Central Florida play turned film screening on Amazon Prime
“Sam and Elvis,” an eccentric family drama made in Central Florida, is playing on Amazon Prime Video.
Director Jeffrey Ault of Orange City is thrilled the story of teen pregnancy and adoption will reach more people.
“It deals with a 15-year-old girl who has been in foster care for the past year,” Ault said. “We find out she got pregnant in foster care. At the top of the movie, she is going to live with an aunt she never met before. The aunt is dealing with the death of her husband.”
Sam is the teen, and Elvis is the aunt’s taxidermied English bulldog, a sounding board for the mourning woman. Ault adapted the film with Susan Price Monnot from her play “Dead Dogs Don’t Fart.” He had produced the play when it premiered 11 years ago in DeLand.
Ault, who works with corporate clients through his Ault Media, said he produces personal projects that have meaning for him. The play dealt with social issues “in a realistic manner without going sappy,” he said.
He shot the film from June 2017 to February 2018 primarily in Orange City. Some scenes were filmed in Orlando, Lake Helen and Palatka.
He worked with a cast of 18 — the play had six people in it — and a crew of about 20. Sally Daykin of DeLand reprises her role as the aunt. Marcela Griebler, 14, a student at Freedom High School in Orlando, plays Sam. The film screened at six film festivals last year.
Monarch Films in New York is handling distribution. “It’s very good news,” Ault said. “They have all the avenues to get it on digital platforms.”
Monarch will help with foreign distribution, too. “Sam and Elvis” just debuted on Amazon Prime in the United Kingdom, said Art Skopinsky, owner of Monarch. The film will debut this spring on Tubi, Big Star digital platforms, Roku Channels, OTT (over the top) channels and TV stations around the world, he added.
“One of the most-requested genre style of films we are asked about is family themed films,” Skopinsky said. “Family films are very popular in the domestic marketplace and internationally, particularly in Asia. ‘Sam and Elvis’ is a lovely and quite funny film that tells the story of the formation of this nontraditional family unit not unlike what a lot of young people experience now in their lives. We think this film helps fill that need for films about families.”