The casting of Few Clothes seems to have been our reward for surviving all the ones who got away, all the actors who got cold feet or lastminute conflicts on our previous movies and sent us back into casting only days before we started shooting. Few Clothes is mentioned in the history books as a giant of a black miner who was rumored to be a good shot from his days in the army during the Spanish-American War, kind of the John Henry of the coal fields. We needed somebody not only big but with the kind of power that could keep him walking head up and alive through the treacherous racial minefield of the rural South in 1920. We saw lots of ood actors, but the combination of size and the kind of power that comes across even when held in restraint was hard to find. Now and then we'd consider making an offer to James Earl Jones, but after three-and-a-half-movies' worth of dealing with name actors and their agents it seemed so unlikely, he seemed so clearly out of our league, that we never took any action on it.

We were already in West Virginia, doing preproduction work, when we decided what the hell and contacted Jones's agent. We sent a script and a litany of warnings about the low budget and modest nature of our production, and in a few days we got a simple yes. James Earl turned out to be one of the best prepared, most helpful actors I've ever gotten to work with. He understood the mixture of strength and savvy Few Clothes needed to help his men survive in a deadly confrontation far from home, and brought even the moments where he just sits and listens to life.

Sometimes you just get lucky.

ELMA
I don't want you usin Danny on no crazy union business.

JOE
A man has to stand up for what he believes.

ELMA
Danny aint no man. Look, Mister, you gonna be movin on. Win or lose, you'll be walking outa this holler. We got to stay here.

JOE
I intend to leave a union when I go.

ELMA
My husband used to talk union. I see where it got him.

JOE
-- they had strikebreaker written all over them.

SEPHUS
Down here hit's the Baldwin-Felts that they use. They's just gun thugs, though.

JOE
They'll have the chief of police deputize them and all the company's mine guards -- so we won't just have to fight the operators, we'll have to fight the law --

SEPHUS
Not Sid.

JOE
I never known a small-town bull that wasn't in their pocket.

SEPHUS
(adamant) Not Sid.

Nowhere in movie-making is the balance between practical concerns and creative process more in evidence than in production scheduling. Even large-budget movies have to make compromises here. Movies are rarely shot in sequence, though that would seem best for the actors. Instead, an actor may do his death scene in the first week of production, get married in the fourth and meet his future wife in the eighth. On low-budget features this is usually done without the benefit of rehearsal before shooting starts (since the Screen Actors Guild requires that actors be paid for rehearsal time).

Time and again an actor would walk onto one of Nora's sets and say "Okay, now I get it.” The mood of the place would help feed their acting, help them inhabit the character. And in the natural settings—in the woods at night, inside the coal mine—there were moments of eerie identification. The cold mist really was cold mist, mud and cutting wind supplied free of charge, and the dark and the damp of the mine left us all cramped and shivering after a few hours underground. We could only push on and hope that we could just catch it all on film, that somehow the experience could be passed through the movie to the audience.

ELMA
Compny doctor said he wouldn't come out but there's a fella in Pikeville on the Kentucky side that'll treat union men on the sly. He'll be here by noon.

MAN
He treat colored?

ELMA
If he treats union he'll treat colored.

Deep into the shooting schedule, when exhaustion was a memory and a kind of numbness had set in, we found ourselves out on a drizzly night with dozens of our local extras climbing the steep, slippery path to the driftmouth again and again. People were willing but very tired and it looked like the night would go on and on. We broke for "lunch" at two a.m. or so, and the rain got a little heavier. As the shuttle van crawled along the narrow mud road to the catering tent we heard music. One of the native miners was picking a banjo, another singing in that high, nasal mountain way, and around them were our actors and extras in their headlamps and coal-darkened overalls—black, white, Italian—joining in when they knew the words. It was so much a scene from the movie, a feeling from the movie, that we hooked back in to why we were there, what we were doing up on that dark mountain in the middle of nowhere, and when we tore ourselves away to go back to work the night didn't seem so long anymore.

MUSIC BEGINS as we ride toward the light at the end of the tunnel, the RATTLE of the gondola car beneath us. The VOICE of an old man, PAPPY, begins to reminisce --

PAPPY (VO)

Hit were 1920 in the southwest field and things was tough. The miners was trying to bring in the union to West Virginia and the coal operators and their- gun thugs was set on keepin em out. Them was hand-loading days -- they paid you by the ton and they didn't care no more for a man than they done for a draft mule.

C.E.
Who wrote The Iron Heel?

JOE
Jack London.

SEPHUS
Where's Joe Hill buried?

JOE
All over the world. They scattered his ashes.

C.E.
Which eye is Big Bull Heywood missing?

Joe thinks for a moment, covers one of his eyes to check --

JOE
Left one.

SEPHUS
How'd Frank Little die?

JOE
Butte, Montana. They hung him from a railroad trestle.

C.E. and Sephus exchange a look --

C.E.
If you're a spy you know your stuff.

JOE

I was with the Wobblies.

SEPHUS

Me too. Back when it meant something.

JOE

(grins) One Big Union.

C.E.

Not around here, buddy.

HICKEY
We got this from Mr. Turley here, and this from our boss, Mr. Thomas Felts.

SID
I've met Mr. Felts.

HICKEY
(smiles) Well then, we don't have any problem --

SID
I wouldn't pee on him if his heart was on fire. Neither of these'll do for a writ. You'll have to see the judge in Charleston.