Oh years books, it should die. People pay good money to see this
movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone for tend.
Podcasting isn't boring, No off, tell us Royal, who are your heroes?
That's easy? You know the legends of people have paved the way that
came before me. You know we're talking about Johnny cash Merle Haggard. If
I had to choose anyone, I guess it's being George Jones. Happened.
Recording artist Chial Brooks, it's good, Let's go again? Why will we
go again? That was good? That was never the best one? Just
warming up? You open number one record in a right now, I'm tru
Brooks. Oh my god, you are staying with the time so much,
but you've become timeless. God, he smiled down on me. You know,
we're all just really glad to have you home for a while. Dear
Troy. I would like to invite you to Nashville next weekend if you're free.
I'm taking a very extended vacation soon, and it would be an owner
if I could meet you before I go. Best George Jones. Mister Jones,
it's not over for here. It's not over for anyone until it's over,
and it ain't over yet. This is an old man that's washed up.
He's trying to get what you got. There's true things that are terrible,
and there are terrible things that are true. You musician, hell's all.
It's Nashville. Everybody down. Here's a musician and singing all my life,
but I did't. Nobody found me yet. It is a damn beautiful
wild It doesn't matter if you are number one or number one million anymore.
You can hear it as songs. But come on face to face with him,
that's when you really realize that he's in pain. Hey George, Hey,
folks, will do a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your
host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking to Mickey Reese, is
the director, writer, and star of the recent film Country Gold. When
it was proposed that I speak to the director of a surreal, comic and
musical film, I said, sure, let's do it up. The film
should be available for you now to rank or purchase on your favorite streaming platform.
Enjoyed the movie, and I hope you enjoyed the interview. You are
a very prolific guy. Actually, I didn't realize that I had one of
your movies on my watch list forever. I've been trying to find Strike Dear
Mistress and Cure his Heart since I came out in twenty eighteen. Yeah,
it's on the Alamo on Demands. All right, great, I will definitely
check that out. I really liked that one. That was an early one
before we started working with Cruise and making quote unquote real movies. So it's
still has that very low budget aesthetic. A love Michael, but no budget.
Let's say no budget. You're from Oklahoma, set right. I never
realized that they had such a film scene out there until I went to Kansas
and attended film festivals out there. Well, we've got the tax rebate.
We've got a pretty big tax rebate here. It's like New Mexico or Atlanta,
like in that vein. I mean, let's see, we got kill
into the Blower Moon here. We did that and like Tulsa King Reservation dogs.
So yeah, we've got some cool stuff. It's coming up. So
how about you, where do you fit into this whole scene? Now?
And you talked about working with real cruise. How long has that been going
on? The first time I worked with a like fool crew where we had
head sung in every department was Climate of the Hunter. So that was the
way directly after Strike Your Mistress. So we've done Climate the Hunter and Agnes
and now Country Gold. I see full Groves. I mean, you know,
like having ten people, it's not like we're not working about fifty people
or anything. And the crew that would be wild. Do I have a
crane and a dolly and all that kind of stuff? Yet? Yeah,
we've got we got little tracks we use, but that's about the furthest extent.
Talk to me about Country Gold. Where did the idea for this one
come from? Before the movie? Before Strike your Mistress was called Alien.
It's like reimagining him, but Elvis Pressley, Elvis and Priscilla's kind of like
tumultuous marriage, and it was mostly interested in just capturing the kind of like
the American iconography of Elvis and just how in a black and white setting of
just because essentially you put anybody in an Elvis costume and everybody's going to go,
that's Elvis, do you know what I mean? So this one was
the same situation. It was like, we want to make another movie like
that, this alternate history situation, like going off like who could it be?
Who could be the next one. We're still trying to figure that out
now because I'm trying to make three of them, trying to make a trilogy
out of it. When Garth Brooks was said, it was like, that's
perfect because he's always He's got that album where he wears the white and black
and the black cowboy hat and it's just you look at that album and you're
like, Bastard Brooks. Anybody could play Garth Brooks because he's about the clearly
it's good Brooks. He's got the shirt in the hat on. Filling in
black and white gives you a license to just where every image can look iconic.
More like finding the character, like the character is Garth Brooks. It's
not necessarily have to have anything to do with the real Garth Brooks, but
this is the character, the look of Garth Brooks, and then we're putting
him into an iconic seventies movie or something like that, like he's a star.
Where did you find your main actor? Ben Hall, the guy who
play Yarn shows so he's in climate of the Hunt. You're and Agnes and
we've been working together for a bit now, we've made I guess four movies
together, and he's just fantastic and just basically like he's the secret weapon.
