‘Is this coffee cup period?’</p><p>Dave Bears and Dan Hadley, both of Lee’s Summit, live for questions like that.</p><p>“We don’t dive into the minute for the sake of doing it,” Hadley said.</p><p>Both living historians, they don’t want history to be misrepresented. Especially, said Bears, when it seems more students are watching movies than reading history books. </p><p>On the set of “Arkansas Traveler,” an independent film set at the end of the Civil War and co-directed by Sean Bridgers and Michael “Fish” Hemschoot, Bears is assistant director, Hadley is assistant costume director and both are historical consultants.</p><p>It’s the research that draws a line in the sand between being a “re-enactor” and a living historian. Bears and Hadley have done both, but now they both consider themselves living historians. The distinction is in the details.</p><p>The historical relevance of a coffee cup, though it may seem like a small thing, is essential to the retelling of history and the authenticity of a period film. That attention to detail is why Bears and Hadley are there.</p><p>“I want to do our history the way it should be done,” Bears said.</p><p>So, everything from a horse to a coffee cup, a button to weaponry, the trees to actress Angela Bettis’ undergarments, must be historically accurate. Bridgers and Hemschoot decided to make the film with Kansas City’s Wide Awake Films, who Bears and Hadley work with, to insure that authenticity.</p><p>“There were three or four guys that you could ask about an item,” Bridgers said. They know where it was made, when it was made. As a director you could relax, (knowing) that nothing was going to be missed.”</p><p>Hadley said there’s no substitute for doing the research.</p><p>“We study because we love it,” Hadley said.</p><p>Bears said he believes American filmmakers are fair at best when it comes to historical accuracy. He said British filmmakers have been getting it right and that’s what he and Wide Awake Films are trying to compete with.</p><p>“Why don’t they do their research?” Bears asked of other filmmakers. “It’s been one of our rallying cries. We want to give the best look and the best feel that we can.”</p><p>For Bridgers, the living historians embody everything he wants to capture in the film.</p><p>“Having those guys around, it’s everything to make the illusion that we’re in 1865,” Bridgers said. “That’s not just when the camera’s rolling.”</p><p>Bears’ Missouri dialect is as thick as the mud under foot. The spelling of the Show-Me state is irrelevant. People from “the coasts” might not know it’s pronounced “Missour-ah.” He smokes a small cigar under black-framed glasses and a cream-colored brimmed hat as that Missouri dialect pours from the corner of his mouth. In the still cool afternoon, he makes his way around the set in a blue, wool Civil War-era style coat.</p><p>Wearing period pieces, speaking with that natural dialect and understanding the time period, they feel, adds to the filmmaking experience.</p><p>“…Understanding that period and understanding it on a level that other people don’t – that rubs off on the actors and the performance,” Bridgers said.</p><p>Bridgers, an actor by trade, is familiar with period pieces. He played Johnny in HBO’s frontier series, “Deadwood,” as did the star of “Arkansas Traveler,” Garret Dillahunt, who played Francis Wolcott. Dillahunt also played Ed Miller in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”</p><p>“When I’ve been around and heard the actors talk about being around a historical setting, it really makes their jobs easier to transport into that era,” Bears said.</p><p>The cast and crew of “Arkansas Traveler” tread carefully around one of the log buildings as the inescapable mud from the rain the day before makes for sloppy, unsure footing. Wide Awake Films and the co-directors production company, Travelin’ Productions hope the “teaser” they filmed here in Missouri last month will translate into a feature-length Hollywood film.</p><p>Bears has been part of several documentaries and films, in front of the camera and on the production side. His Missouri twang narrates the film at the Jesse James Museum in St. Joseph and he’s played both a Confederate and Federal soldier for movies such as the Emmy award-winning documentary, “Bad Blood.”</p><p>It’s not that he’s ever aspired to be an actor or that he fancies himself a “Hollywood-type,” but as a living historian and a self-described “Civil War buff,” he’s committed to staying in touch with living history.