Richard Thompson

He is the filmmaker of The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands Dollar Baby film.

SKSM: Could you start by telling me a little about yourself? Who is Richard “Chomps” Thompson and what do you do?

Richard Thompson: I am a playwright, screenwriter, producer and performer who is honored to apply for this position of bringing ideas to life on the screen. While my writing, directing and acting career has spanned live stage, voice over, film, and contemporary art installations, as a writer I am still a Hearst poet at heart along with being a James Beard nominee.

SKSM: Why the “Chomps” in your name?

Richard Thompson: It was a fun nickname given to me when I was a kick boxing fighter for my martial arts school I trained with. My Friends and colleauges called me it all the time and it stuck.

SKSM: How did you decide that shooting movies was your mission?

Richard Thompson: I have always told stories through my writing and when I was able to start bringing that to stage, I felt something evolve in from that médium, so when a buddy of mine wanted to start filming my scripts, I was completely locked in by that time and never looked back.

SKSM: When did you make The man who would not shake hands? Can you tell me a little about the production? How much did it cost? How long did it take to film it?

Richard Thompson: I had the joyo f making this movie in two different steps – once before COVID and once after. I have been making it ever since I was granted the privilege of being a Dollar Baby licensee. While much of the writing and pre-production was done early on, the majority of production took place this year with shooting happening over an intense 4 day schedule that took place in November of 2024. The total cost (before festival costs) hit roughly 24,000. Pre-production was roughly 4 months of getting everything put together with shooting being an intense 4 days.

SKSM: How come you picked The man who would not shake hands to develop into a movie? What is it in the story that you like so much?

Richard Thompson: 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.

SKSM: You pay homage to the people who lived in the American Southwest in the early 20th century. You decided to film your movie as a Western. Can you tell us a little about this?

Richard Thompson: 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. My vision was to create a slow burn tale of PTSD and war in a post-civil-war southwestern town that not only told a heartbreaking story of solitude and trauma, but provide insight into how diverse and multicultural the southwest – despite how we have been taught – truly was.

SKSM: You also chose a crew of local artists.

Richard Thompson: Nearly the entire cast and crew are local artists that I’ve been fortunate to know and work with in some capacity before.  The Southern Arizona arts community is full of so many incredible talents I could spend hours talking about al lof them. Through my work on stage and screen productions, I have been fortunate to have a great network of creatives that extends throughout the Southwest from California to Texas, and it’s from this pool of artists I was able to build this production.

SKSM: You got permission to shoot the story just before the COVID pandemic hit. How did you navigate that time until you finally filmed the movie?

Richard Thompson: I still have the email telling me. I have to say that the publishing office has always been incredible. When Covid hit, I asked for an extention because teh world was closed down and they aboslutely understood and supported me. During that time, my life changed in the best way posible with meeting my wife and the arrival of our daughter – Abra, and so did my attention, but continued to grow as a filmmaker, and when I found the contract in a box of scripts and stories I was going through, I reached out once more to ask if I could finish it – and they said yes. So from that moment on, with complete Support from my family, the movie was going to be finished.

SKSM: Can you tell us about your experience on this Dollar Baby film? Was everything planned ahead or did some things change during filming?

Richard Thompson: I fulfilled one of my life dream because of Dollar Baby, and I’m not being hyperbolic. And every step of the way, they worked with me to make sure I could get it done in a way that respected the program. We had a lot of planning, but things absolutely changed during filming – mostly recognizing the reality of how much time was in a day. Some things changed during filming – for instance, we were going to have a dog for a couple for a couple scenes – like in the original story – but that had to be scrapped unfortunately.

SKSM: You wear a lot of hats in the film. What were your greatest satisfactions and challenges in these roles?

Richard Thompson: I did wear many hats, and that was a learning experience. Greatest satisfactions include being able to work alongside creatives that believed in this production as much as I did. Challenges include recognizing the times to step back and let others take the lead so that the things they count on me for aren’t dilluded because I’m doing too much of everything, at the cost of doing something well.

SKSM: Were there unexpected moments or difficulties during the making of the film that have become a new point of view?

Richard Thompson: Yes, almost every day there was something unexpected or some kind of difficulty, but they were each new challenges to figure out, which I am so proud of the crew for being able to do so. One big one would be when we learned how far one location was from the staging área. It would have been a 2 mile hike, so instead we found an outcropping about a half a mile away instead that turned out to be perfect for the shoot.  

SKSM: I loved the locations. You found the perfect place to tell the story. The set is truly wonderful. Where was filmed? Was it difficult to find the locations?

Richard Thompson: We were incredibly fortunate to be able to film on the Gammon’s Gulch western studio out in Benson, The Bowen Stone House and Yetman Trail, and The Owl Club in Tucson.

SKSM: You made some changes from the original story. I personally loved it, but how do you think (or would you like) the audience to react?

