Opening in theaters and digital on December 5th is the new Western ‘Frontier Crucible‘, which was based on the book ‘Desert Stake-Out’ by author Harry Whittington and directed by Travis Mills (‘The Five’).
h8bQKatNVEM2paTP8fBNr5The film stars Myles Clohessy (‘Blue Bloods’), Mary Stickley (‘Harvest’), Ryan Masson (‘The Last of Us’), Thomas Jane (‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘The Punisher‘), Armie Hammer (‘The Social Network’), and William H. Macy (‘Fargo’).
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Thomas Jane about his work on ‘Frontier Crucible’, his first reaction to the screenplay, the challenges of making a Western, his character, working with the cast, and collaborating with director Travis Mills on set.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.
Related Article: Actor Thomas Jane Talks New Western ‘Murder at Yellowstone City’
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and the adaption of author Harry Whittington’s novel?
Thomas Jane: Well, Whittington was known as the “King of the Pulps”, and he wrote in the 1950s and’60s. They called him the “King of Pulps”, because I think he’s got the world record for the greatest number of pulp novels ever written by an author. Out of the hundreds of novels that he wrote about six are good, which is a good record. He’s got six strong novels that are worth anybody’s time who loves the Pulp stuff. One of them is ‘Desert Stakeout’, and the screenplay was adapted by S. Craig Zahler who wrote ‘Bone Tomahawk’, and I don’t even know if I’m supposed to say that. Nobody told me not to say it. But he’s an uncredited writer, and he borrowed heavily from the book, and no surprise, Whittington had a knack for great dialogue and great characters. It was really his thing. Every story that he approached, he didn’t come through the plot, he came through the character. So, for adaptations, it’s perfect, and they’ve adapted a few Harry Whittington novels over the years. This one, you read it and you’re like, “Why wasn’t this done like 30 years ago?” It really sings. So, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot to work with. We had great dialogue.
MF: I know you have appeared in quite a few Westerns in the past, what do you enjoy about the genre and what are the biggest challenges of making a movie like this?
TJ: Well, the challenges are always like, we need to make more Westerns, and trying to keep the fan base alive in 2025 is difficult. It’s difficult with all movies, but now, with a good Western, people will watch it. They like it. I produced a Western called ‘Murder at Yellowstone City’, which made it the number one on Netflix. So, if you do a good Western, people will watch it, and there is an audience. It’s just getting a great story. It’s getting people that really know the genre and love the genre. Travis Mills certainly loves the genre, I think he wrote a book where he’s got like 200 Western movies that he reviewed, and now he’s releasing a book on all his Western reviews. So, he’s a real student of the genre. That was fun. It’s always good when your director knows his stuff. I loved that Travis wanted to recreate the way Westerns used to be made in the ’50s and ’60s. This movie has a look that feels like it could have been made in 1965. So that was fun. I’m a fan, in other words. The challenges for an actor are really the positives, the things that I love about Westerns. I love the fact that most Westerns either implicitly or explicitly deal with the civilization of man, and there are laws and are rules, and then the wild West is the lawless land where you must make up these rules. You’re guided by a moral code. Everyone has their own moral code and their own interpretation of the moral code. Like, “Thou shalt not kill”, although that’s negotiable in certain circumstances for some people. That makes it fun.
MF: Can you talk about your character’s gang and creating those relationships with your scene partners, Armie Hammer and Ryan Masson?
TJ: My character thinks he’s a good guy, and I think 98% of him is a decent man. I think some bad things happen to him, and he lost his way a little bit. But the darkness of his heart is revealed by the company that he keeps. You find that’s true with most people in life. It’s the company that you keep that tells you something about who they are, and who they think they are. So, that’s Armie’s role in the thing. He’s the dark heart of the gang, and we’re constantly having trouble reining him in. It’s a lot of fun. Armie had a lot of fun. He leaned into all of that. I really had a good time working with everybody. Armie’s are an intelligent guy, and a soulful guy. He’s done a lot of work on himself, and it shows, he’s stepped up. People step up or they step down and Armie stepped up. So, I’d worked with the guy again in a heartbeat. I think he’s terrific. Everybody else is young. finding their way. We, as the old pros, tried to help them as best we could.
MF: I was not familiar with Myles Clohessy or Mary Stickley’s work before seeing this film. What was your experience like working with them on this movie?
