ABOUT THE FILM

Back in 2010, contemplating making a feature film here in Arkansas, I almost abandoned LAST SUMMER to make ALEX IN THE MORNING instead.  The two movies were like a fork in the road.  While in graduate school, I directed it in this shorter form, and it felt like a new beginning, and a more honest kind of storytelling.  Recut from the original version which screened locally in 2018, this edit gets closer to the spirit of the film I had in mind all those years.

A transitional movie for me, ALEX moves away from the fantasy world of LAST SUMMER and my first shorts to deal with the isolation and self-destructiveness that come with feeling like an outsider even in welcoming spaces, particularly in the South. While the first half is more or less a traditional narrative, the second is largely dialogue-free and made up of long takes, closeups, and natural light, like LAST SUMMER in a state of heavy intoxication.

Around the time we shot the film, Arkansas was in the middle of a major opioid crisis. I learned that there are counties in Arkansas that handed out more opioid prescriptions every year than there were citizens living there. Alex is a movie about drugs, replacing one drug with another (in this case, massive amounts of alcohol), relapsing, and taking things one step at a time.  Most films about drug use are bleak and moralizing.  I wanted ALEX to be a movie with warmth.  Like all my movies, it’s sad but romantic.  It’s about the impermanence of things — highs, lows, relationships, homes, identities — and I think it’s among my most hopeful projects.

ALEX is about something I’ve always felt — a desire to disappear, become someone new, start over.  Alex, who is in a constant place of self-discovery and rediscovery, is also probably a prototype for many of the characters I’ve written since.  I’m very thankful for all the local performers, most of whom had never acted before, for bringing these kids to life. 

The soundtrack is filled with music from Arkansas and neighboring states, and I am eternally grateful to Jimmy Spice, Danny Malone, Benji Schlack, Everett Hagen, Jack Lloyd, and Phillip Rex Huddleston for allowing me to use their work. The images in the film are nothing without the sounds underneath.