Autistic boy saddles up ‘Dear John’
Based on the novel by Nicolas Sparks, director Lasse Hallström’s romantic drama “Dear John” follows the relationship between Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) and soldier John Tyree (Channing Tatum) as they communicate through love letters during seven years of military deployments. For John’s scenes in the Middle East and Africa, livestock coordinator Dan Hydrick provided exotic background animals to give a sense of place.
But for Savannah’s scenes in the United States involving a young autistic character, Hydrick tackled an even more unusual challenge: teaching a young autistic actor, Braeden Reed, to ride a horse.
“Autism has to do with concentration, and if you’ve done any riding a horse, you know that you need to pay attention to what you’re doing,” Hydrick said. “Braeden was exceptional. I just know that he made my job fairly easy.”
Although he now lives on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina, Hydrick spent his childhood as a city boy: His mother worked as the registrar of the College of Charleston. At age 17, he enlisted in the Marines and eventually became a sergeant. He was on active duty for approximately two years and reserve status for an additional four, but he was never deployed to Vietnam.
Upon returning to civilian life, he worked on the waterfront in Charleston to put himself through college. He then went into the city’s carriage tour business and before long was recruited to work on several period films shooting in the area -- including the 1977 miniseries “Roots,” 1989’s “Glory” and 2000’s “The Patriot.” But even after 35 years in the entertainment business, teaching an autistic child to ride a horse was an experience to remember.
“I’ve done so much horse stuff with carriages and wagons; that’s just 101 to me,” said Hydrick. “I know all the hitches and tongue holds. That’s easy. This required a lot of research.”
Horse sense: Hydrick had to find the right horse for the job. “I visited probably a half-dozen different stables and looked at horses,” he said. “I went and called on one of my mentors, Marion Reid, at Stono River Stable. Marion had Alzheimer’s, and he died about six months ago. But his wife, Annie Caroline, showed me the different horses, and I told her what I was trying to do. I looked at a horse named Honey. Honey was a smaller horse, just a quarter-horse, a regular riding stable plug. Old racetrack horses, they’re called plugs. They’re just quiet school horses because they give riding lessons. And that’s what I’m looking for -- settled, just real calm. Then when we had Braeden come out, we showed him all the different horses, but he liked Honey. And within 10 minutes, I knew it was going to work.”
Riding lessons: “Braeden set the pace,” Hydrick said. “We had just the three of us -- me, Annie Caroline and Braeden -- and Annie Caroline is incredible. The way she got him to wear the helmet is she wore a helmet walking next to him. She would ask, ‘Would you like to ride? Would you like to get on Honey’s back?’ We started off walking with the horse, progressed to me leading the horse with him on it, progressed to him holding the reins. We let Braeden take it to the next step. ‘Braeden, would you like to ride with Dan not having his hand on your shoulder?’ ‘Braeden, would you like to ride by yourself?’ Those questions were always asked of him to make him comfortable. Gutsy little kid, I’ll tell you.”
Animal instinct: In “Dear John,” Honey has to share billing with several other animals of a more exotic stripe. “In the film, Channing Tatum plays a character who’s in the Army, and he’s transferred all around the world as he progresses up in rank,” said Hydrick. “The way that we denoted which part of world he was in was with the animals. I found a place called Eudora Farms, and it’s a traveling petting zoo. The owner has got his breeding stock, and he hand-raises the animals. So he’s got emus, he’s got camels, he’s got Cape buffalo and zebus and 150-pound land tortoises and baboons. We used a lot of his animals to denote where Channing was. We had Watusi cattle -- they have the biggest horns. We had African goats and African sheep. I had an 18 wheeler full of animals.”
The poultry whisperer: Hydrick earned an odd nickname on the shoot. “There was an old front-end loader bucket in one shot,” he recalled. “The director of photography said, ‘Can you put a chicken on that bucket?’ I said, ‘I can do better than that. I’ll hypnotize a chicken, and he’ll sit right there.’ You put her under the arm, and you just stroke her. You get her nice and comfortable, and then you just ease her onto where you want her to be. You keep patting her. Then you roll the camera, and you walk away. The chicken’s going to stay right there. The shot in the film is over the chicken to a convoy coming straight at her, then it takes a camera right. It’s a great shot. So they called me ‘Chicken Man’ after that!”