Tucson filmmaker flips the script on making movies in the Old Pueblo

It’s not often, if ever, that a Tucson independent filmmaker filming in Tucson lands a big-name star for their low-budget film.

Even more rare is securing a national distribution deal that could take that film to cineplexes around the country.

Bisbee native and former Tucson television anchor Sally Shamrell did both.

She cast a veteran Hollywood character actor to appear in her just-wrapped debut feature film “Choir Practice” and landed a handshake deal from a major film distributor.

Shamrell hopes her success will help change the narrative around Tucson filmmakers and Tucson as a movie-making destination.

“I hope this is a game-changer,” she said days after Flat Dog Films, her Tucson-based film company with husband Glenn Murphy, finished 16 days of filming at locations throughout the greater Tucson area.

These included a private barn in Catalina, Glover Ranch event center in Marana’s Picture Rocks area, St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, Grand Avenue at the Nogales Port of Entry and King’s Anvil Ranch west of Tucson in Alter Valley.

“I think Tucson has such amazing, diverse landscapes that more filmmakers need to see and understand that they can shoot barren desert and 9,000 feet in the pines,” she added. “This community and all of Southern Arizona, even my hometown of Bisbee, has so much diversity to offer in terms of sets and locations that I feel like other filmmakers need to see it and realize that this is a great location, and give Tucson a chance.”

“This is probably one of the largest local projects that we’ve seen in a while,” said Peter Catalanotte, director of Film Tucson, which helps filmmakers scout locations and services from makeup artists to caterers. “We’re really proud of Sally and her team. They worked a long time on getting that script in front of everyone and raising the money.”

Shamrell, who spent 10 years living and working as an actor in Los Angeles, made up her mind when she was writing the screenplay that she would film in Tucson. Her acting and filmmaking friends suggested she look at New Mexico, with its generous tax incentives of up to 40%; Arizona has a sliding scale depending on production costs, ranging from 15% to 20%.

“Even though the tax credits aren’t as high as other states,” she said, filming in Tucson is less expensive in the end because the costs of labor, hotel rates, services, food and other expenses are lower.

New Mexico also didn’t have the lush desert landscape Shamrell needed to tell her action-crime thriller about an unconventional Catholic priest trying to help a young lost migrant find his American father as an international drug cartel is close on their trail.

Shamrell started writing the screenplay not long after she and Murphy came home to Tucson from Los Angeles in late 2019, just in time for the COVID pandemic lockdowns months later in March 2020. But she had been working on the story for years as she waited for audition callbacks.

“When you’re acting and you have free time waiting for the phone to ring, if you are like me, having been a journalist, you’re writing,” she said, including dabbling with an idea for a TV news pilot, which made her think about doing her own projects.

That’s when her friend Jim Driscoll, a retired Tucson Police Department sergeant, suggested a good character would be an unconventional Tucson Catholic priest named Mike Martinez who played bass in a band, was a retired Air Force chaplain and occasionally did ride-alongs with the police. (Martinez is now serving in Green Valley.)

“I was like, yeah, that is a really interesting character, but you know, what’s the story?” said Shamrell. She grew up Catholic and admits she was enamored by the sacrament of confession. “You could say anything you want and the priest can’t tell anybody. It’s between you two and God.”

She mulled over the priest character for a few years and struck on an idea when she heard about migrants kidnapped by drug cartels in Agua Prieta.

“I sort of took aspects of that story and put it together with the Father Mike story, “ Shamrell said, adding that she changed the priest’s name since the movie is not about Father Mike.

Shamrell wrote the screenplay during the pandemic, then she and Murphy, who own the twin East Tanque Verde Road restaurants The Cork Tucson and UnCork’d Kitchen & Bar, spent several years raising the money to produce it.

“We did the hard yards for like more than four years of literally raising money, pitching and raising money locally. And all the money raised came from Tucson and Tucson residents,” she said.

The film stars Rodrigo Rojos (“Ozark,” “Modern Family,” “Station 19”) as the priest who finds a migrant teen, played by newcomer J.J. Urquidez, who is being hunted by the cartel’s boss, played by Danny Trejo (“Desperado,” “Con Air,” “Spy Kids”).

“(Urquidez) just graduated from Tucson High and he is amazing,” Shamrell said, adding that Urquidez will attend the University of Arizona in the fall. “He’s so shy, I thought I was really worried about getting on set, but as soon as the cameras rolled, he knows exactly what to do.”

