Cowboys Like Us: Director Luke Gilford on Found Families, Exploring Queer Rodeo Culture, and Providing a Beacon of Hope with National Anthem [Interview]

The art of photography and filmmaking can go hand and hand in a lot of ways, as both are a visual representation of human expressions meant to provoke a reaction, thus leading to a, hopefully, insightful conversation. Usually, the most effective voices behind the camera have something meaningful, impactful to say; some even making – their work as a window into the past or the soul of the artist’s presence as well as a glance into what they think the future could hold. This is the case for photographer turned writer-director Luke Gilford, whose directorial debut, National Anthem, finds the celebrated artist jumping behind the camera for his first film in a familiar territory to his childhood; the American rodeo.

Growing up in Evergreen, Colorado, Gilford was surrounded by rodeo culture, as his Dad was a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. He told me “my earliest memories are at the rodeo,” where he would spend time with his family, finding himself as a young man amongst all of the “sounds and smells of animals” as well as the “sweat and hairspray and rhinestones and dirt and blood.” Within this world also lies a fundamental truth too about the rampant conservatism and homophobia found in professional rodeo organizations, and for a young queer childlike Gilford, and many more around the world, it can be a scary place to hide in plain sight. But later in his life, Gilford discovered the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA), an organization built as a safe space for LGBTQIA+ queer rodeo communities in North America, and in finding this newfound family, he was able to create the foundation that led to his directorial debut. Alongside collaborator Damiani Books, Gilford released his first photography monograph called National Anthem: America’s Queer Rodeo in 2020; an extensive look at the evolving subculture of the queer rodeo scene he had become a part of, which was put together after a decade of stellar work featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue and various other publications.

Building off the experience of creating the monograph, Gilford transition his collection of photos into his first film, National Anthem, opening July 12 from LD Entertainment and Variance Films, which follows Dylan (Charlie Plummer), a 21-year-old working construction and any job he can to provide for his little brother and mother, as well as save enough money to buy an RV and leave his small town. But before he hits the road, he gets a job working on a ranch run by a community of queer ranchers and rodeo performers. This is where he meets Sky (Eve Lindley) and forms a romantic bond that sees his worlds colliding as he is becoming the person he is meant to be. The film is a romantic, tender, honest coming of age love story with remarkable performances from Plummer, Lindley, and the rest of the supporting cast, as well as gorgeous cinematography from Katelin Arizmendi. But above all else, the thing that shines brightest in National Anthem is Gilford’s singular artistic voice both on the page and behind the camera, making it not only the directorial debut of the year, but one of the best films of 2024 so far. In my conversation with Gilford, he spoke about his childhood memories, how they shape his work, creating National Anthem as his first film, shooting it in 17 days, overcoming any nerves from behind the camera, subverting western, queer tropes found in films, and his cinematic inspirations that shaped the film’s astonishing style.

Ryan McQuade: The film premiered last year at SXSW, where I was first able to see your wonderful film. It’s been over a year since that first screening, and so for you, how does it feel to finally be able to release this film to wide audiences across the country?

Luke Gilford: Oh my gosh. What a dream come true. I think that SXSW was such a special warm embrace from Austin, and filming the movie in the Southwest, being from the Southwest, it felt really special to take it there. But now it’s been really exciting to expand, and we just went to London and Raindance Film Festival and got the Best Debut Feature, and then Frameline, Critic’s Choice. So, the response both critically as well as from audiences has been just so exciting. And it feels like people really… A lot of folks have been saying, “We really need this movie right now.” So, for it to feel timely as well as kind of timeless has been exciting and inspiring to see that response.

RM: You grew up in Colorado and your dad was part of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and you spent your time a lot around rodeos growing up. Were there aspects from your childhood memories or experiences that you wanted to bring into National Anthem, not just as the film, but also the book of photos? And how was it – exploring an environment familiar to you based on your history growing up around rodeo culture?

LG: Yeah, I mean, all of my earliest memories are at the rodeo. And it’s this kind of magnetism to it too, and this wash for the senses, and really brings this sort of mythological side of America just out into the open air. There’s the pastel geographies and the courtship, and sounds and smells of animals, and sweat and hairspray and rhinestones and dirt and blood. And in a lot of ways it’s kind of a drag performance in and of itself. And I really came to love Western culture, but as I grew older, sort of felt pushed away by it for who I am.

