Here's the map of the south west corner of South Dakota. For reasons of perspective to those unfamiliar with the area, Mt Rushmore is between Rapid City (the middle of the five pink circles, and Custer the lower left of the five. Here's what they mean. We are staying and having these past two days of production meetings and rehearsals in Rapid City. Tomorrow we move from the lovely "Town House Motel" to our first morning of shooting in Custer. This scene is actually the establishing scene of the movie, exposing the relationships and the love between 3 of the main characters. Basically, swimming and horse play at a remote water hole. Here we see the indominable spirit of Bertha and the playful yet deep rooted rivalry between High Bear and Larry (that's me!).

After we shoot there we're moving to a hotel (Cabins) in wall which is the Northeastern of the 5 pink circles. From there we will begin shooting in the Badlands (Below Wall) for a number of days then finishing up in the North Western circle, near Silver City.

We also did something very important today. The director (Andrew Kightlinger) screened a fantastic grainy old flic put together in the late 70's early 80's (I think) called "Walkabout". It's a story of a couple of kids. One very young boy and another girl who's just come of age it seems. They are lost in the desert of Austrailia and they are discovered and guided by an Aborigine (Spelling sorry) boy who is on his "Walkabout" test of manhood where he must live alone in the wilderness and fend for himself. They all have this fantastic maturing journey. The two English children look for home and find it sneaks up on them in the form of a realization that they had not anticipated. The Native boy/man realizes some maturing elements unfolding in his life too as he processes this new unexpected relationship.

We watched this movie to get a sense of the visceral life in the wilderness and how it seems to draw out our latent abilities. More importantly, how we in our own movie "Bertha" will process love life and death itself. Julia said something tonight after the film that I had never put into words but makes great sense. "You can't enjoy life with out the presence of death" I screwed up the exact quote there but it still made a ton of sense. Without our mortality (In our lives and our characters' lives), we wouldn't have anything to struggle for or to battle against. Knowing that it could suddenly happen to anyone we love or ourselves even, makes us add a pleasant and joyful urgency to our tasks.