He can rope a cow in a snowstorm and perform a caesarean with a penknife. Buck Brannaman tells Catherine Shoard why city folk are galloping to see his new documentary
Buck Brannaman is aware he has enormous hands. But as befits the "Zen master of the horse world", he's pretty modest about them. "Perhaps it's just that people in Britain don't have very big hands," says the wrangler who has been tossed off just about every troubled steed from Montana to Idaho. "I've shook hands with a lot of guys today and I was thinking, 'Well, mine just covers yours up completely.'"
It's not just the warm swaddle of those big mitts that makes a meeting with the original horse whisperer (the man who turned fixing abused and injured animals into an art form) feel like a soothing dose of ketamine. It's also the easy formality with which he wears his Stetson, the fleeciness of his lumberjack cardie, the gentle beam of his cobalt eyes. It's plain lulling.
In the 1998 film The Horse Whisperer, based on the book by Nicholas Evans that was inspired by Brannaman, Robert Redford is a blowdried smoothie, stroking colts, flashing his gnashers, rehabilitating teen rider Scarlett Johansson – and her horse – after a riding accident cost her a leg. But audiences can now see the real thing thanks to Buck, a quiet, moving documentary about Brannaman that had crowds braying with approval at the Sundance festival last year.
Why does he think Buck strikes such a chord? "It moves your spirit even if you're not a horse person. Even in urban environments, it was so well received it almost makes you feel optimistic about humans." In Brannaman parlance, that's high praise: the ranch clinics he runs in the US, he says, are more about helping horses with people problems than vice versa.
"We were showing the film in New York and, obviously, I'm really out of my element there. But it was neat for me to learn that we're not so different – even though none of those people had ever been on a ranch, or probably within 10 feet of a horse, or more than a mile from where they were born. They've spent their whole life surrounded by concrete! They think they're pretty worldly, but I just think they've been living in a cave."
Buck is sick of the assumption that rural folk have more restricted horizons, but what especially gets his goat is the use of the word "cowboys" to denote amateurs. "People will use the term like it's a nasty name, when it's actually a noble and sophisticated and dangerous way to make a living. It takes less time to become a brain surgeon than it does to become a good cowboy."
The worst offenders are "self-appointed intellectuals who would be the first to condemn someone for saying something more mainstream prejudicial. They think we eat raw meat and drag women around by their hair. I asked someone a few years ago, 'If you think a cowboy is such an ignorant primitive, then why is it that in a snowstorm he can rope a cow in the middle of the pasture and then, with his pocket knife and needle and thread, perform a caesarean? It's a very complicated procedure: sewing up the uterus and all the muscles and everything that's connected." So what did they say? "They were stunned. They said, 'They do caesareans with a pocket knife?' I said, 'All the time, man, yeah.'"
Buck the documentary is the work of debut film-maker Cindy Meehl, who was so struck by Brannaman while on one of his retreats that she ditched her career as an artist and fashion designer to learn the tricks of the trade. Her film traces Brannaman's background: born in Wisconsin 50 years ago, he was badly beaten by his father until a gym teacher spotted the welts on his back; he was moved to the care of a foster family, who were long-time horse-lovers. With them, Buck discovered an affinity with the beasts that has informed both his career and his philosophy. "Horses don't care whether you're rich or poor, attractive or not, big or small, what colour you are. The horse has no prejudice and neither do I. The horse will respond to you based on how you make him feel. Horses don't have greed, spite, hate, jealousy, envy."
He believes he can read humans almost as well. "That is my living – to assess a person so I can help. You get dialled into someone pretty fast." It must be quite a responsibility. "Always. You're put in a powerful position being the teacher at the clinic, the one with the microphone. You don't wanna hurt someone's feelings. But you need to be effective. And there are some people who have a hide about that thick" – he stretches those jumbo digits – "and then you'll have someone whose hide is so thin you can see right through it."
The success of Buck has led to Brannaman running into the occasional celebrity as he promotes it. "Some you meet and you're real pleased. You think, 'Wow, that's cool.' But others you'll think, 'Oh, kinda sorry I met you, cos I really liked you before.' But people I meet who are disappointing, well, I just block 'em out. It's like they don't even exist to me any more. It's like, 'Yeah, OK, you just became a ghost.'" He smiles: totally delightful and a tiny bit frightening.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/29/buck-horse-whisperer-interview
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