When Hollywood Heads South

The first moment of abject terror in Amber Alert occurs during an early shot of the unruly mass of interstate around downtown Louisville. A minimalist thriller that finds Nashville star Hayden Panettiere’s Jaq and her Uber driver, Shane (Abbott Elementary’s Tyler James Williams), attempting a high-stakes rescue of a kidnapped girl has enough charms of its own. But set against the backdrop of Louisville’s labyrinth of clover-looped highways, the movie should evoke the same kind of trauma for those familiar with the area that expat rural Swedes must feel when they watch Midsommar.

Over the last decade, Louisville and its enclaves have emerged as a magnet for film productions thanks to Kentucky’s 30-35 percent tax credit—incentives competitive with those that have turned Georgia into the global center of media making. But, unlike the numerous Hollywood productions that seem to value the South only for its tax breaks and Anytown settings, writer/director Kerry Bellessa and his producer wife, Summer, have turned Amber Alert into a distinct regional story free of laid-on-thick accents and backwater stereotypes. 

Though it more than earns its genre cred, what sets the film apart is a carefully cultivated sense of place rooted in the conflict between personal moral codes and detached urban outlooks. On the eve of Amber Alert’s premiere at the Nashville Film Festival last Tuesday, the Bellessas sat down with the Pamphleteer to talk about the need for stories focused on everyday people, the struggles of filmmaking while raising a family, and the enduring appeal of the American South. 

👀 Watching Council Do Nothing “They want to make people feel like they're doing something instead of actually doing something,” said Metro’s Fair Board chair, Jasper Hendricks, while discussing the passage of the mayor’s four public safety bills. On Sunday’s episode of Nashville in Focus, the show’s panel weighed in on the legislation recently rubber-stamped during second reading by the council. “That's the day that we're in, with politics today,” Hendricks concluded. “It's unfortunate there was no discussion, but people are tired of talking about it.” 

“You’re seeing the direct result of a lack of leadership at the state level,” said Dakota Galban, Chair of the Davidson County Democratic Party. “Let's not forget there were children who were on the receiving end of racial slurs by… actual Nazis.”

“Which one of these laws would have prevented that from happening?” posed Hendricks. “None of them,” he concluded, before pointing out the lack of enforcement of current laws: “They were breaking the law by riding in that UHaul truck… how come they weren't arrested then?”

🛠️ Do They Even Know Their Job? Later in the show, Fox17’s four-person panel of Nashville Republicans and Democrats discussed the council’s decision to support a nonbinding resolution requesting Metro Nashville Police Department adopt a new zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct. A month ago, the policy was put together by the Community Review Board and approved by its members without MNPD input. “You know… it's easy to pick things like this so that people in the media can pick up on it and say, ‘Okay, our city council is actually doing something,’” Hendricks said, echoing his earlier sentiments. “It's distracting.

“This is a visible example of [how] this council still does not know their job,” said former deputy mayor Bill Phillips. “They don't sit around and decide this department has this policy, and this department has that policy. There’s an HR department.”

🚌 Yellow Bus To Purple Bus Mayor O’Connell’s office made a stop on the transit campaign trail on Wednesday: McGavock High School. Representatives from the Nashville Department of Transportation, WeGo, and the administration stopped by to solicit buy-in from the young crowd. “I feel like they really listened to us and to our problems and to like, I love how they didn’t just, like, cast us aside,” student Isabela Tolentino told WSMV.

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• SoBro set for alcohol-infused ice cream shop

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• 📅View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here. Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
• 🎧On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
• 👨🏻‍🌾Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

Tonight Fri, Sep 27

✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: September 27-October 3

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