Ask Greg Webb what advice he has for aspiring independent filmmakers looking to finance their own films, and the only sound that comes over the phone is a roar of laughter. It isn’t that he’s unsympathetic; it’s just that the path he took was so bizarre that it’s pointless to advise someone else to follow it.
“My partner, the director, knew a guy in Texas who was interested in the movie business,” explains Webb, a Murfreesboro native who has worked extensively in movies and TV. “The Texas investor had some shares in a diamond mine in South Africa, and he sold his shares to finance the movie.”
The result is Under the Hula Moon, a black comedy cowritten and associate produced by Webb. As a prelude to its scheduled distribution next year by the Trident releasing company, the movie makes its regional premiere Thursday, Oct. 5, at the Belcourt Cinema in a special benefit for the film school at Watkins Institute.
Under the Hula Moon stars Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects) and British actress Emily Lloyd (A River Runs Through It) as Buzzard and Betty Wall, two Arizona trailer-park residents who dream of escaping to an island paradise in Hawaii. Their pleasant existence is ruptured by the arrival of Buzzard’s violent, menacing brother Turk (played by Christopher Penn from Reservoir Dogs), who threatens to destroy their lives before fate intervenes in their behalf.
Webb and his coscreenwriter, Jeff Celentano (who directed), came up with the plot while mulling over ideas for an independent film. “We thought, ‘We’ve got a low budget—where can we shoot a movie without needing extras? The desert!’ ” says Webb, who appears in the movie briefly as a goodhearted military operative. After Celentano came across a coffee-table book entitled Under the Hula Moon, the idea took off from there, and the two screenwriters had a completed script in six weeks.
With backing from Celentano’s friend the diamond-mine mogul, the filmmakers got enough money to begin securing a cast and crew. Once Baldwin, Penn and Lloyd signed on, additional financing fell into place, and cast and crew members willing to work for salary deferment climbed aboard. After a shoot plagued by whirlwind desert storms, the production came in at less than $2 million.
Securing distribution has been a lengthy process. While Webb says that the success of films like sex, lies and videotape... and Pulp Fiction has opened the door somewhat for independent filmmakers, too many distributors are simply looking for carbon copies of those films.
“I’m on the rump end of that horse,” Webb says of the distribution process. “It’s a real idiosyncratic time [for independent film]—it’s great when you can get into that pipeline. But by doing it differently, you’re looking at a smaller platform.”
A Vanderbilt graduate who majored in sociology and business, Webb has worked for more than a decade in movies and TV, including a lead in the NBC series and a role in the film version of Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline. In addition, he’s earned hundreds of voice credits doing “looping” (background chatter recorded after shooting is completed) for such films as , the upcoming crime thriller Mulholland Falls, and the new drama Dead Presidents, which opens here Friday. That may sound like gravy, but Webb says it requires a lot of research and preparation to get the detail and the language of the period right. “If you’re doing a crewman on a Civil War battleship,” Webb cracks, “you can’t call someone ‘dude.’ ”
Under the Hula Moon will show 7:30 p.m. at the Belcourt Thursday, Oct. 5, with a reception preceding the show at the Sunset Grill at 6 p.m. Tickets are $15, with all proceeds going to the film program at Watkins Institute. For more information or reservations, contact the Watkins Institute at 242-1851.
