Many of us have already heard about the Serum Run of 1925. It’s the one where the sled dog Balto is hailed as a hero, and kids of the ’90s may even remember the Balto film that covered the whole thing. However, as tends to happen, only part of the story is covered there, and there are plenty of heroes that were missing from the headlines of the time — and this is something the new film The Great Alaskan Race hopes to bring to light.

I had a chance to speak with star, writer, director Brian Presley, as well as actor Treat Williams, were we talked about the film and the forgotten heroes of the 1925 Serum Fun.

Treat Williams: My name is Treat Williams and I played the doctor in the film. And Brian will describe what film I played the doctor in, and who he is.

Brian Presley: I’m Brian Presley. I played the role of Leonhard Seppala and was the writer, director and yeah. We got a movie that was a true story set in 1925. There was a diphtheria outbreak in the middle of winter, and the local hospital was out of the vaccine. And so, kids’ diphtheria is deathly disease, and would have been catastrophic to a ton of kids. And the state of Alaska had to put together a dog relay team to cover 700 miles, through 80 below zero, to save the children in Nome, Alaska. And years later, the Iditarod was started and has run every year in remembrance of the 1925 serum run. So, it’s a story adults will like, it’s a story kids will like, it’s an educational experience, story of heroism. Human beings that immediately all come together and, “What do we got to do to save these children?” And so.

LRM Online: And what a way to bring out some happy tears.

Brian Presley: Yes. Yes.

LRM Online: You’re so caught in the film and then you’re actually crying because you’re happy. Like, “Oh my gosh.”

Brian Presley: Yeah, there’s moments of heaviness in the movie, but it’s very… You’re definitely… Once the movie takes off, I mean you’re on pins and needles. It’s like Titanic, you know what happens. But how do we, in 96 minutes, tell a story that feels like you’re hearing about this for the first time? And those were some of the challenges in the storytelling. And I wanted to create an ensemble piece, and treat the doctor characters is really the backbone of this town. I mean, he’s the anchor too, and I wanted somebody who had Treat’s presence when I was writing it. And when I learned that Treat was available, I’m like, “This is exactly what I had in mind of who I would want to play that part.” And I’m so thankful that we got Treat, he does an amazing job in the movie.

Treat Williams: Thank you.

LRM Online: For your role, I mean, there was this doctor that was passionate with these kids. Especially, I love the scene where it’s like you saw these kids, that the characters saw these kids be born.

Treat Williams: I just said that that was my favorite scene that I had. I love the idea that he’s got a chance to say, “I brought these kids into the world.” And he can’t stop them from leaving at a young age, until the serum arrives. There’s a lot of internal drama right there. It’s actually a wonderful thing that he gave me to be able to play, which is I’m the meanwhile back at the ranch, and they’re getting the serum going but I’m trying to… It’s much more active than you think, we’re not waiting for the serum, we’re trying desperately to keep their wind pipes open. Because, what’s happening is that they’re closing up. Brian mentioned something that was quite wonderful, is this symbolism of the fact that as these guys are going through a storm, where it’s 70 degrees below zero, they’re having the same issues with breathing. But not through disease, but through cold, as the kids are in the beds. And so this is two concurrent plots going at the same time.

LRM Online: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Did you do any of your research on your end on this doctor?

Treat Williams: I played Andy Brown on Everwood for four years. I did more doctoring than I ever needed to do, but I tell you what I did do, which was a choice, was that there was no doctor on set to teach me. But I do know that they didn’t have the instrumentation, at the time, for pulse. And the way they would take the pulse is against a stopwatch or a watch. And so, we didn’t even have hand watches then. Most guys had the watch that came across. So I used a fob watch, the regular timepiece for that. And then one of the things we did, which we had very little time, and we had to get… When I was giving them all the serum and the shots, it’s this very antiquated needle.

Brian Presley: Oh yeah.

Treat Williams: And we had no time. The needle fell off. So, I was pretending I had the needle.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

Treat Williams: And the needle would fall on the floor but we kept going.

Brian Presley: We got the shot of him holding it up and seeing this massive needle. And then the camera moves and then you see Treat with no needle.

Treat Williams: I’m hiding it in my hand giving the shot, and the thing has fallen apart completely. But that’s the fun of doing independent films. There’s a great thing James Cagney said, “Run out the hit. Don’t ever quit.” “Oh, the needle fell apart.” “Come on man. We’re up above you here. Just keep going.” So that was the part that was interesting was to understand medicine in 1925 as opposed to now.

