Vernon Sager is a cowboy struggling to survive in Porcupine, South Dakota, in this story of real cowboys and Indians living in the middle of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Winters with temperatures that reach 30 degrees below zero and summers with prairie fires and frying-pan heat have pushed most of Sager's family and friends off the land. But Vernon still gets up at three a.m. to saddle his horse and count calves. THE LAST COWBOY is the real-deal Rawhide, the story of people fighting to preserve a vanishing way of life. An INDEPENDENT LENS selection.
Premiere: Independent Lens, October 25, 2005 at 10PM
"Filmed over two decades, this sometimes startling documentary gives an unvarnished story of a cowboy trying to make it in modern times (cameras up close to bucking horses and other furious livestock will make you grateful to be sitting comfortably in your living room). "
