In the second episode of season three of Silicon Valley, Richard is starting to feel some of the repercussions from taking on the position of CTO at Pied Piper, after having been ousted as CEO from his own company. Namely, that the new CEO, “Action Jack” Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky) is taking the company on a drastically different trajectory by not letting the platform grow organically by giving free access to individual users, instead pushing a very aggressive sales-driven agenda.
But all of that is a footnote, really, leading up to the big confrontation scene between Richard and Jack. This takes place at a horse stable where Jack’s “number one breeding mare had gone into heat,” resulting in a scene so gloriously Mike Judge, as Richard makes his best attempt to put his foot down while a serious, X-rated equine mating session goes on in the background.
As it turns out, that scene was 100 percent real, according to series creator Mike Judge, who tells the Hollywood Reporter, “Yes, they are really having sex. There is no CG — we captured that moment.” This proved to be a challenging endeavor, as the standard way of impregnating horses is through artificial insemination. It took the crew weeks to find a place where thoroughbreds are inseminated naturally — and almost got them arrested by the FBI — but finally they got their literal money shot.
The whole interview is worth a read, but here are a few of the more, uh, interesting things revealed about filming the scene in question.
How long did it take to get the money shot?
Oh, less than a minute. That’s the only thing that’s fake is, well, the horses actually go very quickly. So we had to repeat the footage some — not too much, but if you cut it all together, the horse just finishes really fast. It would not go on as long as that conversation Richard and Jack are having in the scene.
Do the horses need any sort of… encouraging?
Nope, the minute the male sees the mare in heat, no coaxing has to be done [Laughs.] I mean, they go crazy. There’s a bunch of videos on YouTube…
Now that we’ve gained a bit of insight into Mike Judge’s browser history, he explained why they opted for the natural route instead of artificial or CGI:
It’s just more clear what’s going on. And the artificial way just doesn’t look as fun [Laughs.] If you look closely on camera, you can see that the horse definitely finished.
He’s not lying. I went back and rewatched the scene on HBO Go and there is definitely some horse splooge action going on. For fans of Judge, it’s obvious that this scene is the culmination of everything his career has been building to until now, as predicted by this old episode of Beavis & Butthead:
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)
