A young, self-destructive Montana Blackfoot Indian, his mind groggy with alcohol and tormented by childhood memories, di | dG1fa1h1dHoyUTVIYjg
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Short filmTranscript
00:00He finished this novel in 1973, so it's been 40 years in the making.
00:09And there's so many people here that have worked so hard for so little, for so long
00:13to help us bring this here.
00:16I grew up on three different reservations, and so I grew up with a lot of guys like Virgil.
00:24I based the character, the physical part about him, was based on a friend of mine.
00:30And it's just a lot of guys I had grown up with, and they all struggled with addictions.
00:38I kind of knew where I was going to go with the character, and I just paid attention.
00:44I lived on a lot of reservations, so as a kid I just paid attention to these interesting
00:49characters, and they served me, and this role happened to come out.
00:55I would say trust.
00:57Really trust your director.
00:58Kind of like painting, you know?
01:00It's like when you're just part of the canvas, I'm a color.
01:04So I just asked them how much I should give and how much I should not give, but I knew
01:09everything else.
01:10I knew where I was kind of going, but as an acting, you just never really know where you're
01:17going to end up.
01:18You just sort of jump off that waterfall and see where you land.
01:23Chesky's extremely open about everything, and we shared a lot of information, and it
01:29was stuff that then as a director, we had a tool belt to access as direction, just like
01:36I could go to him and say, this thing you told me about, what about something like that?
01:41That was a lot of the directionals, which is kind of going back to what I'd learned
01:45from him.
01:47We have a couple rules, especially on set.
01:51One is never to fight on set.
01:55It's not to never fight, but to never fight on set.
01:57You don't want to have that energy ripple out into the shoot if you can help it.
02:01And also, the other rule was to sort of, if one of us wanted something, the other person
02:06was supposed to allow it, and we'd figure it out in the edit.
02:09Those were the two big rules we've established working together since the worm.
02:17And the story was told as a very human story, you know, that's not just a Native American
02:25story.
02:26It simply happens to be a human story with a wondrous Native star.
02:31These two gentlemen who made this all come about did something that was always told to
02:39me, never give up, things will work out if it's good, if it needs to be said, need to
02:46be shown.
02:47It'll work out.
02:48This young man here beside me here carried me in my scene, and I really appreciate, and
02:55I'm grateful to him.