Steve Seger: John, welcome to the show.
John: Thanks for having me, Steve. yeah, no looking forward to our for to our dialogue.
Steve Seger: yeah, this will be cool. And as as usual, I'm gonna kick things off with a warm-up round. I've refrained from calling it a rapid fire round because it never ends up being rapid and I always have weird follow-ups that I ask. but let's jump in. first one,
John: Yeah.
Steve Seger: sunrise or sunset.
John: so all my life I'd say sunrise, you know, you get up and you get a start your day and, you know, get everything done that you're looking forward to getting done. I suppose at sixty four years old I probably oughta start appreciating sunsets more. yeah, but no sunrise. I like, you know, getting up early, hitting the day, feeling like you're gonna get stuff accomplished.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. Best Western movie ever made.
John: The best. That's a tough one. So, like, but I'll tell you what just sort of comes to mind quickly would be a few. A man called Horse with Richard
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: Harris, where he's captured by a tribe of black feet Indian. the Culpepper Cattle Company. I remember loving it as a kid for being very authentic. You know, Lonesome Dove, Bill Whitliff
Steve Seger: yeah.
John: just killed it with Lonesome Dove, as did all the actors. you know, yeah, one of the great westerns of all time. And then I will say there's a in case no one's seen it, there's a hilarious one with Jack Nicholson called Going South. R it's really hilarious. It's a real sleeper, kind of flew below the radar screen, but it's it's a great western.
Steve Seger: What type of bike are you riding right now? I know I told you in advance. I heard you on the Colt Wrangler podcast talking about this. And are you still riding?
John: yeah. Yeah. No, I'm yep, I still have a fair bit of that left in me. A Triumph Scrambler twelve hundred. yeah, kind of a you know, a dual sport. It's underrated for long trips, but I I love it on long trips and it it's heavy but it's great in dirt. you know, so if you build dirt into your long trips it can, you know, easily cross over plus. Triumph motorcycles are the coolest looking motorcycles, if you ask me.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. What was the last trip you did?
John: Alaska. I rode to Prudhoe Bay or Dead Horse Alaska. It was it was a long haul. It was twelve thousand five hundred miles. yeah. six weeks. And I did like two and a half weeks with some Canadians that for the most remote parts I was with three other great riders from Canada. Yeah, it was an awesome trip. I didn't do one this year because of this project. I I'm working on, but I will I'll probably head back to Canada next summer. yeah, no, it's I will say it sort of scratches the same itch that cowboying scratched in my, you know, youth.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. What's a book that you would gift to a friend? If you need to do two, that's fine too.
John: Okay. Well, funny, I just gave a book to someone today. it's Prom by Mary Ellen Mark, which is a beautiful photo book. Mary Ellen Mark, if you know anyone doesn't know, is one of the great documentary photographers of all time. And she was a dear and close friend of mine and a big mentor. You know, and another one that I give that for people sort of exploring photography is Gypsies by Joseph Kadelka. He's a a magnum photographer and you know he really like captured the European gypsies. He embedded himself with them and you know i i it's it it speaks to me. He found kind of a subculture, buried himself in it, photographed it, and really, you know, his photographs, it's so clear that he was embraced by the gypsy culture, even though he wasn't part of it. you can see it in his photos and It really takes you there in a very special way. It's it's a an amazingly beautiful book and he's an exceptional photographer.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. When I was listening to you talk about the project you did, was it East Austin where you were
John: Mm.
Steve Seger: was that like a similar experience, you think, to that, where you were really kind of digging in and embracing yourself in that culture?
John: Yeah, no a hundred percent. It's you know, East Austin, for those that don't know, was a it's just east of Interstate I thirty five, so basically, and it's just across from downtown. And it was a historically a very working class neighborhood and kind of strangely like from the river north to seventh street was purely Mexican American, and then there was a hard break at seventh street, and from seventh to eight You know, going north was all African American. There's like a hard break. But, you know, those two communities live side by side and sort of untouched by the rest of Austin for 50 plus years. then it got discovered. I'm surprised it took that long, you know, and wealthier people started buying up homes and, you know, have all but gentrified out the traditional working-class neighborhoods. So I photographed. Just the traditional neighborhoods, you know, the traditional communities, not the incoming folks, for yeah, really over the course of six years. And you know, I'm not from East Austin. I'm certainly, you know, not Mexican American or African American, but you know, getting them to embrace me and y you know, my intentions for the project was incredibly rewarding, remains so, you know, one of my more rewarding projects to this day. It's Yeah, I don't even quite know why. Like why that's so appealing to me. And it's funny, I was thinking about like even a man called Horse, you know, Richard Harris's character was embraced by, you know, the tribe that that captured him. You know, when I was a young kid, I went to Cowboy. I did, you know, I wanted to be embraced by them, and I had nothing to do with cowboy and before that first summer. So yeah, I don't I don't know. You know, there's something, I don't know, it keeps life Rich and interesting to sort of throw yourself into a group that you're not part of and and, you know, embrace them and see if they'll embrace you in return. It's it's richly rewarding. It's yeah, it's hard to describe unless you've done it somewhere. And I'm sure most people have. You know, you can do it quickly when you travel and yeah, very fulfilling.
Steve Seger: I'll do two more warm up ones.
John: No.
Steve Seger: three people, alive or dead, that you're having a meal with, who you're choosing.
John: Yeah, yeah. God, you know. Okay, I'll so I'll be a little bit cliche, but but it's who I would pick. So I'm a Christian, so I would pick Jesus Christ. You know, if I could sit down and have a meal with Jesus, it's you know, can you imagine having coffee and tacos with Jesus of
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: Nazareth? you know, and as a lawyer, and you know, I'm I'm like engaged with how society is governed, you know, politics not so much, more like true governance. And you know, to me, like the most brilliant person in that regard, I've you know, read several biographies and book of his speeches be Abraham Lincoln. You know, and just to even look into that amazing face of his, yeah, I would have I would have a meal with Abraham Lincoln and just, you know, have him walk me through his train of thought. He's so brilliant. And then so, you know, a little more to date, Florence Welch of Florence in the Machine. I'm a big
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: fanboy. I I would love to have a meal with Florence Welch.
Steve Seger: Yeah. Abe Lincoln probably is actually on mine too, so that's kind of cool.
John: Yeah, no I yeah, I get it.
Steve Seger: Yeah, he's special. last one. Could you beat Liam Neeson in a fist fight?
John: Man. Have you not watched Taken One, Two or Three or The Gray? Hell no, I couldn't beat Liam Neeson in a fight. I I guy, yeah, I would be like Peter in in in the T V show. What's the show where he said he was gonna take on L Liam Neeson? the family guy. Yeah, no, I I get
Steve Seger: Family guy, that that's where I stole this bit from.
John: yeah, I would get my ass kicked like Peter.
Steve Seger: Yeah, that's that's where I stole this bit. And Liam Neeson actually, I think, voiced himself in that episode when he came onto the show. So I'm just gonna keep
John: He did, yeah. He did.
Steve Seger: asking it until until he comes on the show. So
John: Yeah, no. Awesome. Yeah. that'd be a good one.
Steve Seger: well, that wraps up all those warm-up questions. I already just have a ton of questions boiling up to follow up on from before, but I think the best place to probably start would be. Before we've got into your career here now, I'd like to understand the world that you grew up in and how cowboying became a s part of your story.
John: Yeah, I suppose it's a bit of the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, although you know, honestly, I don't like I can't even recreate in my mind where I got my passion for cowboying. It started young, you know, and it was definitely it you know, my father fed that passion. His Grandfather was a Teddy Roosevelt rough rider and was also a cowboy in Central and South America, you know, a real character even back then. And my dad was around him growing up and he kind of fed my dad cowboy stories. And my dad had the chance to cowboy on a ranch when he was a kid on a on a well-known, it doesn't exist anymore, but on a well-known ranch up in the Panhandle of Texas called the Row Ranch or the R. O. You know, so he had one summer of it and just it was kind of like a passion for him. And then he became a photographer and he did a book on the cowboy in nineteen seventy-five. super well-known book, beloved by cowboys. I still get notes from people telling me that, you know, my dad's book, you know, introduced them to cowboying and made them go out and become a cowboy. And so You know, my dad, when he traveled around the West photographing for his book, he would send me notes and make phone calls and I went with him to a couple of ranches. And I was also reading Will James books as a kid, who's of you know, was a working cowboy and a great author about the cowboy life, and he was also a a gifted artist. So he did his own artwork in all his books. And I just really, you know, I would buy Will James books every time I found one in a used bookstore. I have a collection of them. They're right up there, as a matter of fact. Yeah, no, no. I've I've got all of them, you know, right up there. And so I read those and I just I wanted to be a cowboy, but I you know, I was growing up in the suburbs of Richardson, Texas. about as far as way away as you could get from working cattle ranches. And, you know, I just somehow built it in my head that yeah, I want to be a cowboy. And so I told my dad that and, you know, I I guess I was damn serious about it. And I remember getting a postcard from my dad. He was out in Montana at a pretty legendary rancher's ranch. This guy named Benny Binion, who's kind of a notorious outlaw and And he sent me a postcard that had a Charlie Russell picture on the cover that was painted right on Benny's ranch, you know, or very nearby in this area called the Missouri Breaks. And Benny had a pasture that ran in the Missouri Missouri Brakes. And my dad said, Hey, this guy said he'll give you a job as a cowboy. And when he came home, he said, Hey, look, I told Benny you were 13, I was 12. Because I didn't think he'd hire you if you were just twelve. So, you know, claim you're thirteen when you get there. And yeah, so I went and did it and you know, that turned into twelve summers of cowboying. you know, starting in the summer after sixth grade through my first year of law school. I missed one or two summers in there, but essentially all those summers I would head out west and I would usually go to one ranch the first half of the summer and go out with a branding wagon and then go back to Benny's the second half of every summer and he sold off all his cattle pretty early on in my time with him and then so we were just breaking horses. At one point he had, you know, five hundred horses and so we'd just spend the summer, you know, riding horses, which, you know, if you cowboy you love horses or you better love horses anyway. And I did. So, you know, riding horses all day every day was just paradise for me. So yeah.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. Can you share a little bit about Benny Binion? Because when you were talking about him on the the Cole Wrangler show, I mean, I was blown away. I did not know anything about his background and I was learning a ton. I w I was hoping we could talk about him a little bit.
