We published a story last summer about This World Won’t Break, when the indie movie that was filmed in Dallas screened at the Texas Theatre. I haven’t yet seen it but plan to, because today it drops on all streaming formats. The film’s (first time) director, Josh Jordan, calls it a love letter to Dallas. Polyphonic Spree frontman Tim DeLaughter has a role in the film. He conducted an exclusive interview for FrontBurner with Jordan to let FrontBurnervians know what they should expect when they pay Bezos the $3.99 to watch the movie. (Meaning Tim sent me a really long Twitter DM that contained a DM from Jordan.) Content:
“March 6, we are boarding our plane in Glasgow and heading back to Texas. We did it. Our film festival tour was officially over. We had taken this little Texas film all over the world. Then our phones went off. SXSW cancels the festival. By the time we’d landed, most every other festival had followed suit.
“Then the phone started to ring in the months that followed. Distributors needed content for platforms by September, and due to lack of production/film festivals/screenings, they were running out. Our little film was still a little fish, but the pond was much much smaller now.
“We went with Passion River. They liked the underdog and didn’t want to change anything about our film. They just wanted the world to see it.
“The film is a love letter to Dallas, Texas. It’s a simple film, made two years before the pandemic and global tension, but there is an underlying feeling of it that echoes when I watched it recently. It has the blues, Americana, and country music that speaks for the main character Wes Milligan, played by Greg Schroeder. The movie had no funding, no main producer, no stars, a first-time feature director and a first-time actor as the lead. Not the recipe for success. But with the help of locals like Dolly Python, Bolt Productions, Tamco, all the restaurants, locations, and helping hands, we made it.
“We were chasing time, though. Dallas was changing before our eyes. We shot in Doug’s Gym with Doug; two weeks later, it was gone. But it didn’t just get made, it went to 14 film festivals and won 13 awards. Went from Australia, Italy, Scotland, London, and on. Now it comes out to the rest of the world. The rest of the world gets to see our little corner on the map. And I’m proud of that.”
