CHASKE SPENCER (VIRGIL FIRST RAISE) was born of the Lakota Sioux tribe, and raised on Indian Reservations in Montana and Idaho. When he was young, he dreamt of becoming a photographer. Instead, he found himself in front of the camera, pursuing an acting career.
Chaske moved to New York City where he worked as a bartender and waiter. He was cast in his very first off off-Broadway play, DRACULA, playing the title role. From there he did a number of New York Theatre pieces, performed at THE PUBLIC THEATRE in NYC and THE ROUNDABOUT and was fortunate enough to be discovered by television/film Casting Director Rene Haynes.
Haynes cast him in his first feature SKINS as well as the lead in DREAMKEEPER, Steven Speilberg's INTO THE WEST and as lead werewolf Sam Uley in the TWILIGHT SAGA. Chaske is passionate about making a difference in the area of reducing poverty and creating sustainable communities.
DAVID MORSE (AIRPLANE MAN) is an Emmy Award nominated actor with thirty years experience in film and television. Among his many film credits are The Hurt Locker, Disturbia, Proof of Life, The Green Mile, Contact and The Rock. He was also a lead in The Slaughter Rule, directed by Alex and Andrew Smith.
On television Morse appeared as Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison in the series St. Elsewhere. He was nominated for a Prime Time Emmy for a Guest Star appearance on House M.D. for Fox and again for his work as George Washington in the HBO mini-series John Adams. Currently he is in New Orleans filming the David Simon's HBO series Treme.
GARY FARMER (LAME BULL) was born in Ohsweken, Ontario into the Cayuga Nation and Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy. Farmer studied film production and photography at Syracuse University and Ryerson Polytechnic University.
Farmer's first big role was on the CBC's SPIRIT BAY. He is known for his role as the spiritual guide "Nobody" in DEAD MAN. He reprised the role in GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI.
A three-time Indie Spirit Award nominee, Gary has had starring roles in the films POWWOW HIGHWAY, SMOKE SIGNALS, DARK WIND, DREAMKEEPER, SKINS, and in numerous comedic and dramatic TV series.
JULIA JONES (AGNES) studied at The Boston Ballet School from the age of four. She has modeled for Levis, Etnies, Esprit, and L'Oreal. She is a descendant of the Choctaw First Nation of Northern Mississippi as well as being part Chickasaw.
Jones graduated from the historic Boston Latin School, the oldest school in America, and later Columbia University with a degree in English.
Julia had a starring role as Leah Clearwater in TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE; a role she will reprise in next year's BREAKING DAWN. She's also starred in JONAH HEX and HELL RIDE, and as Dr. Kaya Montoya on ER.
Alex and Andrew Smith: Directors' Statement
As children, we had the rare privilege to grow up knowing the novel's author, the late, great James Welch. Jim was a life—long friend, a mentor, and a profound influence on our own writing.
As teenagers, we read the novel for the first time, hungrily absorbing its humor, its heartbreak, its raunchy, surreal Hi—Line highs and lows. Jim's words spoke to us so deeply on so many levels. Like Virgil, the narrator of Winter In the Blood— we grew up in Montana, isolated on a decaying ranch; suffered the premature death of our father; were surrounded by the storms of alcoholism; and survived via a deep brotherly connection. Jim's novel told us: "You are not alone."
As young adults, the novel remained a touchstone for us. After we left Montana, rereading it became a way of "coming home"— a form of solace and connection to where we came from. Just as the narrator pursues boozy corridors and romantic misadventures before finding the right road home, Jim's words helped us transcend our own detours, dust—ups and emotional dead ends.
Now we return again to the novel. Not for solace, but for inspiration and renewal. Artists hunt what haunts them. Filmmakers make the films they most need to see. This film has become our quest; our vision is to translate Welch's world— the raw, emotionally honest characters, the richly marbled tragicomic plot, and the gorgeous high plains landscape— to the big screen.
As we've pursued this goal— adapting the novel with Ken White; celebrating our first public reading; auditioning over 500 Native American actors; repeatedly scouting "Welch Country"; and holding countless meetings in Montana, Austin, Los Angeles and New York— we've found so many equally heartfelt responses to the novel. Winter in the Blood is a true classic— unique and universal; timeless, uncompromising, open. The novel touches people in a profound, often life-changing, way. It has remained in print in at least eight languages for 35 years, because it is a deeply affecting story of survival and recovery. It serves as a map of healing to generations of readers around the world.
