Sunday, July 31, 2022

Pixies Backup Singer Wants To Make Ableist Rock'n'Roll Flick

There are a few days left, and about a third of the way to go, for U.K. indie drama Tallywacker's fundraising campaign.

The movie is a labor of love for Jeremy Macomber-Dubs, a man of many talents. On the one hand, he is the chairman of the Disability Commission in Northampton. On another, he is a rock guitarist who doesn't let being confined to a wheelchair get in the way of a good jam session.

The budget for Tallywacker is $30,000 U.S. At press time, about two-thirds of that had been raised on Seed and Spark. The current fundraising deadline for the full amount is August 4. The project is a buddy comedy about a pair of musicians (Macomber-Dubs, Chris Goodwin) whose friendship is challenged after their band Tallywacker is recruited to open for a major rock star.

One of Macomber-Dubs former bands opened for The Pixies. He befriended the band and wound up singing background vocals on one of their albums. Macomber-Dubs currently plays in the group Bunnies.

In recent years, Macomber-Dubs has been sharing his frustrations about the depictions of disabled musicians on Facebook. One of those posts caught the attention of Brendan Boogie, a Boston-based writer-director who has since relocated to L.A.

If a pair of collaborators with the last names Dubs and Boogie can't make a good music drama, then the world is doomed. Sure enough, based on those Facebook posts, Boogie came to Northampton to meet with Macomber-Dubs, and subsequently wrote the Tallywacker screenplay.

"I think Brendan's script is incredible," Macomber-Dubs recently told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. "He really understood the issues I was talking about. He wrote scenes about things that had happened to me that I hadn't even told me about. He just intuitively understood so much."


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