Tag: cass ole

Happy Thanksgiving!!

TCM is broadcasting the “Black Stallion” a on Sunday. When you are tired of football get some popcorn and curl up on the couch and order your Christmas presents from the Trading Post while you watch :-)

Here’s the story;

The Black Stallion

Sunday November, 30 2014 at 08:00 PM
Saturday December, 27 2014 at 08:00 PM

by Emily L. Rice
One of the most critically acclaimed films from 1979, The Black Stallion, was based on the classic children’s tale written by Walter Farley in 1941. Despite the book’s popularity and that of its sixteen sequels, it was never adapted for the screen until Francis Ford Coppola purchased the rights. He planned to release the film as the first film in a series of classical children’s films. The second film in the series, The Secret Garden, was released in 1993. Coppola called on his former UCLA classmate, Carroll Ballard to direct the first installment, making The Black Stallion Ballard’s feature film debut. His first movie was a documentary entitled Harvest (1967) which was nominated for an Academy Award ®.

The Black Stallion is an exotic and often magical tale of a young boy and his horse. When the film opens, the boy and his father are traveling by ship when a disaster occurs. A fire breaks out and the boy finds himself adrift in the rough seas with an Arabian horse he saw on board. Both the boy and the stallion are washed ashore a deserted island where they overcome an initial mistrust to form a strong bond. Soon the two are rescued and return to the U.S. But the horse runs away and the boy eventually traces the animal to a farm owned by an ex-jockey. In time, the boy learns from the former pro how to be a first rate rider and trains the stallion for a championship race.

In his film debut, Kelly Reno plays the young, aspiring jockey; he had never acted before in any medium, and he was not even a fan of film or television. “Oh, if there’s a good movie, the family’ll take a bag of popcorn and go.” When asked what he considered a “good movie,” he responded, “I guess Star Wars (1977) — I’ve seen it twice. As for TV, I don’t watch it much, except for Soap,” he explained in the September 30, 1979 issue of The New York Times. But when Reno heard from a friend that a movie company was coming to Colorado to look for boys who could ride horses, he persuaded his parents to drive him to Denver for an audition. According to producer Tom Sternberg, “We’d considered all sorts of professional child actors. Then we began to search for boys who may not have acted, but who might be right for the role. We eventually interviewed several hundred from around the country and tested 100.” And the saddle-trained Reno was one of the lucky ones who earned a screen test in L.A..

The $4.5 million film took two years to make and involved five months of shooting in Canada, Rome, and Sardinia. For Reno, whose only trips outside Colorado were to North Dakota and L.A. for the screen test, the film became quite an adventure. His parents chaperoned him while on location, but he still admitted he got homesick. “In Rome, I’d have paid $10,000 for a McDonald’s hamburger – you never know how much you want that if after a week all you get is spaghetti. And I had me a little wine, but after a week, I started drinking cokes again.”

During the first week of shooting, Reno enjoyed the work, but he kept glancing at the camera in the middle of scenes. He recalled that the director, Carroll Ballard, “would tell me, ‘This is the way it is…do it.’ If I didn’t get it done, we’d just have to do it all over again. Lines weren’t a problem. I had a lot of them, but they weren’t in the whole, long scenes. And I could put in other words if the meaning was the same – that was all right with Carroll.” Reno also did all his own stunt work. He had to ride bareback and on a racing saddle, take falls from a galloping horse, and swim. The only time a stunt double was used was for racetrack sequences, which required his character to race a thoroughbred at top speed. “I was too small to hold him back,” says Reno.

The most demanding scene Reno recalled was the shipwreck sequence during a turbulent storm. For this scene, Ballard used the huge water tank at Cinecitta Studios in Rome. “It was all done at night,” says Reno. “And they had wind and rain and fire and smoke. I spent a lot of time in the tank, not being able to touch the bottom, while they made these waves that came far over my head.” Ballard also used a completely realistic model ship to burn and sink headfirst while the boy and the horse struggled in the foreground.

