“Making a Stephen King’s story into a Southwest Folktale” by Richard Thompson
Making a Stephen King’s Story Into a Southwest Folktale.
The motivation behind my project is to shoot a story that holds personal importance to me as it was one of the first short stories I had read as a youth from my father’s library of books. I have always been a reader, and this story, about how important stories are to people, despite – or due to – the voice telling them, has held a lasting hold onto how I have been a storyteller for the entirety of my life. After being granted the ability to shoot this film, I found something that I could honor to the author, to myself, to those who work on it, and to the audience.
My plan to film this short has already begun and will proceed as I am determined, and I have been fortunate to have worked tirelessly with so many artists – both on stage and on screen – in my region that I am confident in the support I can find. I have been blessed with years of stage work from the beginnings of community theater to being able to work within the largest equity theater in the state – not just as an actor, but as a learned director, crewmate, and team member.
My plan includes working with local establishments and scenic areas in the region finding ways to mitigate production costs through in-kind work trades (filming commercials for establishments in lieu of payment and working on other projects for other filmmakers that join the production for instance), reaching into my rolodex of professional actors, G&E crew, and production companies (including Chosenfilmproductions) to fill in any production gaps with equipment, resources, and insights for streamlined production, and finally, refining a robust pre-production plan for which a 6 day max shooting schedule can be completed that fits with the incredible working actors and crew that believe so much in me that they want to work on this project for which has no commercial ability, but instead will promote a quality filmmaking production from a widely known author.
My artistic vision is shaping the core elements of the story for which has been adapted to be filmed as a ‘Southwest Folk Tale’, that not only carries a strong cast of people of color, but employs a diverse cast of talented members of the community that highlights a more truthful take of the southwest than what decades of myopic perspectives had maligned by pretending the early wild west was filled only of John Wayne cowboys and non-descript Indians. Following a cinematic structure that combines Ari Astor’s ‘Hereditary’ and P.T. Anderson’s ‘There Will be blood’, my vision is creating a slow burn tale of PTSD and war in a post-civil-war southwestern town that will – ideally – not only tell a heartbreaking story of solitude and trauma, but provide insight into how diverse, multicultural, and black the southwest – as we have been taught – truly was.
– Richard ‘Chomps’ Thompson (January 8, 2025)
