by Zelie Bullen
‘Big deal—it’s only your talus bone,’ said Tad. ‘I’ve broken my talus bone.’
‘You did? They told me it won’t heal.’
‘What would they know? They’re just used to dealing with people who don’t take care of themselves.’
Sonny and Barbara came in to visit not long after my conversation with Tad, and I told them what the surgeon had said. And Sonny said, ‘Oh, Zelie, don’t you listen to him. I broke my talus bone. I don’t have the same power I had in that ankle, but I don’t need the two per cent extra I had before the break—I’m doing just fine.’
I thought, ‘Well, there you go, doctor!’ I was so happy. Hallelujah, I actually knew some of the five per cent who had made it through this injury. From then on, I never had an ounce of doubt that I would get back strength and movement in my ankle.
On the second day after my emergency operation, I was surprised when Barbara asked if we would be staying on with the show once I got out of hospital. She said there were always plenty of things to do, which of course was true. I could still organise and fulfil several of the stable manager duties; there was promotion work, and I could sell tickets. As far as she was concerned, we still had something to offer the show.
I had had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic and Craig put his foot down and said, ‘No, we’re going home.’ He told me I wouldn’t rest properly if we were still working on the show; it was a serious situation and I had a mighty healing job ahead of me that I needed to focus on. I knew he was right, but I was very sad to be leaving.
As it turned out, the healing process was an amazing journey; it was a beautiful time. I was confined to a very limited physical existence. Before then, I had always been able to get out and do what I wanted to do. Even after Colt was born and I had to deal with the constant demands of a beautiful newborn baby, I was still able to carry him around with me as I did things. But suddenly I wasn’t allowed to put any weight on the ankle. I spent those two months sorting out photos, catching up with things in the office and, most importantly, spending quality time with my little boy, something I had unwittingly been pining for.
Of course, saying I had a nice healing journey is a bit like saying I had a nice birth! There was pain and suffering involved, but I was really proud of my accomplishments. I got on the internet; I researched; I saw naturopaths; I asked questions, speaking to every person who I thought could assist with my healing to find out what knits bones back together and what stimulates capillary growth.
I did reiki; I did a lot of visualising; I consumed every vitamin and mineral supplement that claimed to improve circulation and bone strength. Sometimes I wanted to lie on my bed and cry, but I would tell myself that the crying wasn’t helping the healing, so instead I would meditate and visualise my ankle healing.
I had a lot of fun visualising—I became quite creative, trying to maintain my interest and enthusiasm. I imagined different colours oozing around my ankle, in both gaseous and liquid forms; I would close my eyes and imagine noble good guys on horseback, dressed up in suits of armour and tribal warrior costumes, clearing the way for the capillaries to grow and multiply and heal the broken bone. I visualised a lot of crazy stuff, but I believe it was all positive energy going into my ankle at every moment.
Sometimes while I was visualising these things my ankle would tingle and get hot, and I’d feel it start to throb. Perhaps that was a normal physiological response and I only happened to notice it because I was focusing on my ankle, but I felt that, by pouring in all of that positive energy, I was actually stimulating a response. All I know is that I focused very hard and I willed it to heal.
Every morning I’d get up and go to the loo, either hopping or slowly hobbling on my crutches, and occasionally I crawled all the way. On my first morning at home, I had looked out of the toilet window at a staghorn fern that was growing on a little tree just outside and it had a tiny little bud growing on it. I thought, ‘How cool, it’s growing a new leaf!’ I looked at that leaf every single day, and I watched it getting bigger and bigger, and I would imagine my capillaries spreading out through my ankle like the growth of that strong healthy little leaf. By the time I could walk on my ankle again, that leaf was as big and healthy as all of the others.
When we arrived home from Sonny’s show, just days after the accident, we had my ankle assessed again by a different doctor. Lydia did some research for me and she found the best ankle and foot surgeon in Brisbane, Dr Greg Sterling. Craig and I liked him as soon as we met him. He looked at my leg and the x-rays and said, ‘Hmm, that’s a very bad break,’ and ‘I haven’t seen one like this before.’ (Maybe he needs more trick-riding patients!)
He told me I was lucky because my surgeon at Wagga Base Hospital had done a very good job. He could see where the break was, but at every angle on all the x-rays, the surgeon had lined up the bone perfectly.
I told Dr Sterling about the doom-and-gloom report the surgeon had given me—that if the bone died, they would have to fuse my ankle in one position—and he said, Doctors like to give people the statistics and tell you probable outcomes so you have some sort of idea.’
‘I intend to get better,’ I said.
‘Well, good for you,’ Dr Sterling said. He was very supportive, but he also said that I needed to understand the severity of the situation. I knew how bad it was, but I was still utterly determined to heal myself. So he said, ‘Well, you do that—knock ’em dead then.’
