One of the best indie movies to come out last year, Get Low may have flown low under your radar. It’s definitely worth seeking out. Based on a spec script by writer Chris Provenzano (whose credits went on to include episodes of Mad Men and Justified, among others) and championed through years of development by producer Dean Zanuck, Get Low is everything an independent film should be. Directed by veteran cinematographer  and Academy Award winner Aaron Schneider, it is clearly a labor of love, beautifully written, evocatively shot and featuring tour de force performances by Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Gerald McRaney—in fact, by the entire cast.

 

Set in 1930’s Tennessee, the film effortlessly captures the time and the small-town feel, both the strong bonds and the equally strong prejudices and suspicions. The story revolves around Duvall’s character, Felix Bush, a mysterious and feared old hermit who lives out in the woods, and who one day approaches Murray’s hapless mortuary director Frank Quinn with a fistful of cash and an unusual request: to have his funeral staged while he’s still alive. It seems another old codger has died and people now feel free to gossip about him at the funeral; so Felix has decided this is a way to find out what people think before he dies. It may also be a way for him at last to make amends with a community he long ago abandoned, and that now regards him with dread.

 

Quinn isn’t thrilled by the idea but, given the fact that it’s the middle of the Depression and that the mortuary is in financial straits (“People are dying in bunches, everywhere…but here. What are the odds of a funeral home going broke?”), he agrees to go along with it. The script has an easy, subtle humor in scenes like this. Quinn, for instance, goes on to bemoan the fact that he has no business: “One thing about Chicago, people know how to die. They drown, get run over, shot, whatever it takes.” To which his assistant Buddy (the wonderfully low-key Lucas Black) replies, “We get it done around here. We’re just not in a hurry about it.” Although this is a secondary role, it’s Murray’s best performance since Lost in Translation.

 

As the preparations get underway, little by little we get to know what drove Felix into seclusion: the ghosts that haunt him, and the people whom he’s banished from his life—until now. Foremost among these is Sissy Spacek’s "Mattie Darrow," the sister of the girl who was and still is the love of his life; and here the earlier humor evolves into a moving meditation on loss, and on the private burdens people carry all their lives.

 

Here’s a brief interview I conducted with producer Dean Zanuck, who’s perhaps better known for such big budget movies as Reign of Fire and Road to Perdition, but who was the driving force behind getting this film made.

 

Robin Russin: This was a long-term project for you. What about it attracted you?

 

Dean Zanuck: The two main draws were the story's originality and its themes.  I'd never seen/read about a story with a premise like Get Low's...this combined with the themes of loss, regret, forgiveness and grace all added up to an impactful experience in my book.

 

 

A young literary manager (David Ginsberg) to whom my wife (real estate agent) was showing homes introduced the script to my attention around a decade ago.  It's important for me to have an open door policy with material...because you never know where a gem may be found.

 

 

The script underwent a series of rewrites for the many years it sat in development.  [Chris] Provenzano did about a half dozen (diminishing in size each time).  The director, Aaron Schneider did a pass, and finally Charlie Mitchell delivered the draft we ended up shooting.

 

 

Duvall was our first and only choice to play the role of Felix Bush.  He was a perfect fit and fortunately for us he responded to story immediately. He had thoughts and notes that we incorporated along the way that helped shaped the character he saw in his mind, but at the same time he was also very respectful to the writers and the written word.

 

 

I had never worked with or even heard of Aaron Schneider before.  I knew Aaron was an immediate contender for the job when an agent I was speaking to about directors for Get Low recommended Aaron for the job, although neither he nor his agency represented him...agents never do that!  Once I sat down with Aaron, I knew right away he was the man for the job, and it wasn't because he had just won the Academy Award for his short film Two Soldiers…it was a gut instinct I had after getting to know him and hearing his passionate vision for Get Low.

 

 

Chris was a young emerging writer at the time I took Get Low on, who was really willing to roll up his sleeves and do the work asked of him to get the script into shape.  Chris was also willing to "pass the torch" to a more experienced hand (Mitchell) when the project needed that last surge to get off the ground.  Charlie Mitchell really isolated what the strengths of the story were by stripping all extraneous plot strands and focusing on the characters. Mitchell was with us through the production and was an influential presence on the set…which extended through the editing process.

 

 

I don't commit to a project by how "commercial" it may or may not be on the surface or how are we going to market the story, etc. I go purely off a gut feel when I first read or hear about a piece of material.  There was no concern, a good story will more often times than not find its audience.

 

 

Studio films pay more, but I don't feel are as rewarding of an experience.  With an indie, you’re out on an island with just a handful of other believers, without the infrastructure and the army of a studio to carry you through the process. You have to do it yourself -- there is no other way (or it simply won't happen).  By doing it yourself, you learn a lot more about what it takes to really produce and you create indelible bonds with the cast and crew around you.  Everyone is making sacrifices (less pay, longer hours) for the greater good of the project.

 

And what a good project this turned out to be. If you’re looking for a movie with nuance and heart and, most of all, with great characters in a compelling story, Get Low should be high on your “must-see” list.