Edutain Us

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The wind blew her immaculate red hair into her face, but each time Reba McEntire got her cue, she straightened it just long enough to say her lines.

We were going into our fourth take on the set of Jackson Hole to the Max, on location at Snake River Ranch. Reba’s delivery changed subtly each time, seeking out a balance of excitement, colloquialism and straight talk.

Assistants clung to lights and shades. A storm blew foreboding over Rendezvous Mountain.

 “All right, let’s get two more,” director Peter Israelson shouted . . . and, “Action.”
A barrel racer charged into the arena, ducked around a barrel and raced back out.
“In Jackson Hole, nothing is as extreme as the sports …” Reba said.

Tale of our town
This is a story about a place that has been selling stories about itself for decades. A place that has promised an authentic Old West experience for East Coast “dudes” since the early 20th century, and has long banked on film portrayals of a rowdy and wild past.

The latest episode in the story of Jackson Hole is Jackson Hole to the Max, a movie that will play throughout the summer in the Pink Garter Theatre on Broadway Ave.
Not a travelogue or scientific expose on the geological and biological wonders of Jackson Hole, 45-minute film investigates legends and myths of the valley within the context of Old West tales.

Directed by the silver-tongued Israelson, the movie moves fast enough to keep the attention of the most over-stimulated teens and pre-teens, jumping from historical figure to myth to legend to historical figure to landscape and back.

The time-traveling tour guide, Reba McEntire, hops in and out of an iconic red stagecoach, narrating what she sees – at one point, Clint Eastwood fist-fighting on the Town Square, next a kayaker taking a plunge from a waterfall.

Reba is a pop “Americana” icon. Not just tourists passing through this town, but Reba fans in Utah, Idaho, Montana and Colorado will see her face on billboards announcing the film that can only be seen in Jackson Hole.

The Pink Garter Theatre has been outfitted with what Israelson calls the best, most immaculate sound and video projection system that today’s money can buy, so not an ounce of drama will be lost in transmission.

I spent a couple of weeks visiting shoots and meeting the “players” - John Hoggan Jr., John Hoggan, Sr., Dudley Miller, Israelson, McEntire, and the folks from Wink Inc., a local film production house that made this movie happen in a matter of weeks.

They put me in arms length of Reba who told me about her connection to Jackson Hole: “My grandfather on my daddy’s side, John McEntire, is a world champion cowboy because he won the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in the steer ropin’ event in 1934. So, daddy came along, and he won the Worlds in ’57, ’58 and ’61, in the steer ropin’. So I grew up going to Cheyenne Frontier Days all the way up ‘til . . . you know, I’ve played the night show there.”

On another occasion, I arrived to see a tall Jackson local, playing John Colter, leading a horse through the cottonwoods. I had just missed a chase scene, written by Israelson, involving Colter running from some Indians who had given him a head start for the sport of catching and killing him. Evidentally, the chase is in his Journal.

Then, later that afternoon, I watched an even taller Jackson local don a Sasquatch suit and practice his “stalk,” bobbing and ducking through the trees.
“More stalk, less bounce,” Israelson yelled.

The Sasquatch slowed, sleekly peeking from behind trees, acted startled, crouched and then walked slowly. The camera focus and zoom were jostled in and out to replicate a home video.
They got the shot.

Pink Garter Theatre
I met Israelson for the first time three weeks ago at Wink Inc. studios.
He was wearing a green Dartmouth hoodie, a long red scarf, black fleece Patagonia pants and black Merrell slippers – basically, his filmmaker’s uniform. But his casual dress can’t fool you, because he exudes the magnetism and confidence that are the fiber of a good movie director and someone who can interact with the stars. His credits include IMAX and Disney films and music videos for Whitney Houston and Reba McEntire.

“How did this whole movie-thing get started?” I said.
He described how he met Hogan Sr. and Hogan Jr., part owners of the Pink Garter Plaza, who knew Israelson made films and thought he might be able to fill their theater this summer.

 “I had imagined a small screening room or something, but I received these staggeringly beautiful pictures of a Disney-style theater that had all the makings of a wonderful tourist attraction,” he said.

