Just north of the Wyoming border, downtown Livingston, Montana, has seen the line between cinema and real-world tension blur, as a Daily Wire film reenacting the death of anti-ICE protester Renee Good has sparked a saga of its own.
The movie, shooting under the working title “Pawn Shop”, began filming in late September.
Financed and backed by Ben Shapiro’s conservative outlet The Daily Wire, the production is spearheaded locally by executive producer Carter Boehm, a Livingston native who co-founded Paradise Valley's Yellowstone Film Ranch.
The film blends a fictionalized depiction of the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis in January with a narrative centered on armed shopkeepers defending a store from Antifa rioters, including dialogue in the script referencing "rooftop Koreans" firing from a grocery store roof.
The cinematic tension on set was quickly mirrored by real-world friction in downtown Livingston, where residents began staging demonstrations against the production over its controversial themes, unannounced gun-toting stunts and street closures disrupting local businesses and organizations.
That growing uproar soon pushed the dispute onto the floor of the Livingston City Commission, where local leaders suspended the production's permits before hammering out a late-night compromise to bring the cameras back on Monday night.
Boehm did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment by publication.
‘As Much Noise as Possible’
Livingston actor Quenby Iandiorio told Cowboy State Daily she first learned about the film when a local producer recruited her to be an anti-ICE background extra, pointing to her firsthand experience during the Minneapolis demonstrations after Good’s killing.
“I definitely got the feeling that I was being solicited because I was there, and they thought that was great,” Iandiorio said. “That doesn't read to me like they’re doing a pro-ICE movie.”
She met with the producer to discuss it further but said red flags went up when he conflated the background roles he was looking for as, “anti-ICE and anti-government.”
“That gave me pause because I'm not anti-government,” Iandiorio said. “I’m very much pro-democracy, pro-government, but anti-ICE. So the fact that he was rolling those both together gave me pause. It sort of alarmed me.”
She was alarmed enough to step away from the potential gig as a background actor. Then, after learning the script's plot details and seeing a fellow resident start raising questions about city permits, Iandiorio decided to head downtown and disrupt the filming in the most peaceful way possible.
“I realized that the best thing I could do was just bring my guitar and sing,” Iandiorio said. “Make as much noise as possible, and try to disrupt the sound recording.”
She went out of her way to play licensed songs to create an additional barrier for the production if any were picked up in the background.
The demonstration itself was modest, according to Iandiorio, often consisting of just her, a few regulars, or at most 30 people on a busy Saturday morning. So when the Livingston City Commission called an emergency meeting on Saturday to address safety concerns from the community, Iandiorio was stunned by what she heard.
“People were trying to accuse the protesters of being violent,” Iandiorio said. “I suddenly realized that what they were seeing was the actual scene with the movie protesters, who are Antifa, dressed in black, covered their faces, violent, throwing smoke, fighting."
She contrasted that simulated violence with her own presence on the sidewalk, where she wore a pink tutu, cracked jokes over a microphone, and sang vaudeville skits to keep the atmosphere light.
While the confusion underscored how chaotic the set had become to locals, it did not alter Iandiorio's purpose on the sidewalk.
Having traveled to Minneapolis after watching video of an ICE agent shoot Good as she tried to drive away, an event that deeply affected her, Iandiorio said she refused to sit by while what she viewed as a complete rewriting of those real-world events played out on the streets of her own town.
“For me, the content's abominable,” Iandiorio said. "It is absolutely deplorable to me.”
‘A Job is a Job’
After the emergency meeting Saturday, the Livingston City Commission voted to temporarily suspend the film's street-use permits in response to community concern.
For Rob Story, a SAG actor and location manager based in the Paradise Valley, that decision, and the broader backlash driving it, missed the broader reality of working in film.
“This story is more about people getting between a man and his money if you ask me,” Story told Cowboy State Daily. “A job is a job.”
Story's perspective is shaped by decades working on sets across the country. It's also personal for him because the industry is how his whole family makes a living.
“We’re a film family,” Story said. “Kind of like carnies just a little less tattoos.”
Though Story wasn't involved in the controversial Livingston shoot, his wife and daughter both work in the production's wardrobe department. In his view, the people who came out to protest might be targeting the film's backers but actually threatened his family members’ paychecks.
“The people that are protesting, I’m not sure who they are or if they even have jobs or what,” Story said. “But the people that are working that show, including my wife and my daughter, are making a living.”
