Llano Estacado Blues

Next week Llano Estacado Blues, our short film about poverty, will be screened at the Flat Lands Film Festival at Lubbock’s Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts.

Llano Estacado Blues is a twelve-minute slice-of-life portrait of what happens in the daily lives of the poor and those who try to help them. In the film, three women, one a social worker and the other two food voucher clients, become more and more frustrated as they try to deal with the policies that regulate hunger relief. In the end, none of the women’s needs are met.

Seeds for the script were sown when I witnessed a similar incident unfold in real life at The Bridge, a faith-based organization that serves east Lubbock. At the time, I was on sabbatical researching to write a full-length play, The Gospel According to Jesse.

A few months later, after watching a modern dance performance, I decided I’d try to write a short play patterned on jazz forms. I dug out my notes from the incident at the Bridge, and the result was a short play that has since been performed in Arkansas and Los Angeles.

Amy got the idea to turn the one-act into a film because it fit both her artistic needs and her sense of moral obligation. She thought the script was powerful yet simple and would be manageable for an emerging film maker. She also wanted to raise awareness about the conditions of the poor.

We got support from Tech’s Department of Theatre and Dance, The Bridge, and Family Promise, an agency that assists homeless families in Lubbock. Amy then recruited a small but committed company consisting of Dr. Jim Bush of Tech’s theatre program, who would serve as director of photography, and actors Pam Brown, Millie Casillas, and Sheri Boyd. Millie and Sheri were theatre students at Tech, and Pam is a frequently-seen actor on Lubbock stages. With Pam’s help, Amy also recruited the youngest member of the company, one-year-old Jackson Speer.

The film was shot in two days in February at The Bridge in the exact same spot where I had watched the original event unfold. Over the spring and summer, Amy and Jim edited the footage into a finished film. Then in late August, David Dees of Tech’s School of Music agreed to devise and perform original saxophone music for the film’s score. The result was Llano Estacado Blues.

We’re really excited to have our film included in the Flatlands Film Festival. I only wish I could be there for the screening.

Treatment count: 4 down, 41 to go.