At a quiet apartment complex Monday, Durham played host to the North Carolina premiere of an indie festival favorite. That Evening Sun, a Southern Gothic tale of a Tennessee farmer returning home that has garnered Oscar buzz for star Hal Holbrook, screened this past Monday to a class of Duke students.
Producer Terence Berry took a quick break from the film’s hectic promotional schedule to screen the film for his close friend and graduate student Bart Keeton’s ISIS class “Media Remix.” Berry, who started his career as an investment banker in New York, eventually found himself jumping from the macro level of film finance to film producing.
“When I started working on these film finances, I realized I love talking about film more than pure finance,” Berry said. “I decided I don’t want to be up here. I want to be down here on an actual film.”
Berry, who had also taken a screenwriting course at New York University, met the film’s eventual writer-director Scott Teems in 2004 and began producing his short films. The two eventually found themselves in Los Angeles and embarked on the search for a Southern tale to make into their first feature.
“They are all from the South, and they want to make authentic Southern films,” Berry said of Teems and his crew. “They feel that Hollywood might get it wrong.”
On a quick plane trip in August 2005, Teems read William Gay’s short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down,” and their hunt was over. As the two began optioning the story, however, they found some difficulties in selling the script to Hollywood.
“It doesn’t fit into what is perceived as a commercial film: your lead actor is an 84-year-old man with no real name recognition, and it’s a drama set in the South,” Berry said. “[Producers] would say it’s the indie film of yesteryear, and it won’t get done.”
But luck was on Berry and Teems’ side. Their first break was getting Hal Holbrook, fresh off his Oscar nomination for Into the Wild. And their next was finding Tennessee-based Dogwood Productions, a documentary company looking for a Tennessee-centered script that could be made for under $2 million as its first foray into features. The film, shot on 35-mm wide-screen anamorphic film, ended up costing approximately $1.7 million.
But shooting in Tennessee means dealing with the sweltering Volunteer State heat, which was of some concern with their aging star who appears in almost every frame.
“We shot in July and August in Knoxville, and [Holbrook] is 83 years old,” Berry said. “I don’t want to be known as the producer that killed Hal Holbrook.”
The production finished—sans casualties—and the resulting film has won numerous audience and narrative awards at the South by Southwest and Atlanta film festivals, among others. It premiered in New York this past week and is opening in Los Angeles in two weeks.
As for now, the production team is working with Freestyle Releasing to market the film to distributors.
“Everyone that I wanted has gotten to see it,” Berry said. “At some point, that’s all you can ask for.”
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