- Scott Teems
Tonight, the Indie Memphis Film Festival begins proper, with a screening of That Evening Sun at 7 p.m. (and an encore at 10 p.m.). Directed by Scott Teems and shot near Knoxville, That Evening Sun stars Hal Holbrook as a man who escapes a nursing home so that he can return to his homestead and live out his days in the place of his choosing. The Memphis Flyer talked to Teems about his film and his identity as a Southern filmmaker.
Memphis Flyer: That Evening Sun is the second time you’ve made a movie based on material by author William Gay.
Scott Teems: I made a short film as part of the process of getting That Evening Sun made. I had optioned the short story [Gay’s “I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down”] in 2005, and I wrote the script and we spent about a year and a half trying to get something going with it. We were having a tough time getting people excited about it — no one wanted to make a movie about an 80-year-old Tennessee farmer. I can’t imagine why that’s not commercially viable.
[Producer] Terence Berry and I decided to make a short that was indicative of this world [to help with funding]. But I wanted it to be its own thing. I had read “A Death in the Woods,” and it fit a short film. Gay was a big supporter of what we were trying to do and was an advocate for the project. I made “A Death in the Woods” saying, This is me making this kind of movie on very limited resources.
