Mike: Well, any time you get 15 or 20 people together and you’re trying to do one thing, and you’ve got 15 or 20 different …

Renee: Personalities.

Mike: … people. What do they call it – egos? Not egos, but: personalities. I think we’ve done an extremely good job at blending those personalities together.

Renee: Without killing each other!

Mike: Ha, yeah, without killing each other. But we blend well, and we perform well. We’ve been together now for four years. And, like I said before, I think this is probably one of the – or the best – groups out there. And there’s a lot of groups out there… There’s a lot of venues out there. We pretty well pick and choose what we want to do. And, we Villains take the responsibility for safety ourselves. We reserve that right no matter where we perform. If the Villains feel that somebody wants us to do something that we as a group feel is not safe, our safety officer will not allow us to do that. It just isn’t gonna happen.

Kathi: Please, tell me your name again.

Jerry: Jerry.

Mike: He makes sure that there’s rules because we are insured and there’s rules by the insurance company that there’s certain things that have to happen. We are shooting real guns. It’s black powder – it will kill you if you get too close. It will pepper you if you get too close. And it will burn you pretty bad! And you’ll itch for quite a while.

Kathi: What do you mean, “too close”?

Jerry: Pistols have a fifteen-foot margin. You have to have fifteen feet – barrel to barrel. So you know you have enough distance so that you’re not gonna pepper somebody when you fire. And obviously we’re lined up in certain places when we shoot. When we come out we know where we need to stand. Cause we are never gonna point a gun directly at anybody. The exception here is probably a shotgun. A shotgun’s gonna splatter. But then, that’s 25 feet.

Kathi: M-hm, okay…

Mike: So, we always have a space where we stay: on this side. And then there’s this space here that is ten feet …

Renee: … to the audience.

Mike: Ten feet and then the audience can’t put anything in this traffic area because that’s our safety zone.

Excerpt from a conversation with the Villains of Yesteryear, recorded on August 21, 2016.
Ausschnitt aus einem Gespräch mit den Villains of Yesteryear vom 21. August 2016, Originalzitat

Photos and moving images shown in Neorealismo were shot on location at the Gilman Ranch Historic Park in Banning, CA and during a private re-enactment by the Villains of Yesteryear at the Pearl M. Mackey House in Mid-City Los Angeles hosted by Kathi Hofer and staged by Jayne Sjodin and Kathi Hofer. Villains of Yesteryear are an Old West re-enactment group of the Inland Empire and surrounding areas.

Die Fotos und Filmbilder in Neorealismo entstanden an Originalschauplätzen im Gilman Ranch Historic Park in Banning/Kalifornien und im Pearl M. Mackey House in Mid-City/Los Angeles, eingeladen von Kathi Hofer und inszeniert von Jayne Sjodin und Kathi Hofer. Villains of Yesteryear sind eine Wilder Westen-Reenactment Gruppe im Inland Empire und der umliegenden Gegend.

Players:
Jerry Adams alias Luke Short, Shasta Bernier alias Vivacious Vera, Carl Brown alias Marshal Bill Tilghman, Mike Carmichael alias Smilin’ Jack, Renee Evers alias Abigail Hawks, Kathi Hofer, Debby Kennedy, Lisa Marcus alias Sassie Sadie, Brent Marcus alias Wyatt ‘Burp’, Richard Mendez alias Kid Lobo, Russell Nordstrom alias Seth Dakota, Dean Price alias Creek, John Sjodin alias John ‘Ricochet’ Riley, Jayne Sjodin alias Anabelle Riley, Courtney Terry alias Ethel Rose, George M. de la Torre, Anna Watson, George Watson, Dan Wood alias Rob N Yu

Photography:
Nadim Vardag, Armin Adams, George M. de la Torre, Kathi Hofer
Thank you: Todd Lerew, Mike Carmichael, Jayne Sjodin, Thomas Paltiel, Carl Fransson, Anthony Carfello, Jüdisches Museum