John: Yeah, no, he was you know, certainly an incredibly influential person in my life. And yeah, there's like an older generation knows Benny. Most of them know him. So Benny Binion, you know, s he started off he grew up in Pilate Grove, Texas, outside of Dallas, and was just like a a you know, a tough wily kid always figuring things out, started bootlegging early, then got into gambling and he ran all the underground gambling in Dallas till literally a new sheriff came in and ran him out of town. You know, he just said, look, you aren't buying me off. You know, all all the gambling that he was doing was illegal. and there was you know, there was violence involved for sure. you know, Benny was a tough guy. you know he was They tried to get him several times for murder and you know, it was usually self-defense. And I will say, you know, to to not that this necessarily changes thing, but you know, it was only towards people operating in that tough line of work. you know, he wasn't out shooting innocent people, but he was a guy you did not mess with. there's no doubt about it. And like I you know, I appreciated that very quickly on. But so when he got run out of Dallas, this is in the forties, he the story is he showed up in Las Vegas, which had legalized gambling, but was nothing like it is today, with a Cadillac, with a trunk full of hundred dollar bills. And he bought a casino and downtown Las Vegas built up around him. He opened the horseshoe, which was, you know, it was like a gambler's joint. It's where serious gamblers went to play. And it was You know, it was said he would take a bet of any size, you know, so it was like they'd say it's the one place you could go in with a five dollar bill and leave a millionaire. and he had a million dollars, a hundred ten thousand dollar bills hanging in a big golden horseshoe that you'd get your picture taken in front of. and yeah, no, it was just it was such a great classic gambling joint, you know, it was It was like you could tell, just people were it was before all the glitz, he never went with y you know, music or any of that stuff. so that's how most people kind of know him. And, you know, he largely went legit when he got to Vegas. He had a lot at risk at that point, but he never had a gaming license. It was always in the name of his kids. yeah, that you know, because of his his background, he's Did five years in Leavenworth for tax evasion. That's what, you know, they sort of eventually got him for. And
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: and by the way, when he was in Leavenworth, he had a one pasture on his ranch that was a hundred sections, which is a hundred square miles. And I'm told there was like one stud horse that ran off all the other stud horses and built this herd of like five hundred brood mares. And These horses hadn't seen a human being in like six or seven years when he got out of the pen. And so for 20 years his ranch was known for having super rank horses working through this group of horses that this one horse had bred and just
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: left untended. When I got there, it was the tail end of those tough years. But you know, there were some horses there that I couldn't even come close to riding. You know, they would. They'd buck me off three or four times in a day before Benny would finally say, you know, I'll take that horse back. You don't have to ride it anymore. So he was, but Benny was like a one-of-a-kind character. Like you can find some interviews with him online. He's the wittiest person I've ever met. He I I think he only went to school for a few days, but he was the smartest guy I ever met by far. Apparently he was an amazing poker player. You know, but when he and I were together it was usually it was pretty much about cowboying. You know, I would spend those summers up there and it was just kinda him and the family and other cowboys would come and go, but I would sort of spend most of my time with the family. So I kinda had this very unique relationship with Benny, you know, where I kinda had him separated from the rest of the world because you got him back in Vegas. Everybody wanted a piece of his time, you know, and he had so many friends, but it was just us out there on the ranch and And I remember the day Benny took to me, I could tell. It was that first summer, and he had a grandson. He drug his grandsons out there every summer. They they would have preferred to stay in Vegas. But he would make them go to the ranch. And one of them, Bobby, was picking at me, picking at me, picking at me. And it was me and Benny and Bobby out riding somewhere. And he kept riding my ass. And I finally just pulled up my horse. I got off and said, Bobby. Get down off that horse and I'm gonna beat your ass right here.
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: And I, you know, Bobby, Bobby, I I'm sure he could have whipped me in a fight. I'm not as confident as Liam Neeson being able to whip me in a fight. Bobby probably
Steve Seger: Good call out, yeah.
John: could have, but I could tell Benny was so he was humored first of all, but he was impressed, like that. You know, this kid has the moxie to just, you know, take on Bobby right out here in the middle of a pasture. He doesn't care, you know, what I think, what Bobby thinks. and you know, I he embraced me after that. yeah. So it was, you know, we had a lifelong friendship, you know, right till the point that Benny passed at the age of eighty-five. Yeah, he died in eighty nine, he was eighty five. So, yeah, we had a close friendship. Probably, you know, outside of my family, the most influential person in my upbringing. I don't know why I'm, you know, drawn to outlaws, but I for whatever reason I am. yeah, no, we we we loved each other and he taught me a lot. Certainly taught me the you know, the benefit of hard work that, you know, hard work conquers everything.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. You kind of brushed over what I think is pretty cool. You was it your grandpa that was Teddy Roosevelt, a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider? Great grandfather. Okay, got it.
John: No, my great grandfather. Great grandfather. My dad's grandfather. Y yeah, it's You know, I didn't, I never met him. So I didn't get, but he wrote down all his stories, and I have like literally the original copies that he typed up in a typewriter. And of like being a cowboy in Central America. He was an engineer and he worked on rail lines up in you know, engineering rail lines up in the north of the United States. And then he ran the United Fruit Company in Cuba. you know, just like Clearly a fascinating character. There's a lot of, I have a lot of newspaper articles kind of written about his life, you know, like just shy of a book type of thing. But he heard he was in, I want to say, like Costa Rica, I think. And he heard that Colonel Roosevelt was putting together a group of soldiers to go fight in the Spanish-American War. He was a proud American, even though he was down in Central America cowboying. And so he stayed, there was a quarantine in Costa Rica at the time. So he and another guy stowed away on a boat to make their way to Florida, where Colonel Roosevelt was putting together his band of misfits. And so they were hidden under bunks and and they got seasick. The seas got rough and they started throwing up. So they were discovered. And these guys were gonna like treat them roughly on the boat, and they convinced them that they were patriotic Americans just going to join Colonel Roosevelt. And then the the guys on the boat said, okay, we'll give you passage. And, you know, so they stowed away. He joined Colonel Roosevelt. And you know, I don't there were no stories about his time as a rough writer per se, just sort of that he did it. You know, he made the run up San Juan Hill. you know, so I I just know he was like a world class character, and then he went to run the United Fruit Company down in Cuba subsequently. you know, so he returned there. And I've heard there's a street named after him in Santiago, where he where he lived. haven't been down there to find that out. So yeah, that was the genesis of the whole cowboy thing in the Langmore line. But it appears, by the way, neither of my boys, they both went branded cabs for a while. neither of them took to it. So it might end with me. My brother did it as well for like three summers, I think. he didn't he liked it, but you know, it ran its course, which cowboying has a way of doing. It's it's a
Steve Seger: Yeah. Yeah.
John: tough way of life.
Steve Seger: When did so you said twelve summers with Benny and then you got into law. How how did that transition go? I mean, it's quite different from what you were doing.
John: Yeah, it's you know, I will say so the first when I arrived at the ranch every summer, the first question Benny would ask me was, How was your how were your grades? do you know, and he took pride in me having good grades. So I was always a good student and I I personally took pride in being a good student. so I just always knew I was gonna sort of keep going with my academic career. Yeah, it's yeah, just you know, something I was always gonna do and I think I may have told Colt that it was my last summer cowboying. I went out with a wagon on the Padlock Ranch in Montana. And branded calves for we're the wagons out about five weeks. And I think I can't remember what I was making that summer. I know I have an old pay stub from the padlock that I was making 450 bucks a month. And when I got out of law school, they were paying us a thousand dollars a week to go be an intern. So that the second half of that summer I went and look worked for a law firm in San Antonio and you know. in the second half of the summer, you know, the first week of that I made what I had made in the entire first half of the summer as a cowboy.
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: And and I remember I I I really thought I was gonna go cowboy for a while, because I sort of felt deficient that I had only cowboyed in the summer. So I missed all of the fall works and all of the winter work and, you know, and I kind of always felt like, you know, I'm not really I'm not sure if I can claim to be a cowboy, not having, you know, done it year-round. But and and I so even during law school, I thought I'm gonna go take a year or two and just cowboy and you know, after that after that summer and drawing those different paychecks, it was like, who are you kidding that you're gonna go to law school and then go cowboy? My dad was all for it, by the way. And my mom was like, No freaking way are
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: you. Going to law school and then going in cowboying. Anyway, it worked itself out and I, you know, went and joined a big law firm in DC after that. And you know, cowboying faded to my past. It was something I'd talk about, you know, kind of less as the years went on, but I certainly never forgot about it. you know, and it was it's, you know, it's a huge part of who I am even to this day.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. And so how did your law career unfold and when did photography come about too? Cause I know that's an important part of your story too that I'm excited to dig into.
