Made in Columbus with local talent, here’s how to watch Bo Bartlett’s first feature film
From conception to fruition, the first feature film directed by Columbus artist Bo Bartlett — and shot in his hometown with local talent — has been 35 years in the making.
“It’s been such a long time coming,” he told the Ledger-Enquirer. “So the release of letting it out has been a great sense of joy for us. … We are thrilled to share it with the world.”
The film, titled “Things Don’t Stay Fixed,” is described as a Southern Gothic story of a worldly photojournalist who returns home to stop his daughter’s wedding and save her future, but realizes he’s been stuck in the past.
It’s available on streaming services Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Fandango, RedBox, Vudu and YouTube. It’s also on DVD.
Those technologies didn’t exist in the 1980s, when Bartlett attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and started thinking about making such a film.
“I was dreaming that my paintings were moving,” he said.
After studying film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, making a few documentaries and establishing himself as a successful artist, Bartlett had the expertise, time and money ($250,000 budget) to bring his cinematic dream to reality, along with his wife and fellow artist, Betsy Eby, the movie’s executive producer.
Bartlett worked on and off for five years to write the screenplay with dramatist Sandra Deer, former artistic director of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
In 2017, Bartlett and a crew of more than 50 folks brought the words to life as they filmed in Columbus, including landmarks such as St. Elmo, Illges House, Linwood Cemetery, Pop A Top Bar, A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium, Chattahoochee Riverwalk and Lakebottom.
Bartlett wanted the movie to debut in theaters, but the coronavirus pandemic has provided an opportunity for it to gain attention while film distributors are starving for material because productions have been suspended or severely limited.
“Out of the blue — I don’t know how they found out about it — but Indican Pictures got connected to us,” he said.
Although the film is scheduled to get the big-screen treatment at a Hollywood drive-in, Bartlett isn’t pushing for it to be shown at indoor theaters.
“Because of COVID, I don’t want it to be a super-spreader event,” he said. “… We’ll show it at the Bo Bartlett Center at some point, I’m certain — when it’s safer — but for now, it’s just online.”
Movie’s message
Bartlett likens the movie’s aesthetic to a French film — with a universal message.
“It’s about how we find meaning in life,” he said. “We think we have control of things often. We’d like to think we have control of things in our sphere. But it’s about grief and about letting go. … It’s about letting go of our past so that we can move into the future.”
And the present, Bartlett said, is the perfect time for this story.
“Right now, in this time, things don’t stay fixed,” he said. “You have to keep coming back to them. So I think there’s a lesson there: Don’t assume that, just because something’s gotten to a certain point, that’s it, that it’s going to stay like that. To continue to evolve or progress, we have to keep paying attention to it. That’s in our own personal life and in our larger, social, civic life.”
Local cast and crew
Like the realism depicted in his paintings, Bartlett insisted on the movie being set and filmed in Columbus and produced with a mostly local cast and crew.
“Columbus inspired me,” he said. “It inspired me originally to want to be an artist — the light and the place — so I always wanted to be true to that inspiration. … To me, there’s nothing worse than having a bunch of Hollywood actors trying to fake Southern accents. So we had all Southern actors.”
Melissa Saint-Amand, Lucy Sheftall, Lorenzo Battle, Yolanda Sewell and Jonah C. Miller are among the Columbus natives in the cast. Producer Stacy Cunningham, production designer Ben Coolik, postproduction coordinator Cora King, art director Carson DeMars, costume designer Brandy White, set dresser Dradyn Hinson, set assistant Ginger D. Steele, first camera assistant Joseph Berger and additional cameraman Matt Hanner also are from Columbus. The Georgia Film Academy at Columbus State University provided some of the crew members.
Bartlett is grateful as well for the “huge help” from the Springer Opera House and local residents who contributed in various ways.
Starring in the movie are William Gregory Lee (“First Man”), Tara Ochs (“Allegiant”) and Brenda Bynum (“Sharky’s Machine”).
Look for another Bartlett feature film to be shot in Columbus, he said, possibly this summer if the pandemic subsides. This one is titled “Hurtsboro” and is about “the need to be woke” amid the Black Lives Matter movement, he said.
This story was originally published February 23, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Made in Columbus with local talent, here’s how to watch Bo Bartlett’s first feature film."
