Landing in the Morning Calm

Roxanne Rogers and Blake Eckard

For what seems like for the umpteenth time, headed to the Jeonju Film Festival in South Korea, this time invited to screen They Had It Coming.   This will give us a chance to see some friends, former students, have another taste of delicious Korean cuisine, and see how much things changed in two years.  Don’t yet know the screening dates, but was looking like May 3 and 5.  It’ll be the first public screening, though given that it is heavily talky and quite “American” I wonder what the largely Korean audience will make of it – a real subtitle marathon?   Not going to exactly provide a good reading of how the film works on viewers.

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Set in Blake Eckard’s home town of Stanberry MO (pop. 1185), we shot in two phases, which, if it were up to my brain to sort it out, I couldn’t say just when.  I think spring and then autumn, 2014 or was it 2013?  Dang if I remember.   While in Stanberry shooting and acting in Blake’s film Ghosts of Empire Prairie, he told us a handful of local stories, embellished in his story-teller manner, and finding these just too juicy to pass up, I asked if maybe we could spin a film around them and him.  Such was the genesis of They Had It Coming.  I tossed in a few things that had been lingering in my files for 20 or 30 years, we each wrote a bit more, and bang, we had a film.  Frank Mosley, Arianne Martin, Roxanne Rogers and Tyler Messner came in, and in pretty quick order (less than a week?)  it was mostly shot, in Blake’s mother, Susan’s, kitchen! Yep, that was the studio space where nearly 2/3rds of it was shot with window light and a black cloth.  While I was off on a trip to Europe Blake used my camera to snare shots (above) of locals when they came into Eckard’s Hardware to shop. Roxanne’s sister Sandy let me use one of her songs, I tossed in a few of my own, Stephen Taylor’s dad, Larry, lent his voice for a smooth TV announcer (he used to be anchor in Boise Idaho news program), and after a short bit of editing on CS6, out popped the film.  My thanks to everyone who helped.

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I sent an early cut out last summer, accruing a list of festival “no’s,” and getting the suggestion from Mark Rappaport, that I should change my title, which had been “True Gentry County Stories” to one of the lines in the film.  I took his advice. They Had It Coming, while itself being a fiction, is simultaneously a kind of tone-poem/essay on the process of “story-telling.”  In my view a rather strange little beast it is, that for some reason gathers towards the end to provide a visceral punch of a conclusion.  I don’t really understand quite how it manages to do so – adamantly skirting all the usual mechanisms used – but it does.

Blake and Tyler Messner

Frank Mosley and Blake.

Arianne Martin and Blake

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Upcoming screenings include Coming to Terms in Houston TX, April 23, at the Blaffer Art Museum, and then on May 11 in Austin at the Austin Film Society; Last Chants for a Slow Dance will screen May 10 at AFS.  And something is cooking for Phoenix AZ, just when up in the air.  As is life….

Lying Low – Stanberry, Mo.

 

Four months ago, towards the end of November, I pulled into Stanberry, (pop. 1,185) to stay with Blake Eckard (actually at his Mom’s place), and as circumstances looked OK, shot a film.  I was headed, along with Blake, to the St. Louis Film Festival, each of us to show new films, at the end of the month.  I’d shot and acted in Blake’s Ghosts of Empire Prairie back in May of 2012, and while around had soaked up a bit of the local ambiance.  Just happened to make a jig-saw fit with some things I’d scribbled down some decades earlier, and those things, along with some local tales which Blake knows well and tells with a natural story-teller’s ease, just seemed to leap into each other’s arms.  I asked Roxanne Rogers, who had been in my long ago Slow Moves, and then the newest, Coming to Terms, to make a little detour on her way from LA to her home in Istanbul.  We met up at the airport in KC on the 18th, and headed to Blake’s Mom’s house.  A few days later I went back to the KC airport to get Frank Mosley, who’d also volunteered to come be in it and then went on with us to St Louis.  We were joined in Stanberry by Tyler Messner, a friend of Blake’s since childhood who’s been in almost all of Blake’s films.