John: Yeah, yeah. you know, I just did what you do coming out of law school, you know, the big firms come and recruit there and they offered more money than I was worth, that is for sure. and you know, so you interview and you know, I took a job with a big powerhouse firm in Washington DC, Aiken Gump, you know, kind of put me close to politics and policy. And I was a corporate lawyer. and I thought, I really thought, you know, like coming out of law school, I'm going to get rich and I'm going to buy a big ranch. And I was like determined, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get rich. Like I'm going into corporate law and I'm going to make a big bunch of money. And like it really was a motivator for me. It's funny how quickly it faded. You know how like and I remember looking at the lawyers at Achin Gump and and great lawyers, great law firm, but I will say like a far too many of those senior partners there, I looked at their life and I was like, I if that's the pinnacle of success, you know, if that's what I'll work a lifetime to aspire to, you know, most of them were divorced, not all. A lot of them drank too much, you know, they worked nonstop. Till their 70s, you know, hardly ever went home. I was just like, I don't, you know, that's when money started to lose its shine for me. So I only lasted two years there. And it was the late 80s, sort of the the corporate world went through a big disruption with the SNL crisis, the savings and loan crisis. and then I went to work for Caterpillar, which I loved. Caterpillar was a great company. And I was half the time as a lawyer. And then I moved over to the business side because I had an MBA. You know, I did that together with my law degree. So I was a viable candidate to move to the business side. And and I really liked it. Great company, Midwestern values. But the main thing was, you know, when I interviewed, they I I wanted to move overseas. I was definitely, you know, I had that kind of wanderlust. And they're like, yeah. No, that's like you know, if you raise your hand for an overseas assignment, you'll get one. And I did. so they first moved me to Singapore. and that's I got married while I was there to a girl from Texas. And so Eric and I spent three and a half years in Singapore and then they they were gonna move me to Manila, which was a hard sell for Erica. But the guy there was supposed to go to Bangkok and he's like, I'm not going to Bangkok. So he refused to move. So Manila didn't open up. So they said, How about Sydney? And this was my transition to the business side. I was Sydney, Australia? yeah. I'll I'll do that.
Steve Seger: He's
John: So we were there a couple of years. It was, you know, the best, the nicest city I've ever lived in. It's pretty amazing place. My first, our first son, Jordan, was born there. we had a great time. And I will say that as Eric and I were moving to Singapore, my father-in-law, not even my father, gave me as a wedding present, you know, kind of an upper mid-range Canon camera with two lenses and a film camera, of course, at the time, digital cameras hadn't started up at that point. And I will say, like I started photographing Asia, like all our trips. And then it it was almost instantaneous, my kind of, you know, being enraptured with photography. And I had, you know, traveled so w much with my dad as a photographer that I I realized I had just kind of, you know, inherited this mainly approach to people, like how you Because most of my photography is around people. you know, how to approach them, how to engage with them, how to get them to feel comfortable and natural when you're pointing a camera at them. It came to me very quickly and very naturally. I mean, and I know I inherited it from my dad, you know, all those trips we did where he took his cameras and we hated them at the time. You know, we'd stop at a diner in the middle of nowhere. And he'd wind up spending an hour engaging with some locals so he could, you know, get to the point that he could take pictures with them. And we were all like, God, let's go. You know, come on. When when's he gonna leave? And and then I started it so weird. I started doing that to my wife and kids. They're like, No, don't you dare stop and talk to those people. You know, I I get that the light's beautiful, but we you know, we are ready to go. So That was where I took up photography and I just kind of progressively got more serious. And then there was a workshop with a guy, David Allen Harvey, who's a very well known former Magnum photographer, well known National Geographic photographer. He's done, you know, I don't know, forty something stories for National Geographic. Did a workshop with him in Mexico and he you know, my father had really quit taking pictures at the time. And David kind of pulled back the curtain on like how you get serious about photography. And his biggest bit of advice was go do a project. You know, tell a story, a singular story with a group of images. Don't just travel and shoot what you see. That's not a story, you know, that's just travel photography. And that was the, you know, his advice to that effect was. what got me started on the East Austin story. And he also told me wisely, David's a really brilliant mentor. do a story in your backyard. Don't pick some far-flung story that you have to go travel for and spend a lot of money. You know, you can find a great story anywhere. You just have to look for it and be open to it. And, you know, I had taken a few pictures in East Austin and been doing some civic work. that kind of exposed me to East Austin. And, you know, that led to my first project, which was my second book, but the first project that I really threw myself into. And yeah. So it was, you know, that was kind of the how photography, you know, wove its way into my life, you know, while I continued a professional career. and and I had moved back to Austin From I left Caterpillar for the sake of moving back to Texas, I kind of realized like every ten years or so I just feel the need to shake up my life. And so I left Cat, moved back to Austin, worked for the legislature, and passed a wrote a big transportation bill that took me into this other universe and so I consulted for like ten years. but I was doing photography while I was Consulting because I was kind of more in charge of my own life. But you know, I would do it on weekends, I would take time off. Like during spring break, I would take our spring break and go photograph in East Austin for a week.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: so I just found a way to kind of, you know, build this passion into my professional life.
Steve Seger: And you you just got back from a project that you were working on. I I was gonna ask you earlier in this, but what are you able to share what you were what you're working on now?
John: Sure. Only I, you know, I've been working on it for five and a half years, and yeah, I know. It's and I haven't talked about it because it's it felt so tenuous for so much of that time, but I'm very close to finishing. So it's it's another documentary film, and it's it's about men. serving life sentences at Angola prison in Louisiana, but they get to Because Angola runs on 18,000 acres, there's a the second largest cattle ranch in Louisiana is inside Angola prison, the largest maximum security prison in the United States. So they have this working cattle ranch with about 2,000 plus mother cows. And there are these group of men that are again serving life sentences that have earned the right to be cowboys inside Angola. And so the story is their story. It's it's pretty amazing. you know, I haven't talked about it publicly yet. you know, I'm gonna have to deal with the emotion of it, yeah, you know, because it's a super emotional project, as you can imagine. You know, and these guys are all my friends now. I've been inside probably Ten different times more than a month in total. Yeah, and I only have two shoots left to to finish the film and then so we should be done next month and then we'll go into the editing room and you know, hopefully put together a meaningful film. If it's you know, what I've said is if I can convey literally ten percent of what I've experienced inside Angola and with these men, it will be an unbelievably powerful film. You know, I'm not saying that I will you know, I have to do it together with my editor, but yeah, it's it's Yeah. Something else. It's
Steve Seger: How did the opportunity come up? I mean, how did you get introduced to it originally?
John: Yeah, funny. So, you know, we didn't talk about, but I did a project, a photo project on the American Cowboy, which was a book, kind of returned to it, you know, after my dad, 40 years later. So I did a book on the American Cowboy, and then I office in a building that used to be a post-production house for film. And there was a filmmaker in the office next to me, and he approached me about Doing a documentary film on cowboys. He saw my photography and he cowboyed some growing up and said, Why don't we partner? You know, you've just been out to all these ranches and you know this whole world, and you grew up cowboying, and you know, I'm a filmmaker. So this guy, Bud Force, and I co-directed a documentary film on cowboys. So I heard a report on the radio that Where this woman took ins art inside a prison, like physical art, so that men s men and women serving time inside a prison could view art firsthand, which is, you know, an entire it's the way art's meant to be viewed, and it's entirely different than viewing it on a screen. And that sparked this idea that I ought to show the cowboys film inside a prison. And it would have a similar effect and I could, you know, talk about it afterwards and I could also tell the guys watching, men in this case mainly, you know, you get out, you can go cowboy. You know, they don't do background checks. you only on you know, for people working on a ranch, you only
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: need about two thousand dollars worth of gear if you buy it used, and you they'll they'll give you, you know. OJT on the job training, you just got to be willing to put up with livestock, you know, which is a tough deal and it is not for everybody. And you need to be willing to live in rural America. So that's what I had in mind. And I thought, you know what, I'll go do it at a prison, excuse me, that had a prison rodeo. And there's a famous one, Huntsville in Texas, that had a long running famous prison rodeo. And I started reading about it and I thought, you know, God, that could be an interesting concept for a documentary film, the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. And then it was like the the the rodeo at Huntsville's dead. It's been dead for a while. And then I thought, well, maybe something on prison rodeos. And a buddy of mine said, Hey, if you're interested in prison rodeos, I've got a cousin that's a big Whig in the correctional facilities world. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You ought to talk to her about prison rodeos. If they still exist today, she'll know all about them and you know, have lunch with her. So I met with Mary, Mary Livers in 2021. So this was kind of the height of the pandemic. Mary and I hit it off, and she said, the last big you know, prison rodeo is at Angola in Louisiana. And she said, I'm on this thing called the Parole Project. I'm the board chair, and it helps formerly incarcerated men reintegrate back into the real world. You know, And she said, the guy that started it spent 19 years inside Angola. He got a life sentence as a 15-year-old, Andrew. Why don't we get on a Zoom call with Andrew and he'll tell you everything about prison rodeos and if Angola is like worthy of a, you know, a film? I was like, great. So from the point that Mary and I had that conversation to the point that We got on the Zoom call, which was made some number of weeks. I had kind of researched prison rodeos and I'd thought about it more and I wasn't interested. You know, I I like working cowboys, not rodeo cowboys, and they are two different things. You know, one's a sport and the other's kind of a way of life and, you know, a profession in a certain respect.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: And prison rodeos have been done, like films have been done on them. And the Angola Prison Rodeo has been done by a well-known documentary photographer, a guy that did a great documentary film on Angola, called The Farm, which is what it's known as. So he had already done one on the Angola Prison Rodeo. So by the time I got on the Zoom call with Marion Andrew, I wasn't gonna do anything on the Angola Prison Rodeo. But the call had been set up, so I decided to see it through and So I do my little spiel that I just gave you. I heard a report on, you know, the radio, and I thought about doing something at Huntsville, and then, you know, it opened up the idea of prison rodeos. And I said, Andrew, do you think there's a good story about the Angola prison rodeo? Knowing I wasn't going to do anything with it, but just being polite because Mary set the call up. And he's like, Nah, not really. It's been done, you know. he said, But I think there's a great story at Angola. And and I kind of told him my cowboy background. I'm like, okay, you know, I got nothing but time. It's the pandemic. and he went on to tell me about the guys that are the cowboys, they're called the range crew. you know, and he kind of explained the way things work inside a prison that they normally offer you time off your sentence to maintain order inside maximum security prisons. 85% of the people at Angola are serving life sentences with no chance of parole. So
Steve Seger: Wow.
