Stacey Sher worked with Quentin Tarantino on “Pulp Fiction” and “Django Unchained,” so she's familiar with his methods and madness; "The Hateful Eight" was mostly filmed on a scenic ranch in Telluride, Colorado; holiday music to enjoy and avoid.
'The Hateful Eight': The story behind the film's location
When you think of Tatooine from “Star Wars,” you imagine a harsh desert landscape where Luke Skywalker starts his journey to become a Jedi. Or what about “The Shire” in “Lord of the Rings”? You picture Frodo and the rest of the hobbits frolicking through the bright green hillsides.
While these places are set in fantasy worlds, they’re actual locations in our world… and someone is responsible for finding them. For Quentin Tarantino’s "The Hateful Eight," that was location scout John Minor.
[I always say], Oh, I can find that! And then they throw that last thing on there and you go, Oh, that’s gonna make it hard.
Minor has been a location scout for more than 20 years. For his latest challenge, he was tasked to find a ridge with a dramatic mountain in the background for “The Hateful Eight.”
That was challenging. There’s only so much of this open country left in the United States. Being that specific, you can look at a map and [say], There’s a mountain range, those are the places I’m gonna go see what I can find.
MARVIN SCHMID: John definitely nailed it. Quentin came and looked at it and that was it.
Marvin Schmid owns the Schmid Family Ranch in Telluride, Colorado. His family built the ranch in the late 1800s. It sits on a vast green plain, right at the edge of a forest that leads straight to the mountain known as Wilson Peak.
SCHMID: That mountain right there is the most amazing thing.
MINOR: The clouds change. The lighting. It’s amazing.
SCHMID: Right now you could just see it changing with the light and you get the morning sun and the evening sun on it. It’s pretty amazing.
Tarantino isn’t the only person who’s fallen in love with the picturesque view. It’s been used in numerous films and commercials, and you’ve probably seen it before.
SCHMID: Wilson Peak is Coors Mountain. That’s the signature mountain on all the beer cans.
Minor and Schmid met around the mid '90s, when Minor first found this location for a Marlboro commercial. He found it by doing a particular form of research.
MINOR: I’ll sit down at a diner and tell the [waitresses], “Hey, this is what I’m looking for.” If I see a highway patrol officer putting gas in his car, I’ll stop and ask them because they know the area really well. You kind of get a piece of a thread, and if you keep tugging at it, you’ll eventually get shown what’s around.
But once filming gets started, that’s when the hard work starts. And that’s what happened on "The Hateful Eight."
SCHMID: It was intense. I’ve never been around 200 people running around like crazy people.
A film crew of that size coming into a small town like Telluride — population about 2,000 — drew some concerns from the community over increased traffic, road blocks and other disruptions to daily life. It was Minor’s task to handle those concerns.
MINOR: My job was to be the liaison of the film and…
SCHMID: The community.
MINOR: Yeah, normal people. And so I was very open when I first came here [and said,] If there’s an issue, here’s my phone number. So the whole town had my cell number.
One of the first things Minor had to do was let all the people living near the Schmid Family Ranch know a film crew would be shooting for a few months. And that’s when he met a woman named Amber.
MINOR: Amber and I have a funny story. Her friend said, “What do you think? Someone’s just gonna knock on the door and that’s how you’re gonna meet a guy?” So now she says, “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened! He knocked on my door to scout and [laugh] now we’re dating!”
Word spread throughout the crew and it became obvious that Minor and Amber had a connection.
MINOR: So before we even started dating, my construction crew was trying to catch me out at dinner. They said, “We kept looking for you at the restaurants, trying to come to set early to see if your car was there. We never caught you!” Well, I said, “There’s nothing going on.” [laughs]
SCHMID: He didn’t have time.
MINOR: No [laughs.]
Minor knew that work came first. But his relationship with Amber did raise some eyebrows… since she is Marvin Schmid’s daughter.
MINOR: We didn’t tell him at first.
SCHMID: Well…
MINOR: He kind of knew though…
SCHMID: I think that my daughter said something to me and he said something to me so I knew before they knew.
But again, Minor kept it professional throughout the entire shoot. And when filming was done, he returned to Los Angeles and took a U-Haul back to Telluride to move in with Amber. Now, Minor has become a part of the Schmid family, helping out at the ranch when he’s not location scouting.
MINOR: And what do you do when your girlfriend’s father says, “Help me irrigate”? You grab a shovel. [Laughs.]
Minor and Schmid have seen more and more tourists and Tarantino fans driving through the property to see where “The Hateful Eight” was filmed.
MINOR: We had a few people come up to see the set and came down real dejected because all they saw was dirt.
SCHMID: We didn’t have “No Trespassing” signs until he came.
"The Hateful Eight" is in select theaters on Christmas Day then opens wide on Jan. 1.
Lack of snow almost derailed the filming of Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight'
In Quentin Tarantino’s new western, “The Hateful Eight,” Kurt Russell stars as a bounty hunter transporting a high-value prisoner played by Jennifer Jason Leigh through post-Civil War Wyoming.
He happens upon another bounty hunter played by Samuel L. Jackson, and a sheriff played by Walton Goggins. The group takes shelter from a terrible blizzard in a remote haberdashery, and that’s where most of the action — or should we say murder and mayhem — takes place.
But rather than shooting on a soundstage, the filmmakers decided to film almost all of “The Hateful Eight” on location, not far from Telluride, Colorado.
One producer familiar with Tarantino’s method and madness is Stacey Sher. She worked with him on “Pulp Fiction” and “Django Unchained,” and when she joined us at The Frame, she talked about working with Tarantino for years, the double-bind of being both a producer and a mom, and the challenges that arose from shooting on location at 9,600 feet above sea level.
