Movie Director discusses New Movie with WJCL's Jenifer Andrews
A new film is premiering in Seattle, and the company that is making it is based right here in Savannah. Here to tell us all about the movie are the director, James Kicklighter, and screenwriter Mark Ezra Stokes. Welcome to you guys. You're a twenty-two-year-old movie director? I need ID, please.
Well, we've been working together for so many years now. Age doesn't matter in film. You just work.
This is almost like a reality show. It's almost like a dream come true. How does this happen at twenty-two years old? You've got several movies out, and one that's going to be premiering in Seattle. So lead us up to how you got to this point.
When I was sixteen, I met Mark Stokes over here. He was a professor at Brewton-Parker College, and Mark was about to direct a documentary.
That documentary was That Guy: The Legacy of Dub Taylor, about a Western actor that nobody knew about, but he'd worked on something like five hundred films. I brought James over to speak to some high schoolers, because he was a high schooler, and I was impressed with his hard work. I brought him on as assistant director, and pretty soon after that, executive producer.
My gosh. And then the rest is history.
The rest is history.
And you guys have been together ever since. Well, tell us a little bit about the movie that's going to be premiering in Seattle in, what, two weeks?
Yes, two weeks, believe it or not. Followed.
Let's see. I don't know if you can see this or not. Here we go.
Followed is a socially conscious zombie film in which the zombies represent society's oppressed and disadvantaged. It's based on a story from a Hugo Award-winning writer, which is the biggest award a writer can get in sci-fi. Mark and I and our production partner, his wife Casey, were very fortunate to get our hands on this property from a writer in New Mexico, who brought it to us at almost this time last year, and we've been developing it ever since.
Wow. So will we get to see the film in Savannah? We've been seeing some of the pictures.
We hope so. We're hoping to take it to the Savannah Film Festival in November. If not, we will have some kind of special screening event, because we also shot a documentary in Ethiopia last year that Mark directed, and both of them have a lot of thematic similarities. So we're hoping, at some point, either way, to bring it to Savannah.
This is amazing. Now, I know you also said that you may have another project, and you may actually shoot that one here in Savannah. Imagine that. You live here in Savannah, and it's become like the movie mecca here.
Of course. Mark's been working a lot with the extras in Savannah. Savannah really is becoming a mecca for filmmaking, as is the state of Georgia, in fact. So we really would love to shoot a movie here in Savannah.
Earlier we were talking, and I was asking how you go about deciding what film you want to do. I know there are a lot of things in play, plus how you attract the actors. Because if I'm, say, Demi Moore, I'm not going to sign up until I see who else is going to be in the movie, right?
Sure, it all goes into that. There are obviously a lot of pieces of the puzzle that you have to put together. That's where the three of us serve as producers and put those pieces together. Luckily, as our portfolio grows, and as the quality of our work grows, people see that quality, and it's not that hard of a sale. And now that we're a SAG signatory, it's easier for us to get those professional actors.
You've reached the point now where you're starting to be able to do that. You said you're actually getting to the point where you can start working directly with some of the big names. It's fantastic.
Eventually you get to the point where you're working with agents as initial contacts. But once the agents trust you enough, you can move beyond the agents to the actors, and it's wonderful when you can really start working with them directly.
Unbelievable. All right, well, tell Demi we said hi.
We will, of course.
Thanks so much for coming by. Best of luck to both of you. We'd love to see your work here in Savannah. We appreciate it. We'll be right back.