HORSE Te Forgotten Hero
Handspring Puppet Company was given a special award for their production of life size wire puppets to play the horses Joey and his dear friend Topthorn.
Te Making of the Movie In the movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, horses are played
by real horses, in most situations by Dutch Warmbloods and Andalusians. Ten different horses were used to play Joey’s part, two of which were Warmbloods. Four different horses take on the role of Topthorn. Then there were the cavalry horses where as many as 150 were being filmed on the set at one time. Steven was clear that he wanted to see the horses’ personalities and emotions but without causing any harm to them. This complex task was given to the film’s horse master and head horse trainer, Bobby Lovgren, no stranger to horses or to the complications of filming horses. Bobby is a native of South Africa and lives in California.
Horses have been in his family for six generations, and today his father and sister operate Equestrian International, one of the largest hunter/jumper and dressage facilities in South Africa. Bobby has trained animals for films including Seabiscuit,
Racing Stripes and Legend of Zorro, and for the television series Wild Fire. He was fortunate to learn his craft from two of the most renowned movie animal trainers, Glenn and Corky Randall. However, according to Bobby, War Horse was very different
from the beginning. Fulfilling the famous director’s wish was a tall order, but not because the script was wanting. “I must have cried three times reading it, and I’m not normally emotional that way,” Bobby says. “No film compares to this. It’s the most amazing story. It shows what horses have done and what they are capable of. We take for granted what they’ve done [for mankind] in the past.” The script called for the horse stars Joey and Topthorn to
show a full range of emotions from happy to sad. “Scared was our most critical emotion because we don’t want the horse to really be scared or be in a dangerous situation,” Bobby explains. The art of this kind of acting requires eliciting the expressions and body language in realistic form without putting the horse in the situation that causes the emotions. And as is asked of a human actor, the horse needs to
Photos at right by Andrew Cooper, SMPSP. © Dreamworks II Distribution Co., LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Warmbloods Today 17
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