Austin comes to Gonzales

Gonzales tabbed as site for ‘the Pulp Fiction of westerns’

Spend any time on the set of the movies Justin Meeks and Duane Graves make – especially their most recent venture in and around Gonzales – and you develop a particular appreciation for Michelle Millette.

While Millette’s official title is assistant director, her unofficial title has got to be cat herder, as in the one charged with trying to harness the nonstop hustle and bustle that is the motion picture industry, in general, while also channeling the exuberance and enthusiasm of Meeks, in particular.

To be sure, Justin Meeks is the heart and soul of “Red on Yella, Kill a Fella,” a turn-of-the-century western that already had “buzz under it” before he began his 29-day shooting schedule across the state, with stops in Gonzales, Corpus Christi, Van Horn and the Austin area.

But don’t blame Meeks for trying to squeeze 36 hours into a 24-hour day. It’s just that he can already tell he’s got another offering that’s likely to turn plenty of heads when it arrives as early as next summer at some of the film festivals – such as Tribeca and Sundance – known for launching independent films into the motion picture stratosphere.

When he’s not in front of the camera as the focal point in “Red on Yella” playing the aging outlaw Claude Barbee, he’s behind the scenes anticipating, scrutinizing, visualizing, brainstorming and staying one or two or 12 steps ahead of his dedicated Austin crew that’s working as hard as he is to ensure cinematic success.

“Red on Yella, Kill a Fella – it’s sort of a mix between Johnny Depp’s ‘Dead Man’ and Clint Eastwood’s ‘High Plains Drifter,’ so it’s a dark western,” Meeks explains, stopping just long enough for one of his favorite pastimes: talking about his work. “It’s not candyin’ it up. It’s not your grandpa’s western. This is sorta like the ‘Pulp Fiction’ of westerns. It’s like lookin’ back in old nickel books, and the kids are like, ‘Wow!’ this is what those outlaws are goin’ through – they’re movin’ from west to east, so Texas is a character as well.”

It doesn’t take long for the enthusiasm that’s just below the surface to erupt as Meeks talks faster and faster, the inflections of his voice adding emphasis as well as intrigue, mystery as well as anticipation.

“They’re hell bent,” he reveals about the movie’s characters, “and the whole way, it’s kinda like ‘Ten Little Indians,’ they get taken out ‘til the very end there’s only one or two left.

“I can’t really tell you how they’re taken out,” he tantalizes, “but it’s not necessarily a monster. It’s in a horrific way, so that’s why I say it’s like a dark western. But so was ‘High Plains Drifter,’ it was a dark western. It didn’t have a monster, but the people were the monsters, more evil than any monster.”

Not letting his audience’s attention wane, Meeks entices with just enough substance to nourish his listener without revealing all the nuances and secrets that whet the appetite.

“The setting is 1900, on the dot. It’s sort of a time when industry was comin’ and the outlaw was fadin’ out, so you saw less and less of the outlaw,’ he says, utilizing broad strokes to paint a visual picture of what he saw when he and Graves wrote the screenplay. “The phone was comin’ out soon, the car was comin’ out soon, so it was easier to catch ‘em, too. It became harder for a criminal to make a livin’. It’s a hard time for an outlaw to make a livin’.

“This whole movie is based off of a tier system of evil in which, at the end, nature is the most evil of all. We end up in Galveston in which the great hurricane of 1900 came through there and killed thousands of people,” his eyes widening and his voice trailing off.

“There’s a lot of metaphors, we’ve had too much time to work on this script and get it how we want it,” Meeks quips. “It’ll be fun. We have some people lookin’ at it. There’s already some attention through some distributors that do actual theatrical distributing, so we’re lucky to have them already looking at it in pre-production.”

Now he’s starting to reel you in, knowing you’re firmly on the hook, the fragments of scenes you’ve witnessed serving only to entice you more, eager for the calendar to skip ahead so you can see the finished product. You fantasize that it might one day show up on the screen at the newly-reopened Lynn Theatre in downtown Gonzales.

“Red on Yella, Kill a Fella” has been five years in the making, tracing its legacy to Tribeca where Meeks and Graves made a splash with “The Wild Man of the Navidad.” They pitched the new movie idea to representatives for brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who at the time had the storied mini-studio Miramax Films.

But financial hurdles for the Weinsteins derailed the talks, so Meeks and Graves set out to make “Red on Yella” a reality.

“We’ve spent about the last year location scouting, and that’s when we found this great place out here,” Meeks says in praise of Pioneer Village.

“We’re shooting at a couple of ranches around Gonzales, actually shooting a few buildings in Gonzales, but the majority of it will be shot out here at Pioneer Village,” he explains. “When we walked out here, it was like ‘Wow, that’s the exact church we need!’ ‘Wow, this is the exact interior dinner scene we need!’ ‘Wow, this is the bedroom, this is the saloon scene that we need!’ And Ms. [Cindy] Munson has just been bending over backwards to let us use some of this stuff and move it and everything.

“The wooden floor, the wallpaper, everything she has here is just legit, so it’s just gonna give that authenticity to our movie,” Meeks gushes.

To be sure, however, Meeks knew more than a year and a half ago that Gonzales County was where he wanted to shoot his next movie. That’s why he and his father, Jack, bought a heavily-wooded 300-acre ranch off FM 532 northeast of Gonzales that was unspoiled by the encroachment of the modern world.

After two days of shooting – in the vernacular of both the film world and the firearms world – at Pioneer Village, Meeks and his crew spent the next three days at his ranch capturing outdoor scenes, including a climactic interaction between the two main characters as they fight to keep their goal from slipping through their fingers.

Despite working with what Meeks admits is “an ultra-low budget,” he confesses to being humbly surprised by the attention the film has already generated, as well as the caliber of talent who’ve signed on.

“We have Pepe Serna as an associate producer – he was in ‘Scarface,’ he played Al Pacino’s brother. We also have Buck Taylor – he was in ‘Gunsmoke,’ he’s gonna play Sheriff Eagan. We also have Luce Rains from ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ he played the marshal in ‘3:10 to Yuma’ – he was with Russell Crowe – a great actor, an excellent actor. And Bridger Zadina, he was in Iron Man 3,” he says, rattling off the names as if pitching the cast to an investor. “So it’s sort of a semi-famous cast.

“They started reading the script, and got out to California and got buzz under it,” Meeks says. “People started callin’ us, people that we weren’t even expectin’ to possibly come in, because we are shooting this at an ultra-low budget.”

Although all his energies are focused on his current undertaking, Meeks says he and Graves have their sights set on shooting a trilogy of westerns to go along with their earlier movies: “The Wild Man of the Navidad,” which is based on a Texas folklore legend, and which Meeks is quick to point out can still be purchased on Amazon or rented on Netflix, and “Boneboys,” intended as a sequel to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and written by Kim Henkel, who wrote the original movie.

To be sure, Meeks has plenty on his movie-making plate. In addition to anchoring the cast for “Red on Yella,” he shares behind-the-scenes credit with Graves in their roles as co-directors, co-producers, screenplay writers and probably several other uncredited roles. Karrie and Marcus Cox are also listed as producers for the film.

Other actors not already mentioned by Meeks include Paul McCarthy-Boyington as co-star Jack, Timothy McKinney as Deputy Marshal Peak, Benjamin Dane as William Wilberforce, Deon Lucas as Goody, along with Tom Lagleder, Greg Kelly, Craig Ries, Joey Ferguson and Donny Boaz.