Chutin’ The Bull
Jen Scoville interviewed documentary filmmakers Harry Lynch and Jeff Fraley.
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JF: Like I said, I’d always wanted to ride a bull but we didn’t really feel that it was necessary. When you make a documentary you enter a world as a complete foreigner and if you come in and show it from your perspective, not theirs, you never really capture it. It always amazes me when a British director will come over here and do something on Elvis or Americana. It just doesn’t work. For us to enter the world of bull riding not as cowboys was really almost as foreign. So we knew we had to get in there for several reasons, to try and experience the sport at a small level, and to create an active participant in the audience. People like to see people doing things, and if they can relate to that person then they’ll be drawn into the film.
Ranch: Was it terrifying?
JF: Oh, you want to know about that… yeah. I didn’t really think about it because it was in the middle of our first two week shoot, and we were so busy—we were working 16, 18 hour days—and it was just penciled in: “Jeff goes to bull school.”
Ranch: How long is bull school?
JF: It’s three days, but really it’s about two hours and then they put you on a bull. I didn’t think about it until I got on, and right then I looked up and saw Harry filming and I wanted to say “forget this.” But I knew I had to do this. What you don’t see in the finished film is that I was on that bull three times. Harry was shooting and we ran out of battery power and then out of film so I was on the bull for like 20 minutes…
HL: No, not that long.
JF: I was on that bull for like an hour and a half…
Ranch: But it must have helped you relate to the riders themselves. The beginning sequence is really amusing—these guys who get thrown off bulls every day tripping over their words when you ask them what they’re in it for. They just can’t seem to articulate why they do what they do.
JF: There’s no experience that I’ve had that compares to riding a bull. We talked about this afterwards. That wasn’t a big bull, but it’s nothing like riding a horse. I mean, you put your feet on it. Imagine sitting on top of a gas freighter or something. And then it’s just instant power. Their first move out of the gate is so much mass, and it’s so quick. It’s weird, and it’s scary… because you know you can die.
Ranch: Though this film seems to be aimed at both rodeo fans and the general public, the latter is sure to have some preconceived notions about the kind of folks who participate in bull riding. It’s hard not to think in stereotypes—hick cowboys, thick accents, and there’s that one rider who uses a word incorrectly—and this requires you to deftly handle the urge to poke fun at the sport and the athletes. But the way you’ve told the story, you end up admiring these guys.
JF: We knew that 99% of Americans think they’re idiots, but spending time with these guys blew our stereotypes out of the water. When we were done filming we had real respect for them. Still, we knew we couldn’t make a film where the audience was going to see it our way right from the beginning. We knew we had to let people think for themselves: We knew they were going to come in with their own preconceptions and that’s why it starts out the way it does. The moments where you’re laughing at them are right at the beginning, and your respect for these guys grows as ours does. It allows the audience to come around. First you think these guys are stupid, and then you sort of think they’re not, and by the end they’re teaching you something. That was intentional.
HL: In that montage of interviews in the beginning people are looking for something to laugh at. We’ve noticed that’s the way it always starts out. They think these guys are a bunch of red neck idiots, but they’re also listening. When Troy Dunn is having a hard time articulating why it is he rides, some people might take it as him being stupid. The film allows you to start off laughing and then your respect continues to build. The minute that Joe Wim berly looks at the camera and winks and starts telling that story about being in the hospital with his ear half torn off, he knows he’s being clever. The doctor tells him he’s lucky and when he says, “I’ve been lucky before and it felt lots better than this,” you start to realize that these guys really do know what’s going on.
Ranch: Have the riders seen the film? Have they given you any feedback?
HL: Some of them have seen it. They’re kind of stoic guys. Tuff Hedeman saw it. He’s in a third of the footage and he knows every story in it and he knows every person in it.
JF: And he does it every day.
HL: He didn’t learn anything from it either, so he thought it was pretty true to life. I mean, he wasn’t bored with it, he didn’t get up and get a beer or anything during it. He seemed interested.
JF: The stars are into it, yeah, but we’ve also had a nice response from the average rodeo fan. They were driving in from 75-100 miles around to come to the Dobie Theater [in Austin]. It was like, real cowboys do the Dobie. They really appreciate it. We’ve had guys thank us—heck we’ve had guys tear up on us—for capturing this in a positive light, for dispelling the stereotypes that modern cowboys are just dumb.
Ranch: One of the facts putting that myth to rest is that the riders set up their own professional organization, the Professional Bull Riders (PBR). And they still own it themselves, right?
HL: Yeah, the whole thing was spearheaded by Tuff. He was the motivating factor behind that.
Ranch: Do you think all that glitz and glam that the PBR brings to bull riding takes away from it’s true spirit?
HL: I think they’re trying to market it to the mainstream. That’s why it has laser shows and fireworks and all that stuff. I don’t know if you noticed, but a few of those clips that you hear when t he bulls come out of the chutes, there’s all this heavy metal music playing—AC DC—I mean, Bruce Springsteen is about as tame as it gets. It’s not country, and it’s not like at the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) where they have a brass band. It’s like a rock concert.
JF: More like boxing, or NASCAR or something.
HL: But there were people at the Las Vegas finals—everybody from real cowboys to non-cowboys—that came from New Jersey and Maine and Oregon and Alaska. People from all over the world and all age groups are starting to follow the sport. It’s not just a cowboy thing anymore. At least that’s the way they’re trying to market it and I think they’re doing a good job of it.
Ranch: Are all the events in the documentary PBR events?
JF: Some were PRCA which has been around since the twenties. And one, in the beginning of the film, was a non-sanctioned event in Junction, Texas; an amateur event.
HL: The film is structured from small to big—we start out at the amateur level and end with the big professional event in Las Vegas. If you noticed in that opening section, every single one of the riders falls off except Ronnie Kitchens. So if you look at it again—he’s got a mustache at the time—it’s Ronnie that stays on in the beginning and wins it all in the end.
JF: That freaked us out at the time when we went back to look at the footage.
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