Cover Story: Georgia on my screen

FADE IN</
EXTERIOR</
In an OVERHEAD SHOT, we ZOOM IN on the farmland of Starrsville Plantation on a summer afternoon. We PAN past a barn and a century-old cemetery, then HOLD on the trucks and trailers of a motion picture location. We TRACK downhill, following stunt coordinators in Hawaiian shirts, makeup artists in Warhol prints and tattooed women carrying three-ring binders to a grassy glade surrounded by pine trees. Amid the massive lights, cameras, boom mics and director’s chairs, we come in for a CLOSE-UP on a lanky, weary-looking man with a crooked grin.</
On one of the most frenzied days of filming Randy and the Mob, director and lead actor Ray McKinnon has just about all the local color he can handle. Not that he doesn’t possess a distinctly Southern backstory of his own.</
Born and raised in Adel, Ga., a small town 45 miles shy of the Florida border, McKinnon’s no Tinseltown fish out of water on this movie set on the outskirts of Covington. He’s a Georgia boy — you might find traces of red clay in his bloodstream. An established movie and TV character actor, as well as an Oscar-winning filmmaker, McKinnon currently calls the Hollywood Hills home. But he got there by cultivating his Southern roots, and ever since the inception of his new Southern comedy Randy and the Mob, McKinnon knew he wanted to film it in rural Georgia.</
In an idyllic corner of Starrsville Plantation, in view of a serene pond, McKinnon rehearses and shoots the film’s final confrontations, a series of slapstick brawls and character epiphanies. The sleepy country silence periodically explodes with the baying of a distant dog pack. “Could someone throw more kittens in the dog pen?” quips a member of Randy’s 60-person crew.</
“They only do one event a year on the plantation — a big dove hunt — and it’s tomorrow,” explains producer Dave Koplan. “When I realized that they were riling up the dogs, the reality of the hunt set in. There may be men with guns in these woods tomorrow.”</
McKinnon tries to set up a fight scene between his lead character, Randy Pearson, a would-be wheeler-dealer good-ol’ boy, and the bullying sheriff played by Brent Briscoe. But when the dogs start up again, McKinnon periodically turns from his cohorts to bellow “SHU-UT UP!” to unseen hounds in the distance.</
No one blames him for feeling a little frazzled. It’s the next to the last day of the 23-day shoot and McKinnon has been intermittently nauseous, probably due to the sheer exhaustion of directing his own script while playing the film’s central character — or, rather, characters. McKinnon has the role of twin brothers, Randy and his gay sibling, Cecil.</
McKinnon mostly maintains good humor; he’s not wearing Cecil’s teal pantsuit or hair curlers today, but he’ll eagerly whip off a shoe and a sock to show a visitor that he’s still wearing Cecil’s nail polish on his toes. It’s a sign of McKinnon’s cinematic sensibility: Tough, husky sheriffs may be staples of Southern films, but not gay antique dealers.</
With the daylight hours fading — today’s work will go well into the night — and the shoot a day over schedule, one shot eludes McKinnon. “We’ve got to get the P.O.V. shot of kudzu. I’ve done three movies in the South — we have to have kudzu in one of them! I don’t live here anymore, so to me, kudzu is beautiful — it’s so green and flowing. But the schedule keeps pushing it back and back and back.”</
For all the queasy feelings, McKinnon is still thrilled to be making Randy and the Mob, his second feature film following the drama Chrystal, released earlier this year to a lukewarm reception, and his Academy Award-winning short film “The Accountant.”</
“It’s a combination of exhilaration and ‘Holy shit, are we gonna make our day?’” McKinnon says. “Because this could be the last movie we ever make. It’s got to end sometime, this could be it!”</
In the past several years, many members of Georgia’s filmmaking community — from actors to grips, directors to wardrobe mistresses, producers to extras — have echoed the “This could be it!” sentiment. Once the third most popular state in the nation for motion picture locations, Georgia has seen its native filmmaking business undergo dramatic accelerations and reversals worthy of any car chase scene. Yet the work of McKinnon and other Southern filmmakers, as well state legislation passed in May, could signal a creative upswing in Southern film — if not a cinematic renaissance.</
The local film community gives more to Georgia than, say, the mere right to brag that My Cousin Vinny was filmed around here. Film productions add value to an area, and not just through short-term jobs. Movies have lasting powers on how outsiders perceive us, how posterity remembers us, even how we think about ourselves.</
And of the many filmmakers who work in Georgia, Ray McKinnon may have more ideas about the South than anyone — and may be the best ally in Southern film’s fight to rise again.</
