Doonby

If you want to bring in big American audiences, tell a big American story. That’s the idea behind “Doonby,” a new movie starring John Schneider due to hit theaters next year. I visited the set of the film in a small town outside Austin, Texas called Smithville, where summer started early. The heat of late May felt like July up north and brought bugs the size of Volkswagens.

In the 1880s, Smithville -- a stop on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad -- was a bustling, prosperous town. Times changed, leaving Smithville as a perfect record of a turn-of-the-century town. Main Street, has down-home storefronts which look like they’re waiting for Opie to come walking through. The retro hamlet has reinvented itself as a set for filming movies, and the Film Commission shrewdly attracts filmmakers with incentives and plenty of trained crew to hire.

In the Katy House, a bed and breakfast, Sallie Blalock serves a Southern breakfast while the cast and crew chat about politics, children, and past projects.  They’re prepping for a long day of filming and Sallie’s scones and grits are just the thing to give them energy. John Schneider rocketed to fame in the 1980s as Bo Duke in “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show and recently appeared as Superman’s father in “Smallville.” He seems as home at Sallie’s big farm table as he would be at a Hollywood hot spot.

Schneider plays Doonby, a drifter who rolls into a small town, as if from nowhere. A decent, if childlike man, he seems to always be there to rescue people in trouble. However, a dark destiny waits for him and the townsfolk. Schneider describes the film as “’It’s a Wonderful Life” without the wonderful part. Take ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ reach down into the throat of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ pull it inside out and make a movie out of it.”

We travel over to the set itself, a barn transformed into a small apartment, where the crew is already buzzing around. The temperature is climbing and there’s no air conditioning, but that doesn’t stop actors Will Wallace and Jenn Gotzon (Frost/Nixon) from doing a scene again and again. It’s an intense part of the story, filled with violence and menace. Gotzon stays in character during breaks, keeping her weepy emotional state high, but Wallace transforms from a monster into an affable jokester happy to talk about his new baby, and back again. Schneider will be called in later to finish the scene.

Robert Davi, a Hollywood staple since the 1970s and recent star of “The Profiler” TV show, arrived at Katy House from L.A. He plays Sheriff Woodley, whom he describes as “Andy in Mayberry,” a man trying to figure out the mystery of Doonby. Davi says the message of the film is “every life counts.” A New York Italian who got his first break as a child in a film with Frank Sinatra, Davi will film the next day. For the time being, he was looking for a little rest, a nice plate of spaghetti, and some red wine. And, of course, to talk about Sinatra. His true love is covering Sinatra songs, something he does well.

The classic American setting of Smithville is no accident, according to producer Mark Joseph. His story is friendly to faith, he says, but not in the style of niche films sometimes called “Christian movies.” He sees movies like Doonby as a return to what Americans want. “We’re just here to tell a great story,” he said, “Hollywood is out of touch. There’s a very small niche of deeply secular Americans that wants deeply secular stories. The rest of the country loves a great story, whether faith is just part of the natural infusion of it or not. For the past 50 years, Hollywood has been making movies for the 10% niche. Some of the 90% might come, might not come because it’s Friday night and they want to see a movie, but [the movies] don’t really resonate. In my mind, there’s secular movies and there’s mainstream American movies.”

As the industry changes, cracks are opening for small, low-budget films to court the middle America audience. Mark Joseph, John Schneider, and the town of Smithville are poised to tell a story they hope will appeal to everyone, especially that 90% that Joseph says are so often ignored.

It all comes down to the storytelling and the movie-going experience. “It’s going to be a movie,” Schneider said, “If people give it a chance, if people go see it, theyre going to see a movie like they’ve never seen before. It’s going to cause interaction. They’re going to talk about this movie.”

Time will tell for Doonby. I hope it turns out well. For Schneider, Davi, Gotzon, Wallace, and the rest of the cast, it was a chance to do something they believe in, with an extra bonus of eating Sallie’s grits in the morning.