Crash course
Jim Cummings made his first movie, Thunder Road, for no money and with no experience. You can too. Here’s how
JIM CUMMINGS IS a writer. A director. An actor. A producer. An editor. And a composer. Yet before his debut film, Thunder Road, a slow-burn, pitch-black, funnier-than-it-sounds dramedy about a small-town cop having a breakdown in the wake of his mother’s death, he was none of those things. Now, he’s keen to inspire others to follow in his footsteps. So here, exclusively for Empire, is Jim Cummings’ guide to how you — yes, you — can become the next Jim Cummings.
1 PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
“The first hurdle to get over is inadequacy. That’s natural in every industry. It comes about from inexperience and naivety. People shouldn’t hold themselves back with thoughts of, ‘I can’t do this,’ or, ‘This will never happen.’ Think, I have a story to tell. I should put pen to paper. It takes making short films or sketches to build up the confidence to say, ‘I can make something that’s a feature.’ I made ten short films as a writer, director and actor, including a version of Thunder Road, before embarking on my first feature as a writer, director and actor. And all that was slowly chipping away at the wall of anxiety and inadequacy.”
2 ACT IF YOU HAVE TO
“I acted in the short film version of Thunder Road because I didn’t know anybody. When you’re making your first movie, it’s difficult to convince anyone who’s talented to come and work with you. So, because I was the dude who cared about the movie’s success more than anybody, I did it. I did two months of rehearsal for the funeral scene, driving in my car and crying and acting the whole thing out a thousand times so that it was muscle memory by the time I showed up on set. If I hired somebody, I couldn’t ensure that was going to be the case.”
3 WRITE HOW YOU WANT TO WRITE
“I’m not a great screenwriter. I don’t like screenplay format. I think it’s archaic. I think it’s a good blueprint, but people misinterpret screenplays all the time. I submitted the Thunder Road script to The Black List, I got three reviews and two of them were three out of ten. You don’t need to be a good screenwriter. As Tarantino once said, ‘I didn’t go to film school, I went to films.’”
4 RECORD THE SCRIPT AS A PODCAST
“Don’t let people misinterpret your script. Record it as a podcast and make sure it’s going to work over a 90-minute audio duration. If it works in audio format, it’ll probably work in visual format. Don’t spend time imagining how it’s going to come out of human vocal chords. Get it on its feet. Start doing it and you’ll find what’s good. But I’m not going to release the Thunder Road podcast. I play every character. I play a nine-year-old girl and act against myself, recorded in a closet. Maybe I’ll send it to Julian Assange, and he can release it.”
5 CONTROL THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
“It’s the democratisation of filmmaking over the years. People have a camera in their pocket. They have an editing machine in their pocket as well. We can now make movies on our own. I’m shooting a big studio movie right now and legitimately for the pick-up shots, I got my little DSLR out and shot the scenes on that. Shoot short films. Shoot stuff on your iphone, even if they’re sketches. Even if it’s just you and a tripod, at least then you’ll understand how to edit things together and tell a story like that.”
6 CONTROL THE MEANS OF DISTRIBUTION
“It’s such a predatory system. The people you’re selling your movie to say, ‘Let us distribute it because you’ve got to do your next movie. We’ll try to get you a two-picture deal.’ Then they take all of your rights. As I kept making stuff, we posted online, like I was a Youtube influencer or something — just putting out content every couple of months got us an audience. Nobody in Hollywood was going to give us any money. We had Kickstarter campaigns for shorts, so I tried one for a feature. We raised $34,000 in 12 days, which was enough to get going for pre-production.”
7 CUT YOUR CLOTH TO SUIT
“There’s a great joke among producers. ‘How many producers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?’ ‘Does it have to be a lightbulb?’ Thunder Road had a scene in a police station. Does it have to be a police station? No. It has to be a wall with a blue line on it, and a desk, and we have to have two dudes dressed as police officers walk and cross the frame. It’s literally in a warehouse that we got for two grand, instead of the 15 or 20 it would cost for a whole police station. We put in the sound design of a police station and you’d never know.”
8 GET THE BLESSING OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
“For the Thunder Road short, I used the original song because that’s what the character would do. I didn’t think about it. It’s one long take, I couldn’t cut it out. Then, when it won in Sundance, I was like, “Nobody is going to be able to see this thing.” So I reached out to Springsteen, and he saw it. He said, ‘Put it online. Give me $1,000 and you can use it.’ Recently, Patti, his significant other, said, ‘We just watched the full feature in our living room. It’s beautiful.’ All that paid off because the guy watched it. It’s a love letter to him and everything he’s been doing for the last 40 years.” CHRIS HEWITT
THUNDER ROAD IS OUT NOW ON DVD AND DOWNLOAD