Weltzien extolls Savage as one of Montana's best writers

SEELEY LAKE – In 2018, when award-winning movie director Jane Campion began thinking about transforming Thomas Savage's "The Power of the Dog" into a film, the person she contacted for more information was English Professor (now Professor Emeritus) Alan Weltzien of the University of Montana-Western in Dillon. Even before publication of his book "Savage West: The Life and Fiction of Thomas Savage," Weltzien's extensive research into the author's life and writings had turned him into the acknowledged expert on all things Savage.

On March 19, Alpine Artisans hosted Weltzien as the featured speaker at Open Book Club where he talked about "The Power of the Dog"-the book and the movie-and Savage's other works.

Weltzien began by decrying the fact that up until the 2000s, there was no mention of Savage in prominent compilations discussing or anthologizing great Montana writers.

According to Weltzien, "This guy is one of the best novelists of our state. Period. There are very few whom I would rank with him."

Though there are several Montana writers who are much better known than Savage, Weltzien said he would only rank Ivan Doig, Rick DeMarinis and James Welch as Savage's possible equals.

When Campion came to Dillon to meet with Weltzien and discuss "The Power of the Dog," he said to her, "I'm just an English professor from nowhere and I've been beating the drum for this guy for 25 years."

One of the interesting backstories about the book is that the film rights to it had been auctioned off eight or 10 times, but never produced, before Campion took it on. Weltzien told her, "If you remove the curse, you're bringing the guy back."

Campion did more than remove the curse. Since its premiere seven months ago, the movie has not only received kudos from critics, it was named one of the best films of 2021 by the American Film Institute. The movie received seven nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Director and Best Motion Picture–Drama, plus Kodi Smit-McPhee (the boy Peter) won Best Supporting Actor. The film received 10 nominations at the Critics Choice Awards where it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. At the 2022 Academy Awards, Campion won Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The film received 12 nominations including Best Picture and either Best Actor or Supporting Actor/Actress for all four main characters. In addition, The Venice International Film Festival awarded Campion the Silver Lion for Best Director.

Of more importance to Weltzien, however, is that the movie has sparked interest in Savage and all 13 of his works.

Weltzien said, "Tom Savage has arrived. He's finally getting his due. To my astonishment and delight, people all over the place are reading 'The Power of the Dog' now. And then they're so struck by the novel that they want to read more by and about this guy." And, as a bonus, many of them subsequently find Weltzien's own book, "Savage West."

According to Weltzien, Campion's production was "incredibly faithful" to the book. He said he has viewed the movie five times and confirms, "There's nothing in the film that's not in the novel."

From his first meeting with her, Weltzien was impressed with Campion's need to investigate Savage's 'homeground' in as much detail as possible.

Weltzien identifies the "homeground" of all Savage's novels, which he more commonly refers to as "Tom Savage country," as "the territory that runs in a funny line from Dillon to Salmon Idaho. That's his. No other writer, including me, has written anything about there. That's his territory."

Though Savage was born in Salt Lake City, taught in universities in Massachusetts, lived in Maine for 30 years and on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound for the last 21 years of his life, his writing is all about Montana. Savage was five years old when his divorced mother married Charles Brenner in 1920. Savage grew up on the Brenner cattle ranch in Horse Prairie, Montana. Weltzien describes Horse Prairie as another light year-45 miles and 1,500 vertical feet-from Dillon. "You're a long way from somewhere when you're in Horse Prairie," he said.

"The Power of the Dog" reconfigures Savage's own teen years growing up on the Brenner ranch. Though Brenner adopted him and gave him his last name, Savage always felt like a misfit on the ranch and eventually returned to his birth surname.

According to Weltzien, all Savage's main characters are based on family members with thinly disguised names. Names of places are likewise easily translatable to local areas around Dillon. With the exception of his mother, whom Savage described as "my beautiful angel mother," neither family members nor places are treated kindly.

Weltzien said, "Savage writes about loneliness and cruelty and claustrophobia in small towns. He writes, or at least suggests, Dillon's a hellhole and if you have any brains or any creativity, you need to get out. There's no place there for those kinds of people."

"Which is very debatable," Weltzien added.

Though he had not yet declared himself as such, Savage himself was a gay man in a time and place that was far from accepting of that gender orientation.

Despite Campion's intense study of the area where Savage grew to adulthood, despite her contention that she had seen the dog formation (from which the book draws its name) in the mountains of Horse Prairie, despite her stated belief that seeing the dog felt to her like Savage's benediction on converting his book to a movie, she filmed the movie in her native New Zealand. Ostensibly, the reason was that production costs would have been prohibitive in Beaverhead Valley, even more prohibitive in Horse Prairie itself.

Nevertheless, Weltzien said Campion picked out an appropriately rural area in New Zealand, saying she spent months there before the external shoots began, studying it under every light and every weather. The result was remarkably faithful to the feeling of the book.

Weltzien sprinkled his presentation with facts about Savage's personal life. Savage married Elizabeth (Betty) Fitzgerald in 1939. Though he later told his adult daughter there was no such thing as being bisexual and that Betty knew before their marriage that he was gay, he fathered three children. His wife, and later his daughter, were also writers. According to Weltzien, Betty Savage spoke of her own novels as "mere entertainments."

"She knew-correctly," Weltzien asserted, "that her husband's stuff had a lot more substance."

The Savages were married for 50 years and his wife's indispensable role, in Savage's eyes, was as his editor. Weltzien contends the core of their relationship had little to do with sex and everything to do with the written word. According to their son and daughter, they had a "child-like interdependency" on one another and Savage was devastated when Betty died of cancer in 1989.

Savage was also a prodigious drinker. When his doctor told him he needed to drink more milk, he switched to milk punch, a concoction of half milk, half gin, topped with nutmeg. Weltzien recounted a conversation with a woman who remembered Savage's visit to Dillon in 1983. She said he visited every bar in town before noon and he had to give a talk at 1:30 p.m. According to the woman, he drank some black coffee and then she said he gave the most riveting talk that she had ever heard in her life.

Weltzien said, "I don't know how he got away with the amount of drinking he did along with all the writing he did. But Savage said over and over again that he felt worthless unless he was writing a novel."

Much of the impact of "Power of the Dog" comes from the unexpected twist at the end, an ending Savage wrote 11 times before he felt he had it right. Weltzien commented, "He was really proud of that. And it is just breathless."

Weltzien added, "And the last two minutes of the movie are very, very close and produce the same effect."

Riding on the wave of the new interest in Savage's writing, Weltzien concluded, "It's just been such an honor to me to be on the very corner of this phenomenon."