GRACIE ROSE

Gracie Rose (Rebekah Dryden) is a young woman in a funk; trapped in her small Kansas town, the only caretaker to her rapidly deteriorating grandparents, she still mourns the unexpected loss of her husband (and high school sweetheart). At night, she tends bar and imagines a better life. The possibility of such a life opens up with the arrival of Eddie (Jason Miller), a mysterious stranger who rolls into her tiny world and sweeps her off her feet; but as Gracie finally has something to look forward to, Eddie’s past begins to catch up with him.

Gracie’s story, and Eddie’s, is the focal point of Gracie Rose, which is the new drama from Films On Consignment. It’s our eleventh feature film, and is (we hope) in many ways the accumulation of everything that we’ve done until now—funny, heartbreaking, moving, singularly unique independent cinema.

In many ways, the story and the screenplay came quickly, but it was also the result of over a decade of making a certain kind of film—the kind of film that was shot in Kansas, but wasn’t supposed to be Kansas. With some minor exceptions, most of our films were intended to have the urban feel of a bigger city; they were shot in Wichita, but they could have been anywhere, which is all good and well except it doesn’t leave your film with much of an identity. In the midst of writing my umpteenth “generic big city” scenario, I realized that the one thing that we had at our fingertips, the one thing that could make our film stand out, was the one thing I wasn’t using: the unique small-town Kansas locations that were right in our back yard.

The story of the drifter who hides in a tiny Kansas town was something that had been in the back of my head for a while, but I’d never been able to get my head around it—particularly an acceptable ending. When I had my mini-revelation during the writing of the more cosmopolitan screenplay, I immediately figured out the ending, and the rest of the movie came together in my head almost immediately. I hurried to finish the other thing so I could start Gracie Rose (for once, I had the title right away); a month later, the script was done.

I showed it around and got positive response, especially from Rebekah and Miller, which was a relief since the roles had been written for them. Another huge coup came when Lonny Quattlebaum agreed to come on board as director of photography; I knew that I had to collaborate with him on this one or it just wasn’t worth the effort. The rest of the cast and crew fell into place, a nice combination of people we’d worked with on previous films, Theatre on Consignment productions, and Special TV.

Pre-production was in full swing by late spring, while I was also producing and directing a stage production of American Buffalo. Lonny found deals on equipment while I scrounged money together and found props and locations, thanks to the help of Lonny, co-star Bryan Welsby, and producer Cherice Henderson.

Finding the right locations became one of our biggest concerns; since it had prompted the whole movie, I had some pretty specific ideas about what kind of places we wanted to shoot at, and how they would affect the overall look of the film. We used a combination of interiors and exteriors in Wichita, Park City, Haysville, Viola, Conway Springs, and points between to create the fictional town of Garson, Kansas. Favors were asked, owners were begged, and tracking down the powers that be at the all-important gas station location (which had been closed for years) turned into a months-long mission that thankfully, eventually, paid off handsomely.

After two weeks of rehearsals, the two and a half week shoot went like a dream. Lonny connected with Henry Nelson, who cut us a great deal on a huge selection of lights, C-stands, and miscellaneous gear because he wanted to help out and be a part of the process. Assistant directors Navarro Parker and Bob Thomas, sound man Herb Nelson, and gaffer Nick Dryden worked their tails off, while the entire cast (including Welsby, Anna Kraus, Mac Welch, Earnest Roberson, David Bailey, Meridith Jones, Amber Malott, Megan Upton-Tyner, Terri Ingram, Deb Goin, and—for a touch of class—Joyce Cavarozzi and Dick Welsbacher) was pitch-perfect. Rebekah Rine did a yeoman’s job rounding up our background actors, as did Renee Purtee with the costumes.

But that, as they say, is the fun part. Next you’ve got to put that mess together. 1st AD Navarro Parker got us started, logging the hours of footage and getting them ready to cut. Then I captured the footage and did the first two cuts from New York, which took a few months. The edit files were then sent to Lonny (thanks to the miracle of the world wide interwebs), who did the next several passes—tinkering, tweaking, playing with structure, polishing some things, starting other things anew. Once that was done, the picture-locked cut was sent to composer Carter Green, who assembled a beautiful score (mostly of expert acoustic guitar work). While he did his thing, Lonny worked on color correction and spent (literally) hundreds of hours on the very difficult final sound mix—a tough job, since we used a variety of different microphones (both lav and boom), resulting in a bouillabaisse of varying audio qualities and levels.

Now that the mixing and post and finishing touches are complete, Films On Consignment is preparing to make its first serious festival push since My Day In The Barrel, which never really got put out into the market place, due to our lack of a film print. That was almost a decade ago—needless to say, there’s more festivals, and all of them accept video. So it should be interesting to see where this one goes.

-bailey