John: they can't offer that. there's so much more to this story. That's just one piece of it. So a warden, a pretty famous warden, a guy named Burl Kane, was confronted with this dilemma. How do I maintain order? So what he came up with was quality of life inside a prison. And one of the bigger aspects of quality of life is are the jobs. And inside Angola, they've got this whole agricultural industry. One piece of it are these, you know, 2,000 plus mother cows. And it are it's the inmates that do all the work on the farm, you know, inside Angola. And so
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: there are a group of men that run the cattle ranch. it's overseen by employees of the state, but the guys that do the cowboying are all inmates. And so You know, there are these jobs that they use to maintain order. And coveted among the jobs is to be a cowboy on the range crew. and he told me that, and I'm like, my god, Andrew, like that's unbelievable. If you can get me access, I will dedicate three years of my life to do a film on that. I'll raise the money, you know, I will commit myself to that. And he said, Okay, you know. Let's all work with you on getting access. Long, long story, but it was on, off, on, off over the course of four and a half years till I finally got access a little over a year ago. So I've been filming for the past year. you know, I went to the rodeo constantly during that four and a half years that I was trying to get access. And yeah, it finally broke loose. You know, they were comfortable with me. They were comfortable with my intentions for the story that I was gonna tell. you know, it's not an expose, it's not a criminal reform film, it's a human interest story, although those things all feed into it, you know, you can't ignore them. but it's about
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: the men on the range crew. but but yeah, you know, the lives that they've lived and that they're living now are so unbelievably poignant. yeah, just like really nothing else I've experienced. So that's how it all came about, you know, and Andrew and Mary and an assistant warden at Angola and Marie, Warden Easley have kind of been the ones that have stuck with the project the whole time. You know, the four of us, and that eventually, you know, carried it across the line and got the warden. to go along and got the secretary of the Department of Corrections to go along, the deputy secretary, the public information officer, you know, all the people up the line. I'm sure I know it's made its way to the governor's office. I haven't dealt with the governor, but you know, the governor had to sign off as well. But eventually all that, you know, got itself sorted out. And yeah, so been working on it for a year, you know, really a month left if things all go to plan.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: Two more shoots and yeah. It's
Steve Seger: What does a normal shoot look like? Like what is a typical day when you're there usually unfold? I mean, is it n is it all different or
John: Yeah, it is. You know, it it's so I will say like when we went in, you know, so when I first when you when I first went in to go meet the guys, I went in by myself just to tell them how serious I took the responsibility of telling their story. No cameras, no nothing, you know, and I didn't even appreciate at the time like How meaningful it is because I didn't appreciate how vulnerable these men are. They are the toughest men I've ever met, you know, murderers. They're serving life sentences in a maximum security prison, and they're cowboys. You know, it's sort of like stacking up everything that makes a man tough, and yet they are the most vulnerable men I've ever met. And I didn't, you you know, I didn't know them. I had met them at the rodeo because they can They're trustees, which is, you know, you earn the right to be a trustee and you get a lot of freedom as an inmate there. And so everybody on the range crew is a trustee. So they come out during the rodeo and they kind of mix with the people that are there. And so I met them, you know, multiple times. And, you know, I told them, I'm trying to do a documentary film. And I could tell they were skeptical. Like, you know, one is is he for real? And two would be good luck. you know, getting access because it had been a long time before anybody had been given or since anybody had been given this degree of access.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: But I I went in that first time just to tell these guys I take the responsibility of telling your story very seriously. I didn't say I was gonna tell it positively or put a positive spin on it, just that It's a serious responsibility and I am aware of that. You know, that was all. That was the whole trip was for me to spend like forty five minutes just telling them that and answering their questions. Then I went back it's funny, I went back with a cinematographer who I met as a photographer, and he fell apart after that first trip. He kind of melted down on the way home. I'm not quite sure what aspect of it. you know unsettled him. There could be any of a number of them. But when I go in, it's like you're at a working ranch. There's a barn, they're saddling up horses, you know, they're coming and going in trucks, they're loading horses and trailers, you know, and they just interact like normal with the guys from prison enterprises that oversee them. And it's me and one cinematographer. And subsequent to that first trip, I landed on an amazing cinematographer, this guy Lucian Reed. Who did a lot of war photography and cinematography? he's tough as leather, and he's an amazing s cinematographer. So he's the director of photography on this film. So it's me and him. I did take my son, who's an aspiring filmmaker, to be a second camera on the last shoot, and he'll probably go with us on one of the next ones. And you know. Early in the project, it was a lot of interviews, but we were just, I had no idea what to expect when I went in. None. I hadn't been inside. I'd never been in a maximum security prison. I'd never been in Angola, which is unique among maximum security prisons. So I had no idea what to expect. And we just went in filming everything, like everything that moved. And I'm taking still photos along the way because I incorporate them into the film. Which we did it in Cowboys, the Cowboy documentary. And I will do the same with this film. And so I'm photographing while I'm directing and we're shooting everything, did some interviews, but I didn't know what to ask, what the deal is. But as you keep going back, you start to get a sense of it. Okay, this is what's going on. You get to know the guys, they get much more open with you. And then the story starts to form in your mind. And my editor is watching the work as we go along. And he's an amazing ed editor, this guy, Lucas Arger. And cause we just when we shot Cowboys, we just sent him all the film after we had shot it all. We were done filming and there were a lot of holes in there. You know, he's like, Man,
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: if we could have gotten more of this or more of that. And you don't know it at the time when you're filming, the story's not clear in your head. you know you have loose notions of it. It it's you you know, we got much more specific with our shoots as time went on. To this last when it was like I'm going in and I need to shoot five things. You know, I need to shoot Where the people live inside Angola, the employees. I need to film the guys living their life inside Camp F where they live, these big open dormitories. I need to interview the historian for Angola. It's like now we're down to very specific stuff. And the last things are gonna be the guys getting ready for the rodeo, because although they're not all rodeo cowboys, they help with the livestock and a funeral. And the funerals are very dramatic. They do it in a horse drawn Hearst, and then all of the inmates march behind the Hearst for the people that are buried inside Angola, and then they sing gospel hymns as they march behind the Hearst. So we're gonna film that. so yeah, it's you know, it what it looks like filming in Angola has evolved is the bottom line over the course of shooting the film.
Steve Seger: Yeah. And when's the release date? Do you guys know yet?
John: Yeah, good question. You know, my guess would be if all things go to plan, I still have to raise a lot of money and we have to do all the editing, music, sound. But I'm guessing, you know, we would submit to film festivals next fall. Knock on knock on wood. I should be hopefully again knocking on wood, you know, should be done filming in October.
Steve Seger: I can't wait to see it. And where can my audience here come and find everything that you've done up to this point and then eventually find your future film too?
John: Yeah. so you can watch Cowboys on Apple TV or Amazon. And you know, my books one, the Cowboy book is open range and the East Awesome book is fault lines. And, you know, if you just they're Amazon or any of a number of websites and you know, a few stores carry them. so there's they aren't hard to define, although You know, it's not a selling technique. I don't I still they could be available for another year or two. I do know they are down to like, you know, both of them because I just gotten statements, you know, less than two hundred copies. There'll be, you know, used versions of them will circulate for a long time, I'm sure. But, you know, of the original ones, they're they're they're getting close. But still available. Open range is
Steve Seger: Mm. And do you have a title? Do you do you have a title yet for your new new one though? Yeah.
John: for the film? the Angola film. yes, I do have a title, but it's too, you know, tenuous at this point. It trust me, you know, I will not keep it a secret. For anyone that cares enough to follow up on this, if you just follow my Instagram or follow my Facebook, you know, you like projects like this, you want people to see them. So I will I'm horrible at self marketing, but I will make my best effort to at least market the film itself, you know, if not if not me along with it. The film I will it won't be a secret. And hopefully, you know, if it's good enough it might get some bit of attention. Who knows? You know, you you never know. It's crapshoot.
Steve Seger: Yeah. Well I'll I'll link all your socials and everything too, so everyone can follow along. John, this was amazing. Thank you for taking the time today too.
John: Steve, I appreciate it. Thanks for doing a podcast, all the effort you put into it, and I enjoyed it. And yeah, I'm I I appreciate your time and attention.