The Pink Garter Theatre was started in 1959 by Paula Jeffries, a richly flamboyant woman described by one source as “the most beautiful ugly woman I’ve ever met in my life.”

The theater company became famous during a period when America was obsessed with the West. Several Hollywood movies were shot in Jackson Hole, which put the town on the map, and fortified its theater scene with money and talent. It was a time when rhinestone cowboys played poker and roulette in the Silver Dollar Bar, and big-name acts came to play on the Wort’s stage.

In the early sixties, the Pink Garter received a write-up in Time magazine, and in the late 60s it sent its cast to perform one of its productions on the Las Vegas Strip, and then in Los Angeles.

In 1970 the company moved into the newly built Pink Garter Plaza, of which the Pink Garter Theatre was the focal point, touted as “one of the most outstanding tourist attractions in Wyoming” by the Jackson Hole Guide newspaper at the time. But Jeffries had problems with her business partners, and was forced to wash dishes at the Triangle X Ranch to pay debts. The last one source saw of her, she was heading to Los Angeles, and needed money.

Since it was built, the theater hosted Western-style plays to attract tourists during the summer, while community theater and events filled it during the off-season and wintertime. The building has been owned by local investment groups, different Utah politicians and a New York investment group, among others, since it opened.

But its lack of street presence and its contemporary architecture has made it a difficult place for a string of theater companies hawking the Old West to draw in tourists and make money. It doesn’t have the quaint curbside appeal of the Jackson Hole Playhouse.

A few years ago, one owner, Bruce Eagan, proposed a bowling alley and taproom in the Plaza, but he did not win a liquor license.
He later sold the theater to Dudley Miller and the Hoggans.

In recent memory, some deejay parties and a concert by Charlotte Potter and the Nocturnals were locals’ favorites, but something was needed to fill the financial void left when, a few month ago, the Playmill Theatre said it wouldn’t be renting the space this summer.

Edutainment
JH to the Max, which will now be the exclusive attraction at the Pink Garter Theatre, was, and still is, billed as a PR piece for Jackson Hole, an IMAX-like “destination film” that would draw people into the valley to learn more about it.

When I sat at the Wink offices about to view the film, I imagined a sort of travelogue that would show the different components of the valley, rich with breathtaking shots of the Grand Tetons taken from a helicopter, and packed full of geologic facts and biological information. It would show the different features of the region, the wildlife, the mountains, the thermal pools, the Western trappings, and tell the stories behind them.

As Israelson explained, however, a bunch of scientists talking on a screen wouldn’t be fast-paced enough for the kiddies. And when I watched the bronco-ride of a film, I knew what he meant.

“The thesis of our movie is this is the last of the Wild West, and people who’ve been coming here are outrageously wild, creative spirits,” Israelson said.
The room darkened and Israelson turned up the sound. A stagecoach raced across a Western landscape.

“We are telling a rather ambitious story that is as much fun as it is entertaining,” Israelson said. “It’s one part truth and four parts entertainment,”
It was nonstop action, and everything glimmered. From the descriptions of historical characters to the snow-kayakers to the wildlife scene, everything was portrayed as epic as possible. Even the wildlife segment was somehow energizing, somehow sexy. It is what a press release for the film called “edutainment.”

How the film came to be
I browsed the wares of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Company, waiting to meet with its owner, John Hoggan Sr. The sound of powertools and footsteps rattled above.

As I poked around the store, I saw wolf rugs, bear rugs, a stuffed squirrel holding a fishing pole and a shelf of two-dozen huckleberry products. Books about the Yellowstone hotspot sat across from a rack of bathroom books full of redneck jokes.

I recalled the first time I wandered into the store on a summer’s night, and was greeted by a museum-worthy collection of stuffed deer, elk, bears, cats and a bevy of exotic animals staring blankly at me from floor displays and wall mounts.
It was intriguing. Though a bit unsettled by the sight, I was refreshed to walk into a place that wasn’t full of t-shirts and shot glasses.

Every time I’ve been in the store since, I have heard visitors with foreign accents, exclaiming at the curiosities. Hoggan said that he’s shipped items to nearly every continent in the world.

