Last Updated on March 18, 2021, 2:45 PM | Published: June 11, 2017
deadCENTER veterans Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison presented one of their latest serious works in the first night of the film festival in Oklahoma City, now in its 17th year.
“The Scent of Rain & Lightning was adapted from the novel by Nancy Pickard, which was a new approach for the prolific writer/producer team.
Already known for their films The Jogger, 2013, and Rudderless, 2014 the filmmakers were greeted by a nearly full house of festival fans.
Veteran actor Brad Carter (True Detective, Sons of Anarchy) joined Twenter, Robison and director Blake Robbins who seemed eager to watch reactions of viewers.
Watch for a separate story about Carter later in the weekend.
Before the film opened, Free Press got to interview Jeff Robison about the film and the challenges in making it.
After the showing, the four enjoyed answering all friendly questions and hearing compliments about the movie.
Volunteer staff had the uncomfortable job of herding well-wishers into the hallway because so many wanted to linger and talk to the four about the movie.
It was a good kind of problem for the filmmakers, and a typically hard one for the volunteers who are uniformly big film fans themselves.
Once in the hallway we talked with Robison to see what he thought about the reception.
“Oh, this was great. It seemed like people really liked it,” said Robison.
He talked about how the environment is changing for film where people have far shorter attention spans and are liking long movies less and less.
“This type of feature tells a serious story, but doesn’t make you sit for two hours,” Robison said.
This type of time-efficient drama is something that they want to continue to work on into the future, he said.
Basics
Director: Blake Robbins
Writers: Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison
Producers: Casey Twenter, Jeff Robison, Jeff Johnson, Maggie Grace, Kevin Waller
Cast: Miaka Monroe, Maggie Grace, Mark Webber, Logan Miller, Will Patton, Brad Carter, Bonnie Bedelia, Justin Chatwin
102 minutes
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
