Hot New Conservative Film Will Save You From Mexicans, Why Not

Were you lying around this morning, wallowing in your own filth and despair, wishing that a movie would come along and yell at you about how the American government has failed to secure the borders and one man will have to save us all and Take Matters Into His Own Hands? Would you like everyone in the movie to complain about how the government makes them pay taxes but won't enforce the law? How about a cast of flinty-eyed white guys who have seen too many Clint Eastwood films squinting and menacingly mumbling? Good news! Your dream movie is here.

Howzabout we learn more about this film by reading the breathless press release masquerading as a news story over at Truth Revolt? 

The Arroyo is a modern western that takes an unflinching look at the reality of the toll the drug trade is taking on American ranchers along the Arizonan border. It follows rancher Jim Weatherford (Kenny Maines), who after finding a dead body on his land, decides to take measures into his own hands and block the coyotes (human and drug traffickers) from crossing his land. When the head of the cartel sends in hit-man, Torres (David Armendariz), to take care of the problem, the result is a modern day O.K. Corral.

Truth Revolt is probably extra excited about this thing because the film's director, the auteur, the visionary, the man with the plan, Jeremy Boreing, also just happens to be managing editor of Truth Revolt. Vertical synergy!

So this movie is not about the toll the drug trade or human trafficking takes upon people who are actually trafficked or people whose only choice is to be a drug mule because the cartels will otherwise murder their entire family. Haha silly, those are brown people and this does not look to be a movie about brown people, because this is a movie about how it is hard out there for a rancher, son, and how he will fix what the government can't, because he has Grit and Determination on his side and he will singlehandedly stop drug trafficking probably.

This movie also stars no one you have ever heard of, since the director apparently just found random dudes in Lubbock and threw them on horses and gave them cowboy hats.

[W]ith Maines making his appearance on horseback, wearing a white hat, spotting the film’s hero is easy. [...]

Boreing wanted Maines to make his entrance on horseback “only because I wanted to introduce the film as a modern western. I wasn’t thinking about possible cliches.” Neither was Maines. In fact, while Maines was born and raised in West Texas, he said, “I never even owned a (cowboy) hat until filming started. Now I can actually wear one when I sing. ... I guess white is just my color. I didn’t really think about it.”

Boreing envisioned Weatherford being “a natural on horseback.” Asked how many years he has been riding, Maines said, “I’ve been on horses a few times in my life and never knew what the heck I was doing.

Thank god the filmmaker wasn't thinking about Western movie cliches when he had horseback-riding cowboy hat-wearing men form the backbone of his Western movie! Brokeback Mountain this ain't, pal.

We should definitely thank our lucky stars or shake our fists at the sky over the fact that this thing actually got made, because the filming was completely mishap-filled. 

Boreing said that “swarms of bees destroyed the audio” on several takes.

Crew members were bitten by fire ants, and everyone worked to the point of exhaustion as summer temperatures soared to more than 100 degrees. [...]

West Texas had been suffering long drought conditions when Weatherford needed to burn a Trophy Tree. Boreing said, “It was sheer luck that we got permission to burn the only tree that could be burned.”

We tried to figure out what the hell a Trophy Tree is, but we still don't know and also too we are totally fixated by the fire ants and the swarms of bees. SWARMS OF BEES. If we were trying to do our job and we were swarmed by bees in such a fashion that it stopped us from doing a critical part of our jobs, we would go home. But we do not have a squinty-eyed rough-hewn hard-fought vision of America because of how we are lazy liberal bloggers. We're OK with this, truly, because then we can generally work without anything trying to sting or devour us, which is a huge upside.

[ Truth Revolt / Lubbock Online ]