By all indications, Nashville’s Kevin Shaw is on his way to having a successful film career. A graduate of Watkins Film School, he was recently chosen after several interviews and grueling testing to work in the Director’s Guild of America’s training program in New York City. For two years, he will serve as an assistant to a director, which will enable him to join the directors’ union. It’s a prestigious accomplishment: More than 300 film school graduates apply from schools like New York University, University of Southern California and UCLA. Only six are selected. Soon he will be working on HBO’s The Sopranos or NBC’s Third Watch.
Shaw’s phenomenal opportunity doesn’t just hold promise for this 29-year-old Chicago native. It also represents the emerging prospects of a whole community of Nashville filmmakers, who’d love to see this city get recognized as a budding hotbed of independent film production. Shaw himself has already gained considerable attention with his 29-minute short, Jeremiah Strong, which he made during his senior year at Watkins. Starring local actor Barry Scott as a homeless father trying to get off the streets and reestablish a relationship with his daughter, Jeremiah Strong has screened at 25 film festivals (including Nashville’s this past April), winning awards at seven. “I learned that marketing is actually tougher than making a film,” observes Shaw, who quit his job as an ESPN producer to attend Watkins. “I learned that I had to get my name out there. I created a Web site, made posters and postcards to market the film.”
Shaw’s savvy, quickly mastered business sense represents a new understanding among Nashville filmmakers about how to compete in the world of independent filmmaking. And his moving film, beautifully shot on super 16 mm film, says just much about the kind of work that local filmmakers are starting to make here. For years, the film business in this city revolved largely around the production of country music videos. Now that record labels have severely curtailed their budgets, Nashville filmmakers have been forced to find other outlets, and many have started to pursue their own projects. “You have to be careful of what you ask for,” says David Bennett, the recently appointed executive director of the Film, Entertainment and Music Commission for the State of Tennessee. “It was so typical in those days to hear directors talk about how they were tired of making music videos and how they wanted to make indies and features.”
The recent dearth of production work has forced directors and dozens of crew members to pack up and leave town, many for Los Angeles. Those who’ve remained have learned to be more goal-oriented and to become mindful of expenses in a way that they never had to be before. They may finally be creating the feature films that they never got around to making during more lucrative times, but it has come only after some sacrifice and unrelenting persistence.
Yet amid these times of economic uncertainty, there are reasons to be optimistic. In recent years, the Nashville Film Festival has grown tremendously, bringing a higher caliber of films to town, along with expanding attendance numbers and better opportunities for local filmmakers to show their work. Watkins Film School, a division of Watkins College of Art & Design (where my husband, David Hinton, serves as dean), has moved into a new 60,000-square-foot facility, attracting a growing student body from both inside and outside Nashville. These and other developments, such as the emergence of the Belcourt Theatre as a venue where independent filmmakers can show their work, have helped to create a fertile environment in our city. More than ever before, filmmakers are forming a viable and active community, a place where they can trade ideas and learn from each other’s successes and failures.
There are all kinds of ways to gauge the level of film activity in Nashville, but the most visible is feature filmmaking. Thanks to the presence of production houses such as Scene Three, The Collective and Deaton Flanigan, Nashville has long been home to a number of filmmakers, but only in the last decade have there been signs of any independent activity. One of the first was Armada Costanza’s directorial debut, Blood, Friends & Money, in 1996. A year later, veteran director/writer Coke Sams made Existo with Bruce Arntson and Clarke Gallivan. All of these people were pioneers in the truest sense: They created films outside the studio system—raising their own money, writing their own scripts, negotiating low-budget contracts with union leaders, working with actors and guiding Nashville crews through the ordeal of constructing sets and setting up lighting grids. They created their films from beginning to end, with no interference from the outside. But neither of these films have recouped the money invested, nor have they garnered the kind of critical acclaim that catches a distributor’s attention.
Of late, a second wave of filmmakers has come of age in Nashville, directors who know not only how to make a movie, but are learning rapidly how to market it as well. In the process, they’re laying the groundwork for a new level of professionalism here. “Los Angeles, New York and Chicago are years ahead of us,” says Andy van Roon, a local filmmaker and the director of FilmNashville, an organization that promotes the development of film and television projects. “But now we have enough of a critical mass that someone can break through certainly within the next two to three years.”
Van Roon’s implication is that when one filmmaker breaks through, the entire Nashville film community will receive some well-deserved attention. But that’s only true if the city is fostering some genuinely original and creative talent. Austin, Texas, is a prime example: After Richard Linklater’s Slackers became a surprise success in 1991, it helped pave the way for fellow Austinites such as Robert Rodridguez, who has become a critically and commercial successful director in his own right.