LRM Online: So, let’s talk a little about the title. So, I did my research a little. So, you have The Great Alaskan Race, that’s a good one. It’s known for what? The serum run, the great race of mercy. So, why that?

Brian Presley: Originally, I had it called The Great Race. I like simple. At one point I had Race to Save Nome. And so, I wanted Alaska in the title. So, it lets you know where the film takes place. And so, The Great Alaskan race is what we ended up settling on. So, I felt that was best for representations of the movie, but also great for marketing. And so, yeah.

LRM Online: Now for the film, was the love story, a bonus you threw in or?

Brian Presley: Yeah, there was, I mean the… Most of what we did in the film was accurate to the truth. And one of our weaknesses in shooting, we couldn’t shoot this movie in Alaska. For a lot of reasons.

LRM Online: Where’d you shoot it?

Brian Presley: We shot it in Silverton, Colorado.

LRM Online: Okay.

Treat Williams: Two miles up.

Brian Presley: Yeah, it was pretty high up. There’s just no period resources in Alaska, the weather 25 below zero. A lot of reasons why we went to Colorado instead. But one of our biggest weaknesses was the lack of Inuit native people in Colorado. And so, I had to get creative on how I… because it was important to represent the native culture, and really set this world up before we go on this journey. And so, the love story allows us to go on the personal journey of this man.

Brian Presley: When it comes to heroic stories, I love watching flawed human beings, who I feel like I can relate to, overcome something that’s unimaginable. And I think the journey of losing his wife, to now left with raising this child, and life has a way of gut-punching all of us at some point. And sometimes you can get stuck in that rush. And I think this man, it takes the epidemic for him to really go, “You know what, I need to move on. I need to,” Not that you’ll forget but, “I’ve got a little one that I’m not going to let the same thing happen to her.” And so, yeah, so I wanted all those little dynamics that create an arc in a character, and arc in a story.

LRM Online: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, what were the challenges filming this? Especially the scenes where it’s the middle of the storm. I mean, you have the ice cracked. I mean, filming in Colorado.

Brian Presley: Yeah, I mean we were in the elements. To work 12-hour days and some of these nights shoots we were, I mean it’s zero degrees out. You had dogs, kids, snow, wolves. Some days we’d have 45 minutes snowmobile rides to set. Some of the big mountain stuff we were shooting, and strapped the gear in. But for me I was in go mode and, “Let’s go.” The chance to get the opportunity to make the movie and… But we had making your days, keeping kids’ attention, we’re in that hospital. We’re in a basement of a building and making sure we have our kid wranglers. And keeping the kids quiet like they’re sick and not all goofing around because when you get bunch of kids in one area-

LRM Online: That’s a challenge.

Brian Presley: That could become chaos in itself.

Treat Williams: When you’re reminded that they weren’t really sick. Then you stick a kid in a bed and have them to sit there for four hours that kid’s going to go wild.

Brian Presley: And then you put three of them in one bed, and then they start kicking each other and this and that.

Treat Williams: But they were lovely. They were wonderful. When we asked them to settle down they did understand what we were doing and they would settle down very quickly. They were great.

LRM Online: So, let’s talk about the dogs. So, how did you get so many dogs? Were these dogs actually sled dogs?

Brian Presley: Yeah. A lot of racing dogs today, that run the Iditarod, they’re more hound looking. And I really wanted the husky/malamute cinematic… What the non dog sledder would imagine a sled dog to look like. So, I found dogs that were a part of a tour guide place, that would give dog sledding tours. And I went and visited the dogs, because I also needed them to be friendly with kids and friendly with people. And sometimes these racing dogs, I mean they’re programmed, that’s what they do. And they take off like pew, it’s fast. I searched for the dogs for three years to find the right dogs-

LRM Online: Really?

Brian Presley: Yeah. That had the right dynamics. And people saying, “Okay, well you need to have the dog sledding Togo, and then you need to have the off-leash Togo, and this and that.” And I’m like, “It doesn’t need to be that complicated. Let’s find the right set of dogs.”

LRM Online: How many dogs did you get?

Brian Presley: Well, we probably had 15 different dogs that we interchange within the different mushing teams. So, yeah. I mean I had one Togo, he was the one guy. He would pull the sled and he would be in the cabin with us. And it was great.

