FILM: Houston-made ‘Narco Sub’ beats the odds to make Amazon debut.
This is how a Houston attorney became a film producer and screenwriter: The story begins with a fishing trip in Key West, where Derek Potts heard a tale told by a local law enforcement officer who’d recently intercepted a makeshift submarine full of cocaine headed from South America to Florida.
The Potts Law Firm attorney decided the story was too interesting to ignore. He and his teenage son sketched out a threepage story. “We did more research about narcotic submarines, a phenomenon that seems to be increasing, popping up in the news here and there,” he says. “As drug enforcement authorities got better at intercepting flights, the cartels looked for a new approach.”
Potts had invested in films previously, but he says, “This was the first time I’d done something on the creative side. I decided I’d try to take the next step and make this movie.”
He’d worked with Houston filmmaker Shawn Welling previously. Welling had shot a scene for his 2019 film “The Last Astronaut” in a Potts Law Firm conference room.
So they set about creating characters and a fuller narrative that included human trafficking as well as drug smuggling. “Narco Sub” debuted on Amazon Feb. 5. The story follows Bruce Stryker — a retired Navy SEAL, forced to pilot a sub from Colombia to Miami after his family is kidnapped by a cartel.
“We wanted to make it a little deeper and philosophical,” Potts says. “A big part of the movie is this idea that there’s a point human beings will do whatever they need to do to survive or have their loved ones survive. The movie is about that point.”
Shooting in Texas
With a working screenplay, Potts and Welling set about finding their cast. They found Tom Vera, a Houston-based oil and gas geologist as their Stryker. Welling has a long relationship with Lee Majors, who has a small but crucial part in the film. They landed a pair of veteran actors: Robert LaSardo as one of their villains and Tom Sizemore as a DEA agent. The casting was a reunion for LaSardo and Sizemore, who played a pair of muggers in “Penn & Teller Get Killed” more than 30 years ago.
“I’m at the point where I’m up for any shoot that looks like it’ll be a fun, new experience,” Sizemore says. “Shawn has an eccentric point of view. But I can get behind that.”
He also had a fan in Potts.
“Derek seems to know all the lines from my movies. I think he knows them better than I do,” Sizemore says.
While the action jumps from Colombia to Miami to the Caribbean, they found serviceable locations to shoot throughout Texas: Houston, Katy, Kemah and Cotulla.
Their “sub” was by no means seaworthy but rather created inside a warehouse in the Houston area.
“The sub is key, but we didn’t have the budget of ‘The Hunt for Red October,’ ” Welling says. “But, fortunately, the actual narco subs are handmade and kind of janky. So we were able to make it work.”
Adds Sizemore, “It’s not like ‘Jaws,’ where it was shot on the water. But still, there’s this inanimate object, and they found a way to dramatize it well.”
That’s a wrap
Welling relishes the opportunity to shoot in Texas.
“We have a small army of people, and that allows us to move quickly,” he says. “There’s not a lot of red tape in what we do.”
For years he’s found financing for film projects here, and says the city “is a goldmine for great actors. It’s like a hidden secret.”
The choice of location paid off further last year. In February of 2020, “Narco Sub” was, by Potts’ account, about threequarters filmed. But a month later, as the pandemic became a greater concern, production shut down.
“We knew we didn’t want to let this stop us from finishing the film,” Welling says.
Texas started a reopening process before California, which Welling says, “put us in a great position” compared to Hollywood productions. “We were able to safely capture the scenes we still needed. Additionally, being an independent film, we aren’t tied to a specific timeline.”
With the final shots captured, Welling spent the remainder of last year in postproduction. This year, a deal was struck to present the film through Amazon, a remarkable turnaround, considering how the pandemic has shut down other productions entirely.
“The old-fashioned model, it used to be if you weren’t associated with a big studio, your only option was to make your own movie and go through the festival system,” Potts says. “Hire a distributor and open in a movie house that had enough interest. Today, it’s different. The streaming services are looking for tons of content. So we can do this without the big movie houses. That’s the path we decided to take here.”
Potts recalls being enamored with film since seeing “Star Wars” as a kid with his father. And he seems excited to now have a scene that puts him on screen as well as credits of his own.
“Ever since ‘Star Wars,’ I’ve loved the movies,” he says. “I’ve been a fan, and I’ve studied movies. So this opportunity came along, and I jumped on it.”