Dan Harder's Blog
July 28, 2020
What inspired Rancho de Amor?
I could say it started when I moved from the middle of Los Angeles up to an extremely isolated cattle ranch, there to work for a summer—a rural experience reinforced when, a year later, I moved up to rural Oregon and worked in a lumber mill for six months. These experiences exposed me to genuine rural lifestyles and concerns, different from the very urban experiences I’d lived in Los Angeles, then San Francisco, and eventually for years in Paris. Because I write plays, the sine qua non of which is contrast and conflict, I’ve been intrigued with those contrasting, sometimes conflicting ways of living and how various characters might interact were they to come from such differing environments.
That’s the general background of “how and where.” The specific was that my wife and I sold a spec script to a Hollywood producer and were told to come up with new scripts. We didn’t have the time or inclination to write full scripts, but we did come up with a couple film treatments. One was structured using two very different characters, one from an urban environment—a NY city book editor, and the other from a rural setting, a young foreman of a large and isolated cattle ranch. How could I ever get these two characters together? Simple: in a wacky romance.
That’s the general background of “how and where.” The specific was that my wife and I sold a spec script to a Hollywood producer and were told to come up with new scripts. We didn’t have the time or inclination to write full scripts, but we did come up with a couple film treatments. One was structured using two very different characters, one from an urban environment—a NY city book editor, and the other from a rural setting, a young foreman of a large and isolated cattle ranch. How could I ever get these two characters together? Simple: in a wacky romance.
