Hollywood Is Still Heading 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. 

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This seems to be an idea that has really stuck with you two. It was a movie you first made a version of in 2012, and twelve years later, you are revisiting it on a bigger scale. What was it about this idea that drove you to make this movie more than a decade later?

Summer: When Kerry initially had the idea, we were driving from Los Angeles to Phoenix, and he saw an Amber Alert. It sparked a conversation. He always wanted to make this type of film, but no one was giving him a few million dollars for that idea to come to life. We actually made [the first one] a feature-length film, but we reimagined it as a found footage film. It ended up being the second most-watched movie on Netflix when it was released, which felt like we won the indie lottery.

Kerry: It was such a tiny film that we made for $5,000. But this version was always the film that we wanted to make. We wrote the script right after that, then started pounding the pavement to get it here. 

I love the concept. But back then, I thought, like, Chivo [Oscar-winning Gravity and Birdman cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] would be shooting my first film. We'd have fourteen cranes for the found footage version, you know? And then Summer was like, “No one's giving you money. No one's giving you a chance. We just have to go make it.” So that's what we did.

I was really impressed with the look of the movie. Something that I think movies generally don't do well is making it tense when you're in the car. That's hard to pull off, and you all do. What was your approach to not only making the car scenes look cinematic but also keeping that tension going in these enclosed environments?

Kerry: I think we always wanted it to seem claustrophobic where we didn't have a lot of wide shots. They were more tight shots or profiles. When you're working with a process trailer, you can also only do so much. If you're shooting too wide, then you see the trailer and all of the camera stuff. So we strategically chose our angles. We also didn't want it to be redundant and boring. 

That was definitely a concern: that it was going to be boring, that they're just sitting in a car the whole time. I think we were able to pull off some nice shots and our two actors helped us out so much that, at times, it didn't seem to matter what the angle was.

The way you feature Louisville and its unique interstate system really sticks out. An Amber Alert is scary enough, but one on those roads at rush hour is something else entirely. Why did you decide to set the story there, and how did you go about building the fully realized world of Louisville in your film? 

Summer: From the producer’s side of things, knowing about the tax incentives is important. We had a list of the cities, and we thought the script could happen in a lot of different places, so we were flexible. And with the tax incentives, we had our short list of where would be the best, most strategic place to shoot. When we picked Louisville, we didn't want to just make the film. We wanted to lean in and have that specificity.

Kerry: We didn't have many resources to make this film. It’s a shoestring budget in Hollywood terms. So getting that tax incentive really helped us. Josh [Oram] and I wrote the script originally. It was set in Phoenix, Arizona, and so we thought, “Arizona. That's where we were doing it.” But, like Summer said, when we got greenlit to go do it, it was like, we're not shooting this in Arizona. So, we reverse-engineered it. When we got to Louisville, we talked to all the locals. Our production designer, Sally [Jean Wegert] was like, “That's not the right freeway, guys. You got to use this one.”

Summer: We trusted our local team. They were amazing. Really, really talented people. We feel so grateful that we got to work with them.

Kerry: We had such a great time making the film because of them. They're so talented. Luka [Bazeli, the film’s cinematographer] came from L.A., but everyone else was local. They were awesome and really talented, but also just fun to hang out with. 

I've also never seen people smoke so much my entire life. Daniel, our Best Boy, was like, “Yeah, dog, eighty percent of Kentucky smokes, even the babies.” I was like, “All right, cool.” 

One cute thing at the very end was when Hayden asked as we wrapped what she should get for everyone and I was like, “I know exactly what you should get.” I will say, she tried to get a coffee truck for everybody, but it rained and there was lightning, so they couldn't come to where we were. At the last minute, she bought dozens and dozens of cartons of cigarettes. It was so funny. We all loved her for it. They were all just the best.

Amber Alerts are important, but we're desensitized to them. We have a clear villain in the movie, but then the bureaucracy and the influx of crowdsourcing tips end up causing their own conflicts.  Why did you feel that was the route to take, one in which so many of the barriers were coming from good people trying to help, but also from the adoption of technology, which creates problems that didn't exist before?