</p><p>“I love the acting,” Bears said. “It’s something I enjoy doing, but I like watching the magic being made.” A cabin, set as a tavern in April 1865, is a simple two-story with a large stone fireplace. Outside, crew members sit around a campfire in lawn chairs sinking deeper into the soft ground. Electrical cords feed in through a window. A plastic gel covers the window glass where just inside a light on a stand flickers like candlelight.</p><p>Under a vinyl tailgate tent covered on every side with heavy quilted blankets to keep it dim and insulated, crewmembers watch the filming as it happens inside the cabin. Everyone is quiet except for the periodic squish of someone’s shifting feet in the mud below them.</p><p>The movie is being filmed with Viper Filmstream, an ultra high definition digital camera. The detail is jarring as it’s watched on the monitor.</p><p>The magic, for Bears and Hadley, happens when the historically accurate meets characters that bring, not just a story, but history to life.</p><p>Hadley stands outside the cabin waiting to be useful. His hat, worn over salt and pepper hair and paired with the smooth lines of his modern sunglasses, is a military hat called a kepi. The neutral-colored cap, with a flat top and small bill was worn by northern and southern soldiers during the war. His is a hand-stitched reproduction of a Confederate issue kepi copied closely from an original in a museum. Hadley too has done his fair share of re-enactments and films.</p><p>A few yards away, Dillahunt stands poised for his entrance into the dark interior of the cabin. He wears a tall stovepipe hat – Hadley points out the shape, how it is a true stovepipe, a reproduction, but a good one. He says there are only one or two hat makers in the country that produce pieces specifically for living historians.</p><p>Along with the hat, Dillahunt wears dirt and dust on top of a black coat, a simple button up shirt with a purple caveat, a vest in a silver, gray fabric, small check pants – worn above his waist – and black boots authentically caked in Missouri mud. As part of his character, he also carries a carpetbagger’s bag. He waits at the doorstep for his cue.</p><p>When putting together the costumes for this film, in some ways, it was design by committee. They’d put things together, all of them would look over it, pull something else from one of their collections, look again and make a decision.</p><p>“We have tubs of clothing we all bring and pull from,” Hadley said.</p><p>Despite the process, Hadley said it never looks thrown together, but that’s by 19th century styles, not today’s fashion.</p><p>“19th century fashion is far different than 20th century fashion,” Bears said.</p><p>Hadley said the patterns were bold and they paired things differently. It may not be traditional Hollywood glamour, but the commitment to accuracy and the actor’s ability to naturally inhabit the clothes is what’s important.</p><p>“The things we hand these people are our own personal artifacts out of our personal collections,” Bears said. “To get them into that persona we have to dress them that way.”</p><p>A historically inaccurate button can take a historian right out of the story. Hadley studies photos from the era to get styles as accurate as possible.</p><p>“Bad hair, bad clothing – I have a pet peeve about that,” Hadley said.</p><p>Inaccurate settings also pose a problem. Although they enjoyed the film, Hadley and Bears said it bothered them that “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” starring Missouri’s own Brad Pitt, wasn’t filmed in Missouri or the Midwest. The landscape of Canada just isn’t the same.</p><p>“Those little things gnaw away at me,” Hadley said.</p><p>Bridgers said authenticity provides a connection to the audience.</p><p>“Making it historically accurate allows the audience to invest deeper into the story,” Bridgers said. “They may not be conscious of it, but it does.”</p><p>Bridgers said he is committed to shooting “Arkansas Traveler” in Missouri. It was a happy accident that the teaser was filmed in the Kansas City area. It’s just where Wide Awake Films happens to be based. It was easier.</p><p>“Having shot there,” Bridgers said, “we’re really going to make a push to shoot the film there.”</p><p>The first half of the film follows the main character through war-torn Missouri as he tries to make his way back home to Arkansas at the end of the war.</p><p>“The actors feel like they’re there,” Bridgers said of the environment. “It’s one less thing the actor has to do to imagine themselves in the scene.”</p><p>The movie, however, is at the mercy of its investors. Bridgers hopes they can find local investors that will keep it in Missouri.</p><p>“It’s part of what we need to be historically accurate,” Bridgers said. “It really did add something when we were shooting this teaser,” he said. “It felt real. Everything we did felt authentic.”