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All Of It with Alison Stewart
A Horse Trainer's Unexpected Friendship With Queen Elizabeth
00:24:13
We discuss a new documentary about horse trainer Monty Roberts.
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A
Listener support WNYC Studios.
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This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. The documentary the Cowboy and the Queen captures a veteran horse trainer's life story and his relationship with Her Majesty the Queen. For Monty Roberts, taming horses is less about controlling the animal and a lot more about establishing trust and care between the rider and the horse. Roberts is non violent in his approach, carefully reading their body language and handling each interaction with care. His methods sent shock waves in the industry. Traditional trainers whose tactics normally take weeks to tame horses were surprised to see that Roberts could do the same job in less than an hour. One animal lover and avid horse rider across the pond became fond of his techniques. Queen Elizabeth ii. What culminates is a touching portrait about their unexpected friendship, bound by their love of animals. The film is out in theaters today and it will be available to stream on Masterclass starting September 12th. Joining us now is the director of the film, Oscar nominated filmmaker Andrea Nevins, and the subject of the film, veteran horse trainer Monte Roberts. Welcome to the show, Monty. You're a household name in the horse training industry. There are quite a few documentaries out about your story. Why did Andrea approach you and what was your initial reaction?
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I have no idea why Andrea approached me. I was here on the farm one day and Pat and some of our employees came to me and said, there's a lady here that wants to do some videoing and she would like to have you look in once in a while and see if there's some way you can answer some questions. Okay. This happens about three times a week. And I walked around with her and I didn't do all that much, but they had a camera and they were doing their thing and they met my deer and they met the horses and away we went. And then I heard, oh, there's a documentary and it's going to be shown in Santa Barbara at the film festival there. What? Yes. The lady that came here has created a documentary. Well, I had no idea. So, I mean, I'm saying I had no idea. And Andrea probably let everybody know what was going on, but I can't remember five minutes anyway. So whether they told me or not, I can't even tell you.
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I will say to that that Monty's being modest, that that in fact he says he can't remember five minutes past. But when I asked him a few questions about his life, his memory is just extraordinary. So he's a master storyteller and that was really a gift. And the very first time I sat down with him, which was just going to be a short interview on another subject. I realized that there was a rich, deep, wonderful story to be told.
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Monty, people have called you the horse whisperer, first of all. Do you like that description?
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No.
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Okay. What do you think is the definition of what you do?
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The definition of what I do. I have two doctorates in behavioral sciences. I study the behavior, specializing in flight, animals and humans. And horse gentling is a title that a lot of people use, and that's okay with me. No violence. Violence free. That got me thrown out of four halls of fame because the entire horse industry said, you know, if all this junk gets away with itself, we're out of business because we don't know what he does.
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I wanted to ask Andrea. You know, Monty mentioned it, that it is a violent sport, this idea of breaking a horse, as in breaking their will. It's a little bit violent. And you, as a filmmaker, made the choice to show us some of the violence in the film. It's hard to watch. I couldn't watch some of it. I. How did you decide on what to show and how much of it to show?
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You know, it's really hard to talk about the magic that Monty does without showing what it was that he was coming from. To really understand why it might be that the Queen of England would fly him from the middle of California to England and just how surprising and new and innovative this process was to her, I felt that we really needed to show what has been the norm for centuries.
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Monty, when you grew up, you saw your father break horses. You said it was painful to watch. Early on, did you get a sense that there was something inhumane about the way the horses were being trained? They needed to be treated as quote, unquote, equals.
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Well, you have to remember, I probably would have gone right on with the normal stuff, but I was broken the same way the horses were. And later on, with this thing called the MRI and the CAT scan, they advised me that I had 72 prepubescent fractures. And I was in the hospital several times, and ultimately, in 1949, I put him in the hospital. And it was just a war. It was a fight. He was going to kill me because I had discovered that I could take a mustang in the wild and cause him to accept me and take his first saddle and rider in three days, which would be three or four weeks, in the traditional manner with a lot of violence.
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We're discussing the documentary the Cowboy and the Queen, which follows a life of nonviolent horse trainer Monty Roberts and his friendship With Queen Elizabeth. Director Andrea Nevins is here, as well as horse trainer Monty Roberts. Let's listen to a clip. This is from 1945. You and your father went to Nevada to help the rodeo association wrangle a dozen mustangs for the wild horse race. Let's listen to a clip where you had one interaction, Monty, with a horse. This is from the cowboy and the Queen.
