Sets, lights, makeup and hours and hours of student rehearsals go into staging a typical college theatre production. But many of those students yearn for a bigger stage-the bright lights and adrenaline rush of moviemaking.
Why not somehow marry the worlds of theatre and film? In an age when filmmaking is accessible to more people, it seems natural to bring these two experiences together. Georgetown College theatre professor Ed Smith didn't just ask that question, he set about making it happen.
Smith called on former student and budding screenwriter Jesse Harris to flesh out a script he had been working on. He assembled students and some local professionals to be the cast and crew. He begged and borrowed equipment. And, more than a year ago, the cameras starting rolling on "Surviving Guthrie," Georgetown's first feature film and a pioneering venture for a college theatre department.
When I caught up with Smith to discuss the process, he said he was "still recovering." He knew going in that making a movie was draining, but he admits, "I had no idea." The long hours, the tedious takes and retakes, the technical challenges, and reducing hours and hours of film down to a manageable length all took their toll.
For one nighttime scene early in the film, Smith recalls he came to the set at 5 p.m. and didn't get home until 6 a.m. the next day. "We were there long enough for the birds to start singing at the end of the shoot," he recalls.
"Don't get me wrong," Smith said, "It's been a lot of fun. But it's really hard. It's been the hardest thing I've done professionally."
He attributes much of it to the multitude of jobs that everyone on set had to take on, from dollying cameras to painting sets to catering. "Now I know the reason why there are a lot of names at the end of a movie. Those are all people who are doing important things."
But it was all worth it, he says, when "Surviving Guthrie" premiered to a standing-room-only audience at the Kentucky Theatre on March 27. The more than 800 in attendance were not only Georgetown students and alums, and their families and friends, but a general audience from the community who was attracted to the film itself.
"We really tried to make it a movie of broad appeal that any audience would like," Smith said. Based on the response he received that opening night, he says he felt reassured that he had achieved his goal.
The film, about an unruly college professor and the daughter who sets out to reform him, will probably be submitted to six to 10 festivals, Smith says. "Really, the entrance fee of a Sundance isn't too much bigger than anyone else's, so it's worth a shot. But we'd like to try our hand at smaller ones first."
The payoff of a positive showing at a festival is the possibility of acquiring a distributor or investors for future efforts, Smith notes. But he doesn't deny that it's incredibly competitive out there right now.
"The good thing is that everybody can make a movie now pretty cheaply. The bad thing is everybody can make a movie now pretty cheaply," he said. "So, cutting through the clutter is the challenge. If everyone's in the marketplace yelling, how do you yell louder? Ultimately, if the movie's good enough, it'll find an audience."
There is a positive side to the explosion of film and filmmakers now happening. Smith calls it a democratization. As more and more filmmakers enter the arena without huge special effects and car chases, they will have to focus on telling good stories. "The growth of telling stories this way would mean we could hear some different stories," he said. "That would not be a bad thing. There's still plenty of demand for a traditional Hollywood story. But right now, I have to root for the underdogs because I'm one of them."
Nurturing students in independent films from within the confines of a small college theater program seems perfectly fitting to Smith. "It does fit in with the liberal arts tradition, synthesizing different disciplines, of giving students experiences they might not get elsewhere," he said. "And teaching them to use their knowledge and their abilities to work on real things inside and outside the classroom."
Ed Smith survived "Surviving Guthrie," and he did it with his love of film still burning brightly. He talks enthusiastically about the thrill we all experience when a good story unfolds on the big screen. He says it's the appeal of "the waking dream. That's what movies are. That's how they get their power over us."
Review of Surviving Guthrie
On the campus of fictional Paulsen College, Professor Carter Guthrie (Joe Gatton) is a holy terror. In his journalism classes, he bullies, belittles and berates his students. During office hours, you might find him in a drunken stupor after downing a few too many bourbons. And yet, his classes are always full, and surviving a semester with Guthrie is a badge of honor.
Even though Guthrie is tenured, the college administration has had enough of him. Along comes a wealthy alumnus (Adam Luckey) who offers a big donation if Guthrie will reform. A college dean comes up with a scheme for Guthrie's estranged daughter Ally (Jessie Rose Pennington), who's also a student at the college, to either whip her father into shape or be kicked out of school on a trumped-up charge.
The setup for the film's story may be a bit contrived, but the dynamics between the characters are very real. Pennington, as the daughter who initially wants nothing to do with her jerk of a father, and Gatton, as the father who may not be such a jerk after all, make the tangled relationship-and the picture-work. Both actors are familiar to Lexington audiences. They make it look easy as their characters come into conflict, uncover a past and find more of a bond there than they realized.
Of course, you'd expect some glitches in a bare-bones production. The quality of acting can vary and the pacing at times can be a bit uneven. But talented screenwriter Jesse Harris has created compelling characters, deft comic touches and displays all the signs of real promise. Director of photography Marc Gurevitch of Trigger Happy Productions makes the campus of Georgetown College, where the film was shot, look gorgeous. And Pennington lights up the screen.
Director Smith and screenwriter Harris have put together a thoughtful and solid film that has much more going for it than any first-time film really has a right to, considering its minimal budget and mostly inexperienced crew. Its message about celebrating the quirky and even obnoxious people in our lives has a nicely subversive and nonconformist bent.
After experiencing firsthand just how hard it is to make a movie, Smith says he is now more forgiving of the efforts of others in the business. I agree. I'm all for cutting some slack for novice filmmakers who labor with meager budgets and incredible constraints. It makes no sense to compare their efforts to even the most modest Hollywood efforts. The two are not in the same league, and shouldn't be evaluated as such.
"Surviving Guthrie" has a lot going for it. It creates authentic characters you grow to care about and themes that are universal. It's a film whose heart is in the right place.