Bikes, Blues and Big-Screen Debut

'Chrystal' Filmmakers Bring 'Randy and the Mob' to Fayetteville

Last updated Thursday, September 27, 2007 6:02 PM CDT in Entertainment

By Becca Bacon Martin
THE MORNING NEWS

"Who do you write your movie for," he muses. "You write something you like as a person, and I'm from the South. I just felt like it would resonate in the South more readily, and I knew we'd probably get more attention and media in Southern markets because not that many filmmakers come to the South to talk to the media!

"Still, while it's set in the South, it's universal. It's like me watching a Woody Allen movie -- I get it, and not only do I get it, it opens me up to a whole new culture. I think anyone can enjoy this for what it is. I like dark and disturbing movies, but when I was a kid, I loved Doris Day movies, too. I think whoever you are, you can walk away from this movie feeling good."

Doris Day does not appear in "Randy and the Mob," but Burt Reynolds does, in a cameo role. And the filmmaker's friends from his childhood home of Adel, Ga., will almost certainly recognize characters based on McKinnon's family, too.

"I think my mother in the movie is a combination of my mother and my aunt, and me in the pantsuit is definitely my aunt in the 1960s," McKinnon says.

Pantsuit?

McKinnon plays not only Randy but Randy's identical twin, Cecil. Cecil is gay -- and quite possibly the most normal character in the film.

"Both Randy and Cecil are Southern archetypes that I had been thinking about as characters to create and perhaps portray for a decade or so now," McKinnon says. "Of course, to have the opportunity to play both of these archetypes in the same film was something I never would have contemplated. Even after I wrote it, I just intended to play Randy. Cecil would be a fraternal twin played by another actor."

McKinnon's wife, actress and filmmaker Lisa Blount, was having none of that idea. "If this works," he says, "she's really smart."

Randy, says McKinnon, "shoots from the hip, acts before thinking, has created this facade for himself which leaves him both unsatisfied and afraid. Cecil is cautious -- conservative even. Puts family first. Cecil knows and accepts who he is, and yet he is holding on to old hurts and resentments. To me, Randy and Cecil's plotline and relationship must resolve itself in a satisfying way for the film to succeed as a complete piece."

Of course, the choice to play both roles challenged McKinnon as an actor, too.

"Sometimes I would start out the day playing Cecil in a number of scenes and then finish out the day as Randy," he recalls. "On crazy -- crazier -- days, I would go back and forth a couple of times. It was exhausting, but a great opportunity."

McKinnon surrounded himself with great actors, he says, to make the job easier -- his wife playing Randy's wife, Charlotte, the carpal tunnel-suffering owner of Charlotte's School of Baton & Tap; Tim DeKay, who played Clayton Jones on HBO's "Carnivale," as Cecil's partner, Bill; and Walton Goggins, the other third of Ginny Mule Productions with McKinnon and Blount, as Tino Armani, the harbinger of change in Randy's world.

"Tino was written for Walton," McKinnon says. "This device of the odd stranger that comes to town and shakes things up kept evolving in my imagination into this savant, odd, wise, allegorical alien, almost. I knew audiences wouldn't recognize him the way they do Charlotte and Randy; they've never seen anybody like him before. Walton just had to trust that people would eventually come around to him -- and most people do."

Goggins, who has won critical acclaim as Shane Vendrell on "The Shield," says it took faith to make "Randy and the Mob," period.

"I mean, think about it. Ray's playing a wheeler-dealer good ol' boy and his gay twin brother, and I'm playing a clogging, Italian cooking, orphaned mobster from Plymell, Ga., that could run for mayor on Mars!

"At times, we felt the limb that we were walking on, but I trusted Ray," Goggins adds. "If you're going to put yourself out there, it's nice to have your best friend holding the safety net."

So far, the gamble seems to have paid off. "Randy and the Mob" won the Audience Choice Award at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival, and Knoxville News Sentinel critic Betsy Pickle says the film "has a lot of laughs, ranging from mild chuckles to boisterous guffaws." Atlanta premieres were "well-received," McKinnon adds, and he's excited about the Northwest Arkansas screening because Blount was born in Fayetteville, where her father studied engineering at the University of Arkansas, and "Chrystal" was shot around Eureka Springs.

"We expect to see lots of friends," he says. "I hope they're all laughing -- and I mean that in a good way!"

Movie Premiere

"Randy and the Mob"

Date: Oct. 5

Showtimes: Filmmaker Ray McKinnon will be at both evening showings; times will be announced next week

Venue: AMC Fiesta Square 16 in Fayetteville

Admission: Regular theater admission

For information, visit www.randyandthemob.net.

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