With scenes such as the shipwreck, the horse in this film, Cass-Ole, had to perform as few other horses ever have. Cass-Ole’s trainer was one of Hollywood’s greatest animal trainers, Corky Randall. He trained “Trigger” for Roy Rogers, “Silver” for the Lone Ranger, and all the horses in the chariot-race scene in Ben-Hur (1959).

Mickey Rooney plays the horse trainer in the film, a nostalgic reminder to audiences of his role as a former jockey in National Velvet (1944). Rooney also played a jockey in both Down the Stretch (1936) and Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937). He went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film. Rooney recalls how he first heard about the film, “Francis Ford Coppola got on the horn to tell me he’d purchased the rights to a children’s classic called The Black Stallion. He had a part in it for me, a former jockey called out of retirement by a little boy with a beautiful black Arabian horse and a dream about winning a race. Did I think I could play a former jockey? ‘Gee,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I never played a jockey before.’

The Black Stallion became a hit at the box-office and received great critical praise. In addition to Rooney’s nomination, the film also received an Academy nomination for Best Editing and the Oscar for Best Film Editing. A sequel, The Black Stallion Returns, was later released in 1983.

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/59910|0/The-Black-Stallion.html

Producer: Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Roos, Tom Sternberg
Director: Carroll Ballard
Screenplay: Melissa Mathison, Jeanne Rosenberg, William D. Wittliff, Walter Farley (novel)
Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel
Film Editing: Robert Dalva
Art Direction: Aurelio Crugnola, Earl G. Preston
Music: Carmine Coppola
Cast: Kelly Reno (Alec Ramsey), Mickey Rooney (Henry Dailey), Teri Garr (Alec’s Mother), Clarence Muse (Snoe), Hoyt Axton (Alec’s Father), Michael Higgins (Neville).
C-118m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.

35th Anniversary Interview with Jeanne Rosenberg


Here’s a special treat for you, an interview with Jeanne Rosenberg, the screenwriter on the movie of “The Black Stallion” (1979)
She was there in the early days and we all had a very strange trip … at the track, on the Drake and back home again. Thanks to our friends at the Horse Channel and Horse Illustrated. Check out the November magazine for two more articles on “The Black Stallion”!HI nov

Don’t forget to pick up a little piece of history for yourself @ the Gift Shop!

 
The Black Stallion Film’s 35-year Anniversary
Screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg recalls her unlikely path to the job.
By Elizabeth Kaye McCall | September 2014

Never doubt the impact of a college course on life. Los Angeles screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg can vouch for it. “I had written a script analysis of my favorite childhood book, The Black Stallion, when I was in film school,” says Rosenberg about the door that opened her screenwriting career. “After I graduated, I found out that they were making it into a movie and Carroll Ballard was directing it. I wrote him a letter. I had done a script analysis. He called and said, ‘I really like what you wrote. We have to get together.’ Time passed, we didn’t get together. I called again. ‘Oh, they’re in Canada in pre-production.’ I called him again. He apologized for not getting back to me.”
Crazy about horses from her earliest girlhood memories in Illinois, Rosenberg grabbed the reins of her own destiny. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m coming your way. Do you mind? Maybe I’ll just stop in.’ I was flying from Los Angeles to the Midwest and they were in Toronto.” She arrived in the midst of chaos. “People were tearing their hair out because Carroll wouldn’t commit to anything,” she recalls. “We were supposed to meet for coffee one morning. He was late. I was making some notes on a napkin. He showed up, grabbed the napkin out of my hand and kept my notes. I went home and got another call. ‘Carroll would like you to come back. We need help on the script.”

Rosenberg’s initiative paid off. “It was total chaos when I arrived in the pre-production phase. Melissa Mathison [who later wrote “ET”] got off another plane and we met and became this writing team as we were about to shoot,” she describes. “Carroll hadn’t committed to a screenplay! All the actors were there. Everyone was. The art department didn’t know where to go to dress the set. They didn’t even know the locations. Do we need a farm house? Do we need a race track? What do we need? Carroll liked to keep everything open and see what developed. To have an entire film crew that had to be told [what to do] at every moment and to get that information from a guy who doesn’t like to make decisions is tough,” Rosenberg laughs. “He was driving everyone crazy, of course.”