John: Thanks for having me, Steve. yeah, no looking forward to our for to our dialogue.
Steve Seger: yeah, this will be cool. And as as usual, I'm gonna kick things off with a warm-up round. I've refrained from calling it a rapid fire round because it never ends up being rapid and I always have weird follow-ups that I ask. but let's jump in. first one,
John: Yeah.
Steve Seger: sunrise or sunset.
John: so all my life I'd say sunrise, you know, you get up and you get a start your day and, you know, get everything done that you're looking forward to getting done. I suppose at sixty four years old I probably oughta start appreciating sunsets more. yeah, but no sunrise. I like, you know, getting up early, hitting the day, feeling like you're gonna get stuff accomplished.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. Best Western movie ever made.
John: The best. That's a tough one. So, like, but I'll tell you what just sort of comes to mind quickly would be a few. A man called Horse with Richard
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: Harris, where he's captured by a tribe of black feet Indian. the Culpepper Cattle Company. I remember loving it as a kid for being very authentic. You know, Lonesome Dove, Bill Whitliff
Steve Seger: yeah.
John: just killed it with Lonesome Dove, as did all the actors. you know, yeah, one of the great westerns of all time. And then I will say there's a in case no one's seen it, there's a hilarious one with Jack Nicholson called Going South. R it's really hilarious. It's a real sleeper, kind of flew below the radar screen, but it's it's a great western.
Steve Seger: What type of bike are you riding right now? I know I told you in advance. I heard you on the Colt Wrangler podcast talking about this. And are you still riding?
John: yeah. Yeah. No, I'm yep, I still have a fair bit of that left in me. A Triumph Scrambler twelve hundred. yeah, kind of a you know, a dual sport. It's underrated for long trips, but I I love it on long trips and it it's heavy but it's great in dirt. you know, so if you build dirt into your long trips it can, you know, easily cross over plus. Triumph motorcycles are the coolest looking motorcycles, if you ask me.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. What was the last trip you did?
John: Alaska. I rode to Prudhoe Bay or Dead Horse Alaska. It was it was a long haul. It was twelve thousand five hundred miles. yeah. six weeks. And I did like two and a half weeks with some Canadians that for the most remote parts I was with three other great riders from Canada. Yeah, it was an awesome trip. I didn't do one this year because of this project. I I'm working on, but I will I'll probably head back to Canada next summer. yeah, no, it's I will say it sort of scratches the same itch that cowboying scratched in my, you know, youth.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. What's a book that you would gift to a friend? If you need to do two, that's fine too.
John: Okay. Well, funny, I just gave a book to someone today. it's Prom by Mary Ellen Mark, which is a beautiful photo book. Mary Ellen Mark, if you know anyone doesn't know, is one of the great documentary photographers of all time. And she was a dear and close friend of mine and a big mentor. You know, and another one that I give that for people sort of exploring photography is Gypsies by Joseph Kadelka. He's a a magnum photographer and you know he really like captured the European gypsies. He embedded himself with them and you know i i it's it it speaks to me. He found kind of a subculture, buried himself in it, photographed it, and really, you know, his photographs, it's so clear that he was embraced by the gypsy culture, even though he wasn't part of it. you can see it in his photos and It really takes you there in a very special way. It's it's a an amazingly beautiful book and he's an exceptional photographer.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. When I was listening to you talk about the project you did, was it East Austin where you were
John: Mm.
Steve Seger: was that like a similar experience, you think, to that, where you were really kind of digging in and embracing yourself in that culture?
John: Yeah, no a hundred percent. It's you know, East Austin, for those that don't know, was a it's just east of Interstate I thirty five, so basically, and it's just across from downtown. And it was a historically a very working class neighborhood and kind of strangely like from the river north to seventh street was purely Mexican American, and then there was a hard break at seventh street, and from seventh to eight You know, going north was all African American. There's like a hard break. But, you know, those two communities live side by side and sort of untouched by the rest of Austin for 50 plus years. then it got discovered. I'm surprised it took that long, you know, and wealthier people started buying up homes and, you know, have all but gentrified out the traditional working-class neighborhoods. So I photographed. Just the traditional neighborhoods, you know, the traditional communities, not the incoming folks, for yeah, really over the course of six years. And you know, I'm not from East Austin. I'm certainly, you know, not Mexican American or African American, but you know, getting them to embrace me and y you know, my intentions for the project was incredibly rewarding, remains so, you know, one of my more rewarding projects to this day. It's Yeah, I don't even quite know why. Like why that's so appealing to me. And it's funny, I was thinking about like even a man called Horse, you know, Richard Harris's character was embraced by, you know, the tribe that that captured him. You know, when I was a young kid, I went to Cowboy. I did, you know, I wanted to be embraced by them, and I had nothing to do with cowboy and before that first summer. So yeah, I don't I don't know. You know, there's something, I don't know, it keeps life Rich and interesting to sort of throw yourself into a group that you're not part of and and, you know, embrace them and see if they'll embrace you in return. It's it's richly rewarding. It's yeah, it's hard to describe unless you've done it somewhere. And I'm sure most people have. You know, you can do it quickly when you travel and yeah, very fulfilling.
Steve Seger: I'll do two more warm up ones.
John: No.
Steve Seger: three people, alive or dead, that you're having a meal with, who you're choosing.
John: Yeah, yeah. God, you know. Okay, I'll so I'll be a little bit cliche, but but it's who I would pick. So I'm a Christian, so I would pick Jesus Christ. You know, if I could sit down and have a meal with Jesus, it's you know, can you imagine having coffee and tacos with Jesus of
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: Nazareth? you know, and as a lawyer, and you know, I'm I'm like engaged with how society is governed, you know, politics not so much, more like true governance. And you know, to me, like the most brilliant person in that regard, I've you know, read several biographies and book of his speeches be Abraham Lincoln. You know, and just to even look into that amazing face of his, yeah, I would have I would have a meal with Abraham Lincoln and just, you know, have him walk me through his train of thought. He's so brilliant. And then so, you know, a little more to date, Florence Welch of Florence in the Machine. I'm a big
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: fanboy. I I would love to have a meal with Florence Welch.
Steve Seger: Yeah. Abe Lincoln probably is actually on mine too, so that's kind of cool.
John: Yeah, no I yeah, I get it.
Steve Seger: Yeah, he's special. last one. Could you beat Liam Neeson in a fist fight?
John: Man. Have you not watched Taken One, Two or Three or The Gray? Hell no, I couldn't beat Liam Neeson in a fight. I I guy, yeah, I would be like Peter in in in the T V show. What's the show where he said he was gonna take on L Liam Neeson? the family guy. Yeah, no, I I get
Steve Seger: Family guy, that that's where I stole this bit from.
John: yeah, I would get my ass kicked like Peter.
Steve Seger: Yeah, that's that's where I stole this bit. And Liam Neeson actually, I think, voiced himself in that episode when he came onto the show. So I'm just gonna keep
John: He did, yeah. He did.
Steve Seger: asking it until until he comes on the show. So
John: Yeah, no. Awesome. Yeah. that'd be a good one.
Steve Seger: well, that wraps up all those warm-up questions. I already just have a ton of questions boiling up to follow up on from before, but I think the best place to probably start would be. Before we've got into your career here now, I'd like to understand the world that you grew up in and how cowboying became a s part of your story.
John: Yeah, I suppose it's a bit of the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, although you know, honestly, I don't like I can't even recreate in my mind where I got my passion for cowboying. It started young, you know, and it was definitely it you know, my father fed that passion. His Grandfather was a Teddy Roosevelt rough rider and was also a cowboy in Central and South America, you know, a real character even back then. And my dad was around him growing up and he kind of fed my dad cowboy stories. And my dad had the chance to cowboy on a ranch when he was a kid on a on a well-known, it doesn't exist anymore, but on a well-known ranch up in the Panhandle of Texas called the Row Ranch or the R. O. You know, so he had one summer of it and just it was kind of like a passion for him. And then he became a photographer and he did a book on the cowboy in nineteen seventy-five. super well-known book, beloved by cowboys. I still get notes from people telling me that, you know, my dad's book, you know, introduced them to cowboying and made them go out and become a cowboy. And so You know, my dad, when he traveled around the West photographing for his book, he would send me notes and make phone calls and I went with him to a couple of ranches. And I was also reading Will James books as a kid, who's of you know, was a working cowboy and a great author about the cowboy life, and he was also a a gifted artist. So he did his own artwork in all his books. And I just really, you know, I would buy Will James books every time I found one in a used bookstore. I have a collection of them. They're right up there, as a matter of fact. Yeah, no, no. I've I've got all of them, you know, right up there. And so I read those and I just I wanted to be a cowboy, but I you know, I was growing up in the suburbs of Richardson, Texas. about as far as way away as you could get from working cattle ranches. And, you know, I just somehow built it in my head that yeah, I want to be a cowboy. And so I told my dad that and, you know, I I guess I was damn serious about it. And I remember getting a postcard from my dad. He was out in Montana at a pretty legendary rancher's ranch. This guy named Benny Binion, who's kind of a notorious outlaw and And he sent me a postcard that had a Charlie Russell picture on the cover that was painted right on Benny's ranch, you know, or very nearby in this area called the Missouri Breaks. And Benny had a pasture that ran in the Missouri Missouri Brakes. And my dad said, Hey, this guy said he'll give you a job as a cowboy. And when he came home, he said, Hey, look, I told Benny you were 13, I was 12. Because I didn't think he'd hire you if you were just twelve. So, you know, claim you're thirteen when you get there. And yeah, so I went and did it and you know, that turned into twelve summers of cowboying. you know, starting in the summer after sixth grade through my first year of law school. I missed one or two summers in there, but essentially all those summers I would head out west and I would usually go to one ranch the first half of the summer and go out with a branding wagon and then go back to Benny's the second half of every summer and he sold off all his cattle pretty early on in my time with him and then so we were just breaking horses. At one point he had, you know, five hundred horses and so we'd just spend the summer, you know, riding horses, which, you know, if you cowboy you love horses or you better love horses anyway. And I did. So, you know, riding horses all day every day was just paradise for me. So yeah.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. Can you share a little bit about Benny Binion? Because when you were talking about him on the the Cole Wrangler show, I mean, I was blown away. I did not know anything about his background and I was learning a ton. I w I was hoping we could talk about him a little bit.
