THE IRON ORCHARD

IT’S A PROUD MOMENT FOR wildcatter Jim McNeely, the triumphant payoff for years of striving and struggling in the oil patches of 1940s Texas. As a gusher of black gold erupts from the earth, showering his drilling rig and the ground around it, he excitedly embraces his wife, then casts another awestruck glance at what he immediately recognizes as a life-changing event. He exclaims: “We’re in the oil business now, sugar!” And then, as though mesmerized, he starts to walk toward the gusher.

“Yeah, I wanted to bathe in that oil,” says actor Lane Garrison, recalling this exhilarating scene from The Iron Orchard, the independently produced film in which he plays McNeely. “I wanted to bow my chest up and swagger right into it.

“But then,” he adds with a laugh, “I remembered that the wardrobe people told me they’d absolutely kill me if I did anything like that — because the hat I