Yet such breakthrough stories are rare, especially in a market flooded with independent films. MovieMaker Magazine reports that only 40 out of 1,000 independent narrative films made in the U.S. each year find theatrical distribution in markets other than Los Angeles and New York. Even so, some of the Nashville filmmakers readying their projects for a national launch won’t be discouraged. “I’m not really competing against most of these other films,” observes Read Ridley, writer and director of Dodge City: A Spaghetto Western, which takes the conventions of the traditional Western and moves them to the inner city. Contained within the action is the predictable good guy-vs.-bad guy struggle, but Ridley’s female characters are as tough as any male hoodlum and the most important parts are filled by African American actors. “There are very few films made for the black audience, particularly ones that feature a strong role model,” he says.
Of the half-dozen movies that have been birthed by Nashville-based directors this year, three have emerged as contenders for national distribution. One is Ridley’s, which has been submitted to the Toronto Film Festival, in hopes that it will debut there in September. The other two films, Charlie’s War and Stuey, screened at this year’s Nashville Film Festival. All three movies have several key commonalities: They feature well-known actors—who help to lend broad audience appeal—and they come with well-developed marketing plans. And each came to fruition thanks to the sheer determination of its creator.
Charlie’s War, directed by veteran music video director David Abbott, has been the longest in the making. The writer, Christy L. Viviano, first started the script in 1995, after she had a dream about her family’s experiences during World War II. Although an author and teacher residing in Opelousas, La., she had never penned a script, nor did she know anyone in the movie industry. Undeterred, she read books on scriptwriting and, over time, developed a compelling screenplay, one that attracted the attention of Nashville’s David Bennett, then head of Filmworker’s Club, a post-production facility. He showed it to fellow Nashville film professional Tamara Trexler, who agreed to join the project as producer.
Stuey is also the work of a novice feature filmmaker. A director of commercial and industrial films, Tony Vidmer only got the idea after he had undertaken a serious study of how to be a better poker player. “I had entered a poker-playing contest and had gotten badly beaten,” he recalls. Not one to keep losing, he started reading every book about poker he could find. During his research, he kept running across the story of Stu “The Kid” Ungar, who died broke after having become a card-playing legend. “In a lot of respects, I identified with him,” Vidmer says. “He made the same mistake over and over. I think that we can all connect to that.” The director knew he had found the story that would be his first movie; like Viviano, he had never written a script, so he dived into books that taught him how.
Ridley, an instructor and technician at Watkins Film School, had been waiting to make his own movie for 10 years. After working his way up as a technician, a gaffer, a production manager, a producer and then a director on other projects, he’d earned the necessary experience. “I swore that I would make my first movie by the time I was 35,” he says. “I just got in under the wire.” Coming from a family of storytellers, Ridley never thought about asking anyone else to write his script. He had come to his own conclusions about what made a film successful and he set out to incorporate those theories into his script.
Like most major film debuts, these movies were funded with money raised from business contacts, family members and friends. Vidmer funded Stuey by combining the profits from the sale of his successful video production company with funds raised from former business clients. But he admits that the budget was uncomfortably tight, forcing him to analyze every decision and to debate the most important aspects of making his film. He opted to use 35 mm, which because of its expense mandated that he shoot everything in 22 days. “We designed every shot before we ever went to a location, and we story-boarded every setup,” says Larry Boothby, director of photography for Stuey. A fellow Nashvillian who had shot many of Vidmer’s earlier industrial films, Boothby admits that they got some lucky breaks during production, walking into locations that looked exactly like their plans, even though they had only guessed about what to expect. “That part was uncanny,” he says.
Ridley was scrambling for completion funds until the very end of his project. Besides pooling his own money with capital from a couple of investors, he stretched his dollars by doing trade-outs and negotiating product placement deals. But there was never enough money. When one of the actor’s agents demanded more money than was originally agreed upon immediately prior to shooting some of his scenes, Ridley rewrote the script, removing the actor’s additional scenes.
However different their films may be in form or content, Trexler, Vidmer and Ridley are all hoping that the presence of actors with marquee value will give their respective films some kind of advantage. Trexler determined this after producing her first feature, Outlaw Prophet. “It was a nice film,” she says, “but it couldn’t get attention without stars.” While working in Nashville’s film development office several years ago, she fostered a friendly relationship with Academy Award winner Olympia Du-kakis. As they got to know each other better, they talked about ways of teaming up professionally. “Olympia and I were looking for a script that we could work on together,” she says.
When David Bennett brought her the Viviano script, Trexler thought immediately of Dukakis, who loved it. Once she signed on, the actress encouraged her friend Diane Ladd to accept a role. Later, Lynn Redgrave and Vernon Winfrey, father of Oprah Winfrey, joined the cast. Vidmer planned early on to cast well-known names in Stuey, which stars Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos, Pat Morita and Michael Nouri. Ridley’s Dodge City features Academy Award and Grammy winner Isaac Hayes.
