Memphis filmmakers recruit veteran actress Grant
You may not recognize the name but you probably would recognize the distinctive sharp features and expressive Southern accent of character actress Beth Grant, who has stolen scenes as a busybody neighbor, uptight school teacher, priggish pageant official or wacky aunt in about a trillion zillion movies and TV programs.
Grant’s résumé includes cult classics (”Donnie Darko” and “Sordid Lives”), hit television series (she was Mindy’s coworker for the six-season run of “The Mindy Project”) and three ree Best Picture Oscar-winners (”Rain Man,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Artist”).
She’s worked with Cruise (Tom), Clint (Eastwood) and Chucky (the killer doll, who beat her to death with a yardstick in 1990’s “Child’s Play 2”). She’s obviously comfortable among impressive company. But Grant is not in Memphis this week to act alongside Jimmy Smits in the NBC series “Bluff City Law” or to hang out in Elvis Presley’s former haunt in the Hallmark Channel’s “Christmas at Graceland 2,” to cite the two high-profile projects currently in production here.
Instead, Grant and longtime friend and fellow character actor John Diehl — recognizable from “Stripes,” “Jurassic Park III” and the first three seasons of “Miami Vice” — are lending their talents to a crew of independent Memphis filmmakers working in the figurative shadows of Hallmark and NBC.
“Nessun Dorma“— an Italian phrase that essentially translates as “No One Sleeps,” borrowed from the title of an aria in Puccini’s 1926 opera, “Turandot“— is a short film about a runaway kid that is being directed by Matteo Servente, 44, who was born in Torino, Italy, but has lived in Memphis the past dozen years. The 12-page script is by Memphis filmmaker Melissa A. Sweazy, working from Servente’s original idea.
Other contributors include a Who’s Who of local indie talent. Joseph Carr is the producer; Ryan Earl Parker is the cinematographer; Chad Irwin is production designer. Laura Jean Hocking will edit the footage that Servente and his small crew capture July 19-21 at such locations as Shady Grove Presbyterian Church and the High Point Barber Shop. The result will be a 10-to-12-minute short film that likely will screen at this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival and may screen at other film festivals around the world. More than that, the film will be a promotional tool and calling card for the filmmakers, who hope the short’s success will enable them to attract the investors necessary to expand “Nessun Dorma” into a feature film.
The presence of Grant and Diehl — working for what Servente calls the “absolute minimum” fees possible under Screen Actors Guild guidelines for “micro-budget” productions — should help “Nessun Dorma” attract attention.
“This is them making a sacrifice for the sake of the project,” said Carr, 35.
The always in-demand Grant, 69, said she agreed to appear in “Nessun Dorma” because “the script was so beautiful, and it captured my real-life experience in the South.” During negotiations, “I fell in love with these guys,” she said, referring to Servente and Carr.
Grant — born in Alabama, raised in Georgia, and now based in Los Angeles — recruited her friend of 34 years, the Nashville-based Diehl to join her in the film. Diehl — whom Grant describes as “a beloved actor among actors” — agreed to come to Memphis after he read the script. “It’s all about the writing, that’s where it starts,” said Diehl, 69, who earlier in the week was in Boston, acting in an episode of Hulu’s Stephen King-inspired horror series, “Castle Rock.”
The two veterans have worked together in four films, including the 1996 John Grisham adaptation, “A Time to Kill.” Diehl also appeared in director Joel Schumacher’s Grisham-based, madein-memphis “The Client” (1994). Grant said she was supposed to be in “The Client,” too, “but dadgummit, Jan de Bont called to do ‘Speed,’ and he and Joel couldn’t work it out, so I did ‘Speed’ — the movie, not the drug.”
You might be skeptical of that caveat if you spend much time around the high-energy Grant, who calls herself “an old redneck” who is “wired for sound.” With little prodding, she and Diehl happily swap film-set horror stories, with a frankness that might cause press agents to blanch. The down-home accents are thick, although Diehl is not from the South but from Cincinnati — a distinction without a difference, the actor insisted, considering how often he crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. “Fireworks, booze and women, that’s what you’d go to Kentucky for,” he said.
Servente — whose credits include the award-winning 2006 short “Dammi il la,” made in Italy, and the Memphisbased 2012 feature, “The Romance of Loneliness” — has been pursuing “Nessun Dorma” for seven years, he said.
He “workshopped” the project in 2012 when he was accepted into the prestigious 12-day “College Cinema” at the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy; this experience helped him make various contacts that later proved invaluable, including New York producer Phil Newsom, still involved with the film, and New York casting agent Adrienne Stern, who contacted Grant.
In 2017, “We Go On,” a short film directed by Servente, won the “Best Film” award of $10,000 at the second annual Memphis Film Prize festival. Servente put much of the prize money into “Nessun Dorma”; the rest of the $20,000 budget has come to a large extent through the support of the non-profit Independent Film Project, which enables donors to make a tax-deductible contribution to select films through its website, fiscal.ifp.org.
The IFP website provides this synopsis for “Nessun Dorma”: “An imaginative 11-year-old boy barrels into a rural town in a stolen Trans-am, upending the routines of a widowed police dispatcher and a secretive barber.”
The dispatcher is played by Grant, the barber is Diehl (the character is an Italian-american, which explains the film’s title) and the boy, called “Speed,” will be portrayed by a relative newcomver to acting, 9-year-old Max Havens of Germantown, the son of International Paper attorneys Kevin and Mimi Havens.
Max — whose handful of previous credits include the role of the caterpillar in a stage production of “Alice in Wonderland” at St. George’s Independent School, where he is a student — beat out about 30 other kids for the role of the young car thief. He describes his role as that of a child on a quest for his mother, who may or may not be a mermaid. “I’m trying to find the mermaid, a.k.a. my mom,” said Max, who, as “Speed,” wears “Kinky Boots”-style stack heels to reach the car’s pedals.
Quoting the country band Alabama to describe herself as “Southern born and Southern bred,” Grant took a road trip of her own to reach “Nessun Dorma.” She flew from Los Angeles to Atlanta, then rented a car to drive to Memphis via the Chattahoochee region of Georgia, where she was raised.
She said she stopped at various stores and restaurants to talk to residents, to find inspiration for her police dispatcher character. (Being a character actor is “the coolest,” she said.) But the trip was as much pleasure as research.
“I stopped in Tupelo to see Elvis’ house,” Grant said. “I couldn’t resist. He was my first hero.
“Well, Fess Parker and Elvis,” she amended, referring to the “coonskin cap”-wearing star of the Disney TV series, “Davy Crockett,” which debuted in the 1950s. “They were my two top dogs.”
Still doling out memories from a Southern girlhood, Grant revealed the origins of her career as a performer.
“I knew all the words,” she said, alluding to both the “Davy Crockett” theme song and one of Presley’s biggest hits. “I used to pantomime them out. I went back and forth between ’Born on a mountain top in Tennessee‘ and ’You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.’”