John: Yeah, no, he was you know, certainly an incredibly influential person in my life. And yeah, there's like an older generation knows Benny. Most of them know him. So Benny Binion, you know, s he started off he grew up in Pilate Grove, Texas, outside of Dallas, and was just like a a you know, a tough wily kid always figuring things out, started bootlegging early, then got into gambling and he ran all the underground gambling in Dallas till literally a new sheriff came in and ran him out of town. You know, he just said, look, you aren't buying me off. You know, all all the gambling that he was doing was illegal. and there was you know, there was violence involved for sure. you know, Benny was a tough guy. you know he was They tried to get him several times for murder and you know, it was usually self-defense. And I will say, you know, to to not that this necessarily changes thing, but you know, it was only towards people operating in that tough line of work. you know, he wasn't out shooting innocent people, but he was a guy you did not mess with. there's no doubt about it. And like I you know, I appreciated that very quickly on. But so when he got run out of Dallas, this is in the forties, he the story is he showed up in Las Vegas, which had legalized gambling, but was nothing like it is today, with a Cadillac, with a trunk full of hundred dollar bills. And he bought a casino and downtown Las Vegas built up around him. He opened the horseshoe, which was, you know, it was like a gambler's joint. It's where serious gamblers went to play. And it was You know, it was said he would take a bet of any size, you know, so it was like they'd say it's the one place you could go in with a five dollar bill and leave a millionaire. and he had a million dollars, a hundred ten thousand dollar bills hanging in a big golden horseshoe that you'd get your picture taken in front of. and yeah, no, it was just it was such a great classic gambling joint, you know, it was It was like you could tell, just people were it was before all the glitz, he never went with y you know, music or any of that stuff. so that's how most people kind of know him. And, you know, he largely went legit when he got to Vegas. He had a lot at risk at that point, but he never had a gaming license. It was always in the name of his kids. yeah, that you know, because of his his background, he's Did five years in Leavenworth for tax evasion. That's what, you know, they sort of eventually got him for. And
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: and by the way, when he was in Leavenworth, he had a one pasture on his ranch that was a hundred sections, which is a hundred square miles. And I'm told there was like one stud horse that ran off all the other stud horses and built this herd of like five hundred brood mares. And These horses hadn't seen a human being in like six or seven years when he got out of the pen. And so for 20 years his ranch was known for having super rank horses working through this group of horses that this one horse had bred and just
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: left untended. When I got there, it was the tail end of those tough years. But you know, there were some horses there that I couldn't even come close to riding. You know, they would. They'd buck me off three or four times in a day before Benny would finally say, you know, I'll take that horse back. You don't have to ride it anymore. So he was, but Benny was like a one-of-a-kind character. Like you can find some interviews with him online. He's the wittiest person I've ever met. He I I think he only went to school for a few days, but he was the smartest guy I ever met by far. Apparently he was an amazing poker player. You know, but when he and I were together it was usually it was pretty much about cowboying. You know, I would spend those summers up there and it was just kinda him and the family and other cowboys would come and go, but I would sort of spend most of my time with the family. So I kinda had this very unique relationship with Benny, you know, where I kinda had him separated from the rest of the world because you got him back in Vegas. Everybody wanted a piece of his time, you know, and he had so many friends, but it was just us out there on the ranch and And I remember the day Benny took to me, I could tell. It was that first summer, and he had a grandson. He drug his grandsons out there every summer. They they would have preferred to stay in Vegas. But he would make them go to the ranch. And one of them, Bobby, was picking at me, picking at me, picking at me. And it was me and Benny and Bobby out riding somewhere. And he kept riding my ass. And I finally just pulled up my horse. I got off and said, Bobby. Get down off that horse and I'm gonna beat your ass right here.
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: And I, you know, Bobby, Bobby, I I'm sure he could have whipped me in a fight. I'm not as confident as Liam Neeson being able to whip me in a fight. Bobby probably
Steve Seger: Good call out, yeah.
John: could have, but I could tell Benny was so he was humored first of all, but he was impressed, like that. You know, this kid has the moxie to just, you know, take on Bobby right out here in the middle of a pasture. He doesn't care, you know, what I think, what Bobby thinks. and you know, I he embraced me after that. yeah. So it was, you know, we had a lifelong friendship, you know, right till the point that Benny passed at the age of eighty-five. Yeah, he died in eighty nine, he was eighty five. So, yeah, we had a close friendship. Probably, you know, outside of my family, the most influential person in my upbringing. I don't know why I'm, you know, drawn to outlaws, but I for whatever reason I am. yeah, no, we we we loved each other and he taught me a lot. Certainly taught me the you know, the benefit of hard work that, you know, hard work conquers everything.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. You kind of brushed over what I think is pretty cool. You was it your grandpa that was Teddy Roosevelt, a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider? Great grandfather. Okay, got it.
John: No, my great grandfather. Great grandfather. My dad's grandfather. Y yeah, it's You know, I didn't, I never met him. So I didn't get, but he wrote down all his stories, and I have like literally the original copies that he typed up in a typewriter. And of like being a cowboy in Central America. He was an engineer and he worked on rail lines up in you know, engineering rail lines up in the north of the United States. And then he ran the United Fruit Company in Cuba. you know, just like Clearly a fascinating character. There's a lot of, I have a lot of newspaper articles kind of written about his life, you know, like just shy of a book type of thing. But he heard he was in, I want to say, like Costa Rica, I think. And he heard that Colonel Roosevelt was putting together a group of soldiers to go fight in the Spanish-American War. He was a proud American, even though he was down in Central America cowboying. And so he stayed, there was a quarantine in Costa Rica at the time. So he and another guy stowed away on a boat to make their way to Florida, where Colonel Roosevelt was putting together his band of misfits. And so they were hidden under bunks and and they got seasick. The seas got rough and they started throwing up. So they were discovered. And these guys were gonna like treat them roughly on the boat, and they convinced them that they were patriotic Americans just going to join Colonel Roosevelt. And then the the guys on the boat said, okay, we'll give you passage. And, you know, so they stowed away. He joined Colonel Roosevelt. And you know, I don't there were no stories about his time as a rough writer per se, just sort of that he did it. You know, he made the run up San Juan Hill. you know, so I I just know he was like a world class character, and then he went to run the United Fruit Company down in Cuba subsequently. you know, so he returned there. And I've heard there's a street named after him in Santiago, where he where he lived. haven't been down there to find that out. So yeah, that was the genesis of the whole cowboy thing in the Langmore line. But it appears, by the way, neither of my boys, they both went branded cabs for a while. neither of them took to it. So it might end with me. My brother did it as well for like three summers, I think. he didn't he liked it, but you know, it ran its course, which cowboying has a way of doing. It's it's a
Steve Seger: Yeah. Yeah.
John: tough way of life.
Steve Seger: When did so you said twelve summers with Benny and then you got into law. How how did that transition go? I mean, it's quite different from what you were doing.
John: Yeah, it's you know, I will say so the first when I arrived at the ranch every summer, the first question Benny would ask me was, How was your how were your grades? do you know, and he took pride in me having good grades. So I was always a good student and I I personally took pride in being a good student. so I just always knew I was gonna sort of keep going with my academic career. Yeah, it's yeah, just you know, something I was always gonna do and I think I may have told Colt that it was my last summer cowboying. I went out with a wagon on the Padlock Ranch in Montana. And branded calves for we're the wagons out about five weeks. And I think I can't remember what I was making that summer. I know I have an old pay stub from the padlock that I was making 450 bucks a month. And when I got out of law school, they were paying us a thousand dollars a week to go be an intern. So that the second half of that summer I went and look worked for a law firm in San Antonio and you know. in the second half of the summer, you know, the first week of that I made what I had made in the entire first half of the summer as a cowboy.
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: And and I remember I I I really thought I was gonna go cowboy for a while, because I sort of felt deficient that I had only cowboyed in the summer. So I missed all of the fall works and all of the winter work and, you know, and I kind of always felt like, you know, I'm not really I'm not sure if I can claim to be a cowboy, not having, you know, done it year-round. But and and I so even during law school, I thought I'm gonna go take a year or two and just cowboy and you know, after that after that summer and drawing those different paychecks, it was like, who are you kidding that you're gonna go to law school and then go cowboy? My dad was all for it, by the way. And my mom was like, No freaking way are
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: you. Going to law school and then going in cowboying. Anyway, it worked itself out and I, you know, went and joined a big law firm in DC after that. And you know, cowboying faded to my past. It was something I'd talk about, you know, kind of less as the years went on, but I certainly never forgot about it. you know, and it was it's, you know, it's a huge part of who I am even to this day.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm. And so how did your law career unfold and when did photography come about too? Cause I know that's an important part of your story too that I'm excited to dig into.
