Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West Premiers in Hollywood

By Marty Irby and Scott Beckstead

What a week we had in sunny California. It was so refreshing to enjoy the sun and the wonderful weather and to see so many great friends and horse lovers from across America at the Hollywood premier of Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West on Thursday night.

We joined together—cast, crew, friends, and celebrities—to watch this brilliant documentary film by filmmakers Ashley Avis and Ed Winters in which we served as a members of the cast as well as a special advisors to the film (You can watch an interview with us here on the Animal Wellness podcast.)

Along the red carpet came MacKenzie Foy; the star of Disney’s Black Beauty, which Avis directed in 2020; Beth Behrs, star of the hit television series The Neighborhood and Two Broke Girls alongside her husband and Mad Men star Michael Galdis; Jesse Kove from Netflix’s Kobra Kai; and Marty’s dear friends of nearly two decades: Monty Roberts, “The Man Who Listens to Horses;" his wife, Pat; and daughter Debbie Loucks of Flag Is Up Farms and JoinUp International in Solvang. It was truly a night to remember.

The film first won accolades at the Boston Film Festival last fall where it was named Best Documentary, followed by the award for Best Documentary at the St. Louis Film Festival, which qualifies the film to be nominated for an Oscar. Additional accolades include Best Documentary at the Sunscreen Film Festival, and Best Director and Best Cinematography at the prestigious Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival. And today, the film has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Other reviews include comments from Hope Madden of The Screening Room Podcast, who declared, “Avis certainly does an effective job of spotlighting the plight of these animals and tugging at our heart strings. Hopefully her storytelling leads to positive change,” and top critic Tim Cogshell from CineGods, who wrote, “It has a point of view and is wholly in favor of protecting the wild mustangs that live on these lands belonging to every American. Indeed, these wild horses belong to every single American, and what happens to them is ultimately each of our responsibilities, whether we know it or not—now we know.”

Despite the film’s less than two-hour length, the world will likely never know how much time was dedicated to this very special project. In the face of unprecedented cruelty and persecution by the federal government, the film is a game changer for wild horses, and perhaps the best thing that’s happened to them in half a century. Nothing else has come close to helping shed light on the corruption at the federal Bureau of Land Management and the corruption at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), the mortal enemy of every horse standing on American soil. They and other livestock interests have long sought to capitalize on their vulnerability and butcher horses for their meat to serve up as a delicacy on foreign dinner plates in countries like France, Japan, and China.

The film exposes the NCBA and the rampant injustices within this quasi-governmental agency, which is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Commodity Checkoff Programs. And here’s the connection: NCBA joined forces with some so-called animal protection groups to enact the “Path Forward” in 2019, a costly $5 billion federal plan - according William Perry Pendley, former Acting Director at the BLM - that has resulted in tens of thousands of wild horses and burros removed from federal lands at the hands of the BLM and contractors like Cattoor Livestock Roundup Inc., which is deeply embedded in the cattle industry and has earned in excess of $36 million to do the federal government’s anti-horse dirty work. This is your federal tax dollars at work.

Today, wild horses living on federal lands cost virtually nothing to the taxpayer, but once rounded up and incarcerated in holding facilities owned by members of the NCBA and others, the BLM says they cost $1,600 per year per horse. Now, do the math: there have been 64,134 horses rounded up since we learned about the diabolical Path Forward. 64,134 horses times $1,600 equals $102,614,400. So, the big question is why are they being so badly mistreated? If you support responsible government and oppose cruelty to animals, the answer will make your stomach turn, especially when you know those tax dollars could have been used to fund so many other worthy government projects, including feeding American families.

The BLM’s sustained disinformation campaign seeks to perpetuate a false narrative around a purported “overpopulation” of wild equines and harm to public rangelands. But the helicopter roundups and mass incarceration are not about that. In a nutshell, the federal government’s public lands grazing program amounts to a federal subsidy that allows Western state cattle ranchers to produce cheap beef to be shipped to China and other countries. It’s an anti-competitive practice that favors livestock companies in western states – which produce less than two percent of U.S. beef – over cattlemen in the Midwest and Southeast who graze their cattle on their own property or lease grazing space at the market rate.

To top it off, the NCBA is also using USDA checkoff dollars to illegally lobby for policies that are not only harmful to horses and pro-slaughter but also pick winners and losers in the marketplace by giving preference to Western State producers. With the launch of Wild Beauty, it’s an open secret that’s now been exposed to the world on Amazon Prime and in theaters around the globe.

That’s why we’re backing the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, H.R. 1249/S. 557, led by Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Rand Paul, R-Ky., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in the Senate. In the House, backers include Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Dina Titus, D-Nev., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. And the NCBA is understandably fearful that their checkoff scam is being exposed, with groups like the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, R Street, R-CALF, and the National Taxpayer’s Union backing the legislation. To take action and help rein in the NCBA, click here and ask your Member of Congress to cosponsor the bipartisan, bicameral OFF Act.

As you’ll see in the film, these public lands grazers are an especially ruthless and deviant sect, populated by the likes of Cliven Bundy and his domestic terrorist son, Ammon Bundy,, who view our public lands as their own personal pastures.

But beyond the corruption at NCBA and the OFF Act, the film provides hope for the future in the form of enthusiastic youngsters who plead with the government to stop the roundups. These children are following in the footsteps of the 1971 advocates whose effort saw the enactment of the federal Wild and Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which was inked into law by President Richard M. Nixon following a massive letter-writing campaign by kids across these United States. That campaign was led by Velma Johnson, colloquially known as “Wild Horse Annie,” and championed by thousands.

As members of the cast and special advisors to the film, we are certainly biased in favor of the film and its potential to shut down the federal government’s campaign of animal abuse and public disinformation, but we think if you set aside less than two hours and grab some popcorn, you’ll see things the same way we do. Please check out Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West on Prime and other platforms, give it a good review, and share it widely. You can be a part of saving the lives of our iconic American wild equines, whose very backs this country was built upon.

Marty Irby is the senior advisor at the Animal Wellness Foundation in Los Angeles, Calif., and an eight-time world champion equestrian. He resides in Washington, D.C., and was honored by the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his work to protect horses. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @MartyIrby.

Scott Beckstead is a lifelong horseman and director of campaigns for Animal Wellness Action, and teaches classes in animal law, animal agriculture law, and wildlife law and policy at Willamette University in Oregon. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.