Distinctly Montana Magazine

58 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 3 - 2 4 was St. John's Lutheran Church in Hobson, Montana. It was sold and dismantled in 1980; there was discussion of relocating it to Troy, but this plan never achieved frui- tion. Similarly, the business where Lightfoot gets employment before the heist is Pinski Bros. Plumbing and Heating, which was an actual business in Great Falls, one that had been a fixture in the com- munity for several years. One of the most crucial locations, the drive-in movie theater where the bank robbers hide out after the job, was provided by Great Falls' 10th Ave Drive-In. It closed for the end of the season just after filming wrapped on Thunder- bolt and Lightfoot; it re-opened the following June, only to shut down for good two months later. The universe offered similar capriciousness toward the vital one-room schoolhouse that figures in the film's climax. It was a constructed set, modeled on an actual one-room schoolhouse located in Ravalli, Lake County, near Highway 93. After the shoot, the replica schoolhouse was purchased by a developer and relocated to Dearborn Meadows to serve as a tourist attrac- tion, but it was purchased again in 1974 and reconverted into a bar, rechristened Earl Smith's 7-Bar-9 Saloon. It opened for business in 1975 but burned down in a fire a year later. While an aura of bad luck seemed to befall some of the location sites, such misfortune didn't permeate to the rest of the production. The secret weapon to the film's success is Jeff Bridges. Apparently Eastwood expressed concern during production that he was being upstaged by Bridges; it is true that Lightfoot gets most of the humorous and playful moments, but Eastwood's concerns were misplaced (although it is true that Bridges did receive an Oscar nomination for Best Support- ing Actor for the film). The dynam- ic between the grim mentor and the goofy apprentice is one of the main reasons why the film works and stands out among similar bud- dy-road movies of the same era. The film was the directorial debut of Michael Cimino. He had co-written the scripts for Silent Running (1972) and Mag- num Force (1973), the sequel to Dirty Harry (1971). He wrote Thunderbolt and Lightfoot as a spec script with Clint Eastwood in mind. Eastwood apparently liked the property so much that he wanted to direct it himself, but ultimately he granted the op- portunity to Cimino instead. Cimino would later state that he owed his filmmaking career to Clint Eastwood. Four years lat- er Cimino scored massive commercial and critical success with his grim Vietnam war epic The Deer Hunter, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cimino. Alas, meteoric success precipitated meteoric catastro- phe; Cimino's follow-up passion project, Heaven's Gate (1980) was a failure that nearly bankrupted the production company United Artists. While Cimino did direct a few films afterward, he never achieved the same level of prestige or success. There is a kind of ironic symmetry in that the film that launched Cimino's directing career and the film that tanked it were both filmed in Montana, as well as that, for all the hopes of grand significance the Western historical epic was meant to carry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has emerged, fifty years down the road, as the more successful picture. THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN THE GRIM MENTOR AND THE GOOFY APPRENTICE IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS WHY THE FILM WORKS

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