A graduate of USC Film School [now USC School of Cinematic Arts], Rosenberg planned on a documentary film career. “I remember being forced to take a writing class and thinking, ‘This is ridiculous. There’s no way I’m writing.’ And, here I am,” adds the real-life horsewoman and reining competitor, whose scores of film credits include family favorites like “White Fang,” “Bambi II,” and “The Young Black Stallion.”

The date “The Black Stallion” started shooting in Toronto is etched on Rosenberg’s mind. It was 7/7/77. “We shot the second part of the movie first,” she notes. Meanwhile, preparations were underway to move the crew overseas to film the first half of the movie. “Carroll kept refusing to let us write the island sequence,” says Rosenberg. “Of course, we did it anyway. He has an amazing eye and is quite a storyteller. But he was really more used to being a one-man band, making all of the decisions on the fly.”

Now the mother of two grown children, Rosenberg writes from an office with a view of her American Quarter Horses. She revisited the production that launched her career this summer, when film critic Stephen Farber held a 35th anniversary screening of “The Black Stallion” in Los Angeles.

From a personal standpoint, Rosenberg shares that “The Black Stallion’s” magic remains. “It was fun to see again,” she says. If any scenes can be favorites, these made Rosenberg’s list: “The shipwreck sequence is amazing and scary. The whole island scene was everyone’s favorite. When the boy wakes up on the beach and is staring straight at a cobra ready to strike, and The Black comes and saves him—that’s a wonderful scene. Of course, the boy climbing on The Black for the first time is brilliant. But it all goes back to Walter Farley’s novel,” adds Rosenberg. “He wrote such a wonderful, descriptive story.”

Here Comes the BLU-RAY!!

blu ray

Finally after waiting years the HD of “the Black Stallion” feature film is coming out on Blu-Ray! Yeah!
Coppola’s American Zoetrope / MGM 1979 Academy Award winning movie will be released on March 18, 2014 on Blu-ray disk. Carroll Ballard directed Kelly Reno, Mickey Rooney and a cast of classic stars in one of the most popular movies of all time. The critic Pauline Kael of the New Yorker wrote, “this may be the greatest children’s film of all time”.

As I had the honor of being able to work on the movie from the very first days, even before filming began, going around with Carroll and Dad to look for THE STALLION. What a long wonderful road it’s been.
So many of us have been asking for a HD version and it should look great on that huge flatscreen TV you are watching the Superbowl on tomorrow.

Once this comes out they may be inspired to put it together as a trilogy with “Black Stallion Returns” and “Young Black Stallion” as a set … or even better a TV mini series! We’re still working on getting that next feature, “Black Stallion Revolts“, in production. Why does it take so long in Hollywood? Maybe they have too many cars and not enough horses!

You can pre-order the disk now through Amazon  (you have to click on the blu-ray choice) BUT, if I were you, I’d wait a bit ’cause I’m getting a DISCOUNT code which will save us all a little money. The disks are still in production but they promised to send me the code soon – you won’t get the Blu-ray till March 18 anywhere so get it HERE for less!

Happy Days and I’ll post the code ASAP!

