Josh Mitchell of Wickid Pissa Publicity introduced Roger Hill to us as his "new filmmaker client," and told us that his newest feature film, Huckleberry has been released; a trailer is available at:
www.vimeo.com/275289172
Huckleberry, nicknamed "Huck," Mr. Mitchell tells us, is an eighteen-year-old, transgender man; Jolene is the daughter of a single mother; and both of these young people are high school seniors from the town of Rustbelt, Ohio, in the fall of 1999, where Huck goes to the Boys' Room for the first time, before his next class with Jolene, "the unrequited love of his life.
"While pursuing Jolene," Mr. Mitchell explains, "Huckleberry comes into conflict with Clint, her twenty-two-year-old, drug-addled boyfriend." Jolene rejects Huck, and stays in her abusive relationship with Clint, so Huck executes a complicated plot against Clint. Then an unknown assailant attacks Huck by surprise.
Will the identity of Huck's asailant be revealed? Will Huck's friends stand by him? Will Huck and Jolene live happily ever after together? Or will the Rust Belt crush them like defective parts in outdated machinery? Watch Huckleberry
, and find out!
Mr. Mitchell informs us that Roger Hill has spent a decade making documentaries, and co-directed Flying Paper, an award-winning documentary, screened at forty international film festivals, about residents of the Gaza Strip trying to set the Guinnes World Record for flying the most kites. Flying Paper
received an All Roads Seed Grant, Mr. Mitchell tells us, from National Geographic, in 2011 (before it terminated its film festival and these grants, in 2013).
According to Mr. Mitchell, Roger Hill founded Mental-Rev Productions in 2006, and directed its first feature-length documentary, Struggle, which LinkTV aired several times prior to the U.S. Presidential Election of 2012 (Romney versus Obama); it covers voter suppression and election rigging.
Mr. Hill currently divides his time, Mr. Mitchell tells us, between Cleveland, Ohio, after founding Rust Belt Productions, and San Francisco, California where he has roots as the Director of SF Quality Video, which specializes in advocacy videos for non-profit organizations. He is also seeking new partnerships to produce more films such as Huckleberry, and is currently developing two feature-length screenplays, as well as a television series set in the underworld of historic and present-day San Francisco.
Mr.Hill's production of Huckeleberry
is a return to his roots in narrative fiction.
La Libertad: What would you like to tell our readers about your new film,
Huckleberry?
Roger:
Huckleberry is a film I started writing twenty years ago, when I was in High School. It was born from a complex revenge fantasy I was having about tormenting the abusive boyfriend of a girl I had a crush on. I set aside the film for a long time and picked it up again in early 2016.
The logline reads: Huckleberry, eighteen, transgender-male, pursues his crush, Jolene, in the face of indomitable small-town values and his love's loathsome boyfriend, Clint.
Huckleberry is a moody teenage drama with elements of a thriller and some late 'Nineties nostalgia.
At the heart of the story is the fallacy of revenge, a universal theme. However, Huckleberry’s gender identity as a transgender man is very relevant in these times of “
bathroom bills” and increased violence and discrimination towards the trans, non-binary, and the broader genderqueer and non-conforming communities.
This is my first feature length narrative film and was made with the tenacity of a wonderful cast and crew, an incredible cinematographer in
Jon Coy, and the support of the
Ohio University Film Division.
My background is in documentary film-making, and my intention was to bring that gritty realism into the style of
Huckleberry. The environment in which the story takes place is one of abandoned factories and rusting industrial architecture; this is a motif that is representative of the lives of the main characters.
In the screenplay, a key scene takes place near an enormous metal scrapyard, with a unique, twenty-foot tall statue of an iron worker, constructed from bits of scrap metal...from the yard, standing in front. The description from the screenplay which I feel best represents the stylistic approach of the film is the following:
A scrap metal statue of an iron worker stands by the entrance. Rain drips and pours in rivulets as if it is bleeding.