And so it was such a revelation to find the subculture of the queer rodeo, and to be yourself and to create a safe space in a community gave me a lot of hope for a country that you could… That sort of aura of promise that we’re all told that you can kind of be whatever you want to be, but then it’s like, except if you’re this, except if you’re that, except if you’re this. So, the way that these people just so proudly wave the flag and sing the national anthem despite being the ones that are often pushed out of that narrative, it really was so inspiring. And to be able to then take back all those memories and things that I love so much from growing up has been just such a thrill.

RM: What was the point of emphasis you knew you wanted to take with your material and turn it into a film? Was there a specific image or moment when you were creating that project that you knew, you’re like, “I kind of want to explore this more and tap into filmmaking”? Has filmmaking been something that you’ve always been interested in one day doing?

LG: Oh, absolutely. I’m a huge fan of cinema, and actually I’m an only child, and so a lot of memories growing up, I was, once my parents would go to bed, as a horny teenager, I heard that you could maybe catch some nudity on the IFC Channel or Sundance Foreign Films.

RM: HBO or Showtime After Dark too.

LG: Yeah, exactly. (Both laugh) That sort of inadvertently led me to My Own Private Idaho and to Y tu mamá también and these films that completely opened my mind and changed my life as a teenager. I fell in love with cinema at that point. But coming from Evergreen, Colorado, it’s a tiny mountain town in the Rockies, I didn’t really have access to or really understand how filmmaking worked. But I was such a visual storyteller, visual person, and so I picked up a camera as just a way in. And then as I built my career as a photographer, people started asking me to make music videos for them and things like that. And that’s what really gave me the filmmaking bug. And I didn’t go to film school. I just taught myself through making things with friends and kind of finding my people within the filmmaking community. And it’s such a collaborative process. Photography can be very solitary. And I just love that collaboration and the way that you can create these little families through making a film.

So yeah, it was a huge dream. And while I was working on the book, I met so many people that I really saw myself reflected back in them, and these stories of heartbreak and loss, but also finding our people and healing these connections to our biological family and our chosen family. It was just such an inspiring story that I hadn’t really seen before and felt like so many of the films that I had seen that explore rural queerness, it’s been almost 20 years since Brokeback Mountain. And then of course Boys Don’t Cry, The Matthew Shepard Story, all of these are tragedies. And so being there at the rodeos though, it was just so much… And even when I’ve lived on communes for queer people in Tennessee and other places, there’s so much celebration and joy and beauty, and so I really wanted to make something that was more about that than leaning into the clichés that we’ve all heard before.

RM: Well, that’s what I love about the film is the subversion of a western, what a queer love story could be, showcasing a loving, accepting environment that Dylan has to navigate through. Obviously, it has its own complications, but how important was it to showcase the “found family” is no different than any other we’ve seen before?

LG: Well, I mean, I think a lot of my favorite quote-unquote “queer” films are just great stories and kind of transcend thatin a really beautiful way where it just becomes a love story instead of a queer story. And so that was something I really set out to do as well, was to make something that even if you don’t identify as queer, you can still relate to these themes of belonging and first love and finding our people. So that was one thing. But then I also really wanted to show that even one’s proximity to queerness, such as for the mom, the character of the mom, and for the younger brother, their proximity to queerness opens their mind and their heart up to new possibilities and ways of thinking and living beyond these confines and the boxes and labels that really can’t contain who any of us really are. And so that was also a major intention was to show that process being really important and beautiful for a lot of people. And it’s been one that I’ve experienced in my own family.

RM: You’ve said that Dylan isn’t inspired by one person but that anyone in the queer community can relate to his longing of wanting something more. At the same time, Dylan’s liberation with Sky, Carrie and his newfound family comes at the same time he is at crossroads with his normal, day to day life with his mother and brother, until both worlds collide, making it extremely relatable and grounded. Can you speak to Dylan’s worlds colliding together, and that the most unprepared times in our lives can be the best time to grow?

