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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Mark Bishop
'Cowboys & Aliens' Where the horses come from
Mark Bishop sits atop his horse at Sombrero Ranch in Longmont
on Thursday.
Bishop was the head horse handler for the recent Hollywood blockbuster "Cowboys and Aliens."
Move over Hollywood A-listers, the next big stars galloping onto the silver screen hail from Boulder County, Denver.
If some of the horses in summer blockbuster "Cowboys & Aliens" looked familiar, it's because they're from Longmont's Sombrero Ranch.
The ranch, founded in 1958, has stable locations all over Colorado. It rents out horses for summer camps, hunting trips and productions. Its horses have participated in several commercials for brands like Ford and Marlboro, and also several film shoots.
Sombrero Ranch gets called about four times a year for advertising and once every three to five years for movie productions. Rex Walker, who founded the ranch, said he'd love to do more movies, but today Westerns aren't popular.
"There aren't a lot of cowboy movies made anymore," Walker said. "If one was going to be made, it would obviously have aliens in it."
In the late '70s, the ranch participated in its first entertainment shoot for an NBC miniseries called "Centennial."
Since then, it has provided horses for TV Western "Conagher" and movies such as romantic comedy "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox" and classic comedy "Dumb and Dumber." "Cowboy & Aliens" has been the biggest-budget movie -- at $163 million -- that the ranch has been involved in.
Since Colorado has a rich Western history, filmmakers are drawn to the state for animals or locations to shoot their movies, said Kim Farin, Boulder County film commissioner.
"Some of Colorado's appeal is that Western mystique," Farin said. "It's evocative of that time period."
Though the horses were from Colorado, the movie was shot in Santa Fe, N.M.
The first few weeks of shooting included preparation time -- for both the actors and the horses. Mark Bishop, a wrangler for Sombrero Ranch, accompanied the 30 horses on the set and helped out with training.
Some actors were less-experienced riders than others and needed help finding the right animal, Bishop said. The horses on set varied in age from 7 to 20. The older horses went to the inexperienced riders, while the stuntmen rode the more-energetic young ones.
The horses also needed adjustment time, Bishop said, to get used to all of the movie's effects, such as real explosions and gunfire.
"With the horse, you have to expose it to them ahead of time -- expose them to it at a distance, and gradually work them forward," Bishop said. "We let them see it and know that they can hear it and feel it, but know that it won't hurt them. We develop their confidence."
Working on these movies, Bishop said he's constantly impressed at what the horses are capable of -- like running from explosions or in between burning buildings. "It's different for you and I -- we can reason that what we're doing is fake," he said. "But the horses have to trust you enough to do it. You have no way of telling them this is going to be OK. I'm constantly amazed that they do their job."