When Chris Eyre’s “Smoke Signals” won the audience prize in Sundance 25 years ago, the director thought the kudos would soon lead to a landslide of opportunities for Native talent. Amid a flo…
’s “Smoke Signals” won the audience prize in Sundance 25 years ago, the director thought the kudos would soon lead to a landslide of opportunities for Native talent. Amid a flourishing independent film scene, the road trip dramedy won acclaim and awards as the first feature written, directed and produced by Native filmmakers. But it took two decades, and a pivot to television, for Native voices to finally get a wider chance to be heard.
When “Smoke Signals” came out, it got so many accolades and so much attention, given independent film was kind of where it was at, at the time. I really wanted to do it all, and in my career I have done quite a bit. I’ve done documentaries and TV movies and dramatic reenactments and feature films and indie films. I had a great opportunity to direct “Friday Night Lights” a few times, which was human drama on the football field. I made a movie with Josh Lucas and James Cromwell called “Hideaway,” and it was about a guy on a sailboat trying to find his family.
We did “Skinwalkers,” Bob Redford and myself, years ago, after “Smoke Signals.” I was approached by Redford, who asked if I’d read the Tony Hillerman books. Wes Studi was Leaphorn and Adam Beach was Jim Chee and we really learned a lot from that. But the AMC series, we’ve amped it up and done more action and more drama and some comedy and lightheartedness.
We have a language consultant named George Joe who came on and he’s really great. We looked at the language really carefully, because last season there was discussion about different dialects of Diné. He really helped us to make sure that all the Navajo was uniform to a certain place and a certain time. We also had elders such as Betty and she made sure it was all great too.
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