TJ: Myles came from another project (producer) Dallas Sonnier had done, and he certainly looks like a leading man, and he’s learning what that entails. It’s a very different set of rules when you’re the leading man or the leading lady than it is if you’re a supporting character. I like the supporting characters. I’ve gotten a chance to play a lot of leads and I’m grateful for that. But I love the character stuff. It’s what got me into this thing in the first place. Now I’m getting a little older and I’m finding more opportunities to flex those muscles. It gives me a little more freedom. I don’t have the movie that I’m carrying on my back, and I get to have a little more fun.
MF: Finally, what was it like collaborating with director Travis Mills on set, particularly in the remote locations that you were shooting in?
TJ: Director Anthony Mann did a bunch of Westerns in the ’50s and ’60s, and he says, “Anytime you can get on location, you got to do it”. It brings the show to life, and it brings the actors to life. They feel grounded. They’re in the world that the characters live in, and that was certainly true for this. We had one location, we showed up there every day. We got into our costumes, and we were staying at a hotel. It was about a half hour away and our dressing room was in the hotel. They took a couple of hotel rooms and turned them into a dressing room. So, we would show up, we’d roll out of bed, stumble downstairs, grab a cup of coffee, and then hit the dressing room, where all the actors would change together, which is exactly what you do in theater. There’s one place, it’s called backstage, and that’s where you got into your outfit. So, we had that morning ritual of everybody putting on their costumes, at usually 4:30am because we had to capture the daylight. We had to be out there at the crack of dawn. Then we’d shoot until we couldn’t shoot anymore. So that community, that camaraderie, and the fact that our characters were also stuck together waiting for bad things to happen, that was fun. I got to tell you; it was unique. Normally, you hit set, you hit your trailer, you get your coffee, and you have those moments alone. We didn’t have any trailers on this. Another great thing about making a lower budget movie is the locations. We never would have been able to shoot there if it were a bigger film because there’s nowhere to put all the trucks. You’d have to put them way far away and then shuttle everybody. But we were able to just show up and me and Armie started building fires and making our own coffee over a campfire. We were making cowboy coffee. We would do that all day. We’d keep the fire going, and other actors would come around, and throw wood on the fire. We just had a little fire going all day. So, it was a unique experience. Travis created that. We all signed up. We knew what we were getting into. He’s like, “This is what I want to do.” He wanted to create that period feel to everything and I think he did a darn good job with that.
You can pre-order the ‘Frontier Crucible’ here.
What is the plot of ‘Frontier Crucible’?
In 1870s Arizona Territory, a desperately needed wagon full of medical supplies falls victim to an Apache attack. The only man who can guide it through is Merrick Beckford (Myles Clohessy), but to get there, he’ll need to enlist the help of a trio of dangerous outlaws (Thomas Jane, Arie Hammer and Ryan Masson) hellbent on survival. When they accidentally kill an Apache scout, all bets are off, and survival is the name of the game.
Who is in the cast of ‘Frontier Crucible’?
- Myles Clohessy as Merrick Beckford
- Mary Stickley
- Armie Hammer
- Thomas Jane
- Ryan Masson
- Eli Brown
- Zane Holtz
- Eddie Spears
- William H. Macy
List of Western Movies and TV Shows:’
- ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid‘ (1969)
- ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid‘ (1973)
- ‘Silverado‘ (1985)
- ‘Young Guns‘ (1988)
- ‘Young Guns II‘ (1990)
- ‘Dances with Wolves‘ (1990)
- ‘Unforgiven‘ (1992)
- ‘Tombstone‘ (1993)
- ‘Wyatt Earp‘ (1994)
- ‘Open Range‘ (2003)
- ‘Deadwood‘ (2004 – 2006)
- ‘True Grit‘ (2010)
- ‘Hatfields & McCoys‘ (2012)
- ‘The Magnificent Seven‘ (2016)
- ‘Westworld‘ (2016 – 2022)
- ‘Yellowstone‘ (2018 – 2023)
- ‘Let Him Go‘ (2020)
- ‘The Harder They Fall‘ (2021)
- ‘Murder at Yellowstone City‘ (2022)
- ‘Frontier Crucible‘ (2025)
Asked to comment on Mark Wahlberg’s statement that he 
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