Richard Thompson: There is a line from the original short story that opens the movie, “It is the story, not he who tells it’, and it was a line that stuck with me from when I first read ‘Skeleton Crew’ when I was a kid. It was a line of magic to me, a true spell. It probably shaped me in ways I didn’t concoiusly think about until I was adapting it. The idea of a story. That when it comes down to it, we know that fear, sufferning, pain, loss, remorse, and even love are those aspects of humanity we connect with, and everything else is fashion. I think – for those who know the short story – they’ll find that the story stayed true, while for those who haven’t read it, will connect with the trauma shown because we all know what it is to hurt.  

SKSM: Were any movie fragments cut out that you now miss?

Richard Thompson: There was an improvised flashback fight between ROSALIE and GEORGE that was so great, I wanted to find a way to include it, but there just wasn’t a way to do so and that was a bummer.

SKSM: Can you share with us any significant moment or memories that happened on set?

Richard Thompson: I’m note even joking when I say the entire shoot is worthy of it’s own movie. We shot the movie in 4 days, 3 locations, 2 locations in one day, 1 day with unexpected rain, so there are many, but the one I talk about as much as posible is about the – actess – who plays the Little girl. I had cast a child actor weeks before, everything was planned and set, but of course a complication arose and they were unable to join. We found out just before shooting. But it just so happened one of the extras that joined us had their daughter with them and I asked if she would like to be in a movie. She was never on set before this, in a few hours she worked with stunts, the armorer, and special effects. She is a natural. The epic shot for which all that work was needed was done in one take. One take. I will never forget that.

SKSM: What has this experience left you from a professional and human point of view?

Richard Thompson: This experience is still with me. I feel as if the universe synched up completely for this to happen, and to happen so excellently. I am in awe of how well things worked out, and that has helped shape me into realizing how my next movie can be done with the lessons I learned from shooting this one. Taking time, not spreading myself too thin, and knowing when to trust my gut and when to listen to others.

SKSM: Your Dollar Baby film is in the final stages, do you know where it will premiere?

Richard Thompson: We will be having a special screening at GSAAC – Greater Southern Arizona Association of Buffalo Soldiers – in Tucson in July and officially premiering for a festival run in the fall.

SKSM: Would you like to screen it at a particular festival?

Richard Thompson: Yes, I would love to have it screen at Sundance. I will be absolutely placing it in the Arizona International Film Festival as well as a few others from my región.

SKSM: How did you find out that King sold the movie rights to some of his stories for just $1? Was it just a wild guess or did you know it before you sent him the check?

Richard Thmpson: I read about the program online and as soon as I learned about it, I went to apply. I would have applied for any story, but when I saw ‘The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands’, I couldn’t push send hard enough.

SKSM: Are you a Stephen King fan? If so, which are your favorite works and adaptations?

Richard Thompson: Oh my god, Absolutely! His early short stories were some of the first stories I started reading. My pops introduced my brother and I to horror films when we still learning to read and he had a bookcase of busted and worn paperbacks of all his works. My favorites include ‘The Long Walk’, ‘The Jaunt’, Dark Tower and The Drawing of the Three (actually the entire series), and Fairytale. Movie wise, I love the 80’s ‘It’ (Beep beep Ritchie!) and the recent Dr. Sleep.

SKSM: Tell us about your other films. What project are you most proud of with the final result?

Richard Thompson: Other projects I am very proud of include ‘You.kNow.Me?’, a short horror about how being locked in a car with someone you thought  you could trust can be scarier tan anything and my staged production of ‘The GRANDEST Pageant’, a stage production of a reality show contest where four artists vie for audience recognition to win a prize, only for the show to slowly descend into an auction that none of the contestants expected to be a part of.

SKSM: Did you have “mentors”? Artists that inspired you to become an filmmaker? If so, would you tell us who and why?

Richard Thompson: I worked my way to pay for school and I was a physical assitant for one of the smartest, most accomplished persons I’ve ever known, Joe Parkhurst. He was the person that would read my short stories I had hidden away and just wrote, but never shared. He would talk with me about movies, and plays, and poetry and gave me insights into effective storytelling. He passed away just as I was starting my way into filmmaking and I’ll always appreciate our talks.

SKSM: What are you working on nowadays?

Richard Thompson: I am actually finishing up an original script for my next horror I’d like to shoot later this year as well as gearing up for some voice over work for a series of science fiction stories. In the summer, I’ll be helping to shoot a series of shorts about little known individuals that shaped the southwest and see where that takes me.

SKSM: What one thing people would be surprised to know about you?

Richard Thompson: I am originally from Kokomo, Indiana.

SKSM: Well Richard, I can’t thank you enough for this interview. Something you’d like to tell to our readers?

Richard Thmpson: Thank you for this opportunity and I’d like to thank your readers for taking time to learn more about me and this production and we are looking forward to you all checking out ‘The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands’.

SKSM: Would you like to add anything else?

Richard Thompson: Thank you Oscar, it has been an honor to be included in this publication.