Directed by the actress Riley Keough Zola , The Girlfriend Experience and her friend Gina Gammell, the film is not only innovative thematically and stylistically, it also points to an experimental mode of filmmaking that is based on an extensive collaboration between the directors, writers, and actors.
Since both co-directors reside in Los Angeles, one may wonder why and how it took them seven years to bring a narrative grounded in an Indigenous Reservation to the bog screen. Thus, the main goal of War Pony was to capture daily life on the reservation by relying on the perspectives of its Native American residents. What began as an unlikely friendship eventually turned into an extensive collaboration that would stretch over the next seven years.
Hanging out and making Snapchat videos gradually led to a screenplay written by Sioux Bob and Reddy. The coming-of-age tale centers around two guys: year-old Bill Jojo Bapteise Whiting , a laconic, good-natured Oglala Lakota native who manages to get by through hustling small jobs.
Things change a bit when he comes up with ideas of how to breed poodles. Struggling, and in desperate need of cash, he meets Tim Sprauge Hollander , the owner of a turkey farm who uses him to pick up young Native girls for his own pleasure. As a result, Bill gets a job working in the factory on the property while doing dirty work for the boss. In a parallel story, we also meet the year-old teenager Matho LaDainian Crazy Thunder , who is growing up in less than an ideal family situation; he is dangerously left to his own devices by his drug-dealing father.
The loosely jointed script unfolds as a series of interconnected episodes, ranging in tone from comedy a potentially lucrative poodle plays sort of a co-starring role to drama, and even the tragedy. The stories came straight from Reddy, Sioux Bob and others, who drew from their own memories and experiences on the reservation.
