_______________________________

When soft-spoken Guy Small says he’s going to a movie, he doesn’t mean that he’s heading into town for a couple of hours at the local theatre. And getting ready to go involves a lot more than cleaning up and pulling on a fresh pair of jeans. For him, “going to a movie” entails packing for a considerable stint, and loading up livestock that will be used in the film.

A ranch-raised Montana native, Small got his first taste of the film business back when the far-from-typical western, The Missouri Breaks, was shot at Billings. The movie company needed some loose horses. Small, whose family owned a local rodeo company, leased them some bucking broncs – and he got to do some wrangling.

After that came the ABC mini-series, Son of the Morning Star. By now, Small was hooked, but it was the Ron Howard film, Far and Away, that set the hook. Big time.

“They hired me to wrangle,” he recalls, “but I turned out coordinating two hundred wagons and teams. We did a land race, with sixteen cameras, a helicopter, and a cannon. That was the most exciting thing I’d ever experienced. The boom of the cannon – the roar of the wagon wheels. It was wild.”

He laughs. “About half the teams ran off, so in the second take, all the guys who had started out in front were in back. But by the third take, everything was under control.”

Maybe one reason that memory stays so clear for Small is that it’s the sort of thing that can’t happen again. As he explains, there aren’t that many wooden wheeled wagons around anymore. At the time, though, Wyoming and Montana had both just celebrated their centennials. Howard’s timing couldn’t have been better. .

Since then, Small has evolved into one of the most respected horse and cattle wranglers in the business. He’s made eighteen movies in eighteen years, became a member of Hollywood Local 399 along the way, and has racked up experience in a variety of locations, including New Mexico. Not bad for a guy who can honestly say that he still manages to have a life. (He has the same wife he married a quarter century ago, two grown kids, and a dog — an Australian shepherd that he says is more a house dog than a stock dog.) To top it all off, he gets to spend his time between movies on his own ranch, doing what he loves most. Training horses.

“I used to train for the public,” says Small, “but now I just train my own stock. I try to always have some broke to pull wagons, and some gentle ones, for riding. I feed with my teams, so they don’t just stand around. They get used a lot. I don’t go to a movie with all new stock.”

For animal lovers who tend to worry about the plight of the livestock used in films, Small points out that things have changed a lot since the old days.

“I got in on the tail end of that era,” he says. “They used to use trip wires, and do things that were hard on the animals. But it’s been cleaned up since then. We teach them to lie down, and how to fall. Some of them actually like it. And there’s a representative from the American Humane Association on every shoot.”

Not all of Small’s training goes to four-legged creatures. Part of his job is teaching actors to ride. “Some actors are already good,” he says. “Duvall, Hackman, Tommy Lee Jones, Redford. They can all really ride. Others need help. I like to get ‘em before the movie starts. It’s like a couple of weeks of camp.” And if that doesn’t happen? Or happens, and doesn’t work out? “Then you just have the actor ride into a shot, and you use doubles.”

While acknowledging that it’s getting tougher for newcomers to get into the union, Small is convinced that there’s plenty of work for everybody, and that those who want it badly enough can make a place for themselves.

“Get a job with the head wrangler in your area,” he advises. “You don’t have to know a lot, but you have to be willing to learn. The main thing is to pay attention. To make a good wrangler, you need to know horses, know who has them, and develop good people skills. Everything’s easier if everyone is working together, helping each other. I’ve been around people who screamed and hollered, and I made up my mind that I’d never be like that. You accomplish a lot more with people if you treat ‘em right.”

Asked what changes he’d like to see in the film industry, Small admits to being bothered by two things: that more westerns aren’t being made these days, and that so many people assume that western movies have to follow old formulas.

“Everything doesn’t have to be about cowboys,” he says. “I just worked on The Burrowers, which was shot in Santa Fe. It’s a period piece about creatures that came up out of the earth to feed on this western town – and it was great. We need more young people to come into the business with a new way of looking at things. We need a new set of young actors to take hold.”

Although wrangling obviously isn’t for everybody, Small doesn’t see a time when he’d want to stop doing it.

“When you’re on location,” he explains, “you’re up at 3 a.m., and you work hours you wouldn’t necessarily enjoy if you were at home, working a regular job — but you don’t mind. It’s not like anything else.”

He pauses for a moment, then adds, in a voice that says he means it:

“I love it. I just love loading up and going.”

~~Story by Jenny Wingfield