The Electric Horseman

The Electric Horseman (1979)

Timing: 2:2 (122 min)

6.06/10
133

6.874/10
730

6.5/10
11000

All about film

Video 2

Photo 6

Actors and characters

Release date

1979-12-21

Country

United States

Production

Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Wildwood Enterprises

Genre

Drama, Romance, Comedy, Western

Budget

$12 500 000

Revenue

$61 801 971

Website

Director

Sydney Pollack

Actors

Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Valerie Perrine, Willie Nelson, John Saxon, Nicolas Coster, Allan Arbus, Wilford Brimley, Will Hare, Basil Hoffman
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Ray Stark

Operator

Owen Roizman

Composer

Artist

Audition

Jennifer Shull

Editing

Sheldon Kahn
All team (52)

• Sunny Steele’s horse (played by Robert Redford) is nicknamed Rising Star. The search for a suitable animal took six months, and ultimately a five-year-old thoroughbred was chosen for the role. After filming, Redford bought the horse, and it lived on his ranch until its death (living another 18 years).
• A significant portion of the filming on location took place in the American state of Utah, near where Robert Redford lived. This was very comfortable for the actor from a tax perspective and convenient and timely from a purely human point of view, as he had lived in Utah in complete seclusion for several years before starting work on this film.
• Robert Redford performed all the riding stunts himself.
• The film marked Robert Redford’s return to cinema after a three-year break, during which the actor lived on his ranch in Utah. His return to the big screen was widely covered in the press.
• Subsequently, when creating the logo for TriStar Pictures, Sydney Pollack used the horse that was filmed in this movie.
• The film's plot was inspired by an incident in 1973, when the creators of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour invited Penny Chenery and her legendary horse, Secretariat, to appear on one of the show's episodes, but she declined, realizing that the animal would be nervous in the presence of the filming equipment.
• It took two days to film the 20-second kissing scene, and it cost $280,000 (the reason being that filming had to be constantly interrupted due to thunderstorms).
• In one scene, Gus, played by Will Hare, quotes the poem “Metamorphoses” (between 2 and 8 AD) by Publius Ovidius Naso, when the goddess Eos mourns the death of her son under the walls of Troy.
• Jane Fonda (who played the main character, a journalist) later said that working on this film prompted her to create Workout (a complex of exercises geared towards women). She initially did the exercises with the film's creative team in Utah, and then women living nearby began to join them. Towards the end of filming, Fonda was told about the positive impact these classes were having on people's health.
• The costume decorated with images of eagles and flowers and sparkling with artificial diamonds is called the “Nudie suit.” Similar costumes by Ukrainian designer Nuta Kotlyarenko were worn by many stars, including Elvis Presley (1935-1977), Roy Rogers (1911-1998), and Hank Williams (1923-1953). The costume used in this film was made in 1971. It is considered a masterpiece by Nudie Cohn (Kotlyarenko). In 2005, one museum purchased it at auction for almost $9,000, and another $5,000 was spent on building a mannequin and display case.