LRM Online: Did you adopt any of those dogs?

Brian Presley: You know what I didn’t, I would love to. I would love to adopt one of those dogs.

LRM Online: Did anybody?

Brian Presley: But they belong in the snow.

LRM Online: Right.

Brian Presley: But we’re working with… One of our charitable givebacks is the DV Rescue Mission, which is located right here in Beverly Hills. And what is amazing, what they’re doing is, they have a huge husky effort. Huskies in shelters is come to the same level as pitbulls. And so, we’re working with the, Iditarod, the people in Colorado, the Beargrease Dog Sledding Race, which is in Minnesota. And we’re trying to help them rescue and take puppies that are in shelters here in Southern California, and get them up into homes in climates, that are suitable for them.

Yeah, and potentially the Iditarods, what a great story it would be to rescue a husky that ends up running the Iditarod someday. From homeless to racing champions. So yeah, we’re trying to use the movie to… The dog sledding world is very much a part of people’s livelihood today. And so we’re trying to utilize the movie as a get-back and to help bring light to what a lot of these amazing people were doing, and so.

LRM Online: That’s a good reminder, especially if when we’re in California, well LA area, we’re not useful, we’re not familiar.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: So, let’s talk about Togo, and there’s also Balto, let’s clarify. Because, there is the statue, which by the way, I don’t know about you guys, but I love the end. How you actually have a picture and a little brief biography-

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: Of everything and actual images.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: But then yes, there is that statue. And I do remember seeing it when I was–

Brian Presley: In Manhattan? The one in New York city?

LRM Online: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Treat Williams: In Central Park, yeah.

LRM Online: But I didn’t pay attention, obviously then, now I can appreciate it. Thank you.

Treat Williams: Yes.

LRM Online: Thank you. But that’s Balto, but yet if not mistaken, read somewhere that the leash…That’s Togo’s?

Brian Presley: Well, no. So, Leonhard Seppala; Balto and Toga were both his dogs. Balto was about four-five when he did the serum run, and Togo was 12. And so, the reason I chose to tell Leonhard Seppala and Togo’s perspective is Balto and Gunnar got all the credit. And they covered the last 50 miles and brought the serum into Nome. Leonhard Seppala and Togo covered 350 miles, the toughest stretch of land. Most mushers were 50 to 80. And so I felt it was like we’re going to go tell and give credit to the forgotten heroes. I mean they were kind of… Togo was forgotten. I mean he is out of all the… All the dogs were heroic and mushers but, and I didn’t want to discredit that in the movie, that’s why we still highlight it and we feature it and we show the Balto statue at the end. But Togo was, he’s the Brett Favre of dogs.

Treat Williams: I’m going to ask a question to you. Because, my understanding also was that the press knew this but that they preferred the name Balto to Togo for the press releases. They just liked the name better even though they knew.

Brian Presley: Well what happened is, so I mean Seppala was a very… Would rather the attention to be diverted somewhere else, not him. He wanted it to Togo, but he allowed Gunnar to take Balto. And Gunnar immediately was getting proposals to go on a tour. And because this story had become a nationwide story, so Gunnar took Balto and headed into the States, Alaska wasn’t even a state-

LRM Online: Oh I see.

Brian Presley: And began this whole press tour, which led to the whole moment of Central Park. And so-

Treat Williams: And then of course the animated film.

Brian Presley: Yeah. Yeah.

LRM Online: Of course.

Brian Presley: So yeah, it’s one of those, I mean… Yeah, there’s a TV series there of all what happens afterwards, but yeah. That’s the difference between Balto and Togo.

LRM Online: So, as a writer, what made you decide to do the story?

Brian Presley: For me I feel my calling as a filmmaker, as a writer, my strength is really finding inspirational, heroic… I love true stories. So, I’m a sucker for true stories, and I love period pieces. And so I set out and, this was actually my first script to ever write, I’ve written a bunch since then but wanted to tell the story. It was right in my wheelhouse of what… And I began to see it. Kurt Russell told me on, I did a movie called Touchback with Kurt Russell, and I was actually at the time talking to him about potentially directing. He’s telling me all these stories about taking over Tombstone, and this and that, and he goes, “First off, I’m not going into the cold to direct this movie. Second off, if you see it, you should be the one to tell the story.” And so at that point I really was like, “You know what? I am, I know I can tell this story.” And so I just stayed the course and had opportunities to have the script sold, get rid of it.

