Only Russell and Guzmán come to the movie knowing anything about horses. For Dakota and Rodriguez there was a learning curve. The man who was assigned the task of getting them "horse ready" was horse wrangler Rusty Hendrickson, who was not only in charge of ensuring the actors became horsemen but he and his support staff (Rex Peterson, Lisa Brown and Mark Warrick) found and trained the horses who took part not only in the races but around the barns and were behind the scenes teaching the actors the language of the horse.

"We tried to come up with three sets of racehorses," remarked Hendrickson. "We got the horses we needed based on the time we were going to spend filming." Since shooting a scene in a movie is rarely if ever done in one take, there were many times when horses had to be switched out to rest and be replaced by other similar looking horses.

Hendrickson had to keep in mind that the horses he wanted were not going to be your typical high spirited Thoroughbred race horses. "A movie horse is very different than a race horse," he clarified. "It needs to be a very quiet calm horse to be on camera and then for the racing sequences we had to have a spectrum of abilities, like a horse that can look like he is trying and he is still running dead last. You also need the sprinter that can make the move."

For the actors the horses had to be teachers. "I knew nothing about racing," elucidated Rodriguez, who discovered on the film that he was allergic to horses. "I don't think I was even on a horse before this film." In fact the closest Rodriguez ever got to a horse was at a carnival as a kid and in a film called "A Walk in the Clouds" when "there was a quick scene where I come up on a horse," he described.

Since Rodriguez had to do a fair amount of riding in the movie, save for the fast paced racing scenes (which were left to the stunt doubles), it was important for him to feel comfortable on a horse. "Towards the end - I think I was going 30-35 miles per hour."

Rodriguez admitted to being a bit nervous, "I was extremely intimidated especially after seeing a couple of documentaries where horses flip over on these jockeys." However, by the end that fear turned to a passion for the speed of horse racing. It was hard for him to fall in love with the horses since his allergy often left him sneezing endlessly or groggy on antihistamines, but those 30 mile an hour trips around the racetrack left him with some fond memories. "It was exhilarating. It was absolutely exhilarating. I have never in my life felt that feeling before." For Rodriguez, "Dreamer" brings an even larger dimension to the movie arena. "I am really proud of the movie," he said. "One of the big reasons I like the movie is that it is a solid family film minus the cheese, minus the sappiness. It's a film that ? you know I have kids and I take my kids to the movies and sometimes it is like sitting through an hour and a half of torture. But this is not one of those films."

Since Dakota didn't do much riding in the movie, it was a matter of getting her comfortable on and around a horse. She took the role very seriously threw herself into learning her part, understanding the horses she would be working around and grasping the verbiage that comes with the sport of horse racing. "I'd never been around horses that much - I learned all their names, their colors, their socks, stars and blazes. Then I learned everything I could -" she said.

Dakota's passion to learn "horse talk" resulted in a lasting love and after the movie was over her pseudo dad (Kurt Russell) presented her with a horse of her own, Goldie is a Quarter Horse Palomino named after his long time partner Goldie Hawn.

Back to part 1
Dreams Can Come True - part 3