</p><p>There were scenes that even transported Bears and Hadley.</p><p>One scene involves a hanging where they chose not to put actor Raleigh Craighead in a harness, but allowed it to be as real as possible. Raleigh hangs onto the rope and the effect is tremendous according to Bears.</p><p>Proud to display the authenticity of his wounds to Bears and Hadley, the young actor lifts his chin and turns his head to the side in an uncomfortable tilt to reveal the burn marks around his neck. He also removes his hat and lifts his undone hair to reveal a scrape at his hairline where a historically accurate boot realistically kicked him in the head.</p><p>“What I’ve seen has blown me away,” Bears said. “And I’m real critical about what I see.”</p><p>Bridgers said the story is the war within the man rather than the man within the war. The Civil War just happens to be the film’s dramatic backdrop.</p><p>Hadley feels because of that approach, the movie will reach more than just a historian audience, but will have mass appeal.</p><p>“It’s a great story. I’ve read the script. I think people – even if they’re not history buffs – once they hear the story line, they’ll be interested by the whole thing,” Hadley said.</p><p>Outside the cabin, the cast and crew are silent. Dillahunt opens the door and steps into the scene. In the quiet, everyone waits. The large voice of the tavern keeper inside begins to rise and fall in muffled rages seeping into the calm Sunday afternoon outside.</p><p>Within the cabin, a light set inside the fireplace gives a warm glow to the stone. A small table is set in the middle of the room. On the table, there are two whiskey glasses and a large knife plunged into the wood.</p><p>Between takes, actress Angela Bettis, who seems still connected to her character, a woman trapped in forced prostitution, sits in the corner on the stairs like a small mouse. Sitting at the table, Dillahunt discusses how to conceal a gun behind his hat with Bridgers.</p><p>Bridgers said knowing guys like Bears and Hadley makes all the difference in a movie like this.</p><p>“With a period piece we wanted the best,” Bridgers said. “They don’t settle. It has to be 100 percent absolutely authentic.”</p><p>Bears will stand by that.</p><p>“I’m going to guarantee if this becomes a feature film that it will be the most accurate film ever done in the United States.”</p><p><b>Information</b>:</p><p>Arkansas Traveler</p><p>Starring: Garret Dillahunt ("No Country for Old Men," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Last House on the Left"), Sean Bridgers ("Sweet Home Alabama," "Paradise Falls," HBO’s "Deadwood") and Angela Bettis (Stephen King’s "Carrie, Girl," "Interrupted," "May") Directed by: Sean Bridgers and Michael “Fish” Hemschoot (animator and visual effects artist on the films "Master and Commander," "National Treasure," and "The Matrix") Written by: Sean Bridgers Travelin’ Productions synopsis: "Arkansas Traveler" is a Faustian western set in the dark, waning days of the American Civil war. Wayland McGlawhorn (Garett Dillahunt), is a captured Confederate soldier who, with the help of the enigmatic John Bones (Sean Bridgers), escapes from the infamous Rock Island prison camp and embarks on a treacherous journey home to Arkansas to rejoin the wife and family he left behind. Dressed in the clothes of a carpetbagger, whose suicide he witnessed, Wayland travels the back roads of the war-torn South - a world filled with danger and corruption - which provides very little opportunity for him to cool his guns and mend his violent, tortured soul. Along the way, he rescues fellow wanderers Myrtle (Angela Bettis), a wilted flower living in a hell of forced prostitution, and Traveler, a freedman and slave liberator, both of whom end up joining Wayland’s travels. The group arrives at Wayland’s home in Arkansas to discover more scars left by the war. Finding his marital cabin empty and cold, Wayland moves on to his parent’s homestead in search of his wife, Laurel. It’s not the homecoming Wayland hoped for as it’s revealed by his mother, Nancy, that his wife died giving birth to his brother, Frankie’s child. To compound matters, Frankie is also missing, having fled to the Indian nations after killing a Union soldier. Before he can even shake the dust from his clothes, Nancy pleads with Wayland to seek out Frankie and bring him home. Wayland reluctantly agrees and with Traveler imposing himself by his side, rides west into a hostile land uncertain whether his is a mission of salvation or vengeance.</p><p>The movie is currently in development. The “teaser” was filmed in Weston and Kansas City, North last month.