Interview Highlights:
One of the things that's particular about this film is that a lot of it was shot on-location. You have a story that unfolds in a haberdashery during a blizzard in the mountains — most directors would say, "Let's spend a week or two on location, get the exterior stuff, and then we'll go to a soundstage where we can control the production more." Quentin does the exact opposite, right?
Yes, and there certainly were debates about that. But every dime we might have saved, we would have spent a hundredfold, because the unknown element was snow.
And, for a while, it was the unavailable element, right?
For most of the time, the unavailable element was snow. [laughs] Had we not had this entire haberdashery up there to film, we would have been shut down and wasting money, just sitting on location with nothing to do.
As a producer who's used to trying to control as much as possible, what is it like for you when there are things beyond your control? How'd you actually solve the problem?
Georgia Kacandes, our line producer, and I came up with an approach — we prioritized the scenes that we needed in snow, and we broke it down three ways. Literally, the schedule was written down on Post-its, so there was an advance for every scenario that we could go to, and at the bottom of the call sheet it said, "If it's sunny, if it's overcast, if it snows..."
If it was sunny, we went inside of Minnie's Haberdashery and we did stuff that used it like a soundstage. When it was overcast, we went in the stagecoach. And when it was snowing, everybody was prepared to hit the road.
We brought in these extraordinary consultants from Canada, one who had worked on "The Grey" and one who'd worked on all of Frank Marshall's snow movies. We were going into tremendously remote terrain, and if somebody drives a snowmobile across your set, the set is ruined — no amount of raking or redressing will help, fake snow doesn't match real snow, and it was really difficult.
We were at 9,600 ft. altitude — which is about 5,000 feet lower than the base camp at Everest — so we had these guys cut these incredible snowmobile paths in that took us up the back way and wouldn't interfere with our shot. They had sleds and teams, because that was the only way we could get our equipment up there. We also had oxygen, warming tents, and all kinds of things, because everything froze.
You're one of the most successful producers in Hollywood, and you're also a mom. As a person who's both female and a mother — and you're shooting on location — are there special challenges or issues that present themselves to you that men may not experience in the same way?
As a working mom, I could be up on the top of the mountain trying to deal with some crazy thing while my husband is on the other side of my house, and my children will call me on my cell phone to solve some kind of problem. [laughs] I'm like, "Have you talked to Daddy?" It's just kids' instincts.
A friend of mine said that working moms' lives are filled with guilt, and stay-at-home moms' lives are filled with regrets, so there's a double-bind if you're a woman doing this. But it was great for me — my son came to the premiere of "The Hateful Eight," and it's the first time he's ever been able to come to a premiere of a film I've made.
Because so much of your stuff is grown-up.
Yeah, and I made "Matilda" before my kids were born. But they also have a relationship with so many of the crewmembers — they love Greg Nicotero and Jake Garber from the special effects makeup team. And Greg, of course, is the executive producer of "The Walking Dead." So when my son can go to school with a zombie bite on his arm, it makes up for the fact that I didn't bake cookies that day.
The best and the worst of 2015's holiday music
The Frame is a little more than a year old, but we already have something of a holiday tradition — picking some of the best and worst of the year's holiday music.
Joining us this year is Sean Rameswaram, a producer and host at WNYC in New York. He's home for the holidays, so he and Frame host John Horn joined forces to pick some of the highs and lows of 2015's holiday music.
"8 Days of Hanukkah" — Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings: 8 Days of Hanukkah
So where are we starting, good or bad?
I think it's good! Different strokes for different folks, but this is the one Hanukkah song on my list. We're a little late — maybe a week and a half late, actually. But for all you people with a Hanukkah hangover, there's a new holiday music album from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.
It's got like a Tower of Power horn section. It's kinda old school!
Yeah, have you ever heard James Brown's "Funky Christmas Album"? It's like that, but about Hanukkah, which is huge. At one point she just starts going "dreidel dreidel dreidel," and I love it.
"Alone on Christmas Day" — Bill Murray & Phoenix
Alone On Christmas Day by Phoenix and Bill Murray
This is from that Sofia Coppola Netflix special, right? That wasn't so well-received...
[laughs] I watched it, and it was painful. It took me two tries to get through it. There are some salvageable moments at the end where George Clooney shows up and tries to sing. But this is a collaboration with Phoenix — actually talented human beings who can sing and write songs.
The special does have its saving graces — it turns out that Rashida Jones has a great singing voice, but George Clooney can't sing at all, which is really funny. And it's redeemable, since he's trying and it's a joke. When Murray collaborates with Phoenix, it's one of the better moments from the special. And it's a Beach Boys cover!
"Joy to the World (Goat Edition)" — Actionaid Sweden
Joy To The World by Actionaid Sweden
What about goats?
I'm going to end this with goats, naturally, because this is the Internet we're pulling from. A group called Actionaid Sweden put out an album of Christmas music, but instead of humans singing the Christmas songs we're familiar with, we have goats.
It sounds like a slaughterhouse, not a farm!
[laughs] No, these goats are being taken care of! Actionaid Sweden actually wants to highlight the role that goats play in solving poverty — their mission is to get goats for small farmers so they can till the land, and there's fertilizer, and goat cheese, and milk. Apparently goats can really turn your life around.
"The Christmas Song" — David Hasselhoff
The Christmas Song by David Hasselhoff
I'm going to end with a song that's set in a petting zoo, but it's five years old. It features the actor David Hasselhoff walking around a petting zoo with two terrified children on a bench. At one point, Hasselhoff goes to touch a rooster which flies away, and you'll hear some animals in the background.
Are those animals laughing at him? [laughs] This is crazy.