BUTTE - Butte is the backdrop of a new movie and the Los Angeles-based director said he had a great experience making this film here in the Mining City.
“Beautiful nature, you know, great hospitality, everyone involved, we hired a lot of locals, the foreman that did all our construction, a lot of people that worked on the movie were local to Butte and it’s just a great community and a great place to film,” said director Drew Mylrea.
Last Survivors was filmed in and around Butte in December of 2020 starring Stephan Moyer and Alicia Silverstone.
“These actors were out there in the cold with us battling the elements and they just wanted to make a really good film and I think that’s what we did,” said Mylrea.
Some of the indoor scenes were shot on sets built inside the Butte Civic Center and some out in the forests around Butte.
The production crew included many locals. “And they were always grinning at us as we were shivering in the corner, which I appreciated,” the director said.
An unexpected snowfall on the final day of shooting enhanced the film.
“It an intense scene, the father and the son, there’s a confrontation and there’s snow blowing all around them and I’m just like, ‘oh my gosh, thank you Mother Nature,’ I could not have planned this better,” said Mylrea.
Butte Center for Performing Arts President Jocelyn Dodge, who worked on the film, said, “One of the offshoots that can come from this is, because the film’s going to say filmed in Butte, Montana, you know, public and private lands, it’s going to say to people, ‘hey, I’ve got to visit this place.’”
Much of the films are in remote areas just outside of town and in town, like the historic Stephens Building at Park and Montana. It just shows the diversity of locations that can be found in the Butte area.
“Flying here yesterday and just seeing, oh, we filmed there and I stayed there, we did all this stuff here, it was just beautiful, you know, it made me really emotional and it’s beautiful to be back here in Butte. It feels like a really great bookend for what was a really special movie,” said Mylrea.
You can see this movie and meet the director at the Mother Lode Theater Friday night beginning at 7 p.m.
