• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Custer film (story from the Rapid City Journal)

Jinglebob

Well-known member
A new docudrama based on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which was filmed near Wasta, is now available on YouTube.

Produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the docudrama “Custer’s Plan” aired in England in February and can be seen in nine parts on the Web site YouTube.com.

But viewers on either side of the Atlantic would be hard-pressed to tell that the re-enactments were shot in South Dakota and not in the Big Sky state, including the owners of the West River property where the filming took place.

For 15 days in June 2006, crews filmed Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry battle with several bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians and fall to their demise east of the Cheyenne River near Wasta on a ranch owned by Rusty and Angela Lytle. The Lytles watched the filming and were awed with the end result.

“We were impressed with the quality of the filming,” Angela Lytle said. “From what we watched them film and then to watch it, we’d say, ‘How did they get that shot?’”

Lytle said she visited the battlefield years ago and never saw a resemblance to their ranch — until watching the program on YouTube. “In the background scenery from what they shot, yes, it really does look comparable.”

The locations were scouted by commercial artist and photographer Jim Hatzell of Rapid City.

Since 1989, he has worked on nearly 60 films, including “Dances With Wolves” and “Son of the Morning Star,” another film about George Custer. He said he has a big interest in the U.S. frontier army and the cavalry in particular. He has worked a couple of seasons as a park ranger at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and has given seminars there on the frontier soldier for eight years. “I’ve been affiliated up there a long time.”

The docudrama is part of a series produced by the BBC called The Wild West.

The first three characters that they focused on were Western legend Wyatt Earp, outlaw Billy the Kid and Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

“And the reason they picked those three is because there is new information that has come to light recently that made the stories new and fresh,” Hatzell said.

The hook for the Custer storyline is new information surrounding his final hour on Little Bighorn that comes from a book written by his friend and fellow park ranger, Michael Donahue of Temple, Texas. When the BBC approached Donahue, he recommended Hatzell as their contact person.

“They originally wanted to film it in Montana,” Hatzell said. “I told them 10 years ago they could have gotten away with it, but now, there is a lot of new building there.”

Plus, he said, because the battlefield is under the National Park’s supervision, they would not have been allowed to film on the battlefield itself.

“So I talked them into coming to South Dakota and took them to Wasta, over to Rusty Lytle’s ranch,” Hatzell said. “We were there less than three hours and the director said, ‘That’s enough. This is where we’re filming.’ The Lytle Ranch had so many areas that looked identical to Little Bighorn it was scary. So that’s how I got them to South Dakota.”

If they had filmed it in Montana, he said, they would have used members of the Crow Nation. But they wanted all of the dialogue to be in Lakota.

“We just happened to have several guys who spoke fluent Lakota, and they were able to translate the script.”

The casting was done by Joe and Moses Brings Plenty.

Hatzell said there was a large number of South Dakota people employed as crew who added to the excellence of the project, in particular Stan Schultz, who was the boss wrangler, and Dave Horan, the propmaster.

All of the documentary re-enactments were filmed in Wasta. The crew stayed in Wall, which was a 10-minute drive to the base camp, which was a 15-minute ride by horseback to wherever they were filming.

“Everything was concentrated there and they were absolutely thrilled. Every day they kept saying it was the best place they’d ever been,” Hatzell said. “The cinematographer told me he couldn’t believe that every Western in America wasn’t filmed in South Dakota.”

Actor Toby Stephens was cast as Custer. He is best known as the super-villain Gustav Graves in the James Bond film “Die Another Day.” He is the son of British actress Maggie Smith.

Pre-production began on June 8, 2006, and they finished filming on July 3. Because of the confines of a one-hour episode, many details were cut.

“The director tried very hard to get the BBC to go two hours on this episode, and they wouldn’t do it,” Hatzell said.

Hatzell said he was sent several versions of the script for him to correct.

“It was a drag to see them take so many things out because there was no way to get all of it in one hour,” he said. “There’s so much more they wanted to put in the film, but they just didn’t have time.”

The documentary is in nine parts on YouTube. Hatzell said the BBC signed a contract with the video-hosting Web site and gave them the content. Unfortunately, the introduction was not downloaded in the first part and is not part of the Web version.

He said he checked out some of the history blogs on the Internet, and their biggest complaint was that the film was too short. “They loved it. They said it was the most authentic ever done.”

That’s welcome news for Donahue, chairman of the art department at Temple College in Texas and author of the yet-to-be-released book “Drawing Battle Lines — The Map Testimony of Custer’s Last Fight,” on which the documentary was based.

He said he has been compiling research for the past 37 years and writing the book for the past seven. He, too, is impressed with the end product.

“I thought they did a pretty good job,” Donahue said. “It is extremely professionally well done. Dave Stewart was the director, and he did a phenomenal job with the action sequences. The scenery looks just like the battlefield. It’s amazing. Jim found the sites and did a phenomenal job of matching the battlefield terrain.”

The docudrama is expected to air this fall on the Discovery Channel, which co-produced the film, but no schedule date has been announced.
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Well since it takes me forever and a day to download anything from You tube...you better let us know when it's gonna be aired on the Discovery Channel so I can watch it.
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
the_jersey_lilly_2000 said:
Well since it takes me forever and a day to download anything from You tube...you better let us know when it's gonna be aired on the Discovery Channel so I can watch it.

Will do. I got a DVD of it and it turned out real good, but it's too bad they cut so much. Man! I only got one line past the editor's. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
Safe bet.....I'd guess that would have been Custer's line...with a bleep in thrown in here & there!


JB,in which of the 9 parts can we find you?
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
jigs said:
what was your line? ........."where did all these Indians come from? "

No it was, "Yes, sir!" very emphatically. I nailed it. :wink:

Also, when we was gettin' the captive indian women and children out of the teepee, I was in the background hollerin' at the troopers to "hurry up, let's go" and stuff like that. It wasn't even scripted. I just ad libbed. :wink: :lol:
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
kolanuraven said:
Safe bet.....I'd guess that would have been Custer's line...with a bleep in thrown in here & there!


JB,in which of the 9 parts can we find you?

Most of them, but you got to know where to look and what I looked like. :wink:

When they show the scene where Custer is riding around the slaughtered troopers, I'm the one laying across a tree limb.

When it comes out this fall, your all invited to my house and I'll provide stories of the background happenings and where and when all of us are, in each frame. :lol: :lol:

Jr had a line, on "Last Stand Hill" to Custer.

I was always riding a dun horse. And Jr wore a large straw hat in quite a few scenes. He's easy to pick out in the charge scene as we charged the village on Little Big Horn. You can see his hat brim flopping up and down.

I was wearing a reddish shirt on last stand hill and kneeling down, when they killed me. They show it in 3 parts, right after a slo mo shot of a bullet coming out of an indian's gun. It turned out really cool.
 
Top