LG: I think that that’s the beauty of life is that it just sort of these moments happen that you never know when you’re going to start a whole new or uncover a whole new kind of multitude within ourselves that we didn’t know was there. And that’s the power of love too, that it cracks us open. And I really wanted to take that archetype of the cowboy that we’ve all grown up with, kind of symbolizing dominance and violence even, and sort of update that for today’s world.

And create a cowboy that is learning the language of the heart and is tender and has this feeling and is brave enough to get on a bull, but also brave enough to try drag as well. And to show that that’s beautiful and normal too for us to have that process of uncovering ourselves. So that was very much an important part of the process to show. And then I think, in terms of the timing of things too, I mean, I think that right now in the world we’re living in, it’s so important for us to see that someone who has that type of bravery to feel and to be empathetic and brave in a new way.

RM: That’s what I love about Carrie as a character, it’s that unfiltered honesty that you need on that journey as well too. I think that that character is brilliant, and Mason does a fantastic job in the film.

LG: Thank you. Mason is so phenomenal. I want to work with them again and again. But they just have so much soulfulness and they’re so grounded, and they really brought a lot. And the intention with that character was always to be sort of a counterpoint to the mother character and to sort of help provide that guidance that he’s not getting at home. And I think Mason just does that so brilliantly.

RM: You have these amazing sequences, some of the best of the year so far. You have where Dylan’s performing in drag, you have Sky lip-syncing to Dylan in the first half of the film. You have the Walmart sequence. Also, your characters performing are in a rodeo, riding a bull, or riding a horse in competition. And so, what was it like preparing those moments with your actors and the preparations for that? I mean, personally for me, Luke, I would be terrified to ride a bull. But did you feel any nerves from Charlie or Eve or the cast to jump into the fire there, of rodeo life?

LG: We had no choice. We shot the film in 17 days.

RM: Oh, wow.

LG: There was no time to kind of slow down. Our prep was very, very short as well, so major props to our cast and our crew for making that schedule happen. There are several key scenes that we just had to cut from the script in order to make the schedule work, and I’m so grateful that the film even makes sense at this point. But yeah, Charlie got on a bull the very first day of shooting. I mean, talk about brave, but he was way more scared to do drag.

RM: Really?

LG: Yeah, he was terrified. (Both laugh) He has so much respect for the art form, and his brother’s a huge fan of Drag Race and everything, so Charlie was just so nervous to mess that up. And his brother was there on set, Charlie flew him out for that day, and for the first couple takes, he’s like, “James, what do you think?” And his brother’s just like, “Eh, it was okay.” Charlie’s so much more nervous and scared. And so yeah, it was really, really heartwarming to see that that meant so much more to him than even the rodeo stuff, which I think would be so much more terrifying for most people. But yeah, also my process of becoming part of the community, the rodeo community, was very much reflected in the cast and crew, where we all sort of became part of it. And a lot of times they didn’t even know we were shooting because it just felt like everyone was hanging out and having fun.

And so they were very warm on both sides. And I think also just a lot of the tenderness you feel in the film was so much a part of just our time spent together and building that trust and intimacy. And I think you can feel it. I think the minimal time we did have in prep was really just the actors coming over to my house, and with my producer Ben Hannon, we were cooking them dinner and hanging out with them. And Ben and I have a very platonic but intimate friendship where we’re very touchy-feely. We were just showing the actors through our own relationship how the House of Splendor really functions and what feels natural within that community. They sort of modeled that after us, and it was very much just an organic process of us all. And so much of the cast now, they still hang out all the time. So, it really was, I think, in a lot of ways blending script with documentary.

RM: With National Anthem, you have created such a confident, accepting world of characters, and it really starts with your work with the actors, like you’re talking about. You had worked with Charlie before on a photo shoot. Could you talk about the importance of how that familiarity helped you in working with him as an actor for the film? Also, what was it like crafting these characters with your ensemble, especially with Eve as Sky, and allowing her to find complexity and richness within her character?

LG: Well, thank you so much for that compliment. Coming from a photo background, I think that’s always a bit of an insecurity too, is like, can you get those authentic and moving performances? Because people are often so just focused on the image. And obviously I wanted to make a beautiful, visually beautiful film, but it was also so important for me to focus on performances. And so with Charlie, I had photographed him in 2018 for a young actor’s portfolio, and we just really bonded. I could tell that he was so soulful and wise beyond his years, and we just immediately had a sense of ease with each other.

