By Terry Keefe
Sedona: the Movie, the second feature film from filmmaker Tommy Stovall, reminded me of a very fun cross-blending between the Kafka-esque comedy of After Hours, and the road movie plot staple of a stranger breaking down in a very odd town. The film intercuts two stories. First, we meet Tammy (played by Frances Fisher), who does, in fact, break down in Sedona, Arizona (when a plane lands on the road behind her) en route to a huge business meeting in Phoenix. She’s forced to spend the better part of the day with some very eccentric Sedona characters, portrayed by actors Beth Grant, Barry Corbin, Christopher Atkins, Kylee Cochran, and Lin Shaye (who you’ll remember as the Cameron Diaz’s very tanned next-door neighbor in There’s Something About Mary), amongst others.
Tammy’s story is paralleled by the more serious tale of Scott (Seth Peterson), a workaholic executive who goes hiking in the mountains outside Sedona with his son, only to have his child disappear for some time. During their adventures in Sedona, both Tammy and Scott come to life-changing self-realizations. The charming film premiered last month at the Hollywood Film Festival. We spoke to Tommy Stovall shortly thereafter.
Did anything in particular inspire the story of Sedona: the Movie?
Tommy Stovall: We moved to Sedona 9 years ago from Texas and quickly entrenched ourselves in the community. Sedona is full of wonderful and fascinating people with interesting stories and we thought it was rich with material for a movie, or even a TV series. In fact, one of the first people we met after we moved here was our friend Deb Lovejoy, who would come over to our house a lot for movie nights. I told her early on that I thought she would make a great movie character, and a few years later when I wrote the script for Sedona, I put her into the story! Beth Grant plays her. I knew that Sedona would be a gorgeous backdrop. I actually came up with a lot of my ideas for the movie while hiking out on the trails here.
(Tommy Stovall working with Frances Fisher, above.)
What has the response in Sedona been to the film?
The response has been incredible! We previewed the movie earlier this year here at the Sedona International Film Festival, and people came out in droves to see it, thankfully. My biggest concern about doing this movie was how people here would feel about it. Even though it has a lot of comedy, the last thing I wanted was for people to think the movie makes fun of Sedona. It’s impossible to do anything without offending somebody, but so far no one has told me they were offended by the movie. And I’ve asked.
Were there any westerns or comedies that also served as inspiration? I'm sort of thinking After Hours and U-Turn, but I'm sure there are others!
One of the challenges of the script was working with more than one storyline. So I studied other movies with multiple overlapping stories like Grand Canyon and Love Actually. The thing we always said from the get-go was that it would be like the series "Northern Exposure," which I was a big fan of. So it is incredibly ironic and way too cool that we have Barry Corbin in the movie!
How was Frances Fisher cast and could you speak about working with her a bit?
It was all because of Beth Grant. When the idea of Beth playing Deb came up, I actually found Beth’s Facebook page and just sent her a message through it, not knowing if she would even get it. She responded immediately and we enthusiastically cast her very soon after that. Beth and Frances were working together on their own project at the time, so Beth brought up the idea of Frances playing Tammy. She asked if she could give Frances the script and I, again, very enthusiastically said “yes!” And then, lucky for us, Frances said “yes.” In working with her, she and I had to hit the ground running because she arrived in Sedona pretty late the night before our first day of shooting. We had literally no prep time, so we would talk about the character and script on the fly as we went along. That was a challenge, of course, but it certainly helped that she’s so unbelievably amazing, and her attention to detail is incredible.
How many days did you shoot?
We shot 23 days – a pretty fast pace.
What was the biggest challenge of the production of the film?
Well, money is always the biggest challenge working with a low budget, because it limits time, resources, everything. So you have to be creative on many different levels. But we were very fortunate in that we got a lot of help from the community – local businesses, residents, organizations – people who wanted to be a part of it and recognized how beneficial this project could be for all of Sedona. It really became a community event.
You managed to get quite a bit of production value, particularly with the “plane landing on the road” scene. How was that shot?
Again, we had to get very creative for that scene! We were hoping to be able to actually land the plane on the highway and we spent a lot of time planning to do that. But as it turned out, we weren’t able to land the plane for real, so we did the best we could with camera tricks and visual effects.
What are you working on next?
There could very well be some kind of sequel or two to this one – we’ll see what happens. I have a couple of scripts from other writers I’m interested in as well. And I’d love to do a really cool, smart, hip horror movie!
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