He's the secret sauce and all of it, although it's not much of a
secret. Just all right, so this movie, who has been Hall gonna
play? That's how it's been. And your other main character, like,
he's the one who looks very familiar to me. You're talking about the guy
playing Troll Brooks. Yeah, let's be I know. Yeah, I didn't.
It was not I didn't sign up to play the role. That was
not my attention. Necessarily the gentleman I wanted to play the role, was
like, didn't really work out on the timing wasn't necessarily on our side for
him, and so I was like, I can look like Arthur, is
it really a pitcher? Was like I needed character needed to be smaller than
Ben Hall. He needed to be smaller than George Jones in this and all.
He's not a huge guy. So we could couldn't have Garth being huge
and tall and then been haulbing that. So it was like, all right,
I'll go ahead and take the reins. I'll do it. I can
put a cowboy hat on the Barth shot, like I said, anybody can
and look like Garth Brooks. So I was like, all right, let's
do that. And then I just played it like I thought Mason, the
gentleman that I originally wanted would have played it, which is he's got this
kind of like very cocky, like this kind of insecure like Roboto like this
kind of confidence that can easily be broken down and easily be turned into someone
humble. And so I was trying to channel that. I'm not really an
actor, but I've always thought most times, but you just need someone that
can talk in front of the camera and then the script can lead them there
in that way. And so that was what I was doing with just like
all right, to be the standout or anything, I just need to move
the picture. Because Ben Hall, he's the actor, He's the one who
needs to shine. I just need to be there to feed him his lines.
So that's how I tick that approach. So how did the project come
together. I talked to some local finance seers. I talked to some people
with money. We didn't do too much money. But I talked to some
friends and some people that Epp the put in for movies before we got the
funding together, and then it was like, all right, team, we're
gonna make this. Split the difference between climate and agnus as far as budget
goes, and whip for it. Honestly, Now, like preparing another movie,
you asking that question, I am like, I don't even know.
We'll remember. It was a whirlwind, the whole thing, just like we
started seeing all right, we're gonna make this movie, and then we withdraw
all the motions and then eventually we're on set. Hard to like imagine all
of the things we went through, But I'm about to go through it again.
So I bet you I could answer this question better in a couple months,
and then I'd be like, oh, yeah, I remember all the
things we had to do. Well, we've made so many movies. I'm
surmmarized that you don't have it down into a science. Now. Well,
every movie is different, because if I was making the same movie every time,
it might be easier. But whenever you're getting interested from the more from
the horror world, from the genre world, and having so your money coming
from that, and then you announced that you want to make a black and
white comedy about some country singers, but the well dries up rope wicks.
You got to start from square one. Tell me about your cinematographer, because
the movie looks fantastic. That's Sam Calvin is a godsend. We first worked
together on a movie called Arrows Arrows ab Outrageous for Chune and it was because
some mumblecore movie, but basically we shot it like where in the vein of
like, all right, we're not going to use any lights. There's no
lights in this movie. And it was me warming up to using a cinematographer,
especially one who was experienced like Sam, because I was just like,
I don't want to go into a big project and do not know what the
hell I'm doing as far as directing a cinematographer. But it turns out they
don't really have to when they're good. Then he shot Climate and he shot
Agnes and this is our fourth thing to do together, and yeah, he's
just he's a local CINM photographer here, cinematographer here in Oklahoma, and he
is great and we just like really see eyed eye and have a lot of
the same similar interests and kind of the same favorite movies. February of twenty
twenty one. We had yet to get the vaccine or anything. You're still
mid pandemic a little right the heart of COVID. Yeah, oh man,
how did that affect you? It was just annoying. Just having to wear
masks is annoying when you're like trying to make a movie, especially when you're
an actor. Can having the mask on and like, all right, take
it off, now it's time to shoot. And did a short kind of
roll out of Reservation Dogs, which is a much bigger set, and that
was during COVID and just cadn't imagine. It just seems so much worse to
have a crew that size and everybody's got to abide by these COVID rules.
