Hollywood was built on a lot of things. Hard work, ingenuity, and westerns. I’m half joking, but there was a time when moviegoers flocked to the theater to see the latest Sergio Leone Western starring Clint Eastwood in his prime. Will we ever have another leading man able to ooze machismo even in his quietest moments? Will we ever have another great western? I recently talked to one man determined to bring great westerns back to the theaters. Read on for my interview with the director of Eminence Hill, Robert Conway.

LRM: All right Robert, let me ask you, what is the premise for Eminence Hill?

Robert: Well it’s a Western. It’s kind of dark morality play. Basically, it starts out kind of rough, but, hopefully has a deeper meaning than just your usual shoot them up stuff, though we do have plenty of that in it. So, yeah, a young girl’s abducted by a band of notorious outlaws. They have an aim towards selling her and they basically lose their way and end up in a town run by a bunch of very pious, religious fanatics, all the while they’re being pursued by a lawman. So eventually all the roads kind of lead to this town of Eminence Hill where everything goes down. But that’s it in a nutshell.

LRM: What’s your, can I ask you what would be your top Western film?

Robert: Yeah, you know there’s so many different ones, and Western’s a very diverse genre, but I’d certainly say Clint Eastwood stuff. Unforgiven, is one of my best. That’s one of my all-time favorite films. I mean, but of course you know there’s Tombstone which is great. Going back to some of the John Wayne films are always some fun. I mean, there’s just so much there.

LRM: There are so many to choose from.

Robert: Yeah.

LRM: I can see why you would chose those two.  Unforgiven and Tombstone.

Robert: Yeah, those are really great. It’s funny, with Tombstone we were actually lucky enough to get to shoot at the set that was used in a lot of, well, it was the location they used for the town of Tombstone.

LRM: Seriously?

Robert: Yeah, so that was really neat. That was really cool. It’s called Mescal, it’s part of old Tucson studios in Arizona out here, so yeah, we got some of that in the movie.

LRM: Speaking of the movie, when and where can readers of LRM Online check the film out?

Robert: Well, it’ll be out on the 5th of November, VOD DVD. It’ll be on the 1st of November in limited theaters. I believe that’s just the west coast, though. But yeah, everywhere VOD DVD November 5th.

LRM: Nice. Okay. Now, let’s see. You got Lance Henriksen in this film, is that correct?

Robert: Yeah, I was very lucky to get Lance. Was great working with him. Oh, he’s a great guy. Really great guy. He’s a really thoughtful guy and getting him in a Western, getting him at all, was just, it was a dream.

LRM: Yeah?

Robert: Yeah. He really brought so much to the project and it was just wonderful working with him.

LRM: What is his role in Eminence Hill?

Robert: He plays Mason. Everything in Eminence Hill’s, I tried to make it many shades of gray. He’s someone who’s been looking for our lawman. On the face of everything, you want to think a lawman’s the good guy and the outlaw’s the bad guy. So, Lance plays a character who’s been, who knows about our lawman’s sordid past and reveals that.

LRM: Nice.

Robert: Yeah, he’s not the white knight that he would maybe try to portray himself as.

LRM: He has some shades of gray to him?

Robert: Yeah. Exactly.

LRM: Now, I wanted to ask you about your film Krampus Unleashed. I wanted to ask you what was that like, pivoting from doing a horror film to a Western?

Robert: Well I had done Westerns actually first.

LRM: Okay.

Robert: My first feature film, my short film in college was a Western, and then my first feature film was also a Western called Redemption: A Mile from Hell. That came out in 2009. So, the pivot actually was to horror and then back to Westerns. But you know, it’s always fun, it’s always different. I mean movies like Krampus Unleashed were more of a fun kind of monster movie. So yeah, it’s much different element, animal but every film has its series of challenges and so, we had a story worth telling and an audience that appreciates it.

LRM: Now what was production like on Eminence Hill?

Robert: Well, it was kind of tough. We had very little time to shoot the feature, and I had to go with a pretty small crew. Even with my standards, the crew was pretty small. I had a very brief window of access to some of the sets. We used Pioneer Living History Museum here in Phoenix, Arizona to shoot the town of Eminence Hill, and had to kind of be in and out of there in early. This was early January of 2019 when they were closed for the holiday season, so it was a rush kind of shoot which make it pretty stressful. We had to get a lot every day, but I had a wonderful team. I had a great crew that really made that happen. Barry Cohen, my cinematographer, Lori Haberman, my production designer, and just a great cast and crew. We pulled a lot of long hours, but we got it done. Yeah, we were very lucky. We also had a lot of help from our reenactor wild west enthusiasts, reenactors, historical reenactor community.

LRM: I was noticed that the wardrobe appears very period accurate.  

Robert: Yeah, well Lori Haberman’s our production designer, she did all that. And she’s amazing at finding stuff and altering things that are, making it look like the period correct. So, we had her, a very small budget and she was able to really stretch it and find wonderful stuff. That, couple with our historical reenactors, we were able to really put together a cool looking, authentic as we could make it, Western.

LRM: Well let me ask you, after Eminence Hill is out, what’s next up on your horizon? Is there anything that you’d like to tell the readers of LRM Online to look out for?

Robert: Yeah. Well, I’m writing a new Western.

LRM: Okay.

Robert: I also have an action premise, but it’s pretty early in development, So, yeah. Hopefully another couple of Westerns would be a fun direction to go on for a while.

LRM: Awesome. And I’m sure our fans here at LRM Online would love to get to keep up with your social media.

Robert: Yeah, the best place really is Facebook.com/EHwestern.

LRM: Awesome, okay. We’ll make sure they have that info so they can follow along and see what’s coming up next, and make sure they check out your new film, Eminence Hill.

Robert: Thank you very much.

LRM: Awesome. Thanks for taking time out today for this interview, Robert.

Robert: Oh, it was great. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

Be sure to visit Facebook.com/ehwestern get a copy of Eminence Hill when it releases on VOD and DVD on November 5^th.

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