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The image goes OUT OF FOCUS as harp music plays in universally recognized cue for a FLASHBACK. A MONTAGE begins as the image resolves on:</
• Burt Reynolds wielding a bow and arrow in Deliverance (1972).</
• Henry Silva (or stunt man) bursting from an uppermost window of Peachtree Plaza and plummeting to the street in Sharky’s Machine (1981).</
• William Petersen running down the endless zigzag staircase of the High Museum — standing in for Hannibal Lecter’s insane asylum — in Manhunter (1986).</
• Morgan Freeman chauffeuring Jessica Tandy through North Druid Hills in Driving Miss Daisy (1989).</
If Georgia had a golden age of local filmmaking, it began with Deliverance, despite its unflattering Southern associations conjured by “Squeal like a pig!” The gritty survival tale set on the Chattooga River signaled a turning point for the state’s budding film industry. Deliverance marked the rise of 1970s icon Burt Reynolds, who used his clout to film the likes of the Smokey and the Bandit movies in Georgia throughout the 1970s.</
A visit from Jimmy Carter to the Deliverance set even inspired the then-governor to found what is now the Georgia Film Video & Music Office. “Other movies had filmed in the state before,” says Greg Torre, current director of the office, “but for Deliverance, the governor was impressed by all the levels of the production, the sheer number of vehicles, people, props, costumes involved on a movie set.”</
Georgia became one of the first states in the nation to actively court the film industry, says Torre. With its diverse geography, Georgia became a cinematic stand-in not just for other Southern states but for the Midwest, New Jersey, Vietnam, and the sci-fi future. “Things really picked up steam in the 1980s, and we got a lot of television business,” says Torre, pointing to the TV series “In the Heat of the Night” and “I’ll Fly Away,” as well as the hundreds of TV commercials and music videos filmed here every year. And Driving Miss Daisy’s multiple Oscars validated Georgia as the heart of the showbiz South.</
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Stock footage of gathering storm clouds, ominous flashes of lightning. Ominous music booms on the soundtrack.</
Things began to change in the 1990s, in Georgia and elsewhere. Georgia’s work force of actors, camera operators and other film workers began to unionize in greater numbers, diminishing Georgia’s advantages over heavily unionized California.</
And icy winds blew from the North as well, after Canada passed an aggressive tax-incentive program giving film companies significant savings. Suddenly, Toronto began standing in for seemingly every major U.S. city. “Where before the four major shooting cities were Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and probably Chicago,” Torre says, “now they were Los Angeles, New York, Toronto and Vancouver.”</
The Georgia Film, Music & Video Office saw a shift in Hollywood’s priorities. Where once the financial advantages of a place took a backseat — first to a professional filmmaking infrastructure, then to the quality of locations — money suddenly began trumping all other decisions.</
So, in 2001, Georgia fought back by passing a sales tax exemption for film productions. The measure helped make 2002 a particularly robust year for Georgia filmmaking, including five major productions: the comedy prequel Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, the college musical Drumline, the gospel comedy The Fighting Temptations, the Robert Redford kidnapping thriller The Clearing, and the completion of the Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama.</
Yes, despite the title, Sweet Home Alabama was shot in Georgia. In your face, Alabama!</
And that doesn’t include about nine smaller independent films, including the family feature The Adventures of Ociee Nash. According to Torre, movies shot in 2002 had an impact of $267.2 million ­in Georgia.</
Other big productions were on the horizon, including the future Oscar-winning Ray Charles biopic Ray. “They had made their second or third trip here and had pretty much committed ­-- we were helping them find office and warehouse space,” Torre says.</
But upping the ante, Louisiana passed an extremely aggressive and generous tax incentive program, and Ray’s pre-production team investigated the potential savings. “You know how you always remember where you were when something tragic happens?” Torre says. “Well, we were standing in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis when they told us they were going to Louisiana.”</
So Ray, a film with “Georgia on My Mind” at its center, was shot in Louisiana. In your face, Georgia!</
From then on, major feature productions grew scarce in Georgia. The past two years only saw one each, both being biopics with local connections: the golfing film Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius in 2003, and HBO’s Franklin Roosevelt story Warm Springs. (That doesn’t include local indies like The Lady from Sockholm, which boosted employment of the local sock puppet work force.)</
