Local writer/director's movie playing in theaters across the country this week

Andre Royo, left, who the main character in "Hunter Gatherer," won the Best Actor award at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March.
Andre Royo, left, who the main character in "Hunter Gatherer," won the Best Actor award at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March.
photo Ashley, played by Andre Royo, left, has just gotten out of prison and is trying to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend in "Hunter Gatherer."

If you go

› What: “Hunter Gatherer,” special weeklong screening› Where: East Ridge 18 movie theater, 5080 South Terrace› Tickets: Available at box office or at www.fandango.com› Information: 423-855-9652 Showtimes* 11:55 a.m. * 2:20 p.m. * 4:45 p.m. * 7:25 p.m. * 9:50 p.m.

Josh Locy was at the mechanic's, getting his car worked on, when he opened the email.

It came from actor Andre Royo, who currently plays Thirsty Rawlings on Fox's "Empire" and also portrayed recovering heroin addict "Bubbles" on HBO's "The Wire" from 2002-2008. He had been sent a copy of a script written by Locy, a 2003 Bryan College grad, for a film titled "Hunter Gatherer." If he liked the script, Royo might play the lead character, Ashley.

Royo liked the script. Really, really liked the script.

"Wow, a haunting depiction of want and need in human emotion," he wrote in the email. "Manipulation, desire and a selfishness that we battle within ourselves every day. I love the script and the challenge. It's one of those films where people feel bad for laughing and hate the fact that the enjoy the film "cause, if it's done right, it's a film that will stay with you and you don't know why!! I love it."

"I started crying when I read it because it was clear that he understood it," says Locy, 36, who also directed the film.

Picked up by national film distributor The Orchard, who then landed it in Carmike and AMC theaters, "Hunter Gatherer" opens today in 24 cities nationwide, including a seven-day run at East Ridge 18 on South Terrace Road.

Beyond Locy, the movie has another Chattanooga-area connection.

Through the film industry's spaghetti-like maze of a person who knows a person who knows a person, Locy was put in touch with Isaiah Smallman, CEO of Mama Bear, a Chattanooga-based film production company.

Mama Bear - which sprang from the womb of Fancy Rhino, the local video production/advertising company with such clients as Nike, Kia, Samsung and Lodge Manufacturing - produced the film, which means it helped raise money to get it made, then took care of financial and creative odds and ends during the run-up to filming and the actual making of the movie, which was shot in L.A. over a two-month period.

Smallman, who went to Covenant College but didn't know Locy prior to the making of "Hunter Gatherer," says he wanted to make the film after reading its script but knew it was "definitely a risk."

"It's not exactly a super-commercial movie," he says, but he and the others at Mama Bear thought is was "commercially viable and a great piece of art."

They also thought Locy had a lot of potential as a director.

"He had a super-unique vision that he was laying out, and it felt like something different than I'd seen before on the screen," Smallman says. "It felt like it was an interesting commentary on race relations without actually being a message movie. It felt like a story that I wanted to help tell about a guy in a very specific set of circumstances but also very universal."

"Hunter Gatherer" follows a man who's just gotten out of prison and is trying to get back with his ex-girlfriend, but Locy says that's just "the loose, basic plot" and the film is more "episodic" than straight narrative.

Locy says he "wanted to make a small movie that connected on the human side. The script is a canvas on which I can use the colors of the characters. The characters just have to feel; it's an effort to peel back what it means to be human, to be emotionally exposed."

In November, "Hunter Gatherer" premiered in New York and Los Angeles and picked up excellent reviews. Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times called it "a sweet, shambling poem to the tenacity of hope and the sustaining power of friendship," while the LA Times' Gary Goldstein said it is "a warmly eccentric little indie that's amusing, authentic and works against expectation."

Goldstein also said it's Royo's "limber, hand-in-glove portrayal of the oddly charismatic ex-con that make this urban dramedy so memorable."

Royo "is amazing. He calls me his 6-foot-9, Paul Bunyan-looking (expletive deleted)," the 6-foot-6 Locy laughs.

In March, Royo won the Best Actor award at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and "Hunter Gatherer" also won the American Independent Narrative Award in the Denver Film Festival and is a nominee in the Independent Spirit Awards for the 2017 John Cassavetes Award, given to the best feature made for under $500,000.

Locy says the character Ashley was based on a personal friend, Eddie, who passed away in December 2014.

"He was a special guy. He had a lot of stories to tell," Locy says. "His life was an interesting arc."

While Eddie "would buck" at the idea that he was the inspiration for Ashley, Locy says "the character is very much inspired by him. He had a sense of optimism and self-confidence, maybe a little bit deluded, but he had a vision of the world and his role in it."

Having the film play in Chattanooga, even if it's only for a seven days, "is special for me because that's where I studied and learned and went to church and hung out on the weekends," Locy says.

The same is true for Smallman.

"It's super-exciting knowing that people all over the country are experiencing it at the same time while I'm sitting there," he says.

Contact Shawn Ryan at sryan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.

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