The surgeon in Wagga Wagga had told me that I definitely couldn’t walk on my ankle for three months and that I shouldn’t really put my full weight on it for six months; he had said I would have to rely on crutches and then move on to a walking stick. But after two months, Dr Sterling said he was happy for me to start to put weight on my ankle as it was healing very well. When he looked at the new x-rays, he was amazed to see that the blood supply had recovered and was now nourishing my healing ankle. He said, ‘This is looking good. I can’t promise you anything—sections of that bone may still die, but we won’t be able to determine that until further down the track.’
I smiled when he told me this and thought that maybe it had healed because I’d been looking at that plant outside my toilet window. I said, ‘No, I think we’re going to be right.’
Then he looked at me, smiled, and said again, ‘Well, good for you.’
When I went back one year later, after returning from working in Europe, I had more x-rays done and Dr Sterling was again shocked. He said he could barely see where the break had been and there appeared to be full blood supply back to the bone.
I said, ‘I told you,’ and he said, ‘Yes you did.’ He asked me to show him some stretches and then to hop up on the examination table. He manipulated my ankle and was amazed at how much flexion and stability I had got back. When he told me that I should be very proud of myself and that he had never seen anything like it I got the biggest buzz and I hugged him. He was a bit surprised, and then he and Craig laughed. It was a very emotional moment. He asked for my permission to duplicate my notes, as he wanted to use it as an inspirational story, and I said go for it. I felt proud, and incredibly grateful that Craig and Tad had been right.
CHAPTER 53
Working for Spielberg
About three months after the accident, we were called by a man we had worked with on Zorro, who wanted to talk to us about a movie coming up in England called War Horse. It was based on a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo and he said it had a big budget; it was a Steven Spielberg production. He said that they wanted to hire me as the liberty horse trainer, and that there would also be a team of stunt horse trainers from Spain.
I thought, ‘Woo-hoo! What fun!’ I had worked on Steven Spielberg films before; but he only directs a few of his films himself, and at this stage I was not told that he was directing. The discussion on the phone was just about the bare basics of the job and it sounded good. I explained that I was recovering from a broken ankle, though I had just been told I could bear weight on my inju
red leg again and didn’t have to rely solely on crutches anymore. He wasn’t worried about my injury and asked if we could get there as soon as possible. He also asked how many liberty horses I could train, and I told him I could train four full-time; I also requested two for Craig to work with, in between assisting me.
When I requested that a script be sent to me there was a short pause at the other end of the phone. Then he said, ‘That won’t be happening. The script is under lock and key—it has to be signed out and then back in.’ He told me that even the heads of department had to go into the production office to read it and then leave it there when they left. He suggested that I read the book it was based on to get an idea of the story.
My friend and former neighbour at Maudsland Road, Tanya Bangay immediately bought the book for me online. By the time it arrived in the post, I didn’t have much time and so I had to read it overnight two days before we were due to fly out to England. My heart pounded while I was reading it realising what the horse role would involve, but I also wondered why I was the only liberty horse trainer they were planning on getting, because I could tell that four liberty horses wouldn’t be able to cope with the workload of this demanding story.
At our next phone call I asked him how many liberty trainers there would be—surely there would be more than just me? When he confirmed that I was to be the only one, I voiced my very strong opinion that we would need more. He said, ‘Just get over here and we’ll sort out any issues when you arrive.’ During our conversation he made it very clear that he wasn’t prepared to discuss the matter any further from a distance. My questions were causing doubts within the English horse department and he didn’t want to feel like a fool for having recommended me.
As frustrated as I was at not being able to discuss it further right away, I felt the best thing to do was to get over there and read the script. The day before we flew out, we learnt that Steven Spielberg was to be the director; while I was very excited to hear this, I also knew his expectations would be high.
Craig and I packed up in the usual rush, making sure everything was organised at home for the next six to eight months. Then, in May 2010 together with Colt, we hopped on a plane bound for England.
War Horse was to be filmed in Devon, in the south of England, and various locations around London. Craig and I had opted to live in a caravan on site so we could work the horses for longer each day without worrying about commuting. Most importantly, it meant we could spend the maximum amount of time possible with Colt. However, we knew he would need someone to look after him while we were working. Maggie Ashley had agreed to leave Sonny and Barbara’s show in a few weeks’ time and come over as Colt’s nanny, but we also needed someone to be there during pre-production.
Marianna Monroy was a young local Mexican girl who had been brought on to assist with the horse make-up when we were working on Zorro, back in 2004. Horses, like actors, have make-up applied so they resemble a character, or if more than one horse is playing the same character, so they are identical. It turned out that Marianna had never been around a horse before, but we didn’t know that until about three weeks into her working with us. I had seen her squat down right behind the horses’ hocks, which was dangerous, so I went over to her and suggested she stay to the side of the horse, and she thanked me. I then said, ‘What have you done with horses previously?’ and she said she had never been around them before. I was amazed. She was so peaceful around them—relaxed and calm. She happily led the horses around and tied them up. She was just doing her thing.
