Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 42 including a bank, jail, combination hotel and saloon, livery black- smith, houses and various other buildings, all nestled in the hills outside of Livingston, just minutes away from the legendary Chico Hot Springs. But Richie isn't alone on this project. He's also joined by his business partner Carter Boehm. As Richie tells me, he's a "long-time supporter of local community and film," having run the Livingston drive-in theater for years with his family. Carter helped make the choice to bring the project to Montana, preferring to see the tourism and attention go to his beloved state. There's also Colin Davis, owner of Chico Hot Springs. Richie says he and Colin became good friends during his previous two Montana films, and that Colin told Richie to "build it here," and thank goodness he did, because the proximity to great lodging, restaurants and recreation has been a "game-changer" for the Yellowstone Film Ranch. Also, I'd be remiss not to point out that their last film, Robert the Bruce (in which Montana sometimes stands in for Scotland), is completed and will be released this spring, around April. But before you think that they've built something like a living history town up there, consider that as a working film set it all has to be built not just to approximate a historical period, but also has to ac- commodate cameras, crewmen, and directors of photography getting the right shots. It also has to look rustic and a little lived-in. Which means that designer Lindsay Moran, who has worked with Pixar and on major Hollywood productions like the Hunger Games films, and TNT network's crime drama Animal Kingdom, has to come up with a design that's a bit less than perfect. If you look closely at the shingles on various buildings, for instance, you'll find that some of them are slightly mismatched, as if they are the work of a frontier carpenter. In the same way, the metal roof on the town hall building has been treated to look aged and weathered. In addition to the design challenges, the Yellowstone Film Ranch also has to have the capacity to appear in various film and television projects without it being too obvious that it is the same place. To that end, the town has been built to be geographically rearranged. That means that the church, for instance, has been built on a movable steel frame that, after the outer shell has been removed, can be moved up or down the street. Plus, the location of the ranch was chosen because (like so much of Montana) it looks wildly different depending on where you are looking from; one view of the town shows mountains, the other seemingly endless plains. It could be almost anywhere, except it's just a bit prettier than just anywhere. Impressive though they may be, the ranch and Richie's ambition may not be enough to bring the Western back to Montana, but that's where the Montana Film Office and the Media Act come in. We might assume, though we may be biased, that if it were down to photogenic beauty, ruggedness and the surprising sophistication of the locals, Montana would always be the ideal filming location. But we can always rely on taxes to make things more complicated. For instance: have you ever noticed how seemingly every other show on television ends with that little four-note musical jingle that goes "Made in Georgia"? That's because of the some-would-say aggressively generous disposition of Georgia's tax laws toward film and television projects, which can earn as high as a 20% credit if they spend more than a half a million dollars in production or post-pro- duction while working in the state. Montana's beneficence toward Hollywood has varied over the decades, but in May of 2019 Governor Steve Bullock signed the " F I L M I S A P OW E R F U L T O O L F O R PR O M O T I N G M O N TA N A . FILMING MOVIES, TELEVISION SHOWS AND COMMERCIALS IN MONTANA ELEVATES THE AWARENESS ABOUT OUR STATE AND PUMPS OUTSIDE DOLLARS IN TO OUR STORES, HOTELS, AND TO INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS."

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