Q&A: Toby Keith on “Beer for My Horses”
From the Aug. 6-23 issue of Look at OKC entertainment guide.
Toby Keith adds “Beer” to his career
Back in 2003, “Beer for My Horses” was Toby Keith’s chart-topping duet with Willie Nelson, and the larger-than-life music video portraying them as father-and-son lawmen.
Now, “Beer for My Horses” also serves as the title of the action-comedy movie that Keith produced, starred in and co-wrote, which opens in theaters Aug. 8 Friday.
He and Tulsan Rodney Carrington - who co-wrote the script with Keith - play best friends and small-town Oklahoma sheriff’s deputies Rack and Lonnie. When Rack’s girlfriend, Annie (Claire Forlani) is kidnapped by a vengeful Mexican drug lord (Carlos Sanz), the duo defies their boss (Tom Skerritt) and hits the road to rescue her.
The movie also features Barry Corbin, Ted Nugent, David Allan Coe, Mel Tillis and, of course, Nelson, though in a completely different role as the enigmatic leader of a band of circus performers.
Keith, an Oklahoma native who lives in Norman, talked recently in a phone interview about his experiences making the movie, his second feature film.
Q: Obviously, the title of the movie and slogan is based on your hit duet with Willie Nelson, and that had a very memorable video. How did you come to the decision to move away from the plotline of the video and do a completely different story?
A: I never even thought about the video when we started writing this screenplay. I knew that my character was gonna be a small-town Oklahoma deputy, but I never thought about it.
The whole theme of “Beer for My Horses” - the song and the title - is about the toast. So it’s about the posse riding out old-school, getting the bad guy, coming back, saluting the guys that made it, saluting the guys that didn’t make it back, and then even saluting the steed that they rode on, that got ‘em out there and back. … So “whiskey for my men and beer for my horses” - those words in that order - are more about the toast than anything else. So that’s what lent itself to a cop story.
I had a couple of different Hollywood guys - screenwriters - that tried to jump on this script with me and I backed away from ‘em because it turned into more ‘Die Hard’ action than it did Burt Reynolds type stuff. And so I finally just spun and said I’m going country humor with enough action to be interesting but not over the top. …
Q: Was it really important for you to set the movie in Oklahoma?
A: Absolutely. I would have even shot in Oklahoma had we the resources and tax benefits. If you’re going to shoot a $10 million movie in Santa Fe (N.M.), the second you’re done and you go to post (production) with it, they write you a 25 percent check, a rebate. …
So you can’t beat the benefits of that, and I’ve showed it to some people around Mangum that I hunt with it, and they say that a lot of the movie looks just like Mangum. …
So we accomplished everything we wanted, and we’re still businessmen in the end, too. I wanted to shoot in Oklahoma, we just didn’t have the resources, and it just made too much sense to shoot it in Santa Fe.
Q: Tell me what the atmosphere was on the set, because I know many of these people are friends of yours.
A: Well, the days were long; they were 12- and 14- hour days. So where me and Ted Nugent wanted to sit down and write songs and have some fun with it and enjoy our time together creatively, that never even got to come up. It was just too long a day. …
But we had a blast. I mean, the laughing you see on the set is genuine.
Q: Tell me about your collaboration on the script with Rodney Carrington.
A: I already had the story. I had already written the story and submitted that and they (MTV Films) loved it, so now all I had to do was write this screenplay, to go in and do all the dialogue and stuff.
Rodney created several really good scenes for the movie and then across the board just made the dialogue blow up and be funny.
And Rodney has a real sensitive side to him; he was able to really help the scenes of like Claire and my part, when Rack and Annie get together. He was real instrumental.
-BAM
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