Dark Winds: Chris Eyre on Getting Navajo Language Right, '70s Music

By Pat Saperstein

Deputy Editor

When Chris Eyre’s “Smoke Signals” won the audience prize in Sundance 25 years ago, the director thought the kudos would soon lead to a landslide of opportunities for Native talent. Amid a flourishing independent film scene, the road trip dramedy won acclaim and awards as the first feature written, directed and produced by Native filmmakers. But it took two decades, and a pivot to television, for Native voices to finally get a wider chance to be heard.

More than two decades later, Eyre is now an executive producer and director on AMC+’s Navajo noir series “Dark Winds,” based on the Tony Hillerman mystery novels. Longtime Hillerman fans Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin also serve as executive producers. “Dark Winds” premiered in 2022 as a wave of TV Westerns was proving massively popular, and yet, it’s very different from shows like “Yellowstone,” “Joe Pickett,” and “Justified” with its focus on a Native cast, crew and culture. The writer’s room, headed by the series creator Graham Roland, is all Native.

In the first season of “Dark Winds,” which takes place on the Navajo reservation of the Southwest U.S. in the early 1970s, we meet tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), who lost his son in a mysterious mine explosion. Each new crime he investigates seems to tie back to the explosion, and the second season delves even more combustibly into Leaphorn’s quest to get to the bottom of why his only child had to die.

Variety spoke with Eyre, who directed three of the Season 2 episodes, about making his groundbreaking first film, why Native stories have largely shifted to television, and what it was like shooting this new action-packed and emotional season.

You recently screened “Smoke Signals” under the Brooklyn Bridge for its 25th anniversary. What has it been like to look back at the film?

When “Smoke Signals” came out, it got so many accolades and so much attention, given independent film was kind of where it was at, at the time.

I was young, so I had visions of grandeur that we were really making our mark on the world. And we did to a certain degree. But ironically, “Smoke Signals” didn’t really provide that touchstone the way that television has today with “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds.” It literally took another 20 years for this Native voice to ignite in the pantheon of mainstream entertainment, that is, Native writers and producers and directors having a voice of their own.

Why do you think it happened on TV instead of in feature films?

We were ahead of our time, I think, with “Smoke Signals.” Now that the world needs so much content, we got the opportunity, but certainly there were a lot of executives out there that were like-minded. I can connect it from #OscarsSoWhite, to the Standing Rock protests, to diversity and inclusion and all the way up to where executives were pushing for alternate voices like “Rutherford Falls,” “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds.” So I think there’s an actual connective tissue with all of those pushes in the zeitgeist and the consciousness of audiences. I think we’ve come to a place with LGBTQ and Natives and women and film that we’re not going to go backwards. We’re not going to recede, and I say that bravely. This door is blown open, and it’s going to continue.

Were you hoping to get more offers to direct Hollywood movies, or did you always want to stay more independent?

I really wanted to do it all, and in my career I have done quite a bit. I’ve done documentaries and TV movies and dramatic reenactments and feature films and indie films. I had a great opportunity to direct “Friday Night Lights” a few times, which was human drama on the football field. I made a movie with Josh Lucas and James Cromwell called “Hideaway,” and it was about a guy on a sailboat trying to find his family. So really it’s always been about a good story and I think that’s the thing that that I’m maintaining to this day is, I just want to tell great, great stories.

Native films are very important. But I also think that it’s about human stories. I happen to relate to Native stories, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be telling other stories. It’s kind of important that you don’t get caught up in just making the Native experience because that’s not universal to stories in general.

You also directed another Tony Hillerman adaptation for PBS, so how was that different from “Dark Winds”?

We did “Skinwalkers,” Bob Redford and myself, years ago, after “Smoke Signals.” I was approached by Redford, who asked if I’d read the Tony Hillerman books. Wes Studi was Leaphorn and Adam Beach was Jim Chee and we really learned a lot from that. But the AMC series, we’ve amped it up and done more action and more drama and some comedy and lightheartedness.

I wish that we would have been able to do that 20 years ago. But it was a different time. I wasn’t using the digital effects back then, it was all practical. It was public television, so there was a certain amount of PG-13 to it. But we really learned a lot. Redford has always loved Hillerman, and George RR Martin loves Hillerman, and AMC and Dan McDermott.

How did the current series get off the ground?

It was over a lunch with Bob and George in Santa Fe in 2016. I didn’t know it, but George R.R. Martin was friends with the late Tony Hillerman. It started a conversation that lasted about two hours, about Hillerman and rebooting the series, and it took another six years to actually get it into production. I sat there with Bob and George and I think one of them said, “This is a tough industry” and I’m looking at him — I think it was George. And then Bob looks at him and says “You’re damn right it is,” and I thought, I’m just mind boggled that it’s tough for these two legends. Nothing’s a given in this industry and we can see the changes with the strikes and all this stuff.

