Experience Movie Magic
Photo courtesy Fort Macleod Historical Association.
Film making in Southern Alberta isn’t a new thing. In fact, it goes back to the earliest days of silent films, when “Cameron of The Royal Mounted” used Fort Macleod and members of the Kainai First Nation as backdrops for heartthrob Gaston Glass – swoon – in 1920!
Dirt played a big part in that shoot, and eventually a costly one. To set the town scene, producers blew thousands of pounds of ‘movie dust’ down Main Street. Which led to paying to replace the air units on most of the street’s businesses. All in a days work in Hollywood.
Often the beautiful landscapes and wide-open spaces ‘stand-in’ for past times in other ‘places’, but not just the past. In the bigbudget sci-fi movie “Interstellar,” Fort Macleod and Okotoks represented small-town America, in a vaguely apocalyptic future where corn is the only viable crop, and the prairies are once again becoming a dust bowl.
The local environment has its pluses and its minuses. A 2019 Calgary Herald article noted “Facing 100 km/h winds and two massive dumps of snow, production of actress Robin Wright’s directorial debut “Land” was shut down three times atop Moose Mountain in Kananaskis.” The movie also involved Calgary’s Nomadic Pictures, who seem to have a hand in almost everything shot in Alberta. Leonardo DiCaprio said shooting “The Revenant” in K-country was the most grueling work he’s ever done.
Your author actually ‘worked’ as an extra on “Interstellar.” Which meant, in this case, spending three days dressed down and fake dirty, sitting in the local arena with a ton of other local folks, being fed and paid – and never once getting on to the dusty set. Not once.
Oh, the glamour!
Another modern heartthrob, Kevin Costner, has shot here many times, and he’s straightforward about why. Regarding his own 2002 film, the western “Open Range,” Costner shared two distinct advantages to filming here - the landscapes and
34 | Enter Our Photo Contest
