Arts
If God gave you 15 minutes to speak your mind, then took you away, what would you say? That was the question Molly Secours put to students in My Brother's Keeper, a group mentoring program for at-risk Nashville teens. Secours, a local filmmaker known for her socially conscious work, wanted them to create their own film but didn't want them just to copy what they saw on TV. As soon as she asked, she says, "immediately the stakes were higher."
The responses she got became "The Way Out," a short film written, directed, edited by and starring participants in My Brother's Keeper that makes its public premiere Thursday. A straight-shooting slice-of-life drama, it concerns a talented basketball player (William Booker) pulled between the influence of a drug dealer (Quinton Pope) and a studious friend (Thomas Groves) who offers to help him boost his grades for college.
The movie came about through Youth Voice Through Video, the filmmaking project Secours operates with The Oasis Center. Funded by the Soros Foundation, it provides at-risk kids with the tools and knowledge to tell their own stories.
The project made a good fit with My Brother's Keeper, where participants ages 13 to 18 meet for peer support and to vent about everyday problems. "They have major issues at home and at school," says Mark Williams, a social worker now affiliated with the program. "Gangs in school, basic things like sex and parents."
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With support from Secours, local writer-director Steve Taylor and Watkins veteran Carlton Adkins, who also served as director of photography, the first-time filmmakers set about drafting a script. As for casting, only Booker had acted before. The revelation, Secours said, was seeing how newcomers like Groves and scene-stealer Lorenzo Short took to the screen.
Perhaps most dramatic was the enthusiasm of Pope, 16, who came to My Brother's Keeper through the juvenile justice system. The first time she saw him, Secours said, "I thought he'd be the first to go. But he was the first one there every day and the last to leave." Not only did Pope pitch in on the script, he also stuck around through the editing process. This summer, as a result of the film, he spent a week studying drama at an MTSU acting camp. His mother tells Secours she sees his life changing.
Not everyone involved is going Hollywood, though. "Too much pressure," says Michael Lauderdale, 18, who directed and co-wrote the film. "Everybody was always coming up and asking what to do next." Now that he knows how to make movies, he says, "I'll just try to enjoy 'em. It'd probably ruin the whole thing if I looked too close."
"The Way Home" screens 7 p.m. Thursday at Born Again Church, 828 W. Trinity Lane.
—Jim Ridley