What was your role as executive producer in addition to directing?

I knew Tony a little bit, like Bob and George did. I provided some of the back stories and the history and the connective tissue and knowledge of the books and just the tone of the show. Zahn and Kiowa and Jessica and Deanna Allison, they were this nucleus of the cast that’s really humble and real and generous and loving, and you can feel it. There’s a depth in Zahn and just an authenticity to him.

Do Bob and George have much input on the storylines? And how do you decide which books to adapt?

They both have quite a bit of influence. And then John Wirth, our showrunner, is making great choices for us. In the case of the books, that’s a group effort to decide which books we’re going to follow and how to follow them. And then John is the one who really makes the final decision as the showrunner on how to do that. We started with “Listening Woman” and “People of Darkness.” Hopefully we’ll get a third season, there’s enough source material. I think Tony wrote 18 books. And his daughter, Anne Hillerman, is continuing the series, and she has about five books, I think. So there’s 23 novels to cull from.

As an executive producer, does Tony’s daughter Anne Hillerman have input as well?

She knows the material better than anybody, and she’s continuing to write the novels in the series. And it’s really amazing having a Native writers room. To have Zahn, to have John Wirth, to have Bob and George and myself and Tina Elmo, who’s an executive producer, really just push and pull and stretch and try and get the best stories we can. We haven’t even hit our stride yet, I don’t think.

Did you approach anything differently for the second season?

Well, the approach was to entertain aggressively, and we did, with action and explosions. Season 2 opens up with a great dark scene in which the villain is waiting for Leaphorn and Bernadette and they decide to go after the villain and it turns into a big shootout. I think the interesting thing about that is that we got to work in the film noir space again, with the black and white opening. If you look at “Maltese Falcon” or “Touch of Evil,” these are the kind of movies that inspired the series.

Where did the idea to add touches of bright color to the black and white come from?

It really has this contemporary throwback to noir cinema and the little clues are in the color. That came from people like John Wirth in the writers room. (AMC’s) Dan McDermott even had a hand in in that, because I think there was a little bit of that in “Better Call Saul.” The blue wire, the blue eyes, the red blood, the color all represents a clue.

What was one of your favorite scenes to shoot?

We’re shooting on the reservation in New Mexico, and they’ve granted this permission to shoot on their land, places with this beautiful mesa in the background and these beautiful sunsets. Then to stage the scene is just a lot of fun, and work with the DP and figure out the shots and then you get out there and you have four days to shoot this scene, and it ended up being the the end of episode one, the shootout and the explosion. I hope people love it as much as I do. It’s always fun to blow something up.

There was some discussion about how authentic the Navajo language and pronunciation was, and you had said that would be addressed in the second season. How did that work?

We have a language consultant named George Joe who came on and he’s really great. We looked at the language really carefully, because last season there was discussion about different dialects of Diné. He really helped us to make sure that all the Navajo was uniform to a certain place and a certain time. We also had elders such as Betty (Ann Tsosie) and she made sure it was all great too.

How did the 1970s period setting figure into the storytelling?

It’s really a Western, we call it a neo-Western. Zahn happens to be a Native American with the same moral code of anybody good who’s a family man. I remember the ‘70s, and times were simpler and I think for Native people, there wasn’t so much of an outcry of injustice that we see now. They accept the world they live in, but they want things to be better. It really is an American story.

One of the great things about the period around 1971 is the music. This season, we have CCR, we have Bob Dylan, we have Neil Young. In the first episode, Joe Leaphorn rides a horse to the sheep corral and it’s The Allman Brothers “Midnight Rider” playing. That music really transports you, when you listen to “Who’ll Stop the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I’m really proud of being able to participate in the 1970s with the cars and the wardrobe and the throwback to my earliest years and earliest memories. I think a lot of people not only recognize the morality of Joe Leaphorn, but they recognize a past generation that they also love.

Why do you think TV Westerns are so popular right now?

I love Westerns, I could make Westerns my entire career and I hope I get to. But this is a revisionist Western in a certain way, and it’s because of where we are now. I think that in 2023 we’re grappling with where we came from, and we’re grappling with our identity as a unified America, and it’s interesting that that’s what the Western is. That’s what opening the expansiveness of the West was. It’s really a reflection of where we are today, which is that we’re still grappling with questions.

(This interview was edited and condensed.)