Kerry: We had to ramp up the tension. I always think of this as a roller coaster: you go up, and then you drop, and then you ramp it again, and you go to the big one until the very end. We had years and years to come up with different ideas and scenarios. I think, strategically, we also needed our heroes to make certain decisions. They couldn't just get in the car and both be like, “We're Starsky and Hutch. Let's go get them!” We had to have different ideas and perspectives. When Summer and I saw one of these alerts on our trip, I wanted to do one thing, and she thought it was better to play things a little more safe.

Summer: We hope when people watch it, they'll have a similar experience. What would you do? Plus, we hope people will end up being able to talk about and look at Amber Alerts differently when [they] see one and not just let it be like, “Let me get back to Instagram,” or, “Let me text this person back.” You'll take a moment and look around.

Kerry: Just be a little more aware of our surroundings. 

You’re talking about these everyday people getting involved and being totally unprepared. I love the scene where Hayden is trying to spy on the kidnapper, and she's in these giant heels running around a gas station. This is not the typical police procedural movie. We don’t have the rebel cop who goes against the grain and solves the crime. Why did you choose to focus on these two characters who have no idea what they're doing, but are motivated to do good?

Kerry: I find that fascinating—ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I feel like the world is a good place. I think sometimes we highlight more of the negativity. We just never wanted to make a movie where one of them was gonna jump car to car, or, you know, start John Wicking people. I want people to go to Denny's after the movie so they can argue about who was right. 

Summer: I think it's easier to put yourself in their position when they aren't, you know, ninjas. When you’re utilizing things that you have at your disposal.

Kerry: I can't put myself in Superman's shoes. I can't know how to fly. But I can be like, “Huh? I don’t know if I’d do what they did.” So, I think we're drawn to stuff like that.

People say there's no work-life balance in the film industry. There’s a barrier between family and  work. In terms of an independent film, that's much harder because of the fact that you don't have the studio cushion, as you would on another Lionsgate movie with a bigger budget. You’ve had this personal and professional collaboration going in all the uses of that term for so long. How do you manage that working relationship?

Kerry: When we came up with this idea, we were married. We had no kids. Now, we have three kids. Our oldest is 13. It's hard sometimes to keep up with Summer because she can do so much. But I think it's perspective. We have children. We have things that are the most important things in our life. I don't think this is life or death what we're trying to do, but it is important to us.

Summer: Filmmaking is hard. When you're making a film, you give it everything you have. When both of us are on a project, it does make it a challenge. We've relied a lot on my mom. On Carrie's parents. On help.

Kerry: When we were in Louisville, they came out. When we make movies every couple of years, it's nice for the kids to come out and see what we're doing. Summer's mom drove out from the West Coast. They stayed there for a week. But even then, I sometimes feel like I'm a bad dad, because we're working 18-hour days, and then you have to prep for the next day. I don't want to be an absentee parent, so it is kind of hard to do all of that.

Summer: But I try to remind them that I get to pick them up from school for nine months of the year, and we're there, working from home. Not a ton of kids get this much parent time. But then, when we're on a project, we have got to be flexible. 

They love being on set. They're at that age now. Before, we'd have them come wherever we were going, but now they have school. It's less easy to do that, but when we have them on set, it's really fun. Our oldest went and hung out with the sound department, and they taught him how to do things. 

Kerry: He was with the gaffer one day. Then one day he read the whole script. And I was like, “I think it's really good.” And he says, “It's not Indiana Jones, but it's good." I was like, “Cool, there, buddy.”

At the very opening of the teaser, that little girl is our daughter. That’s our youngest.

Summer: It’s a combination of having our family as close as we can, and having an amazing team of people that we love and trust to supplement when we're both on set together. It's a little bit of a dance, and it's a little bit figuring out exactly what's best for the kids at what time while still being artists and getting to create. But we love it. And our kids, that's all they know. So we just keep rolling.

Amber Alert opens in select theaters and debuts on Premium VOD today.