Jon Keeyes lives with assorted roommates in a small house in west Fort Worth and drives a late model car that's missing a hubcap. His freelance lifestyle affords modest trappings. Keeyes isn't a household name, but he's one of the few Fort Worth filmmakers who has made a movie recently and seen it distributed at a rate that indicates it will recoup its money and perhaps turn a profit by year's end. American Nightmare is an $80,000 straight-to-video horror movie shot almost entirely in Tarrant County. Scenes were filmed at several Fort Worth homes and at a Cleburne school. Local bands scrambled to offer songs for the soundtrack. American Nightmare won't be winning Academy Awards, but the cast and crew boosted their résumés and poised themselves for other opportunities. Keeyes is currently trying to raise money for the next film project he's planning in Tarrant County, despite the area's challenges. "Fort Worth has got incredible landscapes for shooting movies and a very diversified crew of people to work, but Fort Worth hasn't promoted itself," he said. Keeyes praised former Fort Worth Star-Telegram movie critic Michael H. Price for co-founding and directing the Fort Worth Film Festival, which was formed in 1997 and has attracted actor Gregory Peck and director John Waters. "Mike wanted to see Fort Worth start standing on its own," Keeyes said. Fort Worth's film community is standing on shaking legs, however, and has yet to emerge from Dallas' shadow. Fort Worth investors lack enthusiasm for movies, in part because local media outlets, including Fort Worth Weekly, downplay the film community, Keeyes said. "It's the media that allows it to build by reporting on films and writing articles about the directors and actors," he said. "Independent films rely on word of mouth and media to get the word out. The next Steven Spielberg could be sitting right here in the Metroplex." Promising filmmakers often head to Los Angeles or Austin. Kara Harshbarger graduated from Texas Christian University in 1996 with a film degree and didn't hang around. She had interned on Walker, Texas Ranger but was stymied by a lack of feature film production. "In my senior year, no films came through," she said. She could only recall one film being shot locally during her years at TCU. She moved to Los Angeles, where she had no contacts and little experience. "The biggest reason I felt like I needed to go is I just knew there were more chances," she said. "There were more films being made, and the chances of me getting a job were better. I soon figured out that there were even more people out there trying to get jobs. It was incredibly hard." Her game plan, sketchy as it was, veered off course almost immediately. She handed out hundreds of résumés to studios and production companies with little response. To pay rent, she did odd jobs that had nothing to do with movies. She fought homesickness and called her parents in Keller a couple of times saying she was coming home. But she always changed her mind and rededicated herself. Her first job in the movie industry was at a "shady film company" that she suspected was actually a money-laundering business, she said. Her next movie job paid $50 a week for 18-hour days working on an independent film with a "scary, temperamental director who said she stole from a 7-Eleven to get the money, and I don't doubt her," Harshbarger said. Next came a filing job. "I literally had a pile of paper next to me and that's what I did for 10 hours," she said. "That stack just kept getting bigger and bigger. I thought there's got to be a better way. I was willing to start at the bottom, but I wanted to at least be learning something." Her turning point came when a co-worker mentioned the name of a casting director who might be hiring. Harshbarger applied for a job but was told she didn't have experience. Harshbarger pleaded her way into a job as a casting director's assistant. She sifted through portraits, set up auditions and sessions with actors, and talked to agents. The job paid little but put her into contact with industry people. Her warm personality and enthusiastic nature forged crucial business friendships that would help her direct her first feature film. After working as a casting assistant on 1998's Clay Pigeons, Harshbarger jumped to producer's assistant on Paulie, a family film featuring a then-unknown Hallie Kate Eisenberg, who would go on to gain fame as the "Pepsi girl" in tv commercials. "It was the best learning experience I ever had," Harshbarger said. "I was able to learn what every department did and how it gets done and staying within budget." Harshbarger struck up a friendship with Eisenberg and her parents and pitched an idea -- she would write and direct a low-budget film short with the fledgling Eisenberg in the lead role. "She was the only actor I knew well enough at this point who would lend me three days' work," Harshbarger said. She assembled a crew who would work for next to nothing and raised $16,000 from backers. A Little Inside resulted from Harshbarger's 14-page script that told the story of a young girl and her widowed father. The short did well on the film festival circuit and was picked up by Lifetime Channel, prompting Harshbarger to expand the screenplay to feature length. She wrote a business plan, raised independent financing, gathered a crew, and traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for filming in September 2000. Independent filmmaking is risky, and Harshbarger faced a critical crossroads almost daily. Scenes of a baseball team's spring training camp were being shot in September, a month when leaves start changing in Ohio. Harshbarger needed a week to film, yet it had been raining for days. Finally, Mother Nature cooperated, the skies cleared, and only one orange-leaved tree can be seen in the final print. Other times, Harshbarger couldn't shake trouble as her constant tagalong. The typical Hollywood solution -- money -- was unavailable to her. But she persevered, finished the film, and is currently seeking a distributor. The movie is a tender family film, which limits its marketability, but the movie's potential is boosted by Eisenberg's rapid rise to fame during the Pepsi campaign. A sell-out crowd that included relatives and friends sat in a downtown movie theater Feb. 28 to screen Harshbarger's movie. First, a TCU professor awarded her the school's first Rising Star Award for former film students. Then Harshbarger stood under the blank screen and introduced her film. There was a problem, she said. The movie's print, done in Los Angeles at a cost of $10,000, turned out blurry, which Harshbarger attributed to a projector that overheated and warped the film. There wasn't time or money to make another print. Here she was, about to show her debut film to a packed room, and the scenes were blurry, which takes viewers out of the moment and ruins the mental escapism required for movie magic.NEXT » |
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