In May 2005, the Georgia Legislature fought back again by passing House Bill 539, which, according to the film office, offers tax credits of up to 17 percent to film productions that spend at least $500,000, with additional incentives for hiring Georgia workers and filming in poorer Georgia counties. Torre says the measure has already made a difference: Since May, the state has lined up one major feature and three smaller ones, including Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion and a film starring Big Boi from OutKast, as well as Randy and the Mob. And Torre says the number of requests for production information received by the Georgia Film Office has gone up several hundred percent.</
SOUND CUE</
On the soundtrack, the rollicking gospel tune “Still Alive” comes up. CUT TO the exuberant Kirk Franklin singers singing and swaying to the music in a Georgia church.</
Although filmed in February and March of this year, The Gospel, a church-set drama replete with contemporary gospel music, proved to be the first film eligible for the new tax savings, thanks to HB 539’s retroactive nature. “The tax incentive is absolutely huge for us,” says Rob Hardy, the Atlanta-based writer/director of The Gospel, which opens this week. “Plus, it’ll attract more filmmakers, which means there will be more work here for everyone.”</
Hardy, who partnered with producer Will Packer and distributor Rainforest Films, demonstrates how fledgling, self-taught local filmmakers can work outside the system — then make their way in. In 2000, Hardy’s low-budget erotic thriller Trois, thanks to Rainforest’s guerilla marketing and distribution campaign, was the second highest grossing independently distributed African-American release ever, and the fastest to earn $1 million. Trois even spawned two follow-ups on DVD.</
Hardy and Packer, eager to avoid being pigeonholed as makers of erotic thrillers, sought a change of pace with The Gospel. Thanks to the timely success of The Passion of the Christ in early 2004, Rainforest interested Sony Screen Gems in the modern retelling of the prodigal son story. “When we made Trois, there had not been many erotic thrillers for the urban demographic. We took the same approach for The Gospel, which is a faith-based drama. Most films like this, for people of color, are comedy-based.”</
Shot entirely in Atlanta and employing about 200 people, The Gospel depicts a sexed-up R&B singer (Boris Kodjoe) who returns to the church of his ailing father (Clifton Powell) and butts heads with an ambitious young pastor (Idris Elba of HBO’s “The Wire”). It’s the first time Rainforest has worked with such established actors, although The Gospel’s real stars are recording artists such as Fred Hammond and Yolanda Adams.</
After years of releasing films straight to video or on limited numbers of movie screens, Hardy is ecstatic to be getting national distribution. “It’s going to be on more than 1,000 screens, just like your typical movie from the quote-unquote urban demographic.”</
Rainforest’s up-from-the-grassroots success shows that when more films get made in Georgia, they will better reflect the ideas and concerns of Georgians across demographic lines. “The more we add to the existing infrastructure, the more local filmmakers will find it easier to develop their own projects,” Torre says, “and write stories that they’re familiar with.”</
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BLACK AND WHITE FOOTAGE OF a tumbledown Southern ghost town, silent except for the whir of crickets. We see empty streets, shuttered storefronts and HOLD on an antiques store. The image DISSOLVES AND TURNS INTO COLOR until we see, in the shop’s place, a brightly painted restaurant in the same location reading “Whistle Stop Café: Fine Food at Fair Prices,” with customers on the waiting list chatting on the front porch.</
Over his 18 years at the film office, Greg Torre takes particular satisfaction in the film Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), particularly the boon the Universal Studios project meant for Juliette, Ga. “It was a kudzu-covered, decrepit place before the film came.”</
Once a vibrant Monroe County mill town boasting the world’s largest grist mill, Juliette saw the mill close in 1957. By 1990, its main street had only two open businesses, but Juliette still retained traces of a timeless, treasured Southern town. Universal chose Juliette as the site for its adaptation of Fannie Flagg’s female-empowering, century-spanning Southern novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and poured $250,000 into the area, including turning the Williams General Merchandise store into a working restaurant.</
Thanks to the infusion, Juliette is now a small-scale success story and an example of how film locations can be a boon to tourism. In 2003, the town was receiving as many as 500 visitors a week (even though Fried Green Tomatoes actually was set in Alabama).</
