We live in a glorious time for anyone who wants to make an indie movie. Back in the early ’90s, if you wanted to make an indie film, it was still an expensive process. You had to buy reels and reels of 16mm film or 35mm film. Each reel lasted 10 minutes. Those costs added up fast if you wanted 80 minutes of a movie. To make the film look good, you had to rent a decent lighting rig. Add in a sound kit with a boom. Later you’d have to pay a film laboratory to develop your film and print dailies. This would get even more complicated when it came to post-production. You had to have access to a Steenbeck editing machine. The Avid systems were rather costly. Plus you had to find all those people to help you out. You were buying a lot of lunches. Now that we’re deep in the digital revolution, all you need is your smartphone’s 4K camera and cheap editing software for your laptop. Instead of hustling to raise $100,000, a low budget filmmaker of today is spending most of their time trying to find a few people willing to appear in the film or help out. Most microbudget films I’ve seen over the years have been in the horror genre. Directors have used them as a calling card to get hired by a production house or studio. But some people use the microbudget to make films that explore tricky topics that wouldn’t find a large enough crowd to pack a theater. But they are stories that need to be told. Intensely Independent: The Micro-Budget Films of Blake Eckard has two films from the Missouri based filmmaker that delve into a bleak situation without caring about box office returns.
Bubba Moon Face (2011 – 84 minutes) has things going bad for Horton Bucks (Tyler Messner). When his mom dies, he drives back to their small Missouri town. Before he get there, the car breaks down and he has zero clue how to pay for repairs since he’s dead broke. His brother Stanton (Joe Hammerstone) picks him up and learns that Horton doesn’t have cash for a hotel room. Luckily he has space for him at his house in the woods. The funeral for mom isn’t going smooth since Stanton’s not sure what to do. The brothers go shopping for a dress to bury mom in. They end up at a dive bar where Horton runs into Leslie (Misty Ballew). The two once had something going on except Horton was barely over 18 and she was 12. Bad choices are made overnight. When Horton wakes up, he’s confronted by a woman who forces him to take a baby that is supposedly Stanton’s kid. There is no thrilled father and child reunion as Stanton flees. Making things more messed up is the arrival of Horton and Stanton’s dad who has replaced mom with a much younger woman. This is not shaping up to be a good send off for mom.
Coyotes Kill for Fun (2017 – 73 minutes) is about people in a small town who are falling apart. Bev is trying to provide and build a family for her two young children. She hires a babysitter to watch the kids while she works as a mechanic at the local truck repair show. She’s gotten friendly with a fellow mechanic, except she has a boyfriend back home. He’s not a sweet guy and gets rather violent when something he left in the house goes missing. Things get even more threatening when a stranger comes to town and begins to cause trouble. Is Bev needing to flee this smalltown life?
Blake Eckard gives us stories that are rough and bleak that aren’t compromised to make an audience feel good at the end. This is the raw indie spirit that everyone talks about at film school until the afternoon they show up for a pitch meeting and get asked, “Who is going to come see this movie?” Eckard’s film with their micro-budgets don’t need to worry about attracting a million ticket buyers in 10 days. Eckard only has to worry about making sure his film is faithful to the story that needs to be told. The moments on the screen feel real as the raw nerves get exposed between the characters. He doesn’t have to worry about the preview audience cards or if the guys in marketing think a scene will cut into their ability to sell Happy Meals in Belgium. Eckard succeeds in pushing his characters to the edge with no sense of a safety net awaiting them. He’s not prettying up these people like a Terrance Mallick wannabe who craves the beauty of Magic Hour to make his characters shine. He uses the camera and practical lighting to look like he’s hiding in the corner recording the characters. These might not be horror films, but there’s real nightmares taking place in both Bubba Moon Face and Coyotes Kill for Fun. He works with whatever he can to make his films complete. Intensely Independent: The Micro-Budget Films of Blake Eckard is a testament to what a director can do when they don’t let the lack of a budget compromise their emotional vision for the movie.
The Video for both movies is 1.78:1. These were shot on early DV cameras so the quality varies. They have that rough feel that goes well with the emotional terrain. The Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo for both films. You’ll hear baby crying and adults screaming.
Booklet has an essay on Blake Eckard by Andrew Wyatt.
Audio Commentary on Bubba Moon Face has director of photography Cody Stokes along with actors Joe Hanrahan and Joe Hammerstone. They talk about how they met Blake Eckard and how he works. Cody met him at a film festival and told him he wanted to shoot his next film which was this one. Joe had wanted to make the film on 16mm except Stoke showed him what the latest digital camera could do. One of the Joes had to prove he could act without looking like a stage actor. Blake wants films that don’t look Hollywood. Blake used his own kid as the baby.
Jost On Eckard (14:42) has Jon Jost talk about meeting Blake Eckard at a film workshop he was hosting. Eckard came out again to work on Jost’s film Homecoming around 2005. He gets into how he got Blake switching to DV from 16mm. Jost has an issue with Werner Herzog.
Synapse Films present Intensely Independent: The Micro-budget Films of Blake Eckard. Directed by Blake Eckard. Screenplays by Blake Eckard. Starring Joe Hammerstone, Misty Ballew. Sylvia Geiger, Jennifer George, Joe Hanrahan, Brent Jennings, Tyler Messner, Roxanne Rogers, Airanne Martin, Harlan Eckard and Blanche Eckard. Boxset Contents: 2 movies on 1 DVD. Rating: Unrated Release Date: September 10, 2024
