East of all
Kate Beecroft found East of Wall’s main character—now one of her closest friends—entirely by chance. She’s retold their origin story in so many interviews that it’s worth quoting her first iteration from the press kit: “Taking a wrong turn on a road in South Dakota led me to the deepest adventure of my life. I pulled up to a rundown ranch and found horse trainer Tabatha Zimiga and a tribe of intimidatingly bold teenage girls thronging out of their trailer, heads half-shaved like warriors, eyeing me up and down. Tabatha welcomed me into her world with one sentence: ‘Want to see some real cowgirl shit?’”
Now isn’t the time to romanticize indie filmmaking, but there’s something undeniably romantic when an actor and production designer, roaming the US along with her DP, has a chance encounter, and like the anthropologist-filmmaker that she doesn’t yet know herself to be, slowly embeds herself into a family and a community—before she knows that there is a film here and long before capable producers like Lila Yacoub (She Said, Ladybird, Eighth Grade) come on board. East of Wall is an unexpected underdog story about a fierce, grieving woman, her moody teenage daughter and a ragtag bunch of teens she has taken in her care, jointly the most talented horse trainers you’ll ever see east or west. In many ways, it’s a quintessential Sundance NEXT film.
A week before its US release on August 15th from Sony Pictures Classics, I spoke to Beecroft about writing tactics, from crucial character confrontation scenes to animal-human face-to-faces, and tiny fleeting shots that most others take for granted.
Filmmaker: Do you find now that the film is in conversation with other American indies that you have seen or been inspired by, and if so, in what way?
Beecroft: I’ve always been really drawn to marginalized communities and stories of women. I’ve always been really drawn to working with first time actors as well. We do get compared to Andrea Arnold’s American Honey or Beasts of the Southern Wild—which was one of my comps, so it’s a nice compliment. People are getting a little bit of Friday Night Lights as well.
Filmmaker: You’ve spoken in other places about how you wanted to make a docufilm based on the life of Tabatha Zimiga and her life on her ranch east of the town of Wall, South Dakota. At what point did you did it really enter your consciousness that—in addition to making a film about Tabatha, her teenage daughter Porshia, and all the teens who live on the ranch—you were also making a film about horses, so a film that required a certain set of filmmaking tools and even specific roles on a set, like animal wranglers?
Beecroft: I don’t think it really dawned on me at first, because when I think of Tabatha, I think of horses. They’re together like a package. But when the logistics started coming in and I started writing the script, I was like, “Oh God!” [laughs] In order for this to be an authentic slice-of-life film, I really was passionate about using Tabatha’s own horses, which are all rescued or from the kill pen. They’re the horses nobody wanted. We didn’t have a budget for a big animal wrangler. Tabatha, during her time off, was training all the horses herself. So I would say, “Hey, I need a horse to rear up,” or “A horse that’s going to ride bridleless.” And she goes, “How many days can you give me?” She’s such an amazing horse trainer. I feel like it’s very rare for the star of your film to also be doing that, especially because we’re shooting on a live ranch.
I know how to shoot horses, because I was around them nonstop for three years. But to me, the difficult thing was [figuring out] a lot of car driving alongside [horses], or the drone shots alongside, because I don’t know the speed and timing of the horse and the camera, like when the perfect moment is, or how many runs a horse has before the sun goes down. Tabby would sometimes say “action” for me, because she was pacing out the speed of the horse to our shots, which was pretty cool. She’s a total badass.
Filmmaker: Were you casting the horses as well? I read somewhere that Tabatha likes to work with pretty horses, but to my untrained eye, you have a real diversity of horses in the film. And I really felt their consciousness, in the way you and your DP Austin Shelton have approached filming them, which reminded me of Chloé Zhao’s The Rider. Was there a conversation in which you told Tabatha, “Maybe this horse is more appropriate for this part of the story?” The black horse at the very end, that’s such a powerful scene.
Beecroft: For Porshia, for example, I knew that her main horse was going to be Bingo. She calls that her “heart horse,” because they are so bonded, and they look alike. They have the same color hair. I was never going to put her on a horse other than Bingo, because the bond between rider and horse is so magnetic and profound. Even if you just get a sliver of it in the film, I needed that to come across to everyone. I told all the kids, “Use whatever horse that you love.” That was a no-brainer, because I’m dealing with a bunch of teenagers. They’re already moody.