John: Yeah, yeah. you know, I just did what you do coming out of law school, you know, the big firms come and recruit there and they offered more money than I was worth, that is for sure. and you know, so you interview and you know, I took a job with a big powerhouse firm in Washington DC, Aiken Gump, you know, kind of put me close to politics and policy. And I was a corporate lawyer. and I thought, I really thought, you know, like coming out of law school, I'm going to get rich and I'm going to buy a big ranch. And I was like determined, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get rich. Like I'm going into corporate law and I'm going to make a big bunch of money. And like it really was a motivator for me. It's funny how quickly it faded. You know how like and I remember looking at the lawyers at Achin Gump and and great lawyers, great law firm, but I will say like a far too many of those senior partners there, I looked at their life and I was like, I if that's the pinnacle of success, you know, if that's what I'll work a lifetime to aspire to, you know, most of them were divorced, not all. A lot of them drank too much, you know, they worked nonstop. Till their 70s, you know, hardly ever went home. I was just like, I don't, you know, that's when money started to lose its shine for me. So I only lasted two years there. And it was the late 80s, sort of the the corporate world went through a big disruption with the SNL crisis, the savings and loan crisis. and then I went to work for Caterpillar, which I loved. Caterpillar was a great company. And I was half the time as a lawyer. And then I moved over to the business side because I had an MBA. You know, I did that together with my law degree. So I was a viable candidate to move to the business side. And and I really liked it. Great company, Midwestern values. But the main thing was, you know, when I interviewed, they I I wanted to move overseas. I was definitely, you know, I had that kind of wanderlust. And they're like, yeah. No, that's like you know, if you raise your hand for an overseas assignment, you'll get one. And I did. so they first moved me to Singapore. and that's I got married while I was there to a girl from Texas. And so Eric and I spent three and a half years in Singapore and then they they were gonna move me to Manila, which was a hard sell for Erica. But the guy there was supposed to go to Bangkok and he's like, I'm not going to Bangkok. So he refused to move. So Manila didn't open up. So they said, How about Sydney? And this was my transition to the business side. I was Sydney, Australia? yeah. I'll I'll do that.
Steve Seger: He's
John: So we were there a couple of years. It was, you know, the best, the nicest city I've ever lived in. It's pretty amazing place. My first, our first son, Jordan, was born there. we had a great time. And I will say that as Eric and I were moving to Singapore, my father-in-law, not even my father, gave me as a wedding present, you know, kind of an upper mid-range Canon camera with two lenses and a film camera, of course, at the time, digital cameras hadn't started up at that point. And I will say, like I started photographing Asia, like all our trips. And then it it was almost instantaneous, my kind of, you know, being enraptured with photography. And I had, you know, traveled so w much with my dad as a photographer that I I realized I had just kind of, you know, inherited this mainly approach to people, like how you Because most of my photography is around people. you know, how to approach them, how to engage with them, how to get them to feel comfortable and natural when you're pointing a camera at them. It came to me very quickly and very naturally. I mean, and I know I inherited it from my dad, you know, all those trips we did where he took his cameras and we hated them at the time. You know, we'd stop at a diner in the middle of nowhere. And he'd wind up spending an hour engaging with some locals so he could, you know, get to the point that he could take pictures with them. And we were all like, God, let's go. You know, come on. When when's he gonna leave? And and then I started it so weird. I started doing that to my wife and kids. They're like, No, don't you dare stop and talk to those people. You know, I I get that the light's beautiful, but we you know, we are ready to go. So That was where I took up photography and I just kind of progressively got more serious. And then there was a workshop with a guy, David Allen Harvey, who's a very well known former Magnum photographer, well known National Geographic photographer. He's done, you know, I don't know, forty something stories for National Geographic. Did a workshop with him in Mexico and he you know, my father had really quit taking pictures at the time. And David kind of pulled back the curtain on like how you get serious about photography. And his biggest bit of advice was go do a project. You know, tell a story, a singular story with a group of images. Don't just travel and shoot what you see. That's not a story, you know, that's just travel photography. And that was the, you know, his advice to that effect was. what got me started on the East Austin story. And he also told me wisely, David's a really brilliant mentor. do a story in your backyard. Don't pick some far-flung story that you have to go travel for and spend a lot of money. You know, you can find a great story anywhere. You just have to look for it and be open to it. And, you know, I had taken a few pictures in East Austin and been doing some civic work. that kind of exposed me to East Austin. And, you know, that led to my first project, which was my second book, but the first project that I really threw myself into. And yeah. So it was, you know, that was kind of the how photography, you know, wove its way into my life, you know, while I continued a professional career. and and I had moved back to Austin From I left Caterpillar for the sake of moving back to Texas, I kind of realized like every ten years or so I just feel the need to shake up my life. And so I left Cat, moved back to Austin, worked for the legislature, and passed a wrote a big transportation bill that took me into this other universe and so I consulted for like ten years. but I was doing photography while I was Consulting because I was kind of more in charge of my own life. But you know, I would do it on weekends, I would take time off. Like during spring break, I would take our spring break and go photograph in East Austin for a week.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: so I just found a way to kind of, you know, build this passion into my professional life.
Steve Seger: And you you just got back from a project that you were working on. I I was gonna ask you earlier in this, but what are you able to share what you were what you're working on now?
John: Sure. Only I, you know, I've been working on it for five and a half years, and yeah, I know. It's and I haven't talked about it because it's it felt so tenuous for so much of that time, but I'm very close to finishing. So it's it's another documentary film, and it's it's about men. serving life sentences at Angola prison in Louisiana, but they get to Because Angola runs on 18,000 acres, there's a the second largest cattle ranch in Louisiana is inside Angola prison, the largest maximum security prison in the United States. So they have this working cattle ranch with about 2,000 plus mother cows. And there are these group of men that are again serving life sentences that have earned the right to be cowboys inside Angola. And so the story is their story. It's it's pretty amazing. you know, I haven't talked about it publicly yet. you know, I'm gonna have to deal with the emotion of it, yeah, you know, because it's a super emotional project, as you can imagine. You know, and these guys are all my friends now. I've been inside probably Ten different times more than a month in total. Yeah, and I only have two shoots left to to finish the film and then so we should be done next month and then we'll go into the editing room and you know, hopefully put together a meaningful film. If it's you know, what I've said is if I can convey literally ten percent of what I've experienced inside Angola and with these men, it will be an unbelievably powerful film. You know, I'm not saying that I will you know, I have to do it together with my editor, but yeah, it's it's Yeah. Something else. It's
Steve Seger: How did the opportunity come up? I mean, how did you get introduced to it originally?
John: Yeah, funny. So, you know, we didn't talk about, but I did a project, a photo project on the American Cowboy, which was a book, kind of returned to it, you know, after my dad, 40 years later. So I did a book on the American Cowboy, and then I office in a building that used to be a post-production house for film. And there was a filmmaker in the office next to me, and he approached me about Doing a documentary film on cowboys. He saw my photography and he cowboyed some growing up and said, Why don't we partner? You know, you've just been out to all these ranches and you know this whole world, and you grew up cowboying, and you know, I'm a filmmaker. So this guy, Bud Force, and I co-directed a documentary film on cowboys. So I heard a report on the radio that Where this woman took ins art inside a prison, like physical art, so that men s men and women serving time inside a prison could view art firsthand, which is, you know, an entire it's the way art's meant to be viewed, and it's entirely different than viewing it on a screen. And that sparked this idea that I ought to show the cowboys film inside a prison. And it would have a similar effect and I could, you know, talk about it afterwards and I could also tell the guys watching, men in this case mainly, you know, you get out, you can go cowboy. You know, they don't do background checks. you only on you know, for people working on a ranch, you only
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: need about two thousand dollars worth of gear if you buy it used, and you they'll they'll give you, you know. OJT on the job training, you just got to be willing to put up with livestock, you know, which is a tough deal and it is not for everybody. And you need to be willing to live in rural America. So that's what I had in mind. And I thought, you know what, I'll go do it at a prison, excuse me, that had a prison rodeo. And there's a famous one, Huntsville in Texas, that had a long running famous prison rodeo. And I started reading about it and I thought, you know, God, that could be an interesting concept for a documentary film, the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. And then it was like the the the rodeo at Huntsville's dead. It's been dead for a while. And then I thought, well, maybe something on prison rodeos. And a buddy of mine said, Hey, if you're interested in prison rodeos, I've got a cousin that's a big Whig in the correctional facilities world. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You ought to talk to her about prison rodeos. If they still exist today, she'll know all about them and you know, have lunch with her. So I met with Mary, Mary Livers in 2021. So this was kind of the height of the pandemic. Mary and I hit it off, and she said, the last big you know, prison rodeo is at Angola in Louisiana. And she said, I'm on this thing called the Parole Project. I'm the board chair, and it helps formerly incarcerated men reintegrate back into the real world. You know, And she said, the guy that started it spent 19 years inside Angola. He got a life sentence as a 15-year-old, Andrew. Why don't we get on a Zoom call with Andrew and he'll tell you everything about prison rodeos and if Angola is like worthy of a, you know, a film? I was like, great. So from the point that Mary and I had that conversation to the point that We got on the Zoom call, which was made some number of weeks. I had kind of researched prison rodeos and I'd thought about it more and I wasn't interested. You know, I I like working cowboys, not rodeo cowboys, and they are two different things. You know, one's a sport and the other's kind of a way of life and, you know, a profession in a certain respect.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: And prison rodeos have been done, like films have been done on them. And the Angola Prison Rodeo has been done by a well-known documentary photographer, a guy that did a great documentary film on Angola, called The Farm, which is what it's known as. So he had already done one on the Angola Prison Rodeo. So by the time I got on the Zoom call with Marion Andrew, I wasn't gonna do anything on the Angola Prison Rodeo. But the call had been set up, so I decided to see it through and So I do my little spiel that I just gave you. I heard a report on, you know, the radio, and I thought about doing something at Huntsville, and then, you know, it opened up the idea of prison rodeos. And I said, Andrew, do you think there's a good story about the Angola prison rodeo? Knowing I wasn't going to do anything with it, but just being polite because Mary set the call up. And he's like, Nah, not really. It's been done, you know. he said, But I think there's a great story at Angola. And and I kind of told him my cowboy background. I'm like, okay, you know, I got nothing but time. It's the pandemic. and he went on to tell me about the guys that are the cowboys, they're called the range crew. you know, and he kind of explained the way things work inside a prison that they normally offer you time off your sentence to maintain order inside maximum security prisons. 85% of the people at Angola are serving life sentences with no chance of parole. So
Steve Seger: Wow.