Story called his own political views “right of center,” and more in line with Ben Shapiro and other conservative commentators than opposed. But he said that for his professional life, and his family’s jobs in the industry, it doesn’t matter.
He pointed to “Scraps”, a coming-of-age romance about two closeted teen boys that took over the Livingston skate park for filming in 2023. Story said his daughter worked in the wardrobe department for that project, too.
“This is what we do for a living,” Story said. “We make cool stuff. So I try not to get overwhelmed by all the politics.”
A private security guard stands near a Livingston police car in downtown Livingston during filming of a Daily Wire movie. (Courtesy: Lynette Zwerneman) 
Livingston actor Quenby Iandiorio, wearing a pink tutu, walks past Livingston police while protesting the filming of a Daily Wire movie. (Courtesy: Lynette Zwerneman) 
A section of downtown Livingston is closed to traffic for filming of a Daily Wire movie. (Courtesy: Lynette Zwerneman)
Downtown Chaos
For Marc Beaudin, co-owner of Elk River Books just blocks from the filming location, camera crews rolling into Livingston is nothing new. Livingston has hosted Hollywood for decades, with "A River Runs Through It" and "The Horse Whisperer" among the best-known films shot in the area.
“But this one is so dramatically different than any other movie filmed here,” Beaudin said. “The way they’ve been seemingly violating all the steps of their agreement, the dangerous way they’ve been doing things.”
Beaudin pointed to the scene downtown, where private guards surrounded the set and Livingston police were brought in to manage street closures and monitor the real-life demonstrations outside.
“In addition to actors cosplaying as ICE agents, you have actual armed security who have been belligerent towards locals,” Beaudin said. “And then a police presence. I don’t know how much money our city is wasting having to be parked there all day every day to defend this movie being made.”
When other movies have filmed in Livingston, Beaudin said he typically sees an uptick in customers at his bookstore. This time, it was the opposite. But a loss in sales since filming started, Beaudin said, is not the biggest local consequence.
“Our business is a tiny drop in the bucket,” Beaudin said. “The much bigger issue is the people at the food pantry who have not been able to get food or afraid to come and get food.”
Directly across the street, the Livingston Food Resource Center, which serves 1 in 8 Park County residents, saw client traffic drop 17% during filming. The nonprofit reported that unannounced street closures and security presence created immediate barriers for locals trying to access essential food assistance.
“People who already face numerous obstacles to meeting their most basic needs are now facing additional, completely avoidable barriers to accessing food because of how this production was permitted,” the organization said in an Oct. 2 statement.
‘100% American’
Livingston City Commission Vice Chair James Willich told Cowboy State Daily that access to the food pantry was one of the primary concerns addressed before the commission voted unanimously to reinstate filming permits on Monday night.
“We put in a requirement that they work hand in glove with the Livingston Food Resource Center to assure that the clients are able to access the facility unencumbered,” Willich said.
Willich added that the city also required visual barriers to shield the public during violent scenes and mandated a secondary buffer zone between road closures and the film's private security team.
“That was in response to the security team directly interacting with members of the public, which we felt was troublesome,” Willich said.
At the Monday meeting, Willich said the commissioners heard from about 60 members of the public regarding their concerns as well as members of the production crew about how to address those concerns.
While Iandiorio openly protested the film’s subject matter, she acknowledged that content alone is not legal grounds for a shutdown. For Willich and the commission, that distinction was paramount.
First Amendment protections meant the content of the film could play no role in their official deliberations.
“I get it that some people are upset and some people are hurt,” Willich said. “But I don't have any ability to make a movie stop filming because somebody doesn't like the subject matter.”
The Daily Wire, which has produced several politically themed feature films, has pitched its entertainment as being for all Americans, and co-founder Shapiro has said the company stands for truth and freedom.
For Willich, the saga that unfolded around the filming in Livingston showed American values in action.
It proved to be a messy, loud, and uniquely American exercise in public space with the right to make a controversial movie, the right to protest it on the sidewalk, and a local government caught in the middle, bound by the First Amendment to let both exist side by side.
“Everybody understands that these guys have the right to make their movie even if they don't agree with it,” Willich said. “And that’s fine. That is a 100% American thing. So is protesting. That's like one of the most American things you can do.”
Looking ahead, Willich said that the experience exposed some gaps in Livingston’s film permitting process, giving the city commission a roadmap to tighten local guidelines while preserving its long history as a movie-making hub.
As filming wraps on Saturday, the permit will expire and the set will vanish from Main Street, leaving a community to process a brief, tumultuous chapter.
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