Obviously we did all the COVID stuff and yeah, I think that's the only
thing. It's just so I'm not saying it's unnecessary. It was certainly necessary
time, but no one wanted to get COVID. But it was just like,
ah, this would be better if we didn't have to do this,
especially having shot your entire life without it, and now it's the masks are
annoying, A big deal, small price to pay no one dot. So
that's good. You're putting together all you're pre prod while you're in the pandemic
as well. Yeah to being in the s I hope we don't have to
do it again. I'm not sure what the rules are now because we haven't
charged movie system, but I'm not sure what the SAG rules are if you're
supposed to continue wearing masks or not. But and hopefully not like to get
back to making movies the way I'm used to. There's a challenge every day,
but they're usually small challenges, especially with this one. This I had
to blast on this one. I think everybody had a really good time on
this when the morale was always very hot because and also just god, making
a comedy it's just so much more fun. It's just so much easier for
everybody, is saying a good mood when you're making something funny. The way
that you bring the comedy out in so many different ways, Like the first
time you had a segment where you introduce animation, I'm like, Okay,
I didn't really see this coming, but this works. The trick is for
me, it's to not write jokes. There's no jokes written. It's just
like the scenario. The situations we're creating are so absurd that it's it's easy
to mind comedy from. So I think writing jokes is where I think I'd
be terrible at. But I think even watching movies, I'm just like,
f I don't like it when they write jokes because especially when they're not funny,
because then it's just forced. And so I try not to have any
jokes written in there. So like when you're reading it, you're thinking you're
reading a drama, and then you get there and on the day and everything's
so ridiculous. It's like, oh see how this could be funny. As
soon as those little kids start talking with the slowed down voices, I'm like,
Okay, yeah, this really works for me. Yeah, but there's
no jokes written. No, they're just saying the most normal shit you can
say. You've got another co writer credit on this, John Selfage. Can
you tell me a little bit about him? Yeah, John Slis and I
we've written a lot of movies together hand, but we've written the last three
for sure. He co wrote Climbing the Hunter with me and act and this
one. We've actually written like three other scripts since then and they're just like
making their way around development health. But yeah, he's just great. He
just knows how to add like the layers that I need that I wouldn't be
able to add otherwise, you know what I mean. It's like like I'm
the ceiling one that will be like, hey, let's do all this greatest.
Definitely he'll ground it for me. So it's a really good partnership.
But also he's educated and I'm not. And that so why George Jones of
all country legends, we're trying to think of who the other person could be
in that Garth is embarking on this mission with, and it's George Jones.
For me was the kind of the one that I didn't hear about as much
like he wasn't this great like Burrow Hagger or Waylon Jennings or Johnick. But
also they didn't seem as I feel like George Jones is important to country music
artists, do you know what I mean? It seems like he's the kind
of guy that Garth would look up to. In fact, I do think
we've found an interview where he that was very similar to the one in the
movie where he does mention George Jones being a hero with his but it just
didn't have as much weight on it as this does. But yeah, it
just seemed like the guy that's like that that country artists are really really admire,
I thought be fitting, but also like he doesn't have as far as
I though, he doesn't have the personality that like, you know, especially
not his music. Isn't that the same personality that like Waylon Jennings does or
Johnny Cash does or something to where those are Those persons are so specific that
you can't create an alternate character for And then you've got Michael Shannon out there
basically doing your leg work and prepping the audience for Here's Who George Jones is.
Yeah, and I've not seen that show yet, but I'm sure it's
fantastic, But that one is probably, I would imagine, closer to the
real thing than ours. So I know the film has played a few festivals.
Now what's the next step for it? So it's doing the years right
now. I think we did oh twenty two twenty two cities, I believes
something like that. We did San France, Chicago, and Denver. Last
night tonight, I'm actually doing Oklahoma City, and I'm very excited about that
and doing Tulsa tomorrow, then Dallas Sunday, and then it's doing a bunch
of other day. It's one in the whole Wakage on Sunday too, so
they on Tuesday a before it comes out for streaming. We're all the seed.
And then you said you were already working on the next one. Working
on the next one. Yeah, it's called The Cool Tenor. It's about
a retired widow weds an unstable jazz enthusiasts who becomes obsessed with avenging the widow's
late husband's death. It's a revenge thriller with or drama, a lot of
comedy and love story and a little bit of sci fi. Mickey, thank
you so much for your time. This was great talking with you. They
thank you, Mike, and I look forward to seeing the next one.
And I look forward now to going back and checking out Strike your Mistress cures
Art. Oh, I'd love you too, all right, well too.
When in northol Carolina went back in the hill, me and my old baby,
and he had him still he brew the Waden line until the sun went
down, and then can tell him a jug and it passed around mighty mighty
pleasing back his corns. Queen, what lighten well? The team and team
and revenue is too searching for pleases were remade his brow. They were looking
trying to book him up a pappocam on Bookingho wh where I laughed, foll
happy wight ain't called his brow? Why Lightning said of my mountain dew,
I still got a little sipping right away I knew, and my eye bulled
out in my face turned blue lighting it started flashing. Thunder started flashing.
Why light where the team man, team and revenues too? Searching for please?
Where remains bru They were looking trying to look at but I'm happy,
gim on cooking? Why lighten well? The cdy snicker came and he said,
I'm tough. I think I want to taste that tarful stuff. He
took once his look and he dranking bout down and I heard him. I'm
moaning as he hid the wool ground by him. Might please and your papist
corns please shoo the GMM team and revenue is too searching far please were remain
They were looking trying to book him with my Papa booking White light