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And there was a young male, and I moved him into one of the oval pens that go into the chute area. And then I started sending him around. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just playing with him. And all of a sudden, he started talking to me. The gestures that they make, you know, he seemed to be locking onto me. And I remember turning and walking away from him. And he came walking to me, and I rubbed him between the eyes, and I started rubbing on his body. And then I realized that my father was off at a distance, watching. He said, he's no longer a wild horse. He can't be in the wild horse race. And he beat the living bejesus out of me and shot the horse. The mustang just shot him. And they pulled him with a pickup. They pulled him out and buried him in the manure pile.
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Monty, do you remember what you were feeling at that moment?
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Well, I was afraid. I was feeling fear, but I was also celebrating somewhere down inside of me, just as I am now, because I love those horses, and they were trying to love me. But people, human beings with two legs and funny way of walking around and stuff, they were mean to them all the time. And I won 12 world championships in major competitions right across the United States and Canada because I loved them. And they said, we'll do whatever you need. Whatever you ask us, we'll do it. And so I had inexpensive horses because I had no money. It was unbelievable how the horses began to teach me that violence is never the answer. Violence is always for the violator, and seldom, if ever, it's for the person that's being violated, the victim.
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Andrea, why was that moment with the horse, why was that such an important chapter in Monty's early life story?
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Because that particular moment that we just listened to really spoke to me of discovery, of that moment of change where Monty could see just how real his ability to communicate with horses was. And that then, I think, changed the course of his life. Not that there wasn't a lot of stuff leading up to it that were formative, but that moment that he could see and feel, to me, felt like that crucial climax, turning point Part of.
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The film is that we learn about how Monty approaches his work. You as the filmmaker, Andrea, what did you want us to understand about the way he approaches his work as a horse trainer?
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For me, it was very important for the audience to be able to see how he does it because it does sound so mystical and so impossible. And I think he's been lambasted by many people over years and years and years for exactly that. The idea that perhaps it's just a little bit of some sort of dust that. That he can put up their noses and make them calm. And it's really not the case at all. I've watched him do this time and time again with horses that are really wild and angry and frightened. And to me, as I saw him doing it, it spoke of so much about our world currently that there is a way to approach people who are frightened in an entirely different way than we do. And that a lot of times people walk around in great fear and that if one can approach them in that beautiful way that Monty does, which is with their own sense of gentleness and open heartedness, that we could all learn something from that. So it's very important for me to show that.
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Let's listen to another clip from the Cowboy and the Queen. This is of Monty teaching people how to successfully be with horses.
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So we're going to talk about diaphragmatic breathing, because diaphragmatic breathing is absolutely essential. When we're frightened and we want to hold our breath for some reason. You can breathe high and take your diaphragm up in a dome and your pulse rate goes up. When we need to relax, take your diaphragm way down, fill the lungs with air, send your buckle toward the saddle. H. And when you are relaxed, the horse knows exactly what your intention is and what you're doing. Learn how to diaphragmatically breathe.
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It's extremely important, Monty, that approach really focuses on human behavior first. Why is it so important to focus on the human behavior towards the Horsa?
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Well, it isn't human behavior. There is a God in heaven, in my opinion. And it's the behavior of everything that God has created. It's not human behavior. It's not equus, it's not vaccas, cows. It's not eliminating everybody else. It's everybody coming together and realizing that being fair and eliminating violence is the answer to all things to get along.
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Andrea, what was it like to watch Monty do his thing, to watch him train the horses, to watch him communicate with the horses?
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I will Say the very first time I saw it, it was very hard for me to understand exactly what he was doing. So it took me a few times watching again and again, getting to know a few of these horses that were very frightened and seeing how much they, their entire body language change, how they breathe changed. And that subtle movement becomes very visible when you see it several times in a row. And so to me, that was literally pure magic. And even to watch the way that he interacts with deer on his property is also just magical because those you really understand as flight animals and to see him bring his calm demeanor and how they respond again is just magical.
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The name of the film is the Cowboy and the Queen. We are talking with Monte Roberts, the horse trainer, as well as director Andrea Nevins. Monty, how much did you know about the Queen's love of animals?