Our desire is to expose this hilarious, unflinching, quietly ferocious story to a worldwide audience, in the collective dreamhouse of cinema.
Jim's 'intimate epic' began as a poem. We will continue this translation, recasting it in the poetry of cinema, capturing Welch's world at 24 frames-per-second: the "true west" wide screen terrain; the silver nitrate etch of Indian children playing cowboy in the rain; the long-lens dreamscape of memory and motion; the dizzying splice of mountain, prairie, and fade away; cowboy shirts from 1972, hand-beaded tobacco pouches from 1892, Red Wing boots from 1958; larks, beetles, hawks, good cow horses and crazy-eyed cattle; burnt aspen forests, abandoned homesteads, unmarked graves; the bone chill of winter wind juxtaposed against the welcome thaw of a spring chinook; the best song on the jukebox, the coldest beer in town, the dizzy green lust of a crème de menthe kiss.
All dreams are true. We are dreaming this one alive, realizing it in a fashion that allows us to be true to this truest of novels. We will shoot it where the novel was born— on the Hi-Line of Montana– with strong community and tribal involvement. We want our collaborators— and our audience— to know this world's stark, giant, particular beauty— to be able to call it 'true to home'.
The Story
Virgil First Raise wakes with a shiner and a hangover in a roadside ditch on the stark but beautiful plains of Montana. As he rises to face the day he sees a vision of his father lying dead at his feet. Impossible-- his father froze to death in a snowdrift years earlier. Virgil returns home to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she's taken his electric razor and his beloved rifle.
Virgil sets out to find her-- beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated encounters, sexual skirmishes, and improbable cloak-and-dagger intrigues with the mysterious 'Airplane Man'. Virgil's quest also brings him face-to-face with childhood memories and visions of his beloved, lost brother Mose-- some glorious, some tragic. Only when Virgil seeks the counsel of an old, blind man named Yellow Calf, does he grasp the truth of his origins and begin to thaw the ice in his veins.
ANDREW SMITH(WRITER, DIRECTOR) is a filmmaker, poet, screenwriter and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Arts at the University of Montana.
ALEX SMITH(WRITER, DIRECTOR) is a prize-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, educator and author of short fiction. Alex teaches Screenwriting and Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is the Creative Director of the non-profit University of Texas Film Institute (UTFI), where he recently produced Dance With The One - a full-length feature-film made entirely by students, but mentored by professionals in the film industry.
THE BROTHERS SMITH co-wrote and co-directed the award-winning feature film, The Slaughter Rule, starring Ryan Gosling and David Morse, and Amy Adams. Premiering in the Main Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, and continuing on to be one of only two American features to screen at the prestigious 2002 New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art. The Slaughter Rule screened at dozens of film festivals, garnering top awards at the Santa Fe, Nashville and Sydney Film Festivals, as well as the Critic's Prize at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Released in theaters in spring 2003 by Cowboy Pictures, The Slaughter Rule was released on home video by the Sundance Channel, and is currently featured on Showtime, IFC and Sundance cable channels.
KEN WHITE(WRITER, CO-PRODUCER) is a poet, screenwriter, and proud member of the Screen Actor's Guild, who received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. His poetry has appeared in The Boston Review, The Tusculum Review, and is forthcoming in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. His screenplay Blight, co-written with John Jackson Braider, was optioned by Titan films in association with Sony and later by JML films. He has also written screen adaptations of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (with J.J. Braider), and the seminal medieval Irish epic The Tain Bo Cuailgne – The Cattle Raid of Cooley. He is currently working on a new script, The Wereman.
HEATHER RAE(EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) has worked as a producer and executive for twenty years. In September of 2009 she was named one of Variety's Ten Producers To Watch. First Americans in the Arts also recognized her for Achievement in Producing. She produced Frozen River, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, won the Grand Jury Prize and was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. Frozen River was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Screenplay, won the Gotham Award for Best Picture and Best Actress and was nominated for seven Spirit Awards resulting in a Best Actress win for Melissa Leo and the Producer of the Year for Rae. Rae produced The Dry Land, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
Previously Rae has had producing roles in a number of narrative and documentary feature films, including Trudell, which premièred at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and played at over 100 other festivals.
