Lone Ranger extras get callbacks
Callbacks begin for locals for parts in ‘The Lone Ranger’

By Paige Blankenbuehler

Article Last Updated: Thursday, April 12, 2012 10:57pm

STEVE LEWIS/Durango Herald

Mark A. Deuel, recently secured a part as an extra in the upcoming film “The Lone Ranger.” Deuel is excited about the role as a railway worker because his great-grandfather worked as a fireman and engineer for the Colorado & Southern Railway in the first half of the 20th century. “My grandpa was excited to hear that,” Deuel said.

A Durango man and stay-at-home father of three is one of many aspiring extras getting callbacks this week to be in “The Lone Ranger” movie filming this summer in the Four Corners.

“They have me in line for the position of a railway worker,” Mark A. Deuel said Thursday.

The role is near and dear to Deuel’s heart.

“I’m pretty excited about the position because my great-grandfather was a pretty famous railway engineer here in Colorado,” Deuel said. “This is now a tribute to him.”

Kristen Berona, a casting agent for Sande Alessi Casting, said the agency started making calls this week and had a couple hundred people on the list.

Berona said that calls to extras will continue for the next few months and throughout filming.

“There are times when we call the night before to see if someone is available the next day,” Berona said. “That happens more than I like.”

Berona said the casting company is still getting names of extras from the film’s director, Gore Verbinski.

“The director has selected a ton of people, and we began calling on Wednesday evening,” Berona said. “Currently, we are calling by roles, not by location at this time.”

Deuel, who will report to Moab in July for filming, hadn’t expected the callback.

“I was pretty surprised. The audition was a lot less personal than I expected,” Deuel said. “We just walked through and turned in the cards, and they attached our picture.”

The open casting call specifically sought people with oddities such as wandering eyes or physical deformations.

Deuel, 37, is blind in his right eye and it is white in color. Among the goals he has for his breakout performance is rubbing elbows with some of Hollywood’s finest.

“I’m hoping to meet Johnny Depp,” he said.

Depp will have a starring role in the film, and so will actor Armie Hammer.

Though his pay rate falls under the confidentiality agreement he signed, Deuel said he is satisfied with the compensation.

“I’m pretty excited,” he said. “This is quite the experience.”

Sande Alessi Casting from Los Angeles held the open casting call March 23 at the Fort Lewis College Theatre. More than 400 people showed up, making it larger than casting calls held in Creede, Alamosa, Colorado Springs or Moab.

“The casting call in Durango was amazing. We’re so thankful for the turnout and the locals being so welcoming to us,” Berona said.

Deuel said preparation for his role as a railway worker will be easy.

“They told me to grow my beard out full and to be prepared to cut my hair,” he said.

pblank@durangoherald.com

This time on Monday, Wilson could be polishing her second Olivier (she won her first in 2010 for her performance as Stella in the Donmar production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire). She is just back from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she's been playing the Lone Ranger's sister-in-law in a $200m (£125m) Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Disney version of The Lone Ranger, alongside Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Wilkinson.

Remind me, I ask, did the Lone Ranger have a sister-in-law? "Yes – she's in a love triangle and that's explored in the film. I can't say any more." Perhaps the third corner in this triangle is Depp's Tonto, with whom Wilson must fight for the affections of Hammer's masked crime fighter? Is the world ready for a sexually conflicted wild west Disney lawman? Let's hope. What Wilson can tell me is that she does a lot of stunts in the movie. "Involving horses and trains mostly," she says, sending up a Bacallian eyebrow.

Johnny Depp Receives Gifts from 'Star Struck' Navajo Visitors

By Michael Haederle

Saturday April 14, 2012 11:40 AM EDT
Johnny Depp Receives Gifts from 'Star Struck' Navajo Visitors | Johnny Depp



Johnny Depp and Gayle Dine' Chacon

Courtesy Gayle Dine' Chacon

A bare-chested Johnny Depp welcomed gift-bearing visitors from the Navajo Nation while filming The Lone Ranger in the remote Monument Valley on Thursday.

Dressed as Tonto, the actor shared the good will visit with Navajo president Ben Shelly and vice president Rex Lee Jim, who presented Depp and costar Armie Hammer with Pendleton blankets.

Despite brisk, windy conditions, Depp posed for pictures, although when he was presented with the thick wool blanket he flung off the poncho he had been wearing and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders.

"This is a good trade," he said.

Dr. Gayle Dine' Chacon, the nation's surgeon general, also presented Depp with a traditional leather warrior pouch, which was decorated with an arrowhead to symbolize protection.

And when she gave Hammer a tiny silver revolver tie tack set with a piece of turquoise, he reacted playfully.

"He took out his gun from his holster and put the little gun inside," she says.

Dine' Chacon, who is responsible for responding to public health problems among Navajos, admitted to being unexpectedly "star struck" after her encounter with Depp.

"He is a very charming man, very gracious and very concerned as well," she says, noting that she spoke to him about preventing youth suicide, a leading cause of death among young Navajos. "He probably spent a good hour with us. Everybody else left the set, but he was still there."

"He is so charming," she adds. "You feel that you are the only one there – that he's just focusing on you."

The Lone Ranger will continue to film in Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly areas of Navajo Nation, a 27,000-square-mile territory that sprawls across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

And Dine' Chacon is happy to have them there.

"He's just a very gentle, generous person," she says of Depp. "I've told my friends he's an illegal drug – I'm still high."

New Hollywood ‏ @FilminNewMexico

Johnny Depp is in Navajo country, was asked to be a spokesperson for Navajo Youth Suicide Prevention programs, and he said YES! #Depp