This convergence of New York actors and authentic Great Plains characters produced some unexpected spin-offs and helped cement enduring friendships. The interaction that followed only deepened the artists’ interest in riding and in Western lore. Indeed, this is a story about those connections and their reverberations decades later.įor example, Duvall and Caan were already horse and Old West aficionados when they were befriended by a couple of Nebraska ranch-rodeo families, the Petersons and Haythorns. The experience of working together on the early Coppola film forged relationships that extended well beyond that project and its small circle of cast and crew. After his star-making performance as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather Caan later teamed up with Coppola for the director’s Gardens of Stone.Īmong Rain People’s principals, the most established by far then was Knight, already a two-time Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee (for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth). The actor went on to appear in Coppola’s first two Godfather pictures as well as The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. Duvall starred in the first feature Lucas made, the science fiction thriller THX-1138. Rain People was not the last time the two actors collaborated with the filmmakers. The pair’s work in Coppola’s The Godfather elevated them to A-list status. Caan’s breakthrough role came two years later in the made-for-television sensation Brian’s Song (1970). Though they enjoyed solid reputations, none were household names yet. Heading the cast were Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall. Rain People cinematographer Bill Butler, who went on to lens The Conversation for Coppola and such projects as One Few Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws and The Thorn Birds, was the director of photography. Lucas first made it big with the surprise hit American Graffiti, which touched off the ’50s nostalgia craze, before assuring his enduring place in the industry with the Star Wars franchise that made sci-fi big business. Coppola ascended to the top with the success of The Godfather I and II. Within a few years the filmmakers helped usher in the The New Hollywood through their own American Zoetrope studio and their work for established studios. With their long hair and film school pedigree they were viewed as interlopers and rebels. The two young men were obscure but promising figures in a changing industry. With no particular destination in mind except escape she gets entangled with two men before returning home.Ĭoppola’s creative team for this road movie included another future film scion in George Lucas, his then-protege who served as production associate and also shot the documentary The Making of The Rain People. He came as the producer-writer-director of The Rain People, a small, low-budget drama about a disenchanted East Coast housewife who, upon discovering she’s pregnant, flees the conventional trappings of suburban homemaking by taking a solo car trip south, then north and finally west. None other than future film legend Francis Ford Coppola led this Hollywood caravan. in the far southwest reaches of the state in the summer of 1968. Film Connections: How a 1968 convergence of future cinema greats in Ogallala, Nebraska resulted in multiple films and enduring relationshipsįrom the melting pot of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Shirley Knight, Robert Duvall, James Caan and two ranch-rodeo families came “The Rain People,” “We’re Not the Jet Set” and moreĪn In-Progress Story and Film Event ProjectĪn unlikely confluence of remarkable cinema talents descended on the dusty backroads of Ogallala, Neb.
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