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Western water wars theme of Wyoming film
BILLINGS (AP)--As a kid, Bill Dahlin used to deliver the local newspaper by horseback.
Now the Sheridan businessman is bankrolling and producing the first Western movie to be shot in Wyoming in many years. Casting for "Thicker Than Water" started April 24 at Sheridan Community College.
"It's a contemporary Western with old West genre or flavor," Dahlin said. "It has the good guys, the bad guys, the fair lady and the family dynamics. It kind of skims around water rights, as well."
The story line involves an old family ranch in northeastern Wyoming that lacks one thing.
"You have a rich rancher that has everything but good water rights and he tries to get a hold of another ranch," he said.
The film is contemporary enough to include a 2004 pickup, Dahlin said.
The rancher' s son, played by Tanner Dahlin, returns to Wyoming to help his father. Casting this weekend is looking for more than a dozen characters, including a leading lady between 18- to 30-years old, a boy 7- or 8-years-old who rides a bicycle and two 45- to-55-year-old men. One plays a good guy father and another the villain.
The movie also needs an older comedy character.
"There's a dirty old man, not meaning sex," Dahlin said. "He's older and he's cruddy."
Dahlin said he started Wyoming Innovation last year to screen ideas from Wyoming residents for new businesses to help the state economy.
"If it was a good idea, a better bungee cord for instance, as long as it was unique and of good taste, it could be submitted," he said.
However, Bill Dahlin, his wife, Rachel, and their son, Tanner Dahlin, came up with the idea to make a Western.
"I love Western movies and I always thought "Gunsmoke" would make a great movie, but our budget really didn't allow us to jump into a big production," Bill Dahlin said.
Having to deal with real-world businesses, Dahlin said he knows sticking to a movie budget will be hard, especially for an inexperienced team.
"We're not going to pretend to be smarter than anyone else," he said. "We know we'll have a few rocks to stumble over."
Sam Heyn of Minneapolis and Reed Halvorson, a writer and actor, wrote the screenplay. Heyn will direct the film.
If all goes well, the Sheridan film should start production in June and be distributed this October.
Dahlin grew up on the edge of Sheridan on a hobby farm with some sheep, a couple of chickens and a couple of horses he rode todeliver The Sheridan Press.
He parleyed his hours in the saddle, including breaking horses when he was 12 years old, into a high school rodeo career and competed regionally afterward.
"I rode roughstock like broncs and bulls," he said. "But I decided I wasn't going to make a living at it because I just didn't have it."
Dahlin worked for the Burlington Northern Railroad for 17 years.
In 1991, he left his secure paycheck to start his own company, M-Bar-D Rail Service, which cleaned railroad cars. He patented some cleaning processes and branched out into other services for railroads.
M-Bar-D grew from a basement project to 120 employees in nine years.
In addition to M-Bar-D, Dahlin also started another company that takes 1,000 railroad cars a year of railroad-generated waste andfills up an old lignite coal mine near Gascoyne, N.D.
He said the company started six years ago made $1.5 million in gross revenues last year with a 40 percent profit.
In addition to "Thicker than Water," Wyoming Innovation plans a second feature film or documentary involving the Big Horn Mountains. Dahlin didn't want to give away more of the second movie' s potential plot yet.
Sheridan businesswoman Karen Powers, who runs the Sport Stop, is helping to develop the second film concept. Powers and her daughter, Michelle Powers, are runners who have helped organize the Big Horn Mountain Run for a dozen years. Rich Garrison, who retired from Decker Coal Co., last spring, and his wife, Beth, also serve on the board.
The last movie filmed in Wyoming was a 2001 HBO production called "The Laramie Project" on the killing of Matthew Shepard.
Second unit shooting, which generally involves scenes without the big name stars, was shot the same year in Sheridan on a movie called "Rollerball."
A 35mm movie called "Star-ship Troopers" was filmed in Casper in 1996.
Montana saw three major film productions in the state last year.
A dark comedy "Love Comes to the Executioner" was filmed near the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge and Butte and was screened last month. "Injured Party's Turn" also was
shot in Butte last year. "The Music Inside" was shot in Bozeman last year.
In 2002, some scenes in the just released "Hildago," a movie of a 3,000-mile horse race across the desert, were filmed on the Blackfoot Reservation in 2002. Most of this movie was shot in Morocco.
Some of the best-known movies with Montana roots include "The Horse Whisperer," "Far and Away" and "A River Runs Through It."
Date: 5/13/04
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