John: they can't offer that. there's so much more to this story. That's just one piece of it. So a warden, a pretty famous warden, a guy named Burl Kane, was confronted with this dilemma. How do I maintain order? So what he came up with was quality of life inside a prison. And one of the bigger aspects of quality of life is are the jobs. And inside Angola, they've got this whole agricultural industry. One piece of it are these, you know, 2,000 plus mother cows. And it are it's the inmates that do all the work on the farm, you know, inside Angola. And so
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: there are a group of men that run the cattle ranch. it's overseen by employees of the state, but the guys that do the cowboying are all inmates. And so You know, there are these jobs that they use to maintain order. And coveted among the jobs is to be a cowboy on the range crew. and he told me that, and I'm like, my god, Andrew, like that's unbelievable. If you can get me access, I will dedicate three years of my life to do a film on that. I'll raise the money, you know, I will commit myself to that. And he said, Okay, you know. Let's all work with you on getting access. Long, long story, but it was on, off, on, off over the course of four and a half years till I finally got access a little over a year ago. So I've been filming for the past year. you know, I went to the rodeo constantly during that four and a half years that I was trying to get access. And yeah, it finally broke loose. You know, they were comfortable with me. They were comfortable with my intentions for the story that I was gonna tell. you know, it's not an expose, it's not a criminal reform film, it's a human interest story, although those things all feed into it, you know, you can't ignore them. but it's about
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: the men on the range crew. but but yeah, you know, the lives that they've lived and that they're living now are so unbelievably poignant. yeah, just like really nothing else I've experienced. So that's how it all came about, you know, and Andrew and Mary and an assistant warden at Angola and Marie, Warden Easley have kind of been the ones that have stuck with the project the whole time. You know, the four of us, and that eventually, you know, carried it across the line and got the warden. to go along and got the secretary of the Department of Corrections to go along, the deputy secretary, the public information officer, you know, all the people up the line. I'm sure I know it's made its way to the governor's office. I haven't dealt with the governor, but you know, the governor had to sign off as well. But eventually all that, you know, got itself sorted out. And yeah, so been working on it for a year, you know, really a month left if things all go to plan.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: Two more shoots and yeah. It's
Steve Seger: What does a normal shoot look like? Like what is a typical day when you're there usually unfold? I mean, is it n is it all different or
John: Yeah, it is. You know, it it's so I will say like when we went in, you know, so when I first when you when I first went in to go meet the guys, I went in by myself just to tell them how serious I took the responsibility of telling their story. No cameras, no nothing, you know, and I didn't even appreciate at the time like How meaningful it is because I didn't appreciate how vulnerable these men are. They are the toughest men I've ever met, you know, murderers. They're serving life sentences in a maximum security prison, and they're cowboys. You know, it's sort of like stacking up everything that makes a man tough, and yet they are the most vulnerable men I've ever met. And I didn't, you you know, I didn't know them. I had met them at the rodeo because they can They're trustees, which is, you know, you earn the right to be a trustee and you get a lot of freedom as an inmate there. And so everybody on the range crew is a trustee. So they come out during the rodeo and they kind of mix with the people that are there. And so I met them, you know, multiple times. And, you know, I told them, I'm trying to do a documentary film. And I could tell they were skeptical. Like, you know, one is is he for real? And two would be good luck. you know, getting access because it had been a long time before anybody had been given or since anybody had been given this degree of access.
Steve Seger: Mm-hmm.
John: But I I went in that first time just to tell these guys I take the responsibility of telling your story very seriously. I didn't say I was gonna tell it positively or put a positive spin on it, just that It's a serious responsibility and I am aware of that. You know, that was all. That was the whole trip was for me to spend like forty five minutes just telling them that and answering their questions. Then I went back it's funny, I went back with a cinematographer who I met as a photographer, and he fell apart after that first trip. He kind of melted down on the way home. I'm not quite sure what aspect of it. you know unsettled him. There could be any of a number of them. But when I go in, it's like you're at a working ranch. There's a barn, they're saddling up horses, you know, they're coming and going in trucks, they're loading horses and trailers, you know, and they just interact like normal with the guys from prison enterprises that oversee them. And it's me and one cinematographer. And subsequent to that first trip, I landed on an amazing cinematographer, this guy Lucian Reed. Who did a lot of war photography and cinematography? he's tough as leather, and he's an amazing s cinematographer. So he's the director of photography on this film. So it's me and him. I did take my son, who's an aspiring filmmaker, to be a second camera on the last shoot, and he'll probably go with us on one of the next ones. And you know. Early in the project, it was a lot of interviews, but we were just, I had no idea what to expect when I went in. None. I hadn't been inside. I'd never been in a maximum security prison. I'd never been in Angola, which is unique among maximum security prisons. So I had no idea what to expect. And we just went in filming everything, like everything that moved. And I'm taking still photos along the way because I incorporate them into the film. Which we did it in Cowboys, the Cowboy documentary. And I will do the same with this film. And so I'm photographing while I'm directing and we're shooting everything, did some interviews, but I didn't know what to ask, what the deal is. But as you keep going back, you start to get a sense of it. Okay, this is what's going on. You get to know the guys, they get much more open with you. And then the story starts to form in your mind. And my editor is watching the work as we go along. And he's an amazing ed editor, this guy, Lucas Arger. And cause we just when we shot Cowboys, we just sent him all the film after we had shot it all. We were done filming and there were a lot of holes in there. You know, he's like, Man,
Steve Seger: Yeah.
John: if we could have gotten more of this or more of that. And you don't know it at the time when you're filming, the story's not clear in your head. you know you have loose notions of it. It it's you you know, we got much more specific with our shoots as time went on. To this last when it was like I'm going in and I need to shoot five things. You know, I need to shoot Where the people live inside Angola, the employees. I need to film the guys living their life inside Camp F where they live, these big open dormitories. I need to interview the historian for Angola. It's like now we're down to very specific stuff. And the last things are gonna be the guys getting ready for the rodeo, because although they're not all rodeo cowboys, they help with the livestock and a funeral. And the funerals are very dramatic. They do it in a horse drawn Hearst, and then all of the inmates march behind the Hearst for the people that are buried inside Angola, and then they sing gospel hymns as they march behind the Hearst. So we're gonna film that. so yeah, it's you know, it what it looks like filming in Angola has evolved is the bottom line over the course of shooting the film.
Steve Seger: Yeah. And when's the release date? Do you guys know yet?
John: Yeah, good question. You know, my guess would be if all things go to plan, I still have to raise a lot of money and we have to do all the editing, music, sound. But I'm guessing, you know, we would submit to film festivals next fall. Knock on knock on wood. I should be hopefully again knocking on wood, you know, should be done filming in October.
Steve Seger: I can't wait to see it. And where can my audience here come and find everything that you've done up to this point and then eventually find your future film too?
John: Yeah. so you can watch Cowboys on Apple TV or Amazon. And you know, my books one, the Cowboy book is open range and the East Awesome book is fault lines. And, you know, if you just they're Amazon or any of a number of websites and you know, a few stores carry them. so there's they aren't hard to define, although You know, it's not a selling technique. I don't I still they could be available for another year or two. I do know they are down to like, you know, both of them because I just gotten statements, you know, less than two hundred copies. There'll be, you know, used versions of them will circulate for a long time, I'm sure. But, you know, of the original ones, they're they're they're getting close. But still available. Open range is
Steve Seger: Mm. And do you have a title? Do you do you have a title yet for your new new one though? Yeah.
John: for the film? the Angola film. yes, I do have a title, but it's too, you know, tenuous at this point. It trust me, you know, I will not keep it a secret. For anyone that cares enough to follow up on this, if you just follow my Instagram or follow my Facebook, you know, you like projects like this, you want people to see them. So I will I'm horrible at self marketing, but I will make my best effort to at least market the film itself, you know, if not if not me along with it. The film I will it won't be a secret. And hopefully, you know, if it's good enough it might get some bit of attention. Who knows? You know, you you never know. It's crapshoot.
Steve Seger: Yeah. Well I'll I'll link all your socials and everything too, so everyone can follow along. John, this was amazing. Thank you for taking the time today too.
John: Steve, I appreciate it. Thanks for doing a podcast, all the effort you put into it, and I enjoyed it. And yeah, I'm I I appreciate your time and attention.
