For filmmaker Cole Webley, growing up near the Gorge Amphitheatre in Eastern Washington was a key part of an upbringing that shaped him into the man and filmmaker he is now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While he currently lives in Utah, he recalls fondly coming of age in rural Washington and going on road trips around the Evergreen state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gorge Amphitheatre lived in the shadow of Quincy, Washington, as we liked to say,\u201d Webley playfully recalled. \u201cIt was great, a small, tiny, tiny town. We always called you guys \u2018coasties\u2019 whenever we ran into people from Seattle that would come over and vacation in Crescent Bar, (Grant County).\u201d<\/p>\n
Webley\u2019s feature debut, the shattering Utah-shot drama \u201cOmaha,\u201d is a film of both tiny towns and road trips that resembles much of his own life. The film, which premiered back at last year\u2019s Sundance and opens May 8 at the Tasveer Film Center, centers on a family: an unnamed dad, his two children, Charlie (Wyatt Solis) and Ella (Molly Bell Wright), and their scruffy dog.<\/p>\n
When we meet them, they must abruptly pack up and leave behind their rural home, setting out for a destination that\u2019s unknown to the audience until the very end. Starring John Magaro (who also appeared in Kelly Reichardt\u2019s locally-shot gems \u201cFirst Cow<\/a>\u201d and \u201cShowing Up<\/a>\u201d), it\u2019s a film that Webley said came from a desire to reflect not just his own upbringing, but the unique people that live in small, often overlooked, American towns.<\/p>\n \u201cI really lived in a tiny, one-stoplight town, and I\u2019ve always been drawn to these communities of four to seven thousand people and the subcultures that exist in them,\u201d Webley said, which he feels is captured in \u201cOmaha.\u201d He called films like it \u201cneo-Westerns\u201d in how they provide more contemporary takes on the classic elements, tropes and themes of the genre.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is what excited me about this story,” he explained. “I know this dad. I know this guy. I know that he is like these friends that I had with some (dipping tobacco) in the back pocket, working construction, coming home. Saw the world mostly black-and-white, and then something happens where their world is turned upside down.\u201d<\/p>\n From there, the film, set against the backdrop of the 2008 economic crisis, is about the family patriarch setting out alone with his children after he wasn\u2019t able to turn to anyone else for help.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis dad, he doesn\u2019t have anybody to go to, or his shame is so heavy he doesn\u2019t. I just felt like I really related to who he was,\u201d Webley said. \u201cI loved him immediately, and I wanted to see his journey end in a way where he could ask for help.\u201d<\/p>\n Magaro said he felt a similar kinship with this character. He carries a heavy weight and is quite reserved, often struggling to vocalize what it is that he is feeling over the course of the journey. Magaro was thus drawn to working with Webley so they could peel back the many layers of him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe definitely has struggles,\u201d Magaro said, referring to his character as a \u201ctragic figure\u201d in the same tradition of \u201cHamlet,\u201d but set in the present. \u201cI like complicated characters. I like people with shades and complexities and nuances. I find that interesting and appealing as an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n The film they made together, while simple, is one that spoke to Webley for precisely that reason. He considers it an experience that\u2019s driven \u201cby emotion rather than plot,\u201d which he finds realistic.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been able to be in these situations where the margins of society exist,\u201d Webley said. It was then the film\u2019s central exploration of a loss of innocence, in addition to how it grapples with the social conditions that lead to people falling through the cracks in modern America, that made it that much more impactful to him. \u201cThere\u2019s hope of what the world could be. I just loved that.\u201d<\/p>\n