Tuesday, August 23, 2011

No-Budget Hot Rod Drama Rolls Into Milwaukee

For Faith Granger, the evolution from car, to car documentary, to car feature was pretty smooth. She bought a 1932 Ford Roadster in Long Beach in 2006; shared a documentary about female hot rod pioneers the next year called The Last of the Hiboy Girls; and from January 2008 through October 2009, on weekends only, filmed her feature film debut Deuce of Spades.

The period drama somehow wound up on Netflix in the spring of 2010 (Granger swears she never submitted it) and had its official theatrical premiere last fall in Fillmore, California. But with a film like this, the exhibition work is never done, so in 2011 Granger has been tirelessly touring Deuces of Spades across the U.S., pulling in next to Milwaukee for screenings August 24th through the 28th. Per her Director's Statement, the movie was a classic labor of love:

Just about everything in the film was donated: Period correct locations, cars, crew and cast. Thanks to the help of my many friends in the local hot rod community, I was able to pull off on a ZERO budget, what it would cost a major studio a good million dollars to film, if not more...

Self-taught and self-powered

The plot of the film involves a woman (Granger) buying a 1932 Roadster and then finding a 1950s era love letter stuck behind one of the seats. As she sets out to find the author of the letter, Johnny Callaway (Timothy Luke), the film flashes back to a time when his roadster was the car to beat.

Granger was able to get Emmy Award winning sound engineer Patrick Cyccone, who has over 100 film and TV credits, to do a post-production mix for free at Electric Entertainment in Hollywood. Since then, the first-time filmmaker has also managed to garner some amazing reviews from the hot rod community as well as a personal endorsement from the company that made her editing software, Sony.

Other current confirmed national tour dates are Kansas City over Labor Day Weekend and parts of Florida in October.

[Deuce of Spades]

No comments:

Post a Comment