He met Israelson while discussing one such product.
A likeable opportunist who attracts business partners, Hoggan has creative ideas and a do-it-yourself approach to his ventures. He is not afraid to humbly drop one-liners about success or hard work, or to discuss the nitty-gritty details of his business.

When asked if he had hired a consultant to help with the planning of this movie, he said that running a farm, a retail story or a movie all take creative gumption and hard work to succeed.

A mural painted by his son, Andre, graced the wall of the movie foyer. His other son, John the taxidermist, helped out on a couple of the shoots I attended.
Those two had become friends with a man named Dudley Miller, who was a customer in their store. He and the Hoggan’s bought the Pink Garter Plaza from Eagan, and Miller has been financing the movie operation.

I walked upstairs to check out the refurbished theater, and as I wandered through the lobby I realized that the displays going up in the foyer will be constructed of stuffed animal carcasses. More animals would look out from above the staircase. A newly constructed doorway and staircase will lead from the foyer of the theater down into the Hoggan’s shop, which is being fortified with new merchandise.
It dawned on me that the movie will strike the same chord in its viewers that the Hoggan’s shop of wonders strikes in the visitors from around the world who are so intrigued by the Hoggans’ shop.

I met Miller when I was watching the guys from Hughes Production install the movie screen at the Pink Garter.  During a conversation with Geoff Tarantola about the history of the theater, a short man wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, covered in paint, said “Yeah, I’d really like to know the history of this theater.”

It was Miller. He had repainted all the trim and railings in the theater himself.
Miller is from Mexico, Mo., and he is the majority owner of the Pink Garter Plaza. He is a very likeable guy; earnest and honest and all the things you would expect a guy named Dudley from Mexico, Mo. to be like.

Miller is happy to have switched his resources from sheet metal manufacturing in Mexico to moviemaking in Jackson, he said, but is also keeping his fingers crossed.
If the numbers work out half as well as hoped (they want to attract a certain percentage of the three-million tourists that visit Yellowstone each year) they, along with Israelson, will be happy.

Piecing together history
To make the film, Israelson discovered a wealth of stock footage ranging from the never-released story of Nick Wilson, to clips from classic Shane and home video filmed in the 30s, locked in an attic and never seen by anyone outside of the family that shot it.

He wove together these scenes with original footage, shot with Jackson actors, and a script he wrote for Reba, an old friend from a video shoot in 1991.

The material for the script he gathered from research at the University of Wyoming, and as many books as he could get his hands on, he said. At one point, he spoke with the Jackson Hole Historical Society about consultation, but “decided to go in a different direction.”

Much of Jackson’s history is oral, he said, and open to interpretation.
At one point, the film delves into the Yellowstone Caldera, known in old times as Colter’s Hell, touching on the idea that underneath something so very beautiful is something incredibly dangerous, that could be responsible for the end of humanity.

“[Colter] was shocked at how much beauty he saw, but at the same time there was such evil underneath,” Israelson said. “And he saw the possibility, as Reba will point out, that so much greatness would be mixed with so much potential danger. He didn’t know how right he was, underneath the Caldera there is more magma than anywhere else in the planet.”

The scene he constructed from a couple of different television specials on the subject was intense. It will send viewers out of the theater with gasps of excitement, and might be responsible for a nightmare or two.

Afterwards, Israelson explained that he used artistic license with Jackson’s history. For instance, he said cattle rustler Teton Jackson could be the valley’s namesake, not trapper Davey Jackson.
“History is shrouded in mystery, so Teton Jackson is as valid a namesake for this town as there is,” Israelson said.

He said that no one could argue against his take of this piece of history, because the records don’t exist.

“We’ve done what we can to make it an entertaining movie, but we’ve based it on real facts,” Israelson said. “It’s a fantasy to a certain degree, but it is at least a fantasy based on a lot of reality.” PJH

JH to the Max will premiere for a select audience, Friday, and will open for the public, beginning noon Saturday and running every day, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., this summer. Tickets are $8.50 for adults; $6.50 for children and seniors.

PERMALINK:
Edutain Us | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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