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Catching Up With the Maddest Cowboy of Them All

Published on January 12, 2007

Ever wonder what it would be like to meet your hero? Howard Lyman is a cattle-rancher turned vegan activist, author and documentary film star. Writer Sacha Vais talks about the man and the documentary that is touching hearts and minds around the world.

By Sacha Vais, editor of IrkedMagazine.com

The first time I met Howard Lyman, I'm pretty sure I developed a little crush on him. He was the first bona fide "rambler" I'd ever met (he's traveled about a million miles in the last decade), and his life seemed so exhilarating to me. I wanted to be him, yet at the same time I wished The Mad Cowboy would take me with him wherever he was going next.

Mad Cowboy: The Documentary features Howard Lyman, a cattle-rancher turned vegan activist.

I'd volunteered to be his chauffeur while he was in Montreal for a series of book signings and speeches promoting healthy living and environmentally-friendly food choices. The night before I was scheduled to drive him to the airport, I had a dream that he was planning to surprise me with a plane ticket and invite me to take a semester off school and join him on his next adventure. He didn't.

But when we got to the airport he did pull out a hardcover copy of his book, Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth From The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat, and handed it to me as a parting gift. When I opened it, there was an inscription. It's dated June 11, 2000:

Sacha, you are one in a million. I will always remember the greeting at the airport. Please consider me your friend and mentor and in the future we will change the world. The children and grandchildren are counting on us.

I remain your friend forever,

Howard Lyman
The Mad Cowboy

I look back on the week that Howard was in town with such fond memories. Each day that I drove him around, I'd try my best to record everything he said before I forgot it. I'd come home at the end of the day with dozens and dozens of ripped up pieces of paper in my pockets--tiny notes that said "Every person should own a Rolodex, no exceptions" and "Never clap until you know what someone's going to say" and "Remember, we each have two ears and one mouth because we're supposed to listen twice as much as we speak" and "Disease is genetic--we pull our chairs up to the same dinner tables as our parents and their parents did."

The thing that struck me the most about Howard, though, was his confidence. He carries himself like someone who knows he deserves to be there. He has an almost eerie calm to him--a calm and a confidence that I haven't been able to reproduce in my own life. He seems to have unequivocal faith in his "authentic voice." He's at once nonjudgmental and staunchly dogmatic, at once outrageously liberal and a born-again. I doubt there are too many vegan-born-again-ex-cattle-ranchers out there. But then again, who knows...

Howard and one of the cow's for whose liberation he fights.

One of the most amazing (and unique) things about Howard is that he's not lying when he claims to hate the sins but never the sinners. Unlike so many activists, he's both a truth-teller and a people-lover.

A documentary has been released about Howard's life (written and directed by Michael Tobias and produced by Patrick Fitzgerald) and it's phenomenal. It's based on his best-selling book, and it's called Mad Cowboy: The Documentary. They filmed it over three years, and edited it down from 150 hours of footage. Like his books and his lectures, the documentary shows how Howard changed his positions on agribusiness and personal diet, how he went from being a fourth-generation multimillionaire cattle rancher to a committed vegan activist.

Like most animal rights documentaries, Mad Cowboy has its share of horrifying, and rather gory, slaughterhouse footage. It even has some tug-on-your-heartstrings, bleeding-heart liberal anthropomorphizing. At one point Howard looks into a cow's eyes and, while scratching her behind her ear, says, "When you go to heaven, you tell your friends up there that I'm doing what I can for ya, ok?" But the film is more than that. It's a funny, sincere, comforting, informative and compassionate film. And it's a joy to watch. Howard comes across as a warm and gentle man, and that's exactly how he is in person.

A favorite scene of mine is when Howard goes to visit an old dairy farm in Constableville, New York to chat with a farmer/state legislator and his wife--old friends of his, we are led to assume by the friendliness of the encounter. The first thing he does when they all meet is turn to the wife and ask, "How come you just keep getting younger and he keeps getting older?" To which the husband wryly replies, "How come you're a vegetarian and you're not getting thinner?" The exchange completely breaks the ice, and then they're able to have a civil and open discussion about animal exploitation. They wind up agreeing that we need to return to an organic, non-industrialized way of farming if we want to save our planet, animals and ourselves.

Like all of his projects, Howard is enthusiastically trying to use the film to create social change. There is a wonderful outreach program involved with its promotion, and Howard personally travels to many of the screenings being held around the globe, educating people about organic sustainable agriculture and the dangers of current methods of food production. These screenings are mostly being organized at a grassroots level, and they are often accompanied by panel discussions, vegetarian potlucks, lectures, classes and media interviews. Howard will be on the East Coast for the last three weeks of April 2007. Send an email to webmaster@madcowboy.com or visit www.madcowboy.com to book a screening.

Howard speaks to an audience at a screening of the film. To organize your own screening, visit www.madcowboy.com.

This film challenges our perceptions, and it's worth the watch. In fact, I'd say the worst thing about the film is that it's too short. At only 58 minutes, you can't help but wonder why they didn't include more of the 150 hours of footage they shot. There are a number of online reviews I came across that say the documentary is 79 minutes long, but alas, the one they shipped me was not.

If you ever get the chance to meet Howard, do. Spend as much time with him as you can, and listen at least twice as much as you speak. Ask him if there are any moral imperatives. And ask him what his wife's advice was when he called her from Oprah Winfrey's greenroom. And ask him about the ten friends in Montana with whom he used to play cards, and about when he ran for Congress and almost won, and about the time he ordered a 72oz carrot in a world-famous steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas. Ask him if he's responsible for Lisa Simpson becoming a vegetarian. Ask him why he named his cat Ceasar, or about his relationship with his mother-in-law, or if he knows any good "mad cow" jokes.

And then open your ears wide, and listen.

But in the meantime, until you are fortunate enough to meet the maddest cowboy of them all in the flesh, order his film. And watch it. And share it. And live it.

Mad Cowboy: The Documentary continues to be screened all over the world, and Howard continues to travel with it, speaking to anyone who will listen about sustaining the planet. To organize a screening, or to purchase a copy of the film visit www.madcowboy.com.

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