Western gives shot in arm to Alberta

Calgary’s film industry will get a boost this fall when a dark western starring Scott Speedman and Kris Kristofferson rides to town for a four-week shoot.

Calgary’s Nomadic Pictures will co-produce The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, a violent western about a woman trying to bring her lover — a murdered outlaw — home for burial.

Speedman, who plays the title character in flashbacks, heads an eclectic cast that includes country singers Dwight Yoakam and Kristofferson, the Station Agent’s Peter Dinklage, Beverley Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley, Deadwood’s W. Earl Brown and NCIS’s Cote de Pablo.

Lizzy Caplan — who last appeared in the horror hit Cloverfield — will play the main character.

“We’ve really taken the time to get this cast,” said Chad Oakes of Nomadic Pictures. “It’s eclectic and unique — it’s not a traditional western. It takes place in 1910 and it has all the western elements. Yet, it could be construed as almost contemporary. It’s really Sam Peckinpah meets Quentin Tarantino.”

Oakes would not say what the budget of the film is, except to say it was a “low-to-medium” budgeted indie film. Nevertheless, it will employ more than 100 crew members, 47 actors and hundreds of extras during the four-week shoot.

Scenes are scheduled to be filmed in the badlands of Drumheller, Longview and in the Currie Barracks in Calgary. The production will also use some of the same locations northwest of Calgary used in the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which starred Brad Pitt. Principal photography is scheduled to start Sept. 2.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride will be directed by renowned documentary filmmaker Tiller Russell and co-produced by Lock & Load Pictures of Austin, Texas.

Caplan plays a young woman who brings Ransom Pride (Speedman) back to Glory, Texas, for a burial.

Along the way, she is menaced by Yoakam’s murderous reverend, Kristofferson’s “savage outlaw,” and bounty hunters played by Brown and Priestley. Dinklage plays a shotgun-wielding dwarf who protects the woman alongside Ransom’s younger brother (played by Jon Foster of Door in the Floor.) Most of the action is meant to take place on the Texas-Mexican border.

Luke Azevedo, Calgary’s commissioner of film, television and creative industries, says The Last Rites of Ransom Pride should serve as a reminder to filmmakers of Calgary’s talented crews and diverse landscape, particularly for westerns.

“One of the the big selling features for Alberta, and our jurisdiction specifically, is that within a three-hour distance from Calgary or Edmonton you have two cities of a million people, you have the badlands, you have the Prairies, you have the mountains.”

Nomadic Pictures co-produced 2004’s Emmy-winning Broken Trail, which starred Robert Duvall and was shot in and around Calgary.