Projectionist To Producer: Wyoming Man Brings Cold War To Screen In ‘Reykjavik'

Wyoming has long been in the bullseye of potential nuclear conflicts as home to F.E. Warren Air Force Base and the 90th Missile Wing.

Now as Hollywood takes on a hypothetical nuclear attack on Chicago in the hit film “House of Dynamite,” another nuclear-themed film — "Reykjavik” — waits in the wings for a release sometime next year. 

Behind this Michael Russell Gunn-directed feature are a pair of producers with Wyoming ties: Carl Beyer, who grew up in Powell; and John Logan Pierson, who has a connection to Jackson. 

The two Wyoming guys have taken different routes to Hollywood success, and now regularly work together. 

For Beyer, his path began at age 13 in a Powell movie theater threading film through projectors.

“Valley Cinemas. There were three of them,” Beyer told Cowboy State Daily from his home in Washington state, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. "There was a drive-in, there was a big regular theater, and there was a little arthouse theater, and that was serving a community of maybe 3,000 people.”

As audiences watched the movies, he watched them.

“To sit in the booth and to just watch the audience and see how they react,” he said about one of the influences that got him interested in filmmaking. "To see them be entertained, taken away, minds expanded in just two hours.

"To listen to them talk as they left the theater. To hear what they loved, what they hated, what made them laugh and cry.”

The son of an English instructor at Northwest Community College (affectionately known as "Powell University" or by its abbreviated nickname "PU"), Beyer grew up on farmland at 972 Road 11, though his parents didn't farm. 

“My father taught, my mother worked the family,” he said. “There was not a lot of money left over to do things, but Wyoming always gave great opportunities.”

Possibilities seemed “limitless,” he said, enhanced partly by his time at Valley Cinemas. 

“I realized then that what I wanted to do with my life was somehow be a part of that experience, give people a bit of an escape, however that looked,” he said.

Montana State Years

Beyer's college search led him to reject both NYU — "I couldn't stomach stepping over homeless people to get into my classroom” — and UCLA — which wouldn't give students cameras until graduate school. 

Instead, he chose Montana State University in Bozeman.

"The reason why I went to Montana State was because they gave you a camera when you walked in the door," Beyer said about its film program. "You had to have a piece of equipment and you were shooting films, like, once a week."

His time at MSU wasn't without controversy. Beyer was called onto the carpet for a particularly bold artistic choice.

During a TV class focused on three-camera interview setups, Beyer decided to test his classmates' reactions.

"I was bored," he said. "And so I decided in the middle of the interview, I would just start slowly stripping off all of my clothes and just to see how people would react."

Indeed, the stunt got Beyer noticed. 

"I did get sent up to the dean's office for a conversation about disrupting class," Beyer said.

Off To Hollywood

After film school, Beyer moved to Los Angeles and started landing impressive gigs. 

"I got to work on some really cool movies back then," Beyer said. "I mean, I've got ‘Barton Fink’ and the ‘Twin Peaks’ first season and ‘Batman Returns,’ and there were a few other really good projects as an assistant director that I got to work on."

But Hollywood, as Beyer describes it, is "a fickle mistress."

"It's not for the weak, I would say," he continued. "And there came a point where my career had stalled, and I was just doing the assistant director thing, and I wasn't moving up."

A friend offered him an opportunity in commercials at a time when TV advertising was heavily funded, he said. 

“They were spending a lot of money on making them and they were really artistic,” Beyer said about making ads. "They were just really great trying to tell a story in 30 seconds."

He moved into production managing and eventually producing commercials, working on national campaigns.

"Toyota, Chevy, Ford," he said. "I pretty much worked on everything, you know, Budweiser, McDonald's."

The McDonald's work was particularly lucrative.

"I did all the kids stuff because I got tied in with a director who did all of the Ronald McDonald kids stuff, and it was great," Beyer said. "Ronald McDonald was huge. We all bought houses off of it."

This work included the opportunity to work with Grimace, a large, purple character suspected of stealing milkshakes. 

But the work eventually lost its appeal. 

The turning point came while filming a commercial for feminine hygiene products.

"Sitting on set watching a tampon expand in a glass tube, and I realized that all of the art was done in commercials, and the money was starting to get tight, and I really lost interest in it,” Beyer said. "And I called my friends up in the movies, which I love doing. 

"My heart was always in movies, and I said, ‘I need to get back in the movies.’”

A return to feature films required persistence, but eventually led to producing work that includes his current project, "Reykjavik."

Wyoming Bond

"I am through and through a Wyomingite," Beyer said. "I will always consider myself a person from Wyoming because my formative years were there. It gave me a chance.”

He said the state also shaped his artistic sensibility.

