The Enterprise-D, with Captain Picard at the helm and his crew at the ready, is mapping the Typhon Expanse, an area of space to which, of course, no one has gone before. The stardate, for those keeping track, is 45652.1, which probably makes it somewhere in September. The Enterprise has been stuck in a time-loop for nearly 18 days. They have died over and over in that time, always in a high-speed (light-speed?) collision with another starship. But this time the ship’s robot and Second Officer, the aptly named Data, realizes that they’re treading water in time and manages to avoid hitting the other ship. The other ship hails them, and we see that the captain is played by none other than Kelsey Grammar. We are told that the ship is the U.S.S. Bozeman.  

It turns out that bigtime producer of Star Trek Brannon Braga was born in our increasingly famous little burg.  

So: Bozeman, and Montana have always been a part of the movies, just as smoke’s always been a part of fire. You might argue that Montana aches to be filmed, that it was born to be in pictures. One of the first was Devil Horse, a silent film starring Rex the King of Wild Horses, an equine star well-known for his violent temper and propensity for biting. It was partially filmed along the Little Bighorn River.  

Since then, Montana has starred in many films. Some of them you already know, like The Horse Whisperer, A River Runs Through It, and Rancho Deluxe. Some of them are less immediately recalled.

If you haven’t seen it, Missouri Breaks is one that merits some attention. Filmed in the ragged area from which it takes its name, Missouri Breaks is a revisionist Western with an impressive pedigree. Directed by Arthur Penn (who made the exceptional Little Big Man and Bonnie and Clyde), Missouri Breaks follows Jack Nicholson as Tom Logan, the leader of a gang of cattle rustlers laying low after the hanging of one of his men. A local cattle baron has summoned what amounts to a hitman of cattle-rustlers, played by the indisputably great Marlon Brando. But Brando insisted on changes to his character, which included a scene wherein he disguises himself in drag before beating a man to death with a handmade weapon, and a scene in which he sings to his horse (just before having his throat slit).  

It’s a very weird movie, but it’s not without its charms – not to mention beautiful scenery.

More recent but maybe even farther afield is the Polish brothers’ (probably best known for Twin Falls, Idaho) gorgeous, surreal Northfork. Ostensibly about the mid-century residents of a valley choosing how to deal with its eminent flooding by the state, Northfork becomes a strange allegory about angels, time and death. Much of its eeriness proceeds from its setting; it was shot in Glasgow, Fort Peck and Augusta, Montana.  

Steven Spielberg has been here; he directed Always, parts of which were shot in Montana. So was the 1951 sci-fi-horror classic The Thing From Outer Space, in which Montana stood in for Antarctica. If your taste runs to the misunderstood, there’s always the epic flop of Heaven’s Gate, which some credit with effectively destroying the New Hollywood system of the 70s. On the other side of the spectrum there is the less ambitious (but no less misunderstood?) Broken Arrow, starring John Travolta and Christian Slater and directed by that most 90s of trendy action directors, the Hong Kong superstar John Woo. Its railway scenes were shot near Livingston, by the way. Even foreign film auteurs get in on the Montana thing: German director Wim Wenders shot his Don’t Come Knocking in Butte.  

And just to hammer in the point, here are a few more notable movies that were filmed in the Treasure State: Almost Heroes, What Dreams May Come, The Patriot (that’s the Steven Segal one, not the Mel Gibson one, and as long as we’re talking about Segal, add Under Siege 2 to the list), Forrest Gump, Iron Will, Far and Away, Red Rock West, Pow Wow Highway, A Man Called Horse, Firefox, and more.

According to the Montana Film Office, the very first was The Tourist Train Leaving Livingston, shot by James H. White in 1897 for the Edison manufacturing Company. If that’s not a rich history, I don’t know what is.

And that list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it over. There are always more films being shot and even sometimes set in Montana by both big Hollywood and indie filmmakers across the world. Last year saw the release of Jimmy P and Winter in the Blood, both indie productions with exceptional talent involved.  

And there are even more coming. Chisel Industries and Conduit Productions made the lush The Orphan Girl, about the titular mine in Butte. Another excellent documentary is Hungry Horse: Legends of the Everyday, by Peter Ten Hoopen, which screened at the 2015 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.  

In fact, if you’re so inclined as to try to become part of Montana Film History, check out the Now Hiring page of the Montana Film Office website and check out the opportunity to appear as an extra or work in the crew of a production in Montana.  

As for Bozeman, most recently seen in A Plumm Summer and Taking Chance, she’s becoming more and more famous, for better or worse. She’s also branched out into TV, guest starring in Finding Bigfoot and, famously, Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Is it too much to say she’s become a star?  

As for the future of Bozeman – and Montana – in film? Well, we should take care to remember that in 48 short years it will be the spot where Zephram Cochran will build the first faster-than-light rocket, and in testing will attract the attention of a starship passing through our solar system. They’ll land, and a bunch of pointy-eared Vulcans will exit the ship and make that hand motion that’s relatively hard to do, the one that means “live long and prosper”. It has, after all, been predicted in 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact.

(P.S. Spock himself, the late great Leonard Nimoy directed a film made in Montana. It’s called Holy Matrimony and it stars Joseph Gordon Levitt. You should see it, Montana is great in it.)