I grew to love beautiful Marianna—or ‘Tita’, meaning ‘little’, the nickname her family called her—and now we flew her from Mexico to meet us in England. We knew she would do a great job of looking after Colt before Maggie arrived. With Tita’s help, he could hang out with us—playing Tonka trucks in the sand, drawing with crayons, or playing games with Tita. He could be right there with us and then retreat to the caravan for rest times or in bad weather.
He had celebrated his third birthday in a circus tent and now he was turning four in England on a film set. I was so happy when Mum came over to share his birthday; she stayed with us for six weeks before returning home, and then she rejoined us for the last month of the shoot.
War Horse was a physically and emotionally demanding film. It was very politically orientated, but the hardest thing for me was having to spend more hours away from Colt than I ever had before, mostly during filming. There were days when Craig and I would get out of bed and go to work hours before Colt woke, and return at night-time when he was already asleep.
That caused me a lot of suffering. I don’t think Colt suffered—he was doing alright. Mum was there a lot of the time and he had Tita, whose patience and energy seemed unlimited. Our love for Tita and our trust in her proved totally justified. When Colt began to speak some Spanish, it melted our hearts—it sounded so adorable. In a relatively short time Colt had learnt to love her as much as we did. Eventually we asked her to stay on until the end of the movie, and we were so relieved when she agreed to. It was a great opportunity for her, and we simply altered Maggie’s role from nanny to my assistant.
About four weeks into pre-production, Julia Burey called me. She said it wasn’t the same on the show since we had left, and she was unhappy. Julia, I felt, looked upon Craig and me as her second parents. I told her to get out of there, to gather up her courage and do something else—go travelling, go home. Anything. I told her she was welcome to use us as a first base if she wanted to. If she came over and there was no job on the film, she would have the opportunity to meet a hundred and fifty horse people all at once—there would surely be a horse job somewhere. In fact, by the time she got on the plane, a job had become available for her on the movie as a floating assistant.
Maggie and Julia suffered through the mud and the long hours, the weather and the usual film politics, but they both had an amazing experience on War Horse. They knew they were very fortunate to get their first break on a film by Steven Spielberg. I told them they were getting spoilt, starting at the top.
CHAPTER 54
Politics and war
When we first arrived in England, I quickly read the script and realised that my early concerns were more than justified. I was really worried when I read through all the intense scenes, particularly those where the horse runs riderless through a battle scene and also when he gets entangled in razor wire.
The script was also very descriptive when it came to the horse’s expressions and emotions. Of course, the more descriptive a script is of the animal’s emotions, the better the actor that animal will have to be. I tried in vain to get that simple message through to the horse department who had employed me. Liberty horse action is not their specialty and they didn’t understand how demanding it is for a horse to work at liberty for extended periods of time. The more trained horses you have to rotate, the more chance you have of being able to get the exact shot the director needs.
What they did know was that this job was the biggest project I had ever done, and they felt that I was being nervous and overly cautious in wanting to bring in more trainers. I tried to explain to them that I was only nervous because I knew that to do the film properly we needed several trained horses, which of course meant we needed more trainers. Much to my frustration, I couldn’t get that through to them. The people who believed me were not in a position to help, and the people who were in a position to help didn’t act.
Originally I was told we had twelve weeks’ pre-production; but, by the time we arrived in the UK, we had just over ten weeks before filming was to begin.
A major problem when we first arrived was that only four adult horses had been supplied to play the main horse character, Joey (the ‘war horse’ of the title), plus one two-year-old horse to play the young Joey, a yearling, and an older mare to play his mother. When I asked about a foal, which we needed to depict Joey as a baby and growing up, I was told they’d get one later. It then truly dawned on me how much they didn’t k
now. All of the horses needed a lot of training to perform as liberty horses at the calibre required for a Steven Spielberg production, and we needed more horses! As well as the liberty horses, we also needed additional horses to be trained for harness work and to be ridden in other scenes by actors, and stuntmen, but the horse department had assumed that the same four horses could be used for all this work.
I was completely shocked. They didn’t realise the level of training and concentration a liberty horse needs.
Craig and I worked for three weeks training the horses we had, all the while trying to get our point across. We were under pressure and stressed, working hideously long hours; the daylight in England at that time of the year was allowing us to work up to twenty hours a day, which we did trying to get it all done. What I should have said, simply and clearly at the very beginning, was: ‘You cannot do this movie with only one horse trainer and four horses—that’s too big an ask.’
I eventually said to the guy who had called me originally: ‘Don’t you remember? You were on Zorro—we had nine horses playing Zorro’s horse, Tornado. And Tornado wasn’t even the lead character—Antonio Banderas was. Antonio had six stunt doubles. War Horse is a big movie, about a horse, and we need more than four to play it!’
We now had two months to go; of the four horses we had, two were proving unsuitable as liberty horses. But we continued to train them, thinking we just had to go ahead with what we had. In the end, those two horses ended up working in other departments—one became a stunt horse, and one became a harness horse. We were eventually able to replace them with other liberty horses, but of course then these two new horses had to begin their training from scratch.