Ten years ago, Atlanta filmmaker Adam Pinney’s film “The Arbalest” won the SXSW Film Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Film.
It’s an award that puts you in good company. As pointed out by an ArtsATL article from the time, other winners include Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture,” Destin Daniel Cretton’s film “Short Term 12,” and Trey Edward Shults’ “Krisha.” After the win, Pinney decided to go in a slightly more commercial direction with his next project. He had producers attached and did rewrites for a couple of years. But nothing ever came of it.
“I got really deflated, and optioned that script off to them. I had a moment of, I don’t know if I’m going to do this anymore, because it was just really frustrating,” Pinney said. “Then the pandemic happened, and that was even more depressing. And after coming out of that, I was like, well, why don’t I just do this myself, and see if I could do this without a crew, and without a bunch of people, and no money – just my family and a couple friends?”
That approach is what birthed “Mudville.” Pinney wrote a film that he could shoot at his own house, using his wife and their kids as actors, and using the most budget gear he could get. It became a true DIY feature, filmed over the course of two and a half years with no real expectations in mind.
Now, it’s playing at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival on April 30.
“Mudville” stars Mark Podojil as Ray, a 47-year-old dad and has-been baseball player who spends his days practicing, desperate to make it back onto a major league team. But the drinking problem that got him kicked off the team in the first place still plagues him, as do strange visions of a Native American tribe. As he becomes more anxious over the nature of these visions, he digs himself into a hole he may not be able to climb his way out of.
“Mudville” is not the only movie that Pinney worked on to play at this year’s festival. Alex Orr’s “Blood Car” is screening in retrospective at the festival, which features Pinney’s work as a screenwriter, producer, editor, and cinematographer. Orr also produced the festival’s opening night film, “Idiots.”
“It’s been 20 years, and they’re showing [“Blood Car”] at the Atlanta Film Festival,” Pinney said. “That was the first feature we ever made. It’s kind of cool that both of them are playing.”
One image that directly inspired “Mudville” comes from the first time Pinney met his wife Amanda’s father.
“He was lying down in his front yard, face down, drunk,” Pinney said. “He was an alcoholic, and that’s what he died from. But he was also the sweetest guy. There was this image I had of him lying in the grass, face down, like the first time I met him, that stuck with me.”
Pinney combined that image with a story about middle aged malaise that he’s often felt in his own profession, addressing a question that so many creatives chasing a dream have probably entertained; Am I too old to still be doing this?
“Where this character is hitting baseballs in his backyard, I’m just shooting a movie in my backyard,” Pinney said. “Is this ridiculous? What am I putting my family through, again? Luckily, they were on board.”
By picking baseball, Pinney evokes a sense of Americana which then curdles as the specifics and consequences of Ray’s vices become clear. Ray finds himself plagued by unconscious bigotry, paranoid over the Native Americans who keep showing up in his dreams, sure there must be something nefarious afoot. The baseball team Ray longs to play for is called the Atlanta Apaches – a not-so-subtle nod at the name of the Atlanta Braves (although, Pinney thinks, perhaps even more ignorant – the Apaches are not even a regional tribe). The tension between the innate prejudice of this character and his love for a team that bears the name of a Native tribe interested Pinney.
“The way the country was going, and is going now, I want to comment on that in some way,” he said. “And our own sort of – not learned prejudices, but prejudices that are in the blood of everyone, and in the air and in the trees, in the ground.”
Ray is a tough character to stick with, darkness peeking through even his lightest moments. But Pinney is far more interested in these types of characters than the alternative.
“‘The Arbalist,’ I did the same thing,’ he said. “Here’s a character that’s unlikable in a lot of ways, but at least it’s honest to me, and it’s vulnerable to me.”
Pinney wrote this part for actor Mark Podojil, who he has known since he was in college.
“He’s such an interesting person in real life, and has this way about him, and he’s a very sweet man – like, the nicest guy,” Pinney said. “But he just has this ruggedness and real lifeness to him that I was like, I just want to put you in something that showcases that, and lets you be a sad sack.”
“Mudville” was shot over the course of 40 days, but those 40 days stretched out over roughly two and a half years. The schedule wasn’t strict, which allowed for freedom regarding how much to shoot on any given day, whether that be 12 or 2 hours.
“It was very unconventional, but it was cool because we got to have our house be essentially a set for two years, and have all these fake plants everywhere, and change stuff up, have film gear laying around,” Pinney said. “Which for me, felt like that’s what film should be. It felt like home.”
