Riley Keogh on War Pony: ‘There were a lot of people who didn’t really get it’
Riley Keough and Gina Gammelll’s War Pony scooped best first feature at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but getting it made wasn’t plain sailing. They speak to us about people failing to understand their vision and the optics of two white filmmakers creating a story about indigenous Americans
When actress Riley Keough and her friend Gina Gammell set out to co-direct their first feature, War Pony, they met a lot of resistance from film-industry folk. Set on the poverty-stricken Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, this masculine-oriented drama seemed to baffle some. ‘There were a lot of people who didn't really get it, or who had very strange feedback, or very strange opinions about things that didn’t resonate with us,’ says Keough. ‘A lot of people would read and kind of go, “I don’t understand what this is, this world”, which was really frustrating.’
The granddaughter of rock’n’roll icon Elvis Presley, Keough has a strong track record in indies (films like The House That Jack Built and Under The Silver Lake). So it’s no surprise she and Gammell approached Pine Ridge with sensitivity and a desire to authentically shoot the story they wanted to tell. It began when Keough met indigenous writers, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, who hail from Pine Ridge, on the set of Andrea Arnold’s 2016 tale of youthful abandon American Honey. Befriending them, and spending time on the reservation, she and Gammell began to forge War Pony.
‘It was everyone’s first time doing this together,’ says Australian-born Gammell. ‘There was a playful energy always from the very beginning of how we’d collaborate and work together.’ What emerged was a story of survival, looking at two young Oglala Lakota males, whose paths occasionally cross. Wildcard 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) steals drugs from his addict-father, selling them on for profit. Meanwhile, at 23, Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is already a father of two kids via different mothers; his latest scheme involves breeding dogs for cash.
The film, which last year won the Camera d’Or at Cannes (the prize awarded for best first feature), has been recognised as a genuine portrayal of indigenous lives. But were they ever concerned that, as two white women in the film industry, this was a story they should tell? After years of work with Reddy and Bob, there was no turning back, says Keough. ‘We don’t want to just say “oops, you know what guys? Sorry, we’re not gonna do it because Gina and I are afraid of getting in trouble” or whatever. So, at the end of the day, we just chose to move forward; we’re not indigenous, and that won’t sit well with some people.’
Indeed, it’s hard to find fault with a film so in tune with its characters. ‘It started with the writing,’ admits Gammell. Regularly, they would record dialogue with Bob and Reddy, who would fine-tune it to the way Matho, Bill and the others would speak. ‘Frank, is very, very astute about making sure the dialogue was very, very, very dialled in,’ says Gammell. The organic nature of the project also helped, adds Keough. ‘This wasn’t a story of two filmmakers going into a community . . . [and saying] “where’s the story here?” This is a story of four friends who were in their early twenties, just wanting to hang out.’
Intriguingly, it offers a very different slant on Pine Ridge than the more elegiac, poetic take seen in Chloé Zhao’s 2017 film The Rider, the film she made before winning an Oscar for Nomadland. ‘Look, it’s an area of the world where there is a lot of devastation. Historically, it is one of the most devastating American stories there is,’ says Keough. ‘Our intention isn’t to tell a dark, sad story. Our intention is to tell an honest, true story about their lives.’ No wonder they made friends for life on the reservation. ‘This is once-in-a-lifetime,’ says Gammell, ‘this family that we have created on this film.’