During production, we were banned from shooting near this statue at the scrap yard, at the last minute. As happens with most artistic visions, we had to make changes on the fly. I approached it by drawing on associations I had with my Rust Belt upbringing, and shot the scene over two locations - one a decaying relic of the railroad industry, and the other the access bridge to a defunct steel mill and current storage yard for decommissioned train engines.
La Libertad: Where were you born?
Roger: I was born in
Ashtabula, Ohio. Which is the northernmost county in Ohio, and gets a lot of snow in the winter. That’s about all it’s known for.
La Libertad: Where do you currently reside?
Roger: I split my time between Cleveland, Ohio and San Francisco, California.
La Libertad: Do you have any fun stories that unfolded on set during the making of the movie?
Roger: We were set to shoot exteriors in the morning for a couple key scenes...in December of 2016. Here are the elements of the shoot:
A cherry, 1986 IROC Camaro, with a manual transmission and a finicky owner who was paranoid about road salt; an actor who can’t drive a stick shift; a choreographed fight scene; a full sized phone booth that we transported to northeast Ohio; and a location that we hadn’t yet cleared. The night before, with all these dangling logistics already to contend with, there was a blizzard dumping about six inches of snow.
Most of the crew and I were crashing at my parents' house in
Youngstown, Ohio. I woke early and looked across the fields of snow. I remember asking my D.P. [Director of Photography] Jon Coy how early was too early to talk logistics for the shoot. He took a deep breath and asked to finish his morning coffee. I begrudgingly agreed that this was acceptable. With the car being delivered that day, after much negotiation, it was not really feasible to shoot anything other than what we’d planned on.
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| Sarah Ulstrup as Jolene |
So we went for it. While Line Producer Carrie Love and Assistant Director Leander Edmiston found a flatbed trailer for the Camaro, I practiced with the actors
Sarah and
Justin for the fight scene. Carrie brought cookies to the unsecured location and won over the owners of the business. We braved the snow and cold, shot the fight scene, unloaded the phone booth, shot that scene and even found time to fly the drone around.
That morning I was upset and concerned about the snow, but it worked out perfectly. The white-out matched the tone of the scene and we captured some of the most evocative footage of the
entire film; it was probably our best single day of shooting over the entire project.
La Libertad: What do you love most about film-making?
Roger: Film-making is a deep, shared experience with an entire cast and crew of amazing people.
That is what I love most about it - the relationships forged in a collective creative endeavor. I e-mailed
Daniel Fisher-Golden, who plays Huckleberry, out of the blue, about three years ago, based on the strength of his grin on his
Backstage profile photo. Armed with a shaky pitch for a proof of concept, I assured him we’d see it to the end; Dan dove in with both feet, he did not hesitate.
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| Daniel Fisher-Golden as Huckleberry |
I feel like Dan understood his character on a molecular level, he worked so hard and challenged himself so thoroughly that what reads on screen is a perfect hybrid of my original imagination of the character and Dan’s genuine self. Dan’s honest portrayal of Huckleberry was so much better than I ever could have imagined! The collaborative process allowed us to reach a deeper level of empathy with the character by freeing the writer (me, in this equation) [from] the burden of their limited experience while opening the floodgates of personal experiences of the actor (Dan). This is an example of the creative collaboration process, which is what I love most about filmmaking. I could give an example for each cast and crew member on this film.
La Libertad: What inspires you?
Roger: I don’t know what it says about me that this is the hardest question to answer. But I think simply working on films is what grounds and also inspires me. If I don’t have a project that I’m fully invested in, I feel unmoored. Success in this career has always seemed just out of reach for me; I mean success is relative, but, for me, it’s simply defined as being paid to do what you love and are good at. I still haven’t quite got to that point as I’m self-financing my films; maybe after this one I’ll enter the ranks of Directors who actually get paid for their work, but until then, I’m inspired by the process, because I’d be miserable if I wasn’t making films. What inspires me is not a lofty ideal; it’s the all the simple acts of creating - engagement with the process.
La Libertad: What is the hardest part of getting a project into production?