Treat Williams: I was there. He did a great job. I was there the whole time. He did a great job, he’s a great director.

Brian Presley: So.

LRM Online: I mean, the scenes, I wish I had a chance to watch on a big screen, but the scenery, it’s beautiful.

Brian Presley: Yeah. The scope of the movie is… I mean I really wanted to show how small they were compared to the environment that they’re in. It really goes to the heroisiscm but also a reminder of how we all are a speck on this planet. And I think the movie… We’re better together than we are alone.

Treat Williams: I’d like to add a technical thing. I directed my first film about 20 years ago, and we had helicopter shots in it. And when you wanted a shot like that you had to rent a helicopter, and a giant camera mount, and the mounts got more and more expensive; as they had gimbals and as they were more stable. And the advent of two things; digital cameras, and drones, has made it possible if you know what you’re doing, to make a film on the scale of something like Lawrence of Arabia.

Treat Williams: Where you can have a camera up in the air giving you that perspective that he’s talking about for relatively affordable price, which I think is a great thing for independent films. You can make them now look like big movies. If you noticed television series now it’s like, “Wow, they got all these cool shots of the English coastline and horseback.” It’s all because of drones. I think we were very lucky to be making this in a period where we could afford. It wasn’t a lot of money-

Brian Presley: I couldn’t have made this movie independently 10 years ago, probably not even seven years ago-

Treat Williams: You get all the equipment, that heavy equipment, and the film and the and the loads, and the magazines would have been-

Brian Presley: Yeah.

Treat Williams: Nigh on impossible.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: And then you added the narrating part.

Brian Presley: Yeah. The shaman.

LRM Online: That was a bonus.

Brian Presley: Yeah. Yeah. I mean to me, I again, I want it to anchor the movie in Alaska and with the Alaskan culture, the native culture. And so, because I didn’t have as much of that to show, given where we were shooting, we had some of it, but I wanted to anchor it so that it feels authentic to the culture. And the voiceover did that and the shaman’s that, I’d want to layer in the spiritual aspect of the movie. The native spirit between the wolf and the bear, the death spirit. The shamans are a spiritual leader to the native culture. So, I wanted it to have that feel. So, that we see the-

LRM Online: Well, my favorite line of that, speaking of, was, “Every living thing has a spirit to take a life. You must honor a spirit and thank them for their sacrifice.”

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: That’s actually one of the ones I was like, “Wow, people really appreciated and acknowledged animals like that.”

Brian Presley: In the native culture and the Inuit culture. I mean that’s how they believe, I mean that’s literally, I mean they-

Treat Williams: Most indigenous cultures, they have enormous respect for the lives that they took and used every part-

Brian Presley: Every part of that animal.

Treat Williams: Of that animal, for either sleeping or bows and arrows-

LRM Online: Survival, yeah.

Brian Presley: All their clothes.

LRM Online: There was a… I liked the newspaper scene where it says wings versus paws.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

LRM Online: Was that real? Because I tried looking it up.

Brian Presley: So, the Harry Davenport character, is a fictional character, and he’s kind of a representation of how all the media… The story grew to New York City where newspapers were being in New York. Chicago theaters were being filled up. But yeah, there was articles, I mean Seattle, I mean the story became-

Treat Williams: It was being told in real time, which was very seldom back then, wasn’t it?

Brian Presley: Yeah and I wanted to do something with Harry Davenport where you had a very cool visual. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t want you to see a guy on radio in a room.” It helped us, in the storytelling, to bring in some of these authentic period images that again, transport you back to that time. Those old news reels. And in some of those reels in the handoffs, it’s the actual newsreels from the actual serum back in 1925.

LRM Online: And at the end was it great to say, oh it was real. All the images, they were real.

Brian Presley: Yeah.

Treat Williams: It’s so funny because I said when he showed me the film and it wasn’t quite done yet, which is very dangerous to do to an actor, and I said, “I really love it, but you know is that thing you’ve got with the guy in front of the black blank… Is that going to work? I mean.” I was like, “Are you sure?” He said, “It’s going to work. It’s going to be fine.” I said, “Okay, okay.” So I apologize. You had a vision for it that I didn’t yet see. But now seeing him at the microphone and with the newsreel super-imposed is gorgeous. It works beautifully.

LRM Online: I agree. Well, thank you so much.

Brian Presley: Thank you.

Treat Williams: Thank you for your time.

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