The Minturn Saloon

"Like any authentic wild west bar, there is a palpable sense of entering a building where bad things must have gone down.”

There is history in the Minturn Saloon in Colorado: over 100 years of it. Like any authentic wild west bar, there is a palpable sense of entering a building where bad things must have gone down. The walls are requested to talk by many an infatuated visitor, but they never do. In the Minturn’s case, that is portably just as well, as some of the older walls come from a brothel up the hill in Leadville. That fact alone begs so many questions.

There was no room for fillers in my cast at the saloon that day. It is a kind canvas for a storyteller, but we needed some very strong faces to do justice to the joint. The Brazilian supermodel - Alessandra Ambrosio - is so easy to work with and such fun and Ty Mitchell - who has become Martin Scorsese’s morally loose cowboy for good reason. The rest of the cast don’t look the most inviting and that was the general idea. My narrative was simply that this is a local bar and if outsiders do enter, they play by the local rules.

I would like to thank Anthony and Connie Mazza - who purchased the Minturn Saloon in December 2021 and then spent two years remodelling the landmark - for their kindness to our crew on the day of the shoot and we look forward to seeing this picture hanging on the walls of the legendary saloon very soon.