Roger: I think the hardest part is the solidifying one’s personal commitment to the project.
Just getting started is really the hardest part. Tinkering on scripts over the years is a pretty low level of engagement, but once you really fully commit, it becomes a whirlwind of activity
from casting, to location scouting, all the prep work, you can’t half ass it, it has to become all consuming or it’ll never truly get off the ground. So that first step, jumping into the fire - that’s the hardest part. I think after you write that first check it starts to get real.
Beyond that, the most stressful part is figuring out your financing. Everything costs so much money, and you have to be prepared for that expense; otherwise it could cripple your production.
We shot
Huckleberry over three periods: one week in October, 2016; a week in December, 2016; and two weeks in August, 2017. Between shoots, I was hustling to secure the budget for the next one, so I was never really out of the grind of fundraising. It was cool, though, to shoot in stages like that, because I got to put more work into the script, and adjust storylines based on the performances we had captured so far.
I adopted a kind of fatalistic approach to the film, and tried not to second guess each decision I made; instead, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and followed the path that unfolded. I think it is important to trust it’ll work out, despite the pitfalls and overwhelming evidence that failure is a distinct possibility.
La Libertad: What are your overall career goals?
Roger: I just want to work. Simply to direct, write, edit, and/or produce movies while supporting passionate people in their careers in the movie industry. There are a lot of creative and talented people out there who are willing to work hard and sacrifice for their art; that should be enough, but it really isn’t in this industry. In film, it takes a level of access to be able to put one’s talents to work. My goal is to continue grinding and working for that access, for myself and those I collaborate with.
I dream of the day I can direct a film and hand it off to a producer and start the next one.
That, however, is not feasible right now, as I must also promote and plan the next project from the ground up. Accepting this as reality helps me set more reasonable goals, and adopt a more patient mantra, because I understand that each film is a three- to five-year commitment. So staying grounded, and not burning out is another goal of mine. If success comes in the meantime, I’ll be happy to adjust my goals.
La Libertad: What future projects are you working on?
Roger: I have a couple projects in development in addition to promoting
Huckleberry. I’m currently writing a drama primarily set along what’s known as the “Loneliest Road in America,”
Route 50, through
Nevada. It’s about that brief moment in time between life transitions, and is centered around two couples: One, a couple of recent college graduates, moving to California from the
East Coast; and the other, a couple in their late thirties, moving from San Francisco (back) to the Midwest. It’s a reflective film, but the points of stress on the characters' relationships is something that will be explored in a unique variety of ways.
I’m also penning a series set in different communities of San Francisco criminal organizations, both past and present, with a stylistic approach, influenced by the wild tales [of] when the city was nicknamed the “
Barbary Coast.”
La Libertad: What upcoming festivals, if any, do you intend to participate in?
Roger:
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| Jahking Guillory as Will |
World Premiere,
Marina Del Rey Film Festival, on October 18, [2018], at 9:30 p.m.
Florida Premiere,
Orlando Film Festival, October 21, [2018], at 4:00 p.m., and October 23, [2018], at 6:00 p.m.
Ohio Premiere,
Ohio Independent Film Festival, November 3, [2018], at 12:45 p.m.
There will be more in 2019, as well, but this is what we have booked so far.
La Libertad: What links would you like to share?
Roger: Follow Huckleberry on Facebook and Instagram:
facebook.com/huckleberrymovie
instagram.com/Huckleberrymovie
Watch the two-minute theatrical trailer at:
vimeo.com/270129140
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| Sarah Ulstrup as Jolene and Daniel Fisher-Golden as Huckleberry |
La Libertad: What else, if anything, would you like to tell our readers?
Roger: Just keep working. I had a professor tell me that if you study every night you won’t have time to worry that you’ll fail. I think that applies to making films as well; dive in and keep treading water; invest yourself fully in the process; and don’t look for excuses, but rather solutions. Anybody can do this work, but not everyone has the discipline and self sacrifice to
see it through.
Introduction by William Mortensen Vaughan and Josh Mitchell
