Andy Rakich, a senior, is an aspiring filmmaker who has made several original productions, the most recent of which is a Viking movie titled Northman. Shortly after the end of shooting Northman, another Andy Rakich film was in the writing stages. This time it’s a western. WSPN conducted an interview with Andy Rakich about his experience with filmmaking and his ideas for his next movie, Boot Hill.

Catey Oakley (CO): Can you briefly describe Boot Hill?

Andy Rakich (AR): It’s about a heroic rebel who is struggling to stay alive in a changing world. It takes place near the New Mexico-Colorado border in 1868, when there was still a lot of resentment between Confederate veterans and Union veterans of the Civil War, and sometimes that ill feeling turned violent. And we follow this one outlaw as he tries to destroy the past that haunts him. It’s an action-chase picture that’s very Eastwood in concept, but it’s becoming very me in the execution.

CO: What inspired you to make a western?

AR: I felt like I had an obligation to. We’ve made movies that have taken place in a lot of regions all over the world, but we’ve never done anything American. And even though the West is closer to home in time and place, it’s still a mythic world, which appeals to me. And westerns are some of the best movies. We borrow pretty heavily from the stock characters that directors like John Ford and Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood created. And the classics are so fun to watch; I wanted to make a movie that people could be entertained and hopefully be brought to a higher level of understanding of sorts. And the last few movies have been really heavy and hard to watch sometimes, but for this one I want to make it a PG-13. It’ll still have the intensity and the integrity of the other ones, and it’ll still be brutal, but hopefully more accessible.

CO: How long does it usually take to make one of your movies? How much time for filming versus editing?

AR: Well…. Eight months, I want to say. The last one took from December to July, so you do the math. So… no small feat.

CO: How many people are involved in one of your movies on average?

AR: Twenty-five, but it’s rare that all of them come to a single day of filming. For big battles we might go as high as fifteen in a day, but more kids than that is just a pain in the neck because you have to control them. And feed them at the end of the day.

CO: What challenges have you faced in the past with filming? What specific obstacles are you facing with filming Boot Hill?

AR: Wow, what haven’t we faced? Angry rednecks, cross country runners, the crew team, police, sudden and horrifying changes in the weather, you name it. This movie we’re really going to be up against the bank because of the high technical demand. But there are little tricks you can employ to minimize it. When we were filming today we built a frontier town out of seventy bucks worth of Home Depot wood. Little tricks. Thank God for Ms. Gavett because she let us use her horses for the film. But later on we need a Gatling gun, we need a train, we need to build another town, we need a Lakota reservation – but we’ll figure it out, we always do.

CO: Is weather usually an issue? How will and do you need to work around snow this winter?

AR: Weather’s always an issue. I love shooting on location and if you don’t have the weather you want, it won’t be the scene you want it to be. Rain, snow, fog, or sunshine for that matter, they design the scene for you. When we were filming “Tears of God” back in my sophomore/junior year we could have never gotten the misery of the characters as they trudge through the forest if the rain hadn’t been pouring down and gotten mud on everyone’s clothes and on their faces. You have to peel your pants off afterward, but behind the camera it looks great. As far as this winter goes, let it come. The film takes place in the lower Rockies anyway, so it’ll just look better, I think. People forget that it snows out west too. It’s the spaghetti westerns like “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”, which are so hot and sticky and smelly-looking that give people the notion that westerns have to be like that. Those were shot in southern Spain, and they usually take place on the border with Mexico, but they still have that great effect on popular culture.

CO: When are you planning on finishing and premiering Boot Hill?

AR: We’ll finish by March or early April and I’m thinking about a May 9 release date. It’s a Saturday I think, and the school calendar is empty that day.

CO: What other films have you made and released?

AR: Tears of God and Northman were the first ones that I actually released. I’ve been making them for a long, long time. I’m pretty sure Justin Billing has been in every one of my movies since sixth grade. The one we made before Tears of God was The Scourge, the premiere of which was in my basement, I think. Tears of God DVDs are floating around everywhere and Northman will be out on DVD soon enough.

CO: How did you get inspired to start directing movies?

AR: Sounds like a college essay question. I don’t know, it just sort of happened.