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You know, the Queen loved all animals and her husband. And she asked me to do my work with veterans post traumatic stress Germany. And I said, you, Majesty, Germany, they were trying to kill you. They were bombing Buckingham palace to kill you. Yes, Monty, but there's some wonderful people in Germany and I married one of them. And now I have these corgis. One is named Monty and Monty causes a lot of trouble with the rest of the corgis. So please teach Prince Philip how to handle his things. So I was taken to several different places to work with the corgis too and with his driving horses, which I hadn't really done much of, but they're horses and they think and is like a child learning to play football or something. He hasn't done it before, but he can figure it out. It was just that I was intensely interested in non violence on the face of this earth. When I first heard that the Queen wanted me to come over there. Can you imagine that some trainers came here and they had an open house here to show my nonviolent way. Top notch trainers they were. And she found out about that, saw the video that came out from that and then that's what called her over there. That's a miracle. It just doesn't happen, you know, and I can teach it to other people. Corporal Major Terry Pendry is my number one student at that time. Now I have students, fantastic students all over the world.
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In one interview, Monty said he spoke to the tween, excuse me, The Queen, over 200 times on the phone over the course of three decades. Andrea, what did you want us to learn about their friendship?
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I thought it was really extraordinary that two people who again sort of in this idea that the audience could apply something much grander to their own lives in some way was that Monty, who came from the American west, which is really known for kind of rugged individualism and, and, and a certain degree of violence. That's what we watch Westerns for. And the Queen was coming from a very colonial, very old fashioned monarch, monarchy and, and that these two people who for all intents and purposes shouldn't meet and shouldn't see eye to eye, found this very common language. And one of the things I loved in the very first interview I did with Monty was how he spoke about his imagining of why these two very different people might have understood each other. And he likened it to their experience of the, of the Second World War, that, that, that where Monty got to experience it because he was displaced because of the Japanese internment camps. His, the rodeo that he grew up on was used as an internment campus. So he had to move and the Queen had to move from Buckingham palace, as he said, because he was being bombed. And, and so, so both of them were watching the war from places, places where it was very important them to have their animals around. And that, that early experience of, of loneliness, fear and animals was something that united them later on on in life when they met Monty.
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Your work has extended past just being with animals. You've started clinics for people experiencing post traumatic stress. You've held workshops with first responders. You going through tough times. What is it about the way you work with horses that can work with people?
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Well, we're not that much different. You know, there's a lot of similarities. And when I work with the horses, it's just like children, so similar in every way. And going through the universities was difficult because the teachers didn't know. Did you know that they came out in the 50s with PTSD? Post traumatic stress disorder. And guess what? Disorders don't heal. A disorder is something you're born with. No legs, no arms. That's a disorder. When you go to war and you come back with a abnormality, that is an.
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Injury.
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Yeah, injury. It should have been called ptsi. And some of our high levels now are calling it ptsi. And I think they'll eventually figure it out because injuries heal and disorders you're telling the guy he will never heal. When you say you have ptsd, the horses have more answers for what's wrong with this world of ours than we humans do.
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Andrea, in the film you put in several of Monty's detractors, people who are skeptics. Why did you want them in the film? And then what would you say to them after spending so much time with him?
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Well, as somebody who was trained as a journalist, I feel it's always important to hear from all sides of a story. And there were enough detractors over time that I felt it was very important to be able to know where it was they were coming from and allow the audience to make their own opinion of, of what it was that they found fault with, with Monty. And, and so that's why they're, they're in there. And I, I think I allow the audience to really make their own judgment as to where, what he does and how he does it and why.
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Andrea, for somebody who has never read, ridden a horse, been near a horse, has never interacted with a horse, what do you hope people take away from the story?
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I really hope that people take away this idea that anybody can use that idea of calming yourself down when you meet somebody new, particularly somebody new who might frighten you because horses are big, they're so much bigger than you and they really could kill you. But to approach somebody like that, so not somebody, but like, but approach anybody with a sense of calm and a sense of openness, animal or human, that's really what I hope that with, with that kind of calm and thus be able to communicate, to walk away with that message, I think could be useful for all of us for this very politically divided world we're in, for parents, for people who have animals. Because I'm not a horse person. I love them, I admire them. But I came to this really as a listener and somebody who wants to make the world a better place. And I heard that in Monty's story.
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The name of the film is the Cowboy and the Queen. We've been speaking with Monte Roberts and Andrea Nevins. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.
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A
Thank you. It's really lovely to be here. Thanks for including us.
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I enjoyed it, too.
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This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday.
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For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.