And I happened to have just started writing the script around that time, and they put him in a western shirt for the shoot, and it just struck me so much, “Holy shit, it’s Dylan.” And he looked like a young River Phoenix, and My Own Private Idaho, as I mentioned, means a lot to me. And so, we started talking about that, and he loves that movie too. We just had a connection, and he was always in my mind as a dream casting, but I never thought it could be possible, to be honest. And so then when we did get the script to him and he really connected to it, we talked for hours, and it was so clear that we were on the same page about the type of film and the tone that we wanted to create together.

Eve came through Zackary Drucker, who’s one of our producers, incredible artist, actress, director, producer, she’s trans, and she just really knows so many talented trans actors out there. And so, she suggested that I meet Eve. She hadn’t done much at the time, and immediately I was struck by her as well. She was living in New York though, and so that process was interesting in bringing her down to New Mexico and just really trying to show her what Sky’s life is like, of living on a ranch and learning to horseback ride. And also, I think for a lot of people who live in New York, there’s this sort of hardness that can happen. And I think that was part of the process for her was softening and bringing that sunshine, that Sky’s character really does this, sort of melts away Dylan’s defenses.

RM: You mentioned My Private Idaho as sort of a big film for you, but I’m curious, were there certain films that you and your cinematographer looked to for inspiration for the look and style of National Anthem?

LG: Yeah, Kate Arizmendi, I mean, she’s brilliant.

RM: Incredible work.

LG: I love her so much. And just there’s so much respect between the two of us. I’m a huge fan of hers. She’s a huge fan of mine. It was a great place to start that relationship with a cinematographer because I had a very specific look to it that I had created with my book first. So that’s even why we used that format of 1.66:1, because it’s the closest connection to the 4×5 format for the photography. So even things like that where she just really wanted to maintain the connection to the source material of the book.

And I would say the main reference point for both of us is Paris, Texas. We both are such huge fans of that film, even just conceptually as a Western, but where the tragedy is not of the nation or the state, but it’s of personal scale. And I really wanted to make a Western for our new world that is more of a spiritual journey for the character, and emotional journey. But to capture these wide-open poetic landscapes that sort of reflect the emotional landscapes of the character, and then very intimate close-up shots with the characters as well. And kind of oscillating between those two to help tell the story, and the very vibrant colors. I feel like so many independent films are so de-saturated or dark, and I wanted something that was joyful and that showed the beauty of this country. And we’re shooting on 35-millimeter film. We have to really show that scale and those colors and details. So yeah, we were very much in each other’s heads.

RM: Lastly, you’ve talked about this in other interviews before, but I was wondering if you can speak again to the importance of a movie like this coming out right before the election, just as Pride Month is coming to an end, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community might seem that the world around them, especially in red states, can feel terrifying to them. What is your message for them as they might still be trying to find themselves and find this movie along their journey?

LG:  Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s so interesting that the radical right has really taken the symbol of the flag as their own and that they’re excluding so many people from that. And the patriotism now is a symbol of hatred. But that’s what’s so inspiring to me about this community that we celebrate in the film, where they take the flag and they take patriotism and they say, “No, this is my country too. I belong here as well.” I think queer and trans bodies are very much threatened and preyed upon and inflicted just brutal, dehumanizing violence every single day.

And this film does not take away from that, but it represents a beacon of hope that safe spaces do still exist and hope for more of that safety in this world. We’ve been creating safe spaces since the dawn of time, and we will continue to do so. Survival just does not always have to be through violence, though, and I think that that acceptance and humanity and freedom really do still exist, even in these really scary times. So, I hope that it is hopeful and inspiring for people to go out there and keep fighting for that freedom.

RM: It’s a very hopeful film. It’s one of my favorites of the year. Luke, thank you so much for talking with me about it.

LG: Ryan, such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

National Anthem opens in U.S. theaters in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Austin this Friday, July 12 and wide on Friday, July 19 from LD Entertainment and Variance Films.