Trevor Donovan and Ashley Elaine star in the drama set for digital and limited theatrical release this weekend.
The next time you hear some western movie fan complain that they sure don’t make them like they used to, feel free to offer Where the Wind Blows as convincing evidence that, actually, they still do. Honest.
Starring Ashley Elaine and Trevor Donovan, and based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Fyffe, director John Schimke’s beautifully photographed indie drama is so thoroughly and unabashedly old-fashioned, its scenario could pass for the plot of a 1950s Audie Murphy star vehicle. Indeed, this pleasantly enjoyable movie — which is set to kick off a digital and limited theatrical release this weekend — would not be out of place on the schedule of the Hallmark Channel. Outside of Christmas season, of course.
Donovan charismatically portrays Chase Logan, a hunky cowboy who seldom stays in any one place for very long, and even more rarely returns to the homestead he left behind. (There’s a reason for that, but be patient — we don’t learn why until we’re well into the story.) He’s saddled with a responsibility he accepts only reluctantly when his cowpoke buddy Nathan (played, fleetingly, by C. Thomas Howell) is gunned down while cheating at cards in a small-town saloon.
Before his untimely demise, Nathan entrusted to Chase a large wad of cash for safekeeping. (Perhaps because he knew being a cardsharp might eventually place him on the wrong end of a gun?) Out of loyalty to his friend, Chase tracks down his lovely widow, Jessie (Elaine), to break the bad news to her.
At first, Chase is startled to see how, ahem, age-inappropriate Jessie is, considering she was married to the conspicuously older Nathan. (This, too, is something that’s explained much later.) But he remains respectful and sympathetic, opting to withhold the messy details of her husband’s demise. Unfortunately, he rides away before he remembers to give Jessie the money that Nathan left behind. Even more unfortunately, he is attacked in his sleep and robbed before he can return to Jessie’s isolated cabin.
One thing leads to another — with more than a little stern encouragement from Mrs. Hollyhock (ace scene-stealer Michelle Hurd), a local store owner who is Jessie’s best buddy — and Chase winds up marrying Jessie, mostly so she can easily adopt two children from the orphanage where Jessie herself had been raised.
Mind you, it starts out as a marriage in name only, since neither party in the union is much interested in consummation. (At least, not at first.) But after some threats by a couple of nasty bad guys, Chase decides it would be better to move his new family away from the isolated cabin, and over to his long-neglected home in a far-off town.
The good news: Chase finds that, during his absence, he has been gifted with a more lavish home by an old friend. The bad news: That far-off town is not nearly far away enough from the aforementioned bad guys.
Hey, this is a western, remember? So you had to know that, sooner or later, shootouts would be tossed into the narrative mix, right?
“I’ve always loved westerns,” director John Schimke told C&I during a recent joint interview with lead player Ashley Elaine. “And even before Where the Wind Blows, I’ve always wanted to make a western. In fact, I had written about four other western scripts that I had wanted to do in the past. And I remember as a child sitting in my dad’s lap watching old westerns that were on TV in the afternoons and on the weekends, like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or The Searchers or The Magnificent Seven.
“Westerns have definitely been part of my inspiration to want to be a filmmaker. So it was really great to use Caroline Fyffe’s novel as a blueprint for a romance story and lean into the western backdrop for a movie.”
Elaine, who also served as one of the movie’s producers, found inspiration in other new and classic westerns.
“I really love watching Lonesome Dove,” she said. “And Hostiles. I just loved the grit of that movie. And Rosamund Pike’s character really spoke to me, with how beautiful and strong she was. So I really watched Hostiles over and over again, to really see what she did with her character in correlation to what I wanted to do with Jessie.”
There is scarcely anything in Where the Wind Blows that would have ruffled the feathers of Production Code censors back in the ’50s. Neither Elaine nor Schimke make any apologies for that.
“When I originally read the book,” Schimke said, “I remember thinking this would make a great Hallmark movie. I wanted to give this story a little bit more edge to it, even while I knew the target audience was going to want something family-friendly. But I just wanted to make the story really exciting, and not try to pull any punches on it, and pull you in as much as possible with the visuals and with the music and the cinematography.
“I wanted to make it as good a movie as I possibly could within the confines that we had. Our budget was limited. Our shooting days were limited. I mean, we shot the movie in only 17 days, which is similar to a Hallmark movie. They don’t have a lot of time to make those, and so that's why they’re very simplified. But we just kept pushing ourselves to do as much as we could — to make this thing the best that we could.”
“The hardest scenes for me to shoot,” Elaine admitted, “were due to time constraints more than anything else. I mean, that scene when it’s raining over Jessie and she starts crying, and then she goes back into the cabin — we could only do one take because we had only one dress. And so if she got soaked, it wasn’t like we could just dry it within a certain amount of time.
“So I think going in and doing that one take while I was really crying on camera — just getting to that space was new for me. That was my first time crying on camera, and I’m so glad that it turned out, and I think the scene looks great.”
Elaine also had to be careful while “doing stunts in six layers of clothing that were authentic, with 1880s corsets and everything. Because I wanted the way I moved to be authentic to the time period. And so I had to do some stunts in those garments while running.”
Laughing, she added: “I think that those were the most challenging days for me by far.”
On the other hand, acting opposite Trevor Donovan wasn’t challenging at all.
“I’d seen a few of Trevor’s films before this,” Elaine said. “And luckily, we had some time to rehearse before we were on set together. We really had good chemistry, and so it was really easy to act opposite him. I think he's very much like the Chase Logan character in the book, especially in the way he looks and everything. So that was really a big blessing that Trevor decided to be Chase.”
“I almost feel like Trevor is Hollywood's best-kept secret,” Schimke said. “I did almost want to try to cast somebody different, but Trevor did match Chase from the book so much. And now I have to say after working with him, I couldn't believe how lucky we were, because I think he's a fabulous actor. I think it’s unfortunate that he’s not yet in bigger studio movies or anything like that. But I know his time is coming.
“He really understood the character. He embodied Chase perfectly, and he carries this movie so well with Ashley. I don’t think this movie would’ve worked unless we had him.”
