Filmmaker from area plans local bash as thanks for help
Two years ago, after he finished filming his first movie, director Aaron Garrett didn’t have time to throw a wrap party.
On Saturday, he’ll throw a block party in downtown London, Ohio — where he filmed most of that movie, “False Flag” — to celebrate its world-premiere screening at the State Theater. And everybody’s invited. “I wanted to create a party for the entire town,” said Garrett, 29, a Madison County native living in Los Angeles. “One of the best things that happened from this film is I learned how many people in London and central Ohio are interested in film and the arts. I never knew it existed.”
“False Flag” tells the story of two estranged brothers in a small town (named Madison, of course) who are trying to mend fences when martial law breaks out.
Filming took place in London in June 2016, but the logistics were daunting. Garrett, who wrote the script, had a large shopping list: military vehicles and uniforms, school buses and What: Where:
Contact: Showtime: Admission: plenty of extras.
But central Ohioans came through. A friend of his father’s had a military truck and knew where more could be found. A surplus store gave Garrett a deep discount on gear. London schools provided buses. Plenty of people showed up to serve as extras. And the city of London offered all the assistance that Garrett could want.
London Mayor Patrick Closser said the city was happy to help.
“He’s a local guy; he’s from Madison County,” Closser said about Garrett, “and when you leave Madison County and you go to California and you’re trying to do these great things and make something of yourself — we have great pride in our county and town, we want to see our citizens succeed, and we thought this was one way we could help him succeed.”
Most of the filming took place at night on Main Street, so the city closed Route 56 through town, sometimes until sunrise.
Occasionally, requests for help came on short notice. One day, as Garrett was reading the script, he noticed that he’d forgotten to mention to officials that he needed to start a bonfire in a barrel in the middle of Main Street.
“I asked (Closser) that morning … as if I wasn’t the person who wrote the script, but the script says we have to light a fire in Main Street, and he said, ‘Can I be the one to throw the match?’”
Closser said that he enjoyed lighting the fire but that liability was more of a concern.
“If something went wrong,” he said, “l’d rather have it be with me than with a citizen.”
Garrett took an indirect path into filmmaking. The son of Rex and Becky Garrett of London graduated in 2007 from Madison-Plains High School, where he was on the wrestling team.
After high school, he decided to give professional wrestling a try, spending a year training at a Florida wrestling school.
“They basically told me to go back home and get a little bit bigger and older and slow down a little bit,” he said.
But wrestling gave Garrett a taste for performing.
“It’s a very easy transfer,” he said. “If you know wrestling how wrestlers know wrestling, … it’s very much a performance art, like a ballet. There are scripted movements and story lines. That’s why a lot of wrestlers transfer into films.”
After getting hired as an extra in the movies “Super 8” and “Foxcatcher” — filmed in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, respectively — Garrett moved to California to seek a career in film. He got jobs as a physical trainer and a waiter to pay the bills, but his work at auditions wasn’t paying off.
Fed up with not being cast, Garrett decided to finish the script for “False Flag” and make it himself. He recruited friends from Los Angeles and from Pittsburgh, where he’d attended acting school, for the project. He also
“False Flag” State Theater, 67 S. Main St., London 740-490-7640, www. londonstatetheater.com 7 p.m. Saturday, with a block party beginning on Main Street at 4 $15 for the movie; free for the block party.