My Trip to "Down and Yonder"
Down and Yonder started for me sometime around 2010 in a two bedroom apartment in Sherman Oaks, California. I felt honored that Flippo would trust my opinion enough to give me one of his early drafts to read. As soon as I finished it, I remember telling him how much I responded to it. I didn't have many more critiques at the time what with me being an oblivious, out-of-work actor in my early twenties.
A script about a small southern town like the one I grew up in was a little lost on me at that time, especially in my then-current state of mind. I saved it on my laptop and didn’t think about it again until much later. The script sat there for years, waiting for its time.
I eventually moved back to Georgia and to say I was a bit down in the dumps would be an understatement. A positive aspect that came out of all this was my renewed love for film. I watched as many as I could get my hands on and began doing a little bit of writing myself. I wasn’t writing to be rich or famous; it was just a way to make me feel less like a failure. It made me forget about all the dreams that I felt would never come true. With this came my own voice. Luckily, I had two best friends (Flippo and Ben) that never gave up on me and pushed me to shoot whatever I had.
We filmed two shorts very unprofessionally. Just three guys with a camera, having fun and trying to figure out just what in the hell we were doing. Shot List? Storyboards? What in the hell are those?! Eventually, Chris brought The Future West to the table. Now for those that don’t know, it is about two friends deciding their own paths in a small southern town. This sounded familiar enough to that script I still had saved on my laptop and, sure enough, it was the same characters from Down and Yonder, back after all those years.
Being very self-involved and, even worse, an actor, I wanted to play the role of Wally, what with his screen-ready inner turmoil and wit. To my surprise, Flippo had other plans and this started my five year journey with Sugar Baby. Good thing I left my ego at the door because we found the perfect Wally in Chris Schulz. He brought his biting sense of humor and kindness to the role and made this little short about two guys lost in the woods into something much more.
After we completed The Future West, Flippo sent me an updated version of Down and Yonder. It now contained a lot of what Chris Schulz and I did with the characters. I asked him if this meant the role was mine if we ever did the full feature. Flippo replied that I’d be too old if we shot it in the future. Almost immediately, it was a film with a buzzer attached to it.
Later on, I thought to myself this would be great to shoot as a feature, but there’s no way we could do it. We had no money, little to know experience and we’d be absolutely crazy to take that huge of a risk. Maybe in ten years. Maybe never. Little did I know events that we had no control over were heading our way and fast.
In early 2014, I was having a bit of a rough patch. I was stuck at a job I hated, my car decided to retire on the side of I-75, and I still felt like a failure. I selfishly wondered what else can go wrong in my life. However, that February I learned that my dad had bladder cancer, and it had to be surgically removed or he would only have about a year left. My mom told me all of this as I was driving to Ellijay to shoot our fourth short film, Phantom Marks.
Now, for those of you that haven’t watched Phantom Marks, it’s about a young man coming to terms with the death of his brother. That weekend is a haze to me now, but the best thing that came out of it was finding out with just a few crew members besides ourselves we could make something look like a real movie (and also the weekend line producer, Jamie Davenport, joined the team). After that shoot, I didn’t think about movies as much. I just wanted my dad’s surgery to fly by and for us figure out what our lives would look like after cancer.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the stars. My hero had to say goodbye. This man didn’t understand movies or why I loved them so much, but he did understand dreams. His dream of being a professional baseball player didn’t come true so he and my beautiful mother gave me a shot at mine. We had set up dates months before for pickup shots for Phantom Marks. It just happened that it was the day after my dad’s funeral. Flippo and Ben both told me not to worry about it and that we could do it later. The only thing I could think to do to honor my dad by keep working. Doing something I loved for the man I loved. Words are cheap, but actions are priceless. We shot that day and, in my head, all I could think of was my dad and how life is too short.
A few days after the funeral, I started to think about Down and Yonder a lot. It started to mean more to me than it had before. What I didn’t understand in my early twenties about community and home, I sure did now. The story started to feel like a piece of me. With this I threw caution to the wind and make my mission in life to get this movie made! Sadly for Flippo and Ben, this started my constant hounding about getting the movie made. We had to figure out budgets, locations, equipment, cast and crew. This was a bigger task than I had ever thought. The more we talked about everything and put it out in the world, the more we started to build a network of collaborators. I became obsessed. I lived and breathed Down and Yonder. We all did. The idea of what getting our movie made meant kept us going.
Somehow months we by and and I soon I found myself in Flintstone, GA at 5am in the morning with some Dunkin Donuts coffee and a nervous look on my face in front of a bunch of eager cast and crew waiting for direction. The next nine days were magical, terrifying, infuriating, and then magical again. I learned that Flippo is amazing at putting up with all my different ways of being grumpy. Even with all the stress I couldn’t believe the feeling of unity experienced by that cast and crew. We were all young and hungry to make Down and Yonder something of which we could be proud.. I have a lifetime of stories and lessons that I will carry with me forever.
I don’t know if anything I do with filmmaking will ever top what we did that summer and with who we did it. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it is a part of a dream and forever a part of me. To say thank you to everyone that had a hand in making the film would somehow cheapen how much it all actually meant to us. This movie got me though a rough time, giving me something to live for and bringing me friends that I now consider family. It gave me the courage to say "hi" to the love of my life.
Most importantly it gave me the chance to give a grand goodbye to my hero. For all that it isn’t and even more for all that it is, it will always be held near my heart.