Even with celebrity names in the credits, these films aren’t guaranteed acceptance into the nation’s film festivals. And getting screened at major film festivals is these filmmakers’ primary way of attracting theatrical distribution deals. This, too, poses all kinds of challenges. “I used to think that just having a good film would get the film screened,” Vidmer observes. “Boy, was I mistaken.” Even though there are now hundreds of film festivals, at each one, thousands of films are submitted for screening, with competition most intense for the festivals located in or near movie industry centers like New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.
Just as filmmakers are charged with making their films stand out, film festival directors are also under pressure to distinguish their events from the others. Several high-profile fests, such as Sundance, have a reputation for showing only edgier, more provocative work. That’s especially frustrating for the filmmakers featured in this story, whose films may get rejected out of hand as a result. “How ironic that these cutting-edge movies get all the attention,” says Tony Vidmer, “especially when the studios hire the directors of those films to make mainstream movies. It doesn’t make any sense.” Echoing some of Vidmer’s complaints, Ridley has decided to bypass Sundance. “Maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot, but Sundance has lost its heart,” he says. “It’s turned into a dog and pony show for the major studios.”
As Vidmer knows, film festival screenings are no guarantee of success either. Although Stuey won the Audience Award at the Nashville Film Festival and had sellout crowds at the Taos Talking Picture Festival in New Mexico and the CineVegas in Las Vegas, it has yet to secure a distribution deal.
At the moment, Trexler is waiting for word from the William Morris Agency, the firm that represents her film’s star, Olympia Dukakis. She has also targeted both the Toronto Film Festival and Wood’s Hole in Cape Cod, in hopes that political connections at each will give her film an edge.
If these films don’t get picked up for theatrical distribution, their chances for achieving favorable financial returns aren’t over. There is the possibility of the film being released on DVD or picked up for broadcast on a cable channel, or even being sold to a foreign market. But the perceived value of the film is deflated in these other outlets if it has failed to get theatrical distribution.
All of which raises a question: How does a filmmaker measure success and, by extension, how does a community of filmmakers measure success? The conventional wisdom is to hope for the ultimate: the rare and triumphant breakthrough hit that will miraculously shine a light on our city and its brightest talent. It certainly happens: A low-budget film catches on with a cult audience, and its popularity grows exponentially. It happened with Richard Linklater’s Slacker in 1991, with Kevin Smith’s Clerks in 1994, with Doug Liman’s Swingers in 1996. But each of those films was the product of a young, first-time director, each bearing its creator’s distinct and often irreverent vision. None of the films profiled above is anything like these movies: They’re pitched for wider audience consumption and, in truth, they’re of varying quality.
Vidmer’s Stuey is the most aesthetically sound of the three, beautifully shot and well acted. The film is a valiant and professional effort, especially for a first-time feature director, but its appeal may be limited, if only because the title character remains so unlikable from beginning to end. While Charlie’s War is stocked with stars and benefits from solid direction, the common reaction after its Nashville Film Festival screening was that the flawed script significantly mars the final result. Both of these movies are shot on 35 mm, giving them a high-quality sheen, but neither is particularly visionary, meaning they’re unlikely to attract attention in the national theatrical arena: There are just too many other films out there, either better funded or better conceived. Stylistically, Ridley’s effort stands out more, as it reflects the guerrilla moviemaking method that has marked such recent critical successes as Gary Winick’s Tadpole and Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April. More significantly, of the three movies, Dodge City: A Spaghetto Western is the most original. But the film is still in its rough-cut stage, making it both difficult and unfair to offer any final judgments.
Whatever their flaws may be, Charlie’s War, Stuey and Dodge City tell us a lot about the prospects for Nashville’s film community. They offer proof that the state of the art in our city continues to grow and develop, and that with each new feature that gets made, local filmmakers are learning how to make better movies. “What Nashville still lacks is someone who knows how to get distribution,” Armanda Costanza ob-serves. But absent originality and artistic risk-taking, theatrical distribution may remain an elusive dream.
Making a feature film is a risky business, whether the filmmaker is working with a meager budget or working for a major studio with vast amounts of funding. But filmmakers here and everywhere keep trying, maybe because what matters far more than commercial success is the very process itself, the chance to create something and see what happens to it. “I like the roller coaster ride,” Vidmer admits, “the bigger, the better.”
Even as she continues to enter Charlie’s War in the film festival circuit, Tamara Trexler is already developing her next project with Olympia Dukakis, tentatively titled Amazing Grace, and Read Ridley has 15 scripts in various stages of development. As for Kevin Shaw, he is confident that he will one day make a feature-length film based on his short Jeremiah Strong. “That character Jeremiah just won’t leave me,” he says. “In the next two or three years, we’ll get it all together and get this film made. It’s a matter of how, who’s in it and which tools that we use. I’m a pretty impatient person, but when it comes to film, I’m patient. It’s worth the wait.”
