, thermal, hoodies, any kind of blue. Even if it's blue, they have to be really beat up."

The prisoners' tattoos also speak volumes about their identities. Makeup department head Galaxy San Juan was tasked with applying the tattoos to Schoenaerts and the other actors playing inmates (an unexpected bit of serendipity-San Juan grew up on a horse ranch and has loved the animals since she was a girl). Fittingly, Roman's tattoo work was the most intricate with San Juan applying roughly 18 separate tattoos, all of which chart the character's personal growth.

"He has some tattoos that show maybe a disruptive life, a rude life, coming all the way to where he is, with a more holy life," San Juan says. "We have some tattoos that are negative and then we have some tattoos that have gone a little bit in the holy direction. His body already tells a story in itself."

The tattoos took between 45 minutes and two hours to apply. "In the prison, obviously at night time, you're in your boxers and a tank top, or just your boxers, so he'll be in full body tattoos," San Juan says. "That takes about two hours. If he is going out into the yard in the mornings, he's normally wearing long sleeves, so we'll have to do the neck tattoos, and the face, and hands."

WILD HORSES: FILMING THE MUSTANG

As part of her commitment to bring to the screen the most authentic story possible, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre insisted on including real mustangs in the cast horses. Twelve rescued mustangs that had never been handled by man before were trained and gentled in six weeks so they could participate in the film. The expertise of Jim Hicks became an invaluable asset. An accomplished professional horseman, the Utah-based Hicks, along with his wife Donnette, owns Sage Creek Equestrian, and is a committed student of the horse who takes pride in helping others relate to their horses in a way that leaves both horse and rider successful in their partnership. Hicks has become a noted clinician worldwide, and he frequently works with and trains the horses owned by THE MUSTANG executive producer Robert Redford.

Redford put Hicks in touch with de Clermont-Tonnerre while she was in Utah developing the script at the Sundance labs. "She and I talked a lot about the different aspects of the mustangs, the different thought process, some of the training aspects of it," Hicks says. "She wanted to portray what it was going to be like for a wild animal to be in captivity, to let people see what their instinct in nature would look like."

Wild mustangs have been the focus of Hicks' work since the 1980s, and his primary mission is to showcase the trainability and the usability of the mustang. "The majority of the horses that have come through our program, we can track it back to one success after another, wild horses being adopted, put into captivity," Hicks says. "With correct thinking and correct training, they can be good citizens. Some mustangs and some people are never going to work together. But the majority of these horses, if they're put in a situation where they can feel confident of their safety and their well-being, after some time they generally will settle in to the domestic lifestyle."

Hicks also had first-hand experience with the Wild Horse Inmate Program-he had trained horses that Redford himself had adopted through the program that was operated out of the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, Utah (though that facility has since been closed). "I saw it as a valuable way for the inmates to do something that would help them look at their lives a little bit differently," Hicks says. "What's nice about a horse-and the mustang in particular-is that they live in the moment. Humans, we tend to live everywhere but in the moment. We're thinking about yesterday or tomorrow or what we want to get done. Horses require us to become present. They are living, breathing beings with their own thoughts and concerns just like we are."

Before shooting began, de Clermont-Tonnerre and Matthias Schoenaerts traveled to Utah to visit Sage Creek, and Hicks worked closely with the actor to personally give him a solid grounding in the basics of horsemanship. "We worked with Matthias for two days in a round pen and started introducing the concept for how to get the horse to turn, how the body language affects the response," Hicks says. "It's not about badgering the horse into what you want. There's a lot of non-verbal communication that goes on. They're masters at reading expression because that's what they do in the herd. So, there is a way to present yourself that will elicit a positive response or a negative reaction."

Marquis was portrayed by two domestic Andalusian horses (the same Spanish equestrian bloodlines as mustangs) and one untrained mustang. It was important to de Clermont-Tonnerre to have several horses with a range of personalities and abilities to fully shape the personality of Marquis. There were practical concerns as well, however. "On a set, everything is on a schedule, on a time frame, and if you don't have a horse that's willing to go along with the program then you've got to find one that will," says Thomas Smittle.

To capture certain shots, director of photography Ruben Impens had to think on the fly and come up with creative solutions if the horses didn't necessarily hit their marks. "I don't have experience with horses," Impens says. "I did a couple of shoots with horses previously, but not a movie like this. You have to be flexible. Of course, you can reposition them, but they're animals. You can't talk to them."

Although mounting a production centering on wild animals presented certain challenges, producer Alain Goldman says every effort was undertaken to create a safe working environment-for both the cast and crew and the animals-that could allow this important story to be told.

"First features have to be made on a tight budget and a tight schedule," Goldman says. "Adding horses into the mix adds a layer of unpredictability that was admittedly concerning. Fortunately, we had many horse experts helping us to cast the right lead horse and handling the horses on set. We also spent a solid week blocking out the complicated horse scenes. This way we had accurate timing on how long each scene would take and how the team would need to dance around each other on set. Safety for the horses, actors and crew members had to be just as important as getting the shot."

Kathleen O'Meara spent much of her time on set standing with the Humane Society veterinarian and says she was relieved to see the horses were so well cared for. "I was very comforted by how protected the animals were," she says.

For Schoenaerts, developing a rapport with the animals took hours upon hours, but the investment paid rich rewards. "It's training," the actor says. "It's spending time. It's bonding through exercise, but it's also bonding through proximity, just being close to the horse, just standing next to it, just looking at it, talking to it, and then training with it. That eventually leads to a situation where you're comfortable enough to ride it and make it do what you want it to do."

"The horse is kind of a mirror because it feeds off your energy," Schoenaerts continues. "If you give it aggression, if you give it violence, that's what you're gonna get back. The more you're genial, the more you're relaxed next to the horse, the more you're gonna receive the same. The wild animal is the wild animal, and it will never pretend to be anything else."

De Clermont-Tonnerre says that, as she watched Schoenaerts deliver his performance from behind the camera, she was overcome by the level of detail and nuance he brought to Roman. "Matthias knows horses, but he's also a bit scared, which is wonderful for the character," de Clermont-Tonnerre says. "You see him overcoming that fear and overcoming his anger and being able to connect with an animal who doesn't speak. There's an invisible dialogue between them-you can see how they respond to each other. It was an emotional and body language. Matthias, as soon as he was in an arena with a wild horse, his face, his eyes, his response would change so much. He has this vulnerability and this humility that was exactly what I was expecting for my character."

Bruce Dern also was quick to praise Schoenaerts' talent and the fearlessness with which he approached the role. "Gary Cooper, you know, he filled a doorway," Dern says. "Matthias has that, plus he has great instincts. He's just very, very good. And he's a risk taker. I wouldn't go in the pen along with that horse. That's not a trained horse to be in movies. That's a horse that's been broken so he could very easily snap at any time. So, he's doing dangerous stuff. But I really like him."

Schoenaets, though, credits de Clermont-Tonnerre's vision, tenacity and insight for making THE MUSTANG truly possible. "She really embodies that screenplay," he says. "She knows every transition, every beat. She masters all of it, but at the same time, she's very open and receptive and creative. She directs like a painter, actually. She's very intuitive."

VIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGES VIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGESVIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGES
VIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGES VIEW ALL 'THE MUSTANG' PAGES