That horse in the end, it’s called a blue roan. I love blue roans. That is a horse that I met with on the first day that I ever met Tabby, and there was something about that horse that was really scary. He was the most handsome horse I’ve ever seen, and he scared the living daylights out of me. I also knew that no one could ride him except Tabby. People try to ride him, they get bucked off. He’s a very specific kind of horse. There’s a love there. Tabby has gone and tried to sell that horse. She’ll show up to the sale barn with the horse and turn right around, because there’s a bond between them. You’re looking at these horses like characters and that’s when I knew that I wanted Tabby to be riding that horse, who was named Blue Duck. She trained Blue Duck how to ride bridleless for the film, which is such an impressive skill.
Filmmaker: As an audience, we can guess from the very beginning that Tabatha, who has not been riding since she has been grieving her husband’s death, will likely get on a horse in the end. So we’re waiting for that big moment, and you build it up so that the stakes are high when she does. I wonder though, was it strange for Tabatha, given that these were her horses and that she’s a horse trainer, to have to wait until that scene to ride a horse? Did she expect to be more on horses in the film?
Beecroft: Yeah, definitely. [The ending, of Tabatha on the blue roan horse] wasn’t in the script. Our amazing editor, Jennifer Vecchiarello, and I found that in the edit. We were like, how can we make the stakes higher? And I remember Tabby said to me once, “Sometimes I get scared of riding a horse, or sometimes I get scared if I just got a new horse and I have to get on it. Sometimes I’ll have [my] partner, Clay, get on it first,” because she’s dealt with so much loss in her life, and so have her children. She goes, “If something happens to me, what will happen?” I felt that fear in her, and the stakes are so high on a ranch like that, especially dealing with horses that primarily have never been touched or been abused. That always really stuck with me, that she has this inner fear of anything happening to her, because then what would happen to Stetson [her real-life three-year-old son, also in the film]? What would happen to the kids, the ranch, these horses, if she wasn’t able to run it? So that inspired me for this idea.
Filmmaker: That’s wonderful! How did you get the horse, Blue Duck, to act upset in that final scene? Did it require many takes?
Beecroft: Relying on a horse, especially a pretty wild horse, to have an amazing performance, always makes me nervous. [laughs] You know what I mean? That’s part of the reason why I cast Blue Duck as that horse, because Blue Duck’s nostrils are always flaring. We had to have the boom, and we had to desensitize the horses as we’re constantly introducing them to the equipment. Even though we desensitized Blue Duck to the boom, he was still always kind of wary of it. I already knew that his nostrils flare a lot, and his eyes are always kind of looking around, even though he’s not panicked, because it’s really just the cameraman, me, a sound guy far away and Tabby, and he’s used to us by now. So, I relied heavily on sound design. That’s the movie magic, because I’m not going to spook a horse for the reason for it to perform. So, I knew what I could get away with, and the second I’d have a shot of a darting eye, I knew I can play with the sound design to make this feel more heightened.
Filmmaker: Did you tell Tabby that plan?
Beecroft: Yeah, she knew that as well. Tabby’s so smart. Even though she’s never been in a movie before, she really knows all the elements. She’s like, “You could do that in post, We had one of the most incredible horse stunt coordinators ever, Tonia Forsberg. If you look at her credits, she’s done every horse film. She also helped us a lot with knowing what to do in those kind of situations, especially when you’re getting a horse to rear up. That was Scoot [McNairy]; that wasn’t a body double from the back of Scoot when the horse rears up. Scoot wanted to do his own stunts, in that sense. So, we had a lot of protection around us—people who really knew what they were doing—to not affect any of these horses in a negative way.
Filmmaker: As much as I was taken by the shots of the horses forming a secondary consciousness in the film, which gives it a certain ineffability, I also found some of the dialog to be beautifully analytic. A scene that comes to mind is between Jennifer Ehle and Scoot McNairy’s characters sitting outside, sharing moonshine in the evening. Scoot says something about looking for second chances. And Ehle looks at him and says “My daughter has been ruined by many. I know you found yourself a good deal here. The ranch is the only thing that she can get behind, and the ranch is the only thing that’s protecting her. Don’t step on the necks of my girls when you’re trying to reach for the honor you’re talking about.” I found those four or five lines of dialog to be so effective and pithy. They’re such a great encapsulation of story and character arcs for the 50-minute mark of a film. Did you achieve those lines on the first go of writing the script?
Beecroft: It’s such a compliment because a lot of people do quote that scene back to me. That scene wasn’t in my first draft. I thought I want a moment between the two of them, because Tabby’s the protector of everybody. This whole film is about second chances, right? So Tracy, Jennifer Ehle’s character, talks a lot about how she really messed up with Tabby, how she wasn’t a good mother, has a lot of regrets and didn’t protect Tabby when she should have. Tabby also personally feels that about her own childhood. So, I drew from that, and I wanted that to be an arc for Tracy. That is the first time in her life that she’s going to protect her daughter. That’s where that came from.