"Wyoming gave me a real appreciation for the weird," Beyer said. "Wyoming's landscape is just weird. There's a lot of people who live outside of town who are just weird, but they're all good people. They all have a great story."

When asked about specific colorful characters from his Wyoming years, Beyer recalled his father's circle of friends with memorable nicknames.

"My dad had Duckie, and he had Red, and he had — there's some guy who always called himself Cut Across Shorty," Beyer said. "It was these collections of characters."

One memory stands out with particular weight.

"There was a guy in Powell who survived the Bataan Death March," Beyer recalled. "And he was pretty crippled up afterwards, and he was a fringe-liver. He lived on the fringe in Powell and always a nice guy, always a weird guy. Nobody knew what he had done."

Looking back, Beyer sees that as a missed opportunity to get to know that man and his story better. 

"That's a regret of mine," he said.

Wyoming Meets Reagan Meets Gorbachev

For now, Beyer continues to produce films that tell important stories, bringing his Wyoming work ethic and appreciation for the unconventional to projects like “Reykjavik,” a film about a moment when two leaders almost changed the course of nuclear history.

“When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sit down to discuss a potential nuclear arms treaty in the upcoming film ‘Reykjavik,' the actors portraying them — Jeff Daniels and Jared Harris — will be lowering themselves into the actual chairs in the actual building where the historic 1986 meeting took place,” according to a 2024 report in Variety.

For exterior shots, Pierson told Variety that sometimes there were 45 mph winds. That was par for the course for a Wyoming kid.

“The crews have the right gear and the right clothing and are just used to it all,” he said.

“There’s a line in the film where a character says, ‘Best prep wins’ and that’s true in filmmaking,” Pierson added, “but even more so when you’re on an island. 

"As an independent film you can’t pay your way out of problems, so you have to look over the horizon.”

The looming prospect of mutually assured total annihilation hangs over this film. 

A description of the plot on the Internet Movie Database sets the scene: “At the most dangerous point of the Cold War, political enemies Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Iceland over one tense weekend to decide if there will be peace or war in the world.”

Initially, the talks went well. 

"Gorbachev turned around and said, ‘Let's talk about getting rid of all of the nuclear weapons in the world.’ And they came up with a solution,” explained Beyer, paraphrasing this moment in history. 

“And at the end of the day, it came down to one word that they could not agree on in the contract, and the deal fell apart,” he added, teasing this hopeful anecdote in the otherwise apocalyptic storyline of the Cold War. “We were that close to having a nuclear-free world."

Work Of Producing

The specialty Beyer is revered for is line producing. 

Pierson, who used to work at Teton Gravity Research in Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily, “When the schedule squeezes and the budget bites, Carl doesn’t flinch.” 

Pierson said Beyer is "relentless in the details and generous with the crew, the exact mix that keeps a crew sharp and a set sane” 

He also credit’s Beyer’s Wyoming roots and “the way he pairs humble grit with good humor” with long hours on set.“That spirit has held as we have traveled from the jungles of Colombia to the glaciers of Iceland and I look forward to the next one together,” he said. 

Beyer recalled a long-ago conversation with one of his first Hollywood mentor, when he said, “I want to be the person that's out on set. I want to be the person that's yelling at people, and I want to be the person that's in charge of the making the movie. We call those line producers.

“I'm not technically creative. So my job is you hand me your script like you hand me your plans, and you introduce me to your bank, and I go off and hire all the people to make your movie."

Crews generally include around 100 people, but can swell to five times that.   

“I love problem-solving and I really love the fact that each movie is so different, the problems are never the same,” he said. 

On the way to a solution that’s right for the film, sometimes Beyer has to be the heavy on set — the guy who delivers bad news and says what needs to be said. 

“I once told Keith Richards to shut the F up to his face,” Beyer recalled. “Long story, thankfully it ended in a laugh.”

Then there was the time he drove rock star Billy Idol’s personal motorhome through Los Angeles. 

“My boss is asking if any of us can drive a motorhome. I say I can. It’s the same size as a grain truck,” he said. “I pull out of the parking lot and drive it through Los Angeles to the film set. 

"My boss pulls up three minutes later, and she is mad as hell. Turns out that I didn't factor in the long tail and I clipped a pole and ripped the bumper.”

On “Reykjavik,” the crew took Beyer out to a roundup of characteristically tiny Icelandic horses, which roam the haunting volcanic landscape. 

“They bring out this horse that is maybe a bit bigger than a very large dog and say these are what we are riding,” said Beyer. “Icelandic saddles and riding style are not the same as Western. 

"Let's just say I was happy to have a helmet — I did not make Wyoming proud. Kissed a lot of lava on that day.”

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.