Blog

I recently spent a week back in Missouri and noticed something interesting.  On several occasions, when entering certain establishments, I would find these signs that read “No Fire Arms Allowed.”  What?  Are we back in the Wild Wild West?  This of course made me think of a few situations I had while making “Albino Farm” – with guns in the mix.

The first incident happened to Sean McEwen and me down south, near the border of Arkansas.  We were scouting for a river location and came across this beautiful piece of property that would have been perfect for the shoot.  In fact, we struck up a nice conversation with two men who were canoeing nearby.  All seemed well, until we met the property owner. We were driving back up the road, basking in our glorious find, when all of the sudden this elderly gentleman literally jumped out in front of the car.  Standing close behind him was this young girl.  She couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13 years old.  And judging from their body language, she almost appeared to be his girlfriend.  Oh well, that’s another story.

Immediately, the gentleman began interrogating Sean and me.  We explained that we were scouting for a movie, but he absolutely did not believe us.  He thought we were dealing drugs with the two guys we were speaking with down by the river.  In fact, he was adamant that we were and said “I saw you boys speaking to those guys down there!”  “You talked to them, and then you shook their hands!”  Well, I always thought shaking hands was a nice gesture but I guess in these parts it means you closed a good drug deal [meth is a big problem in this parts].  The more we explained our motives, the more it upset him.  Finally, after I saw him pull back his shirt, revealing a pistol in his pants, I knew it was time to go.  Without a beat, I punched the gas and flew the hell out of there.  Needless to say, we never went back to that river again!

The second gun situation happened when we were scouting some land to film the church revival scene.  We came across a farmer fixing a fence.  He was extremely talkative and excited about what we were doing.  In fact, he was so excited, he wanted to show us his new gun.  He pulled out a .45 automatic and started talking about it.  Waving it back and forth to show us the laser beam sight he had.  A couple of times he even had the gun pointed right at our faces.  Trust me, there was no ill intention involved.  He was just very excited about it but all of us in the car we’re thrilled to make it out of our little encounter without a nose shot off.  It’s not every day you have an old man waving a loaded gun in your face just for mere sport.

The third gun story actually happened on a late night of filming.  The owners of the land we were using told us we could use their home for anything we needed.  One of our female crew members had to use the restroom and the porta-potties were just not going to cut it so I noticed that the lights in the owner’s home were on.  I took her down to the house and let her use their restroom.  We did the usual courtesy knock but there was no answer.  I notice the door was actually unlocked so we quietly began to enter.  All of a sudden the lights popped on inside and the homeowner was pointing a rifle at our heads!  I have never been more scared in my life!  As soon as he saw it was us, he lowered the gun and the homeowner and I had a good laugh.  The crew member gal used the restroom and I was hoping to be next, but had already gone in my pants!!!

Barry Curtis (co-producer)