Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies
By: Frederic B. Wildfang
City Slickers
1991 — CastleRock — produced by Irby Smith, written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, directed by Ron Underwood, photography by Dean Semler, music by Marc Shaiman and Hummie Mann, production design by Lawrence G. Paul, film edited by O. Nicholas Brown — starring Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Jack Palance, Patricia Wettig, and Helen Slater
Academy Award Nomination: Jack Palance
“...the rowdiest western jokefest since ‘Blazing Saddles.’” — Rolling Stone
This comedy western begins in New York City, where three young friends (Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby) — all suffering from mid-life crises — decide to spend their vacations on a cattle drive out west in order to find their lost youth and restore their manhood. Midway through the drive, however, their crusty trail boss (Jack Palance) suddenly dies — leaving them to fend for themselves — hurrying them along toward the ultimate realization of their goal.
Shooting locations around Durango for this movie included Becks’s Ranch near Baker’s Bridge (the same site used for scenes in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the Cool Water Resort on the Pine River near Vallecito, the Southern Ute Reservation between Ignacio and Bondad, and the 2,400-acre Steward Ranch near Lightner Creek. Filming took ten weeks.
As the Durango Herald reports, the length of the shoot caused some problems. At the Cool Water Resort location, for instance, “wrangler boss Jerry Young, a 28-year industry veteran, ran 250 head of cattle trucked in from California for a scene in which the cattle crossed the Pine River during a contrived rain storm.” The problem, Young pointed out, was “the impending fall color change of leaves....”:
Young said that one time during the movie filming, crews had to spray paint the yellowing leaves to reproduce a scene.
Another problem was that during the cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado Billy Crystal delivers a baby calf, “Norman,” whose mother dies during the breech birth — leaving Norman with Crystal as his newly adopted mother. During the ten weeks of shooting, Young explains:
...the calves taking turns playing Norman will grow too large. The trainers, Carol Sonheim and Clay Lilley, must continually train new young calves to fill in for the part.
The number of two-week-old Jersey calves trained by Sonheim and Lilley to take Norman’s part — following Crystal around like a puppy — eventually totalled thirteen.
