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Q: You already know a lot about this story, being a Western historian in your own right. But did you know much about Arabia at that time?
Fusco: No. In many ways, that was a real blessing. As a writer, as a creative artist& I got the story, and [thought] this can really be fun. Arabia, 1890. I studied travel narratives, looked at some of the stuff that went on, you know, just true adventure. And so as my wife had said to me at the outset of this& Id been letting it steep for so long, and I told her that I was finally going to write HIDALGO. She knew the name right away; wed even named one of our horses Hidalgo a Paint horse. She knew it was a passion, but she said, So youre really going to do it now? I said, Yep. Im going to do it on spec. And she said, I have serious concerns. I said, Why?, and she said, Well, youve got a guy, youve got a horse, and youve got 3,000 miles of sand. And thats basically what you know of the story. What are you going to do? I said, Im going to have fun with it. He was a real guy, I have this information that supports the race, and it never felt like I was doing the Battle of Little Big Horn, or an event where we have fairly well-documented beats along the way. I had no other choice, really.
Q: Im wondering about the ending of the movie did Frank Hopkins really go out and buy the herd of doomed mustangs?
Fusco: Yes.
Q: So thats something you read, that he actually took the prize money and bought those horses?
Fusco: No not that, specifically. He was dedicated to using his winnings from different races, domestic races, to buying what horses he could from the government slaughter programs. That was one of his passions, one of the things he wrote about and it was why he did endurance racing in the first place. He was one of the early proponents of mustang preservation. He felt he had to prove their utilitarian merits, in a way. He believed they were the greatest endurance horses in the world. He used them as a dispatch rider. He said, If I can convince other horsemen of that, maybe theyll be viewed as worth saving.
Q: Did he own that land he turned the horses out on? It wasnt clear in the movie, but it seemed to me if he set those mustangs loose they could just be rounded up by the government again later on.
Fusco: It was reservation land. It was the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. [For the movie] we had one of my Lakota relations, Sonny hes a medicine man playing a role, speaking Lakota with Viggo [Mortensen, who plays Hopkins]. So he set the herds free on the vast Pine Ridge reservation.
Q: Are you part Lakota?
Fusco: No. I was adopted into a Lakota family, and I speak the language.
Q: How long did it take you from the time you told your wife about this, till you finished writing it?
Fusco: At that point, it kind of steeped for a long time. It was kind of the standard three or four months to turn a draft in.
Q: Can you expand a bit on your journey as a screenwriter for HIDALGO?
Fusco: Doing the first act was just like breathing for me. Details of Wounded Knee and everything; I mean, Id done interviews with elders of& um, whose parents were survivors. I didnt even need to go back and reference that. But I knew I had to do a lot of prep work for the Arabian aspect of it because even today, to many people its an exotic world there. 1890, it was incredibly exotic and dangerous in many ways. So I drew on travel narratives . I researched every travel narrative from the period that I could find, including Sir Richard Burtons narrative, which is incredible. I never really knew much about that I knew Arabian Nights, but this was his documented narrative. Addison, the works of Addison, and the works of Blunt& people who traveled then in Arabia and documented what they saw. At times, you feel like it is Arabian Nights its so& you know. The effect I wanted to get was kind of a heros journey of leaving this American West at the end of The West, which he was inadvertently tied to at the decimation of his mothers people. We take what he know about him, put those together, and hypothetically its there. Now he enters this other planet. Its the world of 1890 Arabia. So, you know, studying all these narratives. I [also] worked with an advisor, an Iraqi scholar and advisor and had him go through it with me.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the timing of this? I know you started the project before 9/11 but now people are calling it Pro-American how do you react to that?
Fusco: Its bizarre, because I finished the first draft two years prior to those events. It never entered the picture. I considered that, after. Soon after, I thought: What happens to this movie? What does this movie become now? I said to someone recently, In no way is it a polemic or a metaphor. It never entered my mind. [I thought] Wait a minute, dont tell me what metaphors to bring to my movie. People are going to see what theyre going to see but the one thing that would be a shame is to really& there are those types out there who want to say, This is jingoistic! Some Arab newspaper had written, Here we go: A cowboy, an American cowboy& I think they even said he was from Texas, which isnt true, but they said, Riding roughshod over the hostile Middle East, and this is a clear metaphor for U.S. invasion and victory. And they started analyzing lines and saying, This means this, and my house is always open to you means come on in and invade us& Its gotten intense at times.
Q: Why are critics saying that HIDALGO is revisionist history?
Fusco: Its really remarkable, but from what I know and Im pretty darn close to this thing thats its one guy. Its all one guy. And it started about a week before we wrapped production. He launched an attack on [the movie] from every possible angle; I was mystified, because he had a very colorful Irish name and belonged to a distance horse riding association. I thought, Oh, OK. Theyre advocates of the Arabian horse. Im starting to see something here. As we researched, we found out that he lived in Afghanistan for many years and converted to Islam.
Q: So its not just the Arabian horse issue?
Fusco: Thats also a big part of it. Again, just like as the movie shows, the horses are part of the Koran. The Profits five mares, you know, are at the heart of this. So its all entwined. He pledged he would do this&
Q: Pledged he would do what?
Fusco: Go after the movie, destroy the movie. Unfortunately, it offended his religion. The Arabian horse / mustang issue goes back a long way. [Pats hardcover book sitting on the table before him] When I got here earlier today, someone gave me this book. Ive been looking for an original copy for years. I have some copies of the writing, but this is from 1942 and its called The Blood of the Arab. Its considered still today to be the bible on Arabian horse breeding, written by the president of the Arabian Horse Registry. He bred these horses and traveled extensively to Arabia. Now, if there was anyone in the world who had an interest in ignoring the Hopkins story, it would be this guy. He dedicates two chapters to Frank Hopkins, the race, and Hidalgo in here. One of the problems for certain people is that he suggests that Hidalgo bred onto Arabian mares while was there. That gets bloody in the horse world because now youre saying that theres mustang genes in this line that goes back to& you know. It goes pretty deep. And thats whats at the heart of this whole thing, and to this mans credit Ive never seen anyone so brilliant at manipulating historians, the press, and launching such a campaign. Its been phenomenal.
