Litlhorn, LLC

If cowboys are your weakness…

By EVE MARX

“You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen 1800 cowboys doing the Texas Two-Step,” joked Mitch Horn, documentary filmmaker, ardent rodeo enthusiast and executive producer and director of GidyUp! On The Rodeo Circuit, a feature length documentary about rodeo. Gay rodeo that is. Under the aegis of his Bedford based production company, Litlhorn LLC, Mr. Horn has made a highly entertaining and emotionally wrenching show that cracks wide open a window into a little known and even less understood component of contemporary American culture. The film premiered in late July on the LOGO cable network, MTVN’s cable channel for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audience. When most people think of rodeo…and rodeo is very popular, lately…images of tough guys in spurs and Stetson’s grappling with dangerous and unpredictable beasts leap to mind. In most respects, gay rodeo isn’t any different. For one thing, all broncobusters and bull riders wear chaps. But not every man in gay rodeo is macho. And in fact, there are some very pretty ladies involved.  

Mr. Horn hails from Nacogdoches, Texas, a town close by the Louisiana border where rodeo is a regular pastime. Mr. Horn was one of four children, raised by a schoolteacher mom and a father who was a professional bull rider until a steer took out one of his eyes. “He wore a patch and he had three glass eyes which he used to leave on the bathroom sink. Sometimes they were the last thing I saw before I went to bed,” Mr. Horn said. . He recalls the thrill he got as a child going to rodeos at Houston’s Astrodome, a place now more familiar as shelter to thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims. As a youngster, he participated in local Little Britches rodeos where he rode calves. Then and now, bull riding remains his favorite sport. “It’s an 8 second ride but it seems like it’s happening in slow motion. It’s totally hypnotic.” He raves about the adrenaline rush. “You have so much focus. And then there is that suspension of time. You become one with an animal who could really hurt you. It’s impossible to describe the feeling. Let’s just say it’s like taking the best drug in the world.”

Mr. Horn is a graduate of the Film Conservatory program at SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Documentary Film Directing. He began his career as a production coordinator on a Barbara Walter’s AIDS awareness special, “In a New Light.” For over a decade he has been a line producer and production manager for Lifetime Television, ABC, and the Fox Family Channel. Among his roster of achievements are working as producer on shows as diverse as “Brazelton on Parenting,” and a Lifetime show called “Your Cheating Heart.”  

After working as a producer on Houston Medical, a series of six one hour documentary episodes made for ABC, Mr. Horn learned that Viacom was looking to start a gay channel. The idea of a gay rodeo documentary had been fomenting in his mind for some time. “I wanted to focus on people who are attracted to rodeo. People who want to challenge themselves. Rodeo is pretty basic. It’s a simple outlet. You’re competing against others but at the same time you’re competing against yourself. Plus there is that element of danger that you’re flirting with even when you think you’re in control.”

Once his project was green lighted, he began spending his weekends going to rodeos, getting to know the participants. He says it was not hard to find the characters he wanted to stay with. “We shot from January 2003 right up through the Nebraska-Omaha finals in October 2004,” he said. “I went home with people. I met their families. I went to work with them. It’s not just rodeo.” The people portrayed in his film are not full time rodeo cowboys and cowgirls. “They’re weekend warriors,” Mr. Horn explained. One person works as an accounts receivable supervisor. Another is an emergency room nurse. Another is the executive director of an AIDS research group.  Still another is a well-known fitness guru. One woman also works as an erotic actress. One man in particular is more himself riding a bull that could kill him than he is spending an afternoon at home with his family.   A young woman who has perfect balance on a horse can’t keep personal life together. An HIV-positive man on the verge of entering an intimate relationship wants to delay telling his future partner details about his health.

Nearly every stereotype you ever heard of or harbored about cowboys or who’s a sissy is blown away from the first frame. Rodeo is a super sport requiring skill, determination, concentration and guts. Its main events are bareback bronco riding, pole bending and chute dogging. Bull riding is the pinnacle event. “It’s the most dangerous sport around. A bull is 2000 pounds of pure testosterone.” In a period of history where we are obsessed with extreme sports, bull riding is possibly the most extreme of the extreme.