Hell on Wheels, the latest offering from red-hot AMC, is a natural fit for a TV network that was initially known for showing wall-to-wall John Wayne westerns.
It was only a matter of time before AMC, which now boasts a number of critically acclaimed hits including Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Walking Dead and The Killing would add a western to its viewing stable.
“The old AMC was very much associated with the western and we still show John Wayne movies. It was really the bread and butter of the channel years and years ago,” Owen Shiflett, AMC's director of development, said at a screening of the new series at the Banff World Media Festival. “It's still as popular as it was then.”
Hell on Wheels is an American period drama with a revenge theme set during the building of the TransContinental Railroad just after the end of the Civil War.
“It's just a modern thriller set in the west. I think the audiences are ready for it with the release of True Grit, the Coen brothers’ version,” Shiflett said.
Although set in the south, the show been shot in the Calgary area, where rain and snow caused problems, which nevertheless has convincingly subbed in for the American West even if the weather hasn't been all that co-operative in the past few weeks.
“You're always restricted on time, money and weather. We shot this beautiful, gorgeous pilot last summer. It's beautiful, it's epic. But the first three weeks here in Alberta we had epic rainstorms, flooding and hail,” said Chad Oakes, the series's Calgary producer.
“It could have been called Hail on Wheels. We jumped into the first two episodes. It's dirty, it's muddy. It looks fantastic.”
Jeremy Gold said the actors who auditioned for "Hell on Wheels" were warned about the conditions.
"We sat down with them and said this is not like getting in your air conditioned car, drive five minutes to the Warner Bros lot, work for a few hours, have a nice dinner and go home," he said.
"We said it will be really, really hot and really, really cold — maybe on the same day. It will be wet. It will be muddy. Are you down for that? The response from everyone was yeah, I'm in. When do we start?"
Tennessee actor Anson Mount was cast as Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier who returns home to find that his wife had been raped and murdered, and his young son killed by Union soldiers. The story revolves around Bohannan tracking down the men who committed the crime, which brings him to the railroad being built to connect the country and where he finds himself working on the “Hell on Wheels” section of the railroad.
“The elements will throw at you what they throw at you and you have a choice – do you try and work around that or you dance with it? This crew and creative team has done a terrific job of trying to dance with it,” said Mount, whose previous credits include Straw Dogs and In Her Shoes.
“Nobody ever said making a western was a clean affair. You can check the rings around my bathtub. There's a lot of dirt, but it's great,” he added.
Mount was among those on hand Monday offering attendees of the Banff World Media festival a sneak peek of the new series, showing a trailer and two clips from the grimy and violent western.
In an hour-long panel discussion, Mount, co-star Common, Chad Oakes, Jeremy Gold and Owen Shiflett were among those introducing Hell on Wheels to a packed hall of delegates eager to see the latest series greenlit by a network that has a golden touch with dramatic TV series.
Judging by the initial clips, the show will offer an authentically messy and unromantic look at the Wild West as a place of violence, vengeance and injustice.
It helps that the production has hired some of the top guns of the Alberta film industry, including many with a long history in shooting westerns. Among the more notable heavy lifting required by the team was to build - from scratch - a train from 1865.
"We couldn't pull the 1865 trains from the museums in the States," says Oakes, who runs Calgary-based Nomadic Pictures. "So we built it. That is a train built from plans we got on the Internet for $150."
“I can't stress the importance of working with a local crew that understands the genre to the degree that the Calgary crew does,” added Mount. “To have hair and makeup people who understand how to behave around a horse. It's really important because you could get hurt.”
Another key member of the cast is hip-hop artist and actor Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., better known by his stage name Common. The performer raised some eyebrows last month with controversial lyrics at a White House poetry night.
Common plays Elam Ferguson, a freed slave who ends up working on the railroad.
“When I first read this pilot I was just so intrigued, so moved and inspired because I hadn't come across any character like this ever in my days of acting,” he said. “When I read I was excited.”
"It was a very rich character to play," he adds. "There were things that I'd never seen an African-American play during those times. It's something that is rich and intriguing for me."
Created and written by American writers Tony and Joe Gayton, Hell on Wheels was first conceived three years ago. AMC, the cable network behind such critical hits as The Killing, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, was actually looking for a western, which harkens back to its early days when it received strong ratings airing old John Wayne movies.
The show also features Irish actress Dominique McElligott, Colm Meaney, Eddie Spears and Philip Burke.
But the principals of Hell on Wheels say they believe the show will offer a considerably less scrubbed look at the wild west than audiences may be used to.
"It's not a story about the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad, it's a story about the building of a nation," Mount says. "It's not romantic at all. It's a lot of corruption, and violence and anger and difficulty."
Hell on Wheels will continue shooting in Calgary and other areas of Alberta until September.
AMC has ordered 10 episodes.
Sources: Calgary Herald / The Globe And Mail / MacLeans.ca
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