Courtesy of Greg Lockard and Comixology, AIPT can share ten influences on Trick Pony. A new original graphic novel by writer Greg Lockard, Trick Pony is now available digitally. Trick Pony is the follow-up to Lockard’s GLAAD award-nominated debut original graphic novel Liebestrasse.
Trick Pony is about a washed-up gay rodeo star who embarks on a road trip that will force him to face his past and present.
Without further ado, check out Lockard’s ten film influences!
TEN FILM INFLUENCES ON TRICK PONY
By Writer Greg Lockard
The main character of Trick Pony, Jimmy Thomas, is a romantic to his core and dreams of going to Hollywood to be a stunt rider. Fittingly, here are 10 films that greatly influenced the creation of this graphic novel.
THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN (1979) – this film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda gave me the initial spark of this story 15 years ago. Robert Redford is a rodeo star past his prime and he steals his horse and rides out into the desert followed by Jane Fonda’s journalist character. Aside from the starting point, Redford’s character wears a brilliant purple and green outfit with actual light bulbs installed upon it for the ultimate sparkly stage presence. We dressed Jimmy in a similarly fashioned suit modeled after this look (and the classic country western suits of Nudie Cohn).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079100/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) is a wonderful film and the first thing anyone thinks of when you say “gay cowboy story.” But if anything, I wanted Trick Pony to subvert the fate of Jack’s character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Also, a rodeo star, his tormented closeted life and tragic death are the exact opposite of what I aspire for the characters in the world of Trick Pony, and the fantasy I hold for our reality in contemporary America.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388795/
GIANT (1956) stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean and represents that big widescreen view of the American West before the counterculture of the 60s and 70s started a reexamination. Imagining a GIANT without Rock Hudson in the closet and terrible Mexican segregation and treatment is part of the core influence that Trick Pony emerged from.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049261/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
RED RIVER (1948) is another classic Western that stars John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. It’s documented by film and queer historians that Clift was harshly bullied by Wayne and others on the set (and elsewhere throughout his career). Regardless of his true sexuality and personal labels, “othering” Montgomery Clift is a tragic product of the toxic masculinity that permeates much of the culture around this genre. This film does grapple with those themes directly in the differences between John Wayne’s character and his “adopted son,” Matthew Garth (played by Clift). There’s plenty of homoeroticism, too! Cherry Valance and Matt Garth have a particularly fun exchange that deescalates into them comparing guns and admiring each other’s skills with the weapons.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040724/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991) is not a Western but is also highly influential in the ideation of Trick Pony. A forever favorite film of mine, Gus Van Sant takes the road trip movie and combines disparate material to make a fabulously queer hallucinatory adventure for Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix’s dreamy characters. Turning “tricks” as street hustlers, the characters of Mike and Scott start in Portland and make their way to Idaho and Rome (!!!) in a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, as well as Henry V that were blended in early drafts by Van Sant’s use of William S. Burroughs “cut-up technique” which feels very close to how all these influences were re-configured in my heart for this graphic novel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102494/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
THE MISFITS (1961) – Montgomery Clift was my main visual reference for co-creator/artist Anna David and this film is the reason. Clift plays a rodeo-riding hitch-hiking dreamer that reminds me so much of my paternal grandfather. There’s a quick scene of him calling his mother on a pay-phone that highlights Arthur Miller’s script so wonderfully… and a high-camp scene with Marilyn Monroe entertaining an entire saloon with a simple display of her prowess with a paddle ball… and a fabulous high-drama character building from all the actors. This film is one that delights with every viewing and greatly influenced Trick Pony in tone.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055184/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
EL TOPO (1970) / HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)- both films by Alejandro Jodorowsky are massive achievements in cinema and very squarely a product of their time and their writer/director/actor. Jimmy’s journey needed a touch of acid and these two films are gorgeously surreal and cited as the beginnings of the Acid Western subgenre, which Trick Pony attempts to queer. With only sex-positivity and balancing of heteronormative couplings.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067866/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) / RETURN TO OZ (1985) – the simple road trip structure of Trick Pony shadows The Wizard of Oz very purposefully. It’s a shorthand of the Hero’s Journey that works very well. Borrowing visual references from the film version of children’s fantasy books are very frequently co-opted by the LGBTQIA community. It offers another layer to the hallucinatory experience of Jimmy, who much like Dorothy Gale, is really meeting these fantastic and unbelievable characters and situations in the same reality as the readers/viewers. In THE RETURN TO OZ, Dorothy begins the story in an abusive psychiatric hospital– an attempt to “heal” her from these “nightmares.” The parallels to the LGBTQIA community are easy and obvious– Dorothy’s found family from her adventures in Oz are real and true. I wanted the characters and situations in TRICK PONY to all have the same effect on the queer people dreaming and singing along to Wizard of Oz for generations: wherever you are on your journey or road through life… you can be home and accepted as you are and for who you are.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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