Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Monahan, a Los Angeles based actor/director who just finished production on his first feature film Anchorage.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Scott. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received in regards to filmmaking was to just get out there and shoot the damn thing. You will find just about every excuse under the sun not to bring your project to life. Don’t listen to those voices, whether they are the voices inside your head, or from the people around you, just get out there and make your film. With just over $10,000 saved, a couple of credit cards, and a script that I had worked on with one of my best friends, we did it, we made a feature film called Anchorage, and we shot it in five days.
Anchorage is a film about two brothers who attempt to drive a trunk full of opioids from Florida to Anchorage, Alaska to cash in big in the land of gold. That plan gets challenged by their surroundings, their shortcomings, and their tendency to dip into their own supply. A split-second act of violence somewhere in the California desert derails their trip and sets the brothers on a crash course with tragedy.
The tone of Anchorage is like the desert itself: long contemplative stretches, a sense of decay, and then the darkness creeps in. Jacob and John hop from an abandoned Air Force Base to a ghost town, from a once-was baseball field to a boarded-up mining site, decrepit structures dying in the middle of nowhere.
When did you decide to start working on this project?
The inception of this collaboration and idea began in 2017 in an underground warehouse venue called Montserrat in a show called Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (Ceaseless Fun). If you aren’t familiar with immersive theater, the short and skinny is imagine theater without the chairs, and you as the audience member get to be immersed in the world of the show, sometimes even having one-on-one interactions with performers. The show had an incredibly talented cast, and one of those cast members was Dakota Loesch, who would soon become one of my closest friends, a fellow Ceaseless Fun company member, and writer of the film Anchorage.
After this production was over we started saying “buddy flick or bust”. We went on to work collaboratively in immersive shows with Ceaseless Fun, while simultaneously working independently on different film and TV projects. Two years later in 2019, we decided that we didn’t want to wait for the stars to align and for us to by chance fall into our dream project on screen together, we decided to write it ourselves.
We spent the better part of a year developing this script together using the techniques and practices we had been honing with collaboratively devised theater and bringing it into the filmmaking process. We brought on our associate director Meredith Treinen (Grief, Re-Lease, Ceaseless Fun Producer) to rehearse with us to find how these characters moved, spoke, thought, and how they differed from us. We would live record improvised scenes together in character, and then transcribe those recordings into our script.
I was given the confidence to direct and create this film because I was inspired by so many artists and friends in this city that have put everything on the line to create their projects. If you are reading this now and have a project that you have always wanted to do, from the very words of Shia LaBeouf himself, “DO IT!!” What on earth have you got to lose?
Why this story?
Both Dakota Loesch and I have been personally affected by the opioid crisis. The same is true of so many of our family and friends, co-workers and neighbors. Here lies the current problem: pharmaceutical companies are destroying America by preying on Americans. Opioids are tearing apart families, killing people of all ages, and the doctors are prescribing more and more and getting bonuses because of it.
Opioids are terrible. You can get hooked by swallowing a pill, but if you start snorting it or (even worse) smoking it, the addiction locks you in so fast that there isn’t a thing you can do about it. In 2010 alone, 85% of the nation’s Oxycodone was prescribed in the state of Florida. 85%. I’ve heard stories of kids stealing them from their grandma who was ninety-two pounds soaking wet and prescribed one-hundred 120mg Oxys per month. That’s enough to kill a mule.
Our film is a very raw and unfiltered look at two brothers who have become dependent on this drug not only as users and abusers but by taking the opportunity created by the ease of access and lack of regulation to acquire large amounts and then sell them. This film isn’t a glorification of drugs but it isn’t a demonization of drug users either. This isn’t a happy-go-lucky journey to the promised land; this is a journey to the heart of a family, the heart of addiction, and the heart of America.
Our hope with this film is that we can bring some awareness to what this drug is doing to the nation on a more microscopic level. This film is about one specific relationship between two brothers. We want to show the darkness of the hold of addiction but in a way that raises some complex questions and leaves some aspects intentionally unanswered so that the audience can walk away with their own answers or interpretations.
How you can help!
The best way for us to raise awareness with this film is by getting as many people to see it as humanly possible. That’s where we need your help. We are one week into a 30-day crowdfunding campaign through Seed & Spark, a film-specific fundraising platform. We are raising $20,000 so that we will be able to get through the expensive process of post-production, editing, sound design, composing, coloring, festival submission fees, and screenings.
One of the incentives for contributing to this film is a ticket to Anchorage: The Immersive Experience, an immersive show where three audience members will hop into the back seat of the Crown Vic with John and Jacob and go for a ride they won’t soon forget. After the show has it’s run in LA we will take it on the road with us as we bring the film and the immersive experience to festivals around the country.
Click this link below to check out our Seed & Spark page. Every contribution, follow, and share brings us closer to our goal, and closer to bringing this film to a theater near you!
https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/anchoragefilm
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge for me was managing stress during the pre-production process. I was feeling like that stress was at a low simmer on the back burner of my mind constantly. If I wasn’t careful it started to permeate other areas of my life. Creating an independent feature is not an easy process. You are often wearing way more hats than you should, which means you are learning on the fly how to do them.
It took me a while to realize that the stress was coming from all of the things I didn’t know, and all the things people tell you you should know, or should be doing, or should have. I needed to release all of these expectations and limiting beliefs I had put on myself, and just step by step follow my gut. Each time I brought a new crew member on, a weight was lifted off my back. I’ll never forget one day during pre-production one of my producers Gia Rigoli, said “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll handle that.” about something I was unsure about. I almost cried. That was the first time someone took something off my plate. I felt so supported.
That’s when I was reminded of one of the reasons I love film so much – the collaborative process. I was very lucky to be surrounded by such kind, intelligent, and extremely talented individuals. And, on top of it all to be making this film with one of my best friends, my brother in the film, and now my brother for life, Dakota Loesch.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
We had just wrapped shooting in Lone Pine, and everyone was getting the cars loaded up, and checking out of their rooms at the Portal Motel. Erin Naifeh (our DP), Dakota Loesch, and I were going to be staying to drive back the next day and shoot B-Roll, while the rest of the crew was leaving that night. There was this bittersweet moment with everyone like we didn’t want it to end. It reminded me of the scene in Hook where Peter Pan is about to fly back home with Maggie and Jack and leave the lost boys. Most of the people in this crew had never met or didn’t know each other and now we were all friends. We had created something together. It’s this magic that exists within the creative process that I love so much. Collectively creating something that is bigger than one person, bigger than whatever your title is, or your role on a project. Creating it and releasing it into the world. It’s small moments like this that make this harsh world we live in feel like Neverland, like maybe magic does exist, but not in sprinkles of pixie dust, but in people. I think we could all use a little more magic.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seedandspark.com/fund/
anchoragefilm - Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/anchoragefilm
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/anchoragefilm
Scott Monahan started his career as a child actor in Tokyo. He studied theatre at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia, before relocating to Los Angeles in 2011. His first feature was the lead role in I Was A Teenage Wereskunk (Amazon Prime) and now as Jacob (Anchorage). Featured roles include Anger Management (FX), Bakers Dozen (Amazon Prime), Love Shot (Netflix, Gravitas Ventures), as well as a lead character on TURNT (Facebook Watch), and Eating Cars (Post-Production). He directed and starred in FILM:ONE, an award-nominated experimental short film. He was an Artistic Director of the international theatre company Play Collaborative Arts and is currently a company member with the immersive theatre company Ceaseless Fun.
www.scottjmonahan.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/
Image Credit:
Cody Burdette, Scott Monahan, Dakota Loesch, Erin Naifeh, Seed & Spark
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