Q: Is the first time in a film weve seen Wounded Knee reenacted?
Fusco: Yes. And that was important to me. Ive considered doing Wounded Knee as a film entirely. In my film Thunderheart, we have flashbacks and images, but& I was really close to an elder named Grandpa Bill Horncloud and his father was a survivor who ran from the massacre and hid in the badlands. I got a straight pass-down oral history of Wounded Knee. The incident with Black Coyote, the deaf warrior and the gun going off [as depicted in Hidalgo], and I cross referenced it with other history in factoring the shooting of it. We had the military historian, I was going by the Lakota history, and we came to a happy medium to kind of reenact what would have happened. One of the exciting things about that is, we, because of my relationship to Pine Ridge, we were able to seek out and bring in actual descendants of Wounded Knee survivors. They played ghost dancers, and in order to do the ghost dance you cant reenact it, you have to perform it. We had a medicine man and he did a blessing. We had to really be careful with it, and it was unbelievable to talk to some of the elders. I remember one old woman there, and she kept looking up at the soldiers there and she was going, [sings in Lakota]. She said, You know, its making me sick. The medicine man did a blessing in the beginning, and he said, [speaks in Lakota] Look over us, and give us your permission to do this dance, and to reenact this painful episode in our history. When we finished, we had this wind come up. And I swore it was going to blow the cameras off the set and take down every tipi we had erected. It just came out of nowhere. The Lakota people turned toward the wind, their hair flying, and it was just like this waiting period and [it went away]. In the 7th Cavalry reenactment group, we had actual descendents of soldiers who had been there that day. I was wandering between camps Joe [Johnston, the director] kept the camps separated and at one point, he gave the soldiers instructions, said, Were rolling, I want you to just start on your marks as we practiced for the last few days, down into the camp. They dont know youre coming. The reactions from some of these people, it was just like genetic, you know, this echo. Afterwards, the soldier descendents and the [Native American] descendants all got together and we did a ceremony there, and& it was actually an honoring ceremony. They did an honoring dance, and people from both camps got what was sort of a catharsis.
Q: Writers arent usually on the set much. How much did Joe involve you?
Fusco: I think if the director sees that the writer is a resource for the material, I dont think its in his best interest to ostracize him from the project. Joe and I really hit it off. I did not go to North Africa, but I was on the U.S. set all the time. I was writing at home during the Morocco period. It was really great; Joe and I were able to work really well together.
Q: Have you seen the completed movie?
Fusco: Yeah. I havent seen it in awhile, though. Ive seen pretty close to the final cut. I was really pleased. I think Joe shot the script and did a great job of working with the tone in this fine line. And these issues were talking about, the kind of Arabian Nights feel that actually resonates from these travel narratives and, um, its tricky to walk that line, but he did a really great job.
Q: What did you think of the casting of Viggo?
Fusco: I think it was perfect. Its one of those things that once its done, no matter hard you try you cant re-cast it in your mind. He became the character. People say that all the time, but with Viggo its really true. And all that stuff they say, you know, the No-ego Viggo hes not a star, hes an actor that is so true. Hes such a class act. I worked with him 12 years ago on horses, we rode together down by the Mexico border in Arizona while working on Young Guns 2. He played a small role [in which] he rides along with Billy Peterson, who played Pat Garret. He plays John W. Poe, a historical bounty hunter who pursued Billy the Kid. We had all these young actors playing historical figures and I had all this research available. But it was Viggo who had this tiny little role, who just kept coming to me and saying [things like], You know, I was doing some research and copper was really big at that time and they were making copper rifle scopes. I think that Poe wouldve made his own scope, you know, as a bounty hunter to personalize his tool of the trade. Then he would come back and say, What was Poes relationship with John Chisum? Did he have any cattle interests&? So when I heard that he was interested in the role [of Hopkins] I anticipated that kind of commitment to research and sure enough, days after he was cast he called me and said, Who do you know on Pine Ridge reservation and can I go there? Within a week he was out with these Lakota horsemen and riding with them, and on a long ride to Wounded Knee.
Q: At what point did you decide to write the script as sort of an ensemble piece with all of these colorful supporting characters?
Fusco: Its like a sporting event. We know that they had these truck camps along the way and its just a rich stage for interesting characters. Many of them are inspired from actual travel narratives. The wandering goat herder whos being punished, and Jaffa the Abyssinian slave& you know, their style of speaking and [such]. Its just a rich treasure-trove of characters, and I knew early on as my wife said, A guy and his horse and sand other than the first act where we know these people [in the West], we dont know who was there [in Arabia].
Q: Was Lawrence of Arabia an inspiration? Did you watch it at all?
Fusco: I did not. I havent seen it in years. But Im sure all these things are [mentally] downloaded throughout your life and I was so thrilled that Omar [Sharif] wanted to do it, and to me, having people ask What about sensitivity to the culture? and having Omar say, I love this character, was real validation. He brings so much life to it. His little character quirk of reading Old West dime novels, he really enjoyed that. At that time, those Wild West Shows were traveling to Paris, you know, performing around the world. These dime novels and programs were circulating and this young country had all these quirks and was a world of adventure. They loved firearms over there [in the Middle East] the idea of a horse culture, and this cowboy, Wild Bill& [laughs].
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