SWEETGRASS: Q & A with filmmaker Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Recorded January 8, 2010)

Summary: SWEETGRASS: A paean to the Old West: SWEETGRASS captures modern cowboys’ overland journey, wrangling thousands of sheep, as they move across Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, amid sweepingly dramatic vistas and endless skies. Ronnie Scheib in Variety describes the film as “a mad cross between Howard Hawks’s RED RIVER” and an anthropological account of vanishing nomadic traditions, with “a dash of Tex Avery’s DRAG-ALONG DROOPY.” Twenty-first century cowboys call their mothers on cell phones and complain about rainy weather, ornery sheep and exhausted horses. A strikingly beautiful film, SWEETGRASS is at once funny, awe-inspiring and endearing. At first the passive, fuzzy sheep seem utterly adorable; over time we come to understand the exasperated cowboy who screams profanities at this sea of stubborn, bleating beasts over which he struggles to reign. This podcast is a recording of the Q & A with SWEETGRASS filmmaker Lucien Castaing-Taylor, recorded January 8, 2010, at Film Forum after a screening of the film.