The deadCenter film festival offers Oklahomans a chance to see both short and full-length movies produced around the world and within the Sooner State. Similarly, the three Okie features making their premiere at the 2022 festival deal with themes both global and local, namely: the need to stand out as an individual, the need to make a living while retaining one’s individuality, and the lengths one will go to achieve those goals. Each film grapples with these issues in unique ways – in their own language, so to speak.
Cate Jones’s sophomore effort Chicken House utilizes the language of offbeat comedy in the style of David Lynch and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (two artists directly name-dropped by Jones, who also plays Cat in the film). The story centers around a rental home occupied by aspiring actors living in Oklahoma City, a place seemingly less dog-eat-dog than Los Angeles, where performers with stars in their eyes go to struggle and starve creatively. But this scarcity is every bit as alive in OKC as in the City of Angels, creating/reinforcing fierce competition and, at times, animosity among the four women in the house. Some viewers may read their clashes as a battle of egos, and to some degree this is true, but it is the conditions fueling such egotism that Jones seems most interested in, examining an industry mired in misogynistic power-jockeying no matter the location. Midwest and West Coast aren’t that different, Jones seems to be saying, and the answer, at least according to her character Cat, is to “start doing whatever the fuck you want and stop worrying about everybody else.”
Comedy takes more of a backseat in Tenkiller, the debut feature of Jeremy and Kara Choate, filmed in and around Tahlequah. The writers/directors present a “warts-and-all” depiction of this poverty-stricken locale and the life therein. The film drifts along on a skeletal plot about Leon (Ian Walker), an angry eighteen-year-old boy running afoul of his mom’s unhinged boyfriend/machine part factory co-worker Dalton (James Allen Pershing), a conflict that unsurprisingly culminates in violence. But Tenkiller is more interested in the slices of life happening in-between its narrative, emphasizing simple small town happiness and hardship in equal measure. A serene montage of Ian, his brother Beck (Beck Walker), and his friend June (Harper Choate) goofing off at the lake juxtaposes a scene of Dalton’s buddy and fellow machinist Troy (Raygun Busch of the band Chat Pile, who also provide the soundtrack) mindlessly shooting off bottle rockets in a parking lot by himself (a moment both darkly comedic and sad). In both instances, the characters are just killing time and entertaining themselves, but are Troy’s activities a window into Ian’s future: bored, still working the same old shit job, and thus incentivized to a life of crime? Perhaps, though the Choates do provide a glimmer of hope in their film’s denouement.
There is no humor to be found in Out Of Exile, a pitch black thriller/familial drama from Kyle Kauwika Harris about an armored car robbery that goes south and the consequences thereafter. This is also the only film of the three not explicitly set in Oklahoma, though its examination of identity, scarcity, and crime are no less present and potent. Much like in Tenkiller, the characters in Out Of Exile struggle to differentiate themselves and escape the cycle of violence plaguing their worlds. Troubled, drug-addicted vet Wesley (Kyle Jacob Henry) lives under the shadow of ex-con big brother Gabriel (Adam Hampton), who in turn lives under the shadow of their father Ruben (Van Quattro). Gabriel’s daughter Dawn (Hayley McFarland) wants to make a life away from her previously absent father, even as she endures the violence of another man. Even FBI Agent Brett Soloman (Ryan Merriman) has to live up to the stellar reputation of his law-enforcing daddy, causing him to be more devoted to his job than his family, echoing the abandonment experienced by Dawn, Gabriel, and Wesley. But while escape does come for a lucky few in the film, everyone else mostly remains stuck in their respective cycles, proving that carving out one’s own path isn’t as easy as it seems. And unlike the solution to life’s problems presented in Chicken House, the people of Out Of Exile cannot get away with doing whatever they want.
Though of course, the artistic stakes in Jones’s film and the life and death circumstances of Harris’s are quite different, as they are in the Choates’ Tenkiller. And yet, this trio of distinctive features come to similar conclusions about life both in Oklahoma and abroad, whether through comedic, seriocomic, or full-on dramatic means.