 

Roxanne RogersRoxanne and BlakeBlake and Arianne MartinFrank Mosley and Blake

Blake and Tyler Messner

In the next 6 days we shot the film in a simple relaxed way – natural light, a handful of simple set-ups against a black cloth, with Blake telling “real” stories (names changed to protect the innocent) from around Gentry County.  On returning now, Arianne Martin, who was in Ghosts, was here to be in Blake’s new film, Coyotes Kill for Fun, and plays in my film as well.   While I was traveling in Europe Blake wrote a few new scenes and did 10 shots of locals which will get slipped in.  On getting those few one shot-sequences tomorrow I should have it pretty much done, with only some music to record (my own C&W) and a few other small things to add.  Hope to have it done in May or so.  About 75 mins.  I think it’ll be pretty damn good.

Locals

The film is a kind of play with literature, story-telling, reality, all with a deep mid-west footing.  Of course, it’s one of my films so it is for the usual audience of (n)one, sure to be seen by extremely few, and ignored by the film biz, large and small.   Nothing to do with making a buck.

Broken down on the highway, broken down on the road

My car’s runnin’ fine, it ain’t a problem of mine,

It’s my heart that’s in pieces, you know

     Broken hearts, and busted up dreams,

     All decked out in faded old jeans,

     It’s a story, it’s a story as old as time.

Standing there at a far edge of town,

There’s a broken young man with his head hanging down

And he’s calling,

And he’s falling in front of your eyes.

(partial lyrics from song of mine, circa 1988)

Here in Stanberry, Blake is shooting his new film which I’d intended to shoot for him but I arrived with a nagging cold/flu and have had to lay low here, trying to recuperate.  On the road in two more days, headed to O’Hare to drop Roxanne off for a flight to Istanbul, and then I spend a week and some visiting old friends in Chicago.  Then slowly back to Butte for a summer of work and rest.

Empire Prairie

Here in Stanberry, Missouri, (pop. 1,230 or so), tucked up in the northwest corner of the state, shooting a film for Blake Eckard, who’s lived here all his life.   The film will be called Ghosts of Empire Prairie.   Aside from shooting the film (SONY XDcam), Blake cast me as a red-neck Daddy asshole.  So far a bar-fight involving a (real) rodeo hand resulted in a nice bruised butt from landing on the floor a few times smack on top of my wallet.  Hard to sit comfortably the last few days.   It’s been now 10+ days, and we seem to be coming to a close – one actress left, an actor leaves tomorrow.  I’m out of here middle of the month.   The smear of time is an odd mixture of small-town slo-mo and the rush of shooting, and I lost track of the calendar some time ago.  Blake has a script of some kind, though the exigencies of reality usually see it tossed under the bus at the first clash between “idea” and execution.  Blake writes in a literary manner, with descriptions which he has no means to actually make happen on screen.

Blake “Buck” Eckard

Stanberry ATM

Those tossed on screen with me include Ryan Harper Gray, who met Blake through me when Ryan did his first role for me, in Homecoming.  He’s done one other film with Blake since, as well as two for me and is up for another for me in August.  He also is finishing his own first film, This Is A Love Story.   Along with Ryan are two friends of his, from Dallas, his erstwhile home-town, though he’s made pilgrimage now to LA.  They are Frank Mosley, himself a filmmaker, and Arianne Martin.   We’re each cast as rural caricatures:  myself the asshole Dad of Lonnie (Gray) and Ted (Mosley), and Dawn, Lonnie’s high-school local slut, bar-girl.   Of this mix Blake seems, in my view, to be making a slice of small town Gothic something.

Ryan Harper GrayArianne MartinFrank MosleyJon as “Burl”

With just a few scenes to go, and 20 minutes in a pretty tight edit, it looks as if Ghosts of Empire Prairie might turn out rather good.  I hope so, for Blake and the rest of us.   While I don’t like to count chickens before they hatch, we did give the Venice festival a little heads up about this film, and if it all works out Blake will submit it for their consideration.  Roll them dice.

Sign in St. Joseph Mo coffee shop

The lady came out of her house as I was taking this picture, and asked “What are you doing?”  And I replied, “I’m taking a picture of the hand coming out of the car’s hood.”   She seemed a little surprised at this straight-forward reply, and then said, “It’s my boyfriend’s ex,” and went back into her house.