Rae has worked as an advisor or consultant to the Sundance Institute, ITVS, the Rockefeller Foundation, National Geographic, PBS, Film Independent, the Independent Feature Project, and other media companies and organizations.
RENE HAYNES(CASTING DIRECTOR) is a two time Emmy Nominee; In 2006 for the TNT/DreamWorks mini-series INTO THE WEST and in 2007 for the HBO feature BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, for which she also won a CSA Artios Award for "Outstanding Casting".
In addition to being recognized in the entertainment industry as one of the foremost experts in Native American and First Nations casting, Rene specializes in conducting international talent searches and enjoys taking on projects with specific and challenging casting needs. Her world-wide search for the female lead in the Terrence Malick feature THE NEW WORLD, being one successful example. (The film's young lead went on to be named "Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actress" in 2005 by the National Board of Review.)
In 2009 Rene became part of the casting team on the widely popular TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON and TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE.
CHRIS CRONYN(PRODUCER) is a Line Producer and Production Manager of feature films. He recently completed "WAKING MADISON", an independently financed feature film produced by Fixed Point Films in New Orleans.
He has also worked on many studio productions. His production manager credits include FATAL ATTRACTION, MERMAIDS, THUNDERHEART, BAD BOYS, and HEAT. His producer credits include REACH THE ROCK, MEET THE DEEDLES, LOST SOULS, and THE SLAUGHTER RULE, which he co-produced in Montana for writer/directors Alex and Andrew Smith.
SHERMAN J. ALEXIE(ASSOCIATE PRODUCER) is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He has earned the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the NEA Poetry Fellowship for THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING and I WOULD STEAL HORSES, and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the short story collection, THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN.
Alexie wrote the script to SMOKE SIGNALS, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the creators of artistic works "which affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Alexie was also nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
His most recent honors include the 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for his collection War Dances, and the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for his young adult novel THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART TIME INDIAN. Alexie lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons.
James Welch was born in Browning, Montana, in 1940 and was raised on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations. His father was Blackfeet, his mother Gros Ventre, each having Irish ancestors. In the mid 1960’s, the family settled in Harlem, Montana, just off the reservation.
From an early age, Welch dreamed of becoming a writer. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana and continued his study of creative writing in the university’s MFA program. Welch married Lois Monk, a professor of English and comparative literature in 1968.
His first book of poetry, Riding the Earthboy 40, was published in 1971. In addition to Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney, Welch also published Fools Crow, The Indian Lawyer, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk.
In addition to his published work, workshops and conferences, Welch taught at both the University of Washington and Cornell University. He was awarded a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1995. Welch died of lung cancer in 2003 at his home in Missoula.
Purchase the novel, Winter in the Blood at one of these independent bookstores:
Please contribute to Winter in the Blood to help us continue our work in making this film. Your contributions will allow us to shoot the film where it was born-on the Montana Hi-Line.
Through our partnership with the Big Sky Film Institute, your contribution is fully tax-deductible. The Big Sky Film Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.
You can contribute on-line via PayPal, or for larger contributions (over $500.00) via a check made out to: Big Sky Film Institute, P.O. Box 8796, Missoula, Montana 59807 (please write "Winter in the Blood" as the Memo). We will send donation letters to such contributors for your tax records.
Thank you to everyone helping bring James Welch's novel to life.
Winter in the Blood - Press
The Write Question on MTPR - Featuring Alex Smith, Andrew Smith, and Ken White
The Write Question - The MTPR Radio Interview
Reimagining Winter in the Blood - The Buffalo Post
National Native News Interview
The Missoulian covers Feb. 13 - 14 casting call
Keep Up to Date!
Winter in the Blood is scheduled for production in the late spring / early summer of 2011.
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Native American Actors
If you missed our casting calls but would like to submit a video audition, the following scenes have been provided:
1. Two brothers (ages 12 & 14) are caught in the rain.
2. Two lovers (20's to 30's) who haven't seen each other in awhile catch up in a bar.
3. A rancher (40's to 60's) woos a widow (40's to 60's) and teases her elderly mother.
Questions may be directed to:
casting@winterinthebloodfilm.com