Filmmaker: Was there any dialogue editing at any stage? Did you and Jennifer work together on figuring it out, or did it play exactly as it was scripted?
Beecroft: For that scene, it was [as scripted]. But I’m not a precious director, and I’m not a precious writer. Film is about collaborating. I love actors, and I love working with them. So, for me, I am constantly asking Jennifer and Scoot, “What sounds better to you? Does that sound artificial coming out of your mouth, or too written? What would you rather say?” That’s so much better than things that I could have written, because the end of the day, it’s coming out of their psyche, their body, and it has to feel natural to them.
Filmmaker: I really liked Porshia’s voiceover throughout the film as she’s riding the horses. I feel like you show the Badlands through Porshia’s point of view, and how their meaning changes for her through the film. Was it always the case that you wanted to give this voiceover and narration to Porshia, or did you have another character in mind?
Beecroft: There was always the voiceover in the beginning, but to have it throughout was something that I always knew that I might want to do but didn’t put in the script. I love magical realism. So I wanted to use magical realism in those moments where it feels like the Badlands are crashing down, and I always knew I wanted the sound of the Badlands crashing, for her, internally. That was something I had spoken about with my DP, but I never told anybody else. I think that if someone has a script that’s docufiction, and you put some magical realism in there, people would be like, “Wait, what? I’m too scared to invest in this!” So, it was a little secret that I knew I was going to do. It was more towards the last edits, after we shot the film, where I was thinking, “Okay, I want an arc of her voiceover to change as she’s changing, as she’s coming to these realizations, as she’s slowly forgiving her mother.” They were all inspired by Porshia and conversations that we’ve had, then I molded it into to a voiceover for those bits.
Filmmaker: I’m curious about this idea of people like Tabby taking in other teens into their care from a sociological standpoint. From your talking to Tabatha or understanding of the region, is this a common practice? Is it something that happens in the rural parts of the United States, or in the Dakotas, or just something that’s unique to Tabatha ?
Beecroft: I can’t speak to any place other than South Dakota, but I see that a lot happening in South Dakota. Sometimes I’ll ask a parent, or I’ll meet someone, and figure out they have kids. I’m like, “Oh, where are your kids now?” They’re like, “I’m not really sure. I think they’re living maybe three hours from here?” That always struck me. But that is also me checking my own privilege. I grew up with very loving, supportive parents. Mental health, addiction and financial issues play a huge part in rural America, and that hardens you, takes away the empathy a bit. So, I think that a lot of people there, look at their kids differently, or look at life differently because of all of these intense burdens on top of them. I’m always thinking, who am I to judge what people have to do to survive?
Tabby always jokes, “It’s not like I’m like a Mother Teresa. It’s not like I have an adoption agency. People just show up on my ranch. What am I going to do? Turn them away?” She’s so realistic about it. “Fine, all right, another kid. You could sleep on the couch, but we’re doing work tomorrow. Yes, there’s food in the fridge, go get some.” Whenever we see women and mothers in films, they are these caretakers. For me, I love that Tabby, in some way, was also the opposite of that. She’s not some saint. She’s just like, “I don’t want you doing something stupid and getting into a car accident, or getting addicted to something.” So she is this fierce, loyal protector of them, but not in a maternal femininity kind of sense, and I thought that was really interesting.
Filmmaker:There was an early shot that randomly caught my attention. I don’t know if we were yet introduced to Tabatha’s face but it was a shot of shampoo bottles floating in bathwater that was tipping over the tub. Perhaps we see Tabatha’s legs. Do you remember that shot? I always wonder how intentional these shots are, or was it taken accidentally while filming which you then included in the edit?
Beecroft: Yeah, that shot was in the script.
Filmmaker: Ah, okay!
Beecroft: When people are going through financial difficulties, how many times do you see in a movie these “past due” letters, and you’re like, “Now I see that they’re having struggles”? I don’t want to see them struggling to put coins in a pay phone. I’ve seen those kind of tropes before. [Here], because I’ve lived with [Tabby], [I saw when] they were like, “We need to pay for a plumber because clearly things aren’t draining.” But you have so many other things you have to take care of, and the hair in the drain or bad plumbing get pushed down to the bottom tier of things that you actually need to do. So, that [shot of shampoos floating] was a kind of hint to the audience that she has so much going on, she can’t take care of this little thing, whereas if we lived in New York or LA, we’re like, “Call the plumber tomorrow.” So, that was in the script. A lot of the B-roll in this film were things that were very intentional for me, because they were just texture and detail that had caught my eye in the three years living there before even shooting. I would constantly [write in] a notebook the things that I witnessed. I handed my list over to my cinematographer, and I was like, “These are things that I want to capture in B-roll.”