Juliette’s renewal may even bring it back to the screen a second time. Atlanta filmmaker/musician Neill Calabro had no intention of making another film after the poor reception to his quirky first feature, Cultivision. Juliette’s charms changed his mind after a visit in 2003. “It reminded me of when you went to Helen, Ga., in the 1970s, when it was so quaint and neat, but now it’s so overcrowded and built up. I thought Juliette could die out or it could boom like Helen, which would be terrible, too. So I thought, why not make a movie about it now, while it’s still like it was when the movie finished 15 years ago?”</
Currently, Calabro is completing his self-financed, all-volunteer documentary on Juliette called Fried Green Tomorrows. He hopes to get Fannie Flagg to narrate the history section, open the film in Macon before the end of the year, then shop it around to Southern or regional-interest TV outlets and finally to the film festival circuit. Calabro has been paying for the film by working temp jobs, including one as a stand-in for the cast of Randy and the Mob. At the shoot, he wore a green T-shirt that read “Get Fried in Juliette, Ga.”</
It’s an example of the unpredictable impact of movies: Someone can work on one film, to help fund their own film, about the lasting influence of yet another film.</
FADE IN</
A TIGHT SHOT on Ray McKinnon, standing among the pine trees and of the Starrsville Plantation. The camera backs up to reveal that the image is on a monitor, and McKinnon is watching his own performance in an editing suite in Los Angeles.</
The headaches of production behind him, McKinnon now wrestles with the headaches of post-production. The dove hunt on the last day of shooting turned out to be no big deal — “Keeping a pantsuit clean was much more difficult” — but a whole day’s worth of negatives were lost in transit from Los Angeles to Atlanta and might require a return for reshoots.</
McKinnon is trying to decide whether a cut of Randy and the Mob can be made ready in time to submit to the Sundance Film Festival in January. As he studies the different takes, he says “It’s not exactly the movie I had in mind, but there may be one even better in here. I’m still looking for it.”</
One of McKinnon’s driving passions is to record the real South, not the countrified, stereotypical Hollywood South. His short film “The Accountant” begins as a dark comedy worthy of Flannery O’Connor and segues into an eerily convincing conspiracy theory of how corporations and the media marginalize the Southern way of life. As the quirky accountant of the title, McKinnon rails against the preponderance of clownish fictional Southerners — “Bubba, Gomer, Goober, Cletus, Enos, Cooter, Jethro, Ellie Mae, Billy Bob! Don’t insult my intelligence!” — and how they serve to confuse and manipulate the honest rural working man, “until he starts actin’ country instead of bein’ country.”</
While making “The Accountant,” McKinnon wondered if anyone else would “get it.” “I certainly hoped it would resonate with Southerners, especially a certain kind of Southerner who’s thoughtful, who’s gone to Jackson, Miss., and said, ‘This could be anywhere in America.’ Because everywhere you go, there’s Chili’s for ribs and Best Buys and the Hilton. You could be in Jackson, or you could be in Southern California.”</
McKinnon found a firsthand example of the “mall-ization” of the South when he scouted for a suitable farmhouse for “The Accountant.” “It needed to be within a 35-mile radius of Atlanta or it would cost more,” he recalls. “But I found out that a 35-mile radius of Atlanta, was Atlanta. We’re lucky we found Villa Rica, but one day it’s all going to be filled in.”</
Filming on authentic Southern locations can be, if nothing else, a way to record them for posterity. “The landscape where we live is changing so much that the places you film off the beaten path soon may not exist.”</
After completing Randy and the Mob’s final cut, McKinnon and company will seek a distributor — a process that can be as arduous as making a movie in the first place. Add in time for selling and marketing, and Randy and the Mob probably won’t reach theaters before next fall.</
With a budget of just under $2 million, it’s a small, independent film, but McKinnon’s a kind of cultural entrepreneur whose ideas deserve investment; he’s the rare filmmaker who’s not just interested in explaining the South to itself, but who’s qualified to do so.</
McKinnon did wind up getting his kudzu shot, at the 11th hour. “We actually scouted the kudzu. We had a local fellow who had an old 35 mm camera who got the kudzu shot we wanted.” Not that filming kudzu in rural Georgia is the most difficult task in the world. “The only thing more difficult would be not to find kudzu.”</
McKinnon’s left with studying his film for the funniest punch lines, the most moving character moments and all the essential, unspoken truths about the changing Southern way of life. These might not be small jobs, but McKinnon’s the right person to be cast in the role.</
After all, he’s got an appreciation of kudzu.</
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