Enjoy the Ride!
your friends in the saddle – Tim & Pam Farley

A dozen stories about horses

Trying to catch up from the weekend … funny how fun can cost so much – here’s the next book / chapter … maybe you’ve already read it but take a look, it’s my favorite;
The countryside through which they were now driving was heavy with green fields of tall cane, but occasionally there would be open pasture land with lush grass upon which cattle, goats and horses were grazing. Steve had thought it best to wait awhile before mentioning his desire to visit Azul Island, but the sight of the horses caused him to consider bringing up the subject at once. What’s the sense of putting it off? he thought. I like Antago all right, but only as a place from which to get to Azul Island. I’ve only a little over two weeks, and I might as well find out now if Pitch knows how I can get there.
Pitch had been quiet for a while but now he turned to Steve. “Steve,” he asked, “are you still interested in horses? I remember that as a youngster you sold me about ten subscriptions to a magazine I never wanted just because you were going to win a pony.” Pitch’s tone was hopeful again, as though he was still striving to find something of real interest to Steve.
“Yes,” Steve replied, “very much so. I’ve ridden a lot during the past year.”
“Good,” said Pitch. “I was hoping you would be.” He paused a moment and Steve noticed an intentness in his pale blue eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I’d like to tell you something,” Pitch went on, “that’s been of great interest to me of late.” He paused again, and Steve waited impatiently for him to continue.
“Yes, Pitch,” Steve had to say finally. “What is it?”
“Do you recall the picture I sent your father several weeks ago? The one of our rounding up the horses on Azul Island?”
Did he remember it! “Yes, Pitch, I do. That’s why I …”
But Pitch interrupted with evident eagerness to tell his story. “It was the only time I’ve been to Azul Island,” he began. “Oh, I’d heard about it, of course; Tom spoke of it occasionally. And before I arrived here he had written me once or twice about wrangling horses on a small island not far from Antago. But,” and Pitch smiled, “you know I’m pretty much of a greenhorn about things like that, and I never really understood any of it. That is, not until I went to Azul Island with Tom and the others.”
Pitch paused and glanced at Steve. Then, as though pleased with the boy’s obvious interest, he went on: “I remember that we all looked upon our visit to Azul Island as very much like a day’s outing. And we spent the time there imagining ourselves as cowboys. I couldn’t help thinking, as we ran after the horses, how strange we’d look to any people from our western states. All of us, of course, were wearing our shorts and had on our sun hats because the day was extremely hot. We had no trouble chasing the horses into the canyon, because the island is very narrow at that point; and twenty of us, walking about thirty yards apart, I would say, easily forced the horses into the canyon. Tom was in charge because he was the only one who knew anything about horses. The rest of us were plantation men, laborers, fishermen and the like with no experience whatsoever in this business of wrangling horses. However, as I’ve said, there was little to it, because Tom told us what to do, and it was he who selected thirty of the most likely looking animals to take back with us to Antago.”
Pitch stopped, thought a moment, then said in an apologetic tone, “I must tell you, Steve, that the horses are small, scrawny beasts and not very much to look at, really. But if you’d seen the desolateness of that small bit of the island, with the sparse grass and only the few, meager fresh-water holes, you’d wonder that they’d survived at all.”
Pitch paused again before adding with renewed enthusiasm, “But they have, Steve! Their breed has survived for centuries on Azul Island!” His words came faster now. “It was on the way back from the island, with the animals crowded into the barge we towed behind our launch, that I first learned of it. I was sitting next to the photographer of our weekly newspaper, and I mentioned that I had been surprised to find so many horses on Azul Island. He mentioned, very casually, that these horses were believed to be descended from the ones that the Spanish Conquistadores rode centuries ago! I tried to learn more, but that was all he knew. His editor had told him, he said. It was just an assignment to him. He wasn’t really interested. It shocked me, actually, because I’ve always been so very much interested in Spanish colonial history that I suppose I assumed everyone else would be. To think that here was a breed of horse the Conquistadores rode, and which had survived all these hundreds of years, and no one—not even Tom, who knew of my interest—had thought it important enough to tell me!

the rest of the story – 12th book chapter

ride on! — tim

Another Story

That’s what he said …. Aramco World Magazine!

This is one of the coolest magazines out there … all glossy, no ads and FREE!!! You really need to take a look – if not for Black Stallion, to learn about where we are in the Middle East part of life for a lot of Americans soldiers … and History. This magazine has fascinating articles you won’t see anywhere else.

Our story, from a few years back, but they still show “Black Stallion Returns”  on base someone wrote me not long ago. Enjoy the story and if you never saw the sequel you can find it HERE.

The whole story is here at Aramco (pdf)