COWTOWN BALLROOM...SWEET JESUS!
Robert Butler Kansas City Star 5/7/09
Hot KC film scene has yet to catch fire
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
For years I’ve been hearing that Kansas City is ripe for a moviemaking renaissance.
Members of the local film community say all it would take is one breakout title for this city to establish itself as the new Austin, a hotbed of young directors and cinematic possibilities.
According to this happy scenario, from out of our copacetic little burg would emerge a name — like Austin’s Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise,” “Waking Life”) — around which writers, actors, crew members and other directors would coalesce.
We have the talent here. And we have locations that haven’t already been seen a thousand times in other movies.
We just need the break.
Well, I haven’t yet identified our local Richard Linklater. We’re yet to produce that one earth-shaking film that puts KC on the movie map the way Nirvana and grunge established Seattle as an alternative rock scene.
But things are definitely percolating.
You can measure it in different ways. Like the locally made films that have been a success on home video.
Last month saw the national release on DVD of “Fling,” John Stewart Muller’s KC-shot movie about good-looking young city dwellers, “open” relationships and the inevitable fallout of infidelity. Brandon (“Superman Returns”) Routh leads the cast. It’s a very smart movie.
New in stores this week is “Matchmaker Mary,” Tom Whitus’ KC-lensed family film about puppies and an incurably optimistic little girl who solves big-people problems. Dee Wallace and Jeff Fahey are among the players. (See the review on Page 12.)
This comes on the heels of Dennis Fallon’s family pic “All Roads Lead Home” with Peter Coyote, Patton Oswalt, Peter Boyle and Jason London. Shot here in 2007, it had a limited theatrical release last fall and came out on DVD a month ago. Along the way it earned a Crystal Dove Seal for excellence in family entertainment.
Lawrence filmmaker Kevin Willmott has had two features accepted by the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. The most recent — the revisionist Western “The Only Good Indian” with Wes Studi — opened the recent Kansas City FilmFest and undoubtedly will get a commercial booking here in coming weeks.
Local auteur Gary Huggins has also fared well on the fest circuit. He has had shorts accepted at both Sundance and South-by-Southwest.
We Midwesterners may seem bland on the outside, but apparently deep, dark things are stirring. We’ve become a hotbed of horror. Lawrence creep-meister Patrick Rea specializes in spooky cinema and is ridiculously prolific, cranking out features and shorts in the time other filmmakers spend working up the nerve to get started. None of his movies has had widespread theatrical release, but on home video they are widely admired by horror fans and are the subject of Internet buzz.
Meanwhile the St. Joseph-filmed “Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula” is entering its second week at the Screenland Crossroads. Timothy Friend’s mash-up of gangster and bloodsucker clichés is a happy blend of gore and tongue-in-cheek goofiness.
Local attorney Terence O’Malley is yet to break out of the Kansas City ghetto, but his two documentaries about our town — “Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time” and “Black Hand Strawman,” a history of the KC mob — have enjoyed tremendous success on local screens.
And Benjamin Meade continues to make slightly off-center documentaries like “Bazaar Bizarre” (about home-grown serial killer Bob Berdella), “Das Bus” (urban bus riders), “American Stag” (early film pornography) and “American Music: Off the Record” (about the disconnect between creative musicians and the radio/record industry that should support them but rarely does).
Meade has developed a cult reputation in some cinema circles but may be too edgy for mainstream success.
Hitting theaters later this month is Joe Heyen’s “Cowtown Ballroom Sweet Jesus,” a doc about the rock emporium at 31st and Gillham that in the early ’70s drew the biggest names in music. It may be too KC-specific to play elsewhere, but it should find a loyal following among area baby boomers.
And that’s just skimming the surface.
I cannot say whether KC will emerge as Hollywood on the Mighty Mo. But an awful lot of stuff is being cooked up here and thrown at the silver screen. Some of it is bound to stick.
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