Also in the film, which is co-produced by Tucson-based Monsoon Production Services, are Tucson natives Jon Proudstar (“Reservation Dogs,” “Last Stop In Yuma County”) and Lou Pimber (“Breaking Bad”) and Catalina native Tanner Sarff (“Animal Kingdom,” “Lucifer”).

More than 90% of the Screen Actors Guild cast is Tucson- and Arizona-based actors, including Tucson native and UA alum Savannah Guthrie (“Today” show anchor, “Zero Day,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) playing a news anchor.

“Choir Practice” is in the final editing stage before Flat Dog Films submits it to film festivals. Shamrell said she already has a handshake distribution deal with an independent arm of Lionsgate and Magnolia Pictures.

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Tucson filmmaker goes for a trilogy

Alan Williams landed his first feature film project by accident.

The veteran filmmaker, who had a half dozen projects on his résumé from music videos to award-winning shorts, was hired to direct a pilot of “8000 Ft Up,” a “Hitchcockian thriller” that the producers hoped to take to Netflix.

Long story short, that didn’t work out so well.

So Williams, a retired Rural Metro firefighter/EMT and graduate of the University of Arizona film school, huddled with the film’s cast and crew.

“We said, ‘Okay, let’s do a little crowdfunding thing and see what we can raise’,” he said. “We can do this movie. It’s a simple movie. We can do this, and let’s finish a feature film, and let’s show people what can be made in Tucson for very little money. And so we did. Somehow, I don’t know how, we pulled it off.”

Soon after it came out on all major streaming platforms in 2022, Williams entered the film “8000 Ft Up” — about three strangers, one of them a psychopath, who meet on a mountain camping trip — in several festivals including the Arizona National Film Festival, where it won Best of Arizona, and the Arizona International Film Festival. During a Q&A session with the audience, Williams joked about making a sequel.

“The audience response was, ‘No, we don’t want a sequel; we want to know what happened beforehand. We want a prequel’,” Williams recalled.

“And then I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wow. Alright, now we have to do a prequel’.”

Williams got the producer of “8000 Ft Up,” which he filmed on Mount Lemmon, to sign over the intellectual rights so that he could do the prequel, the psychological thriller “10Ft Down.”

“I wrote the prequel, and then I was getting ready to start looking for funding,” Williams said, recalling how a fan of “8000 Ft Up” stepped up and funded the project. The fan looked at what Williams had “done with nothing” and thought, “Imagine what we could do with something.”

They filmed “10Ft Down” in Tucson and released it last year. Like its predecessor, the film snagged the Best of Arizona nod at the Arizona International Film Festival in April.

And now ... the sequel, “489 Miles,” a crime caper that puts a period on “8000 Ft Up.”

Williams, who spent 24 years as a firefighter and now owns and operates the cross-fit gym Milo Fitness Factory with his wife, Kare, hopes to film and release “489 Miles” next year.

“If I could get this thing shot and released in ‘26 wouldn’t that be something,” he said. “That would be my ultimate goal.”

Williams, whose film credits include the 2008 experimental short “The Human Condition” and the award-winning “featurette” “On a Clear Day” in 2007, earned his first Best of Arizona award from the Arizona International Film Festival for his 2011 documentary “The Avenue,” about Tucson’s venerable North Fourth Avenue.

HBO pilot that was ... then wasn’t

Film Tucson helped the producers of J.J Abrams’ HBO Max series “Duster” scout locations downtown and around Pima County before they arrived to shoot the pilot episode in early September 2021.

The show about a getaway driver for a crime syndicate, co-written by LaToya Morgan, takes place in the 1970s Southwest, which made Tucson’s saguaro-studded landscape a perfect backdrop.

For three months, there were Tucson sightings of star Josh Holloway (“Lost”) before filming wrapped up in mid-November. The show also stars Rachel Hilson and Keith David.

The producers put the props and costumes and other affects from the project in a south-side storage warehouse, where it sat until Film Tucson Director Peter Catalanotte got a phone call in 2023.

“HBO called to say, ‘We’re gonna scrap that pilot and redo the whole thing in New Mexico. I’m so sorry, blah, blah, blah,’ which, you know, it’s business,” Catalanotte said. “So none of the footage from Tucson survives, or maybe it does on a hard drive somewhere. I have no idea. But when you tune into the show on HBO, when you watch the first episode, that’s all New Mexico, and you will see very fake saguaros.”

Catalanotte said there is, however, a silver lining to the story.

“They spent $11 million here,” he said. “It’s still a win for us because the economic impact all those people, all the locals that got hired and made money and were able to make car payments, or (put) some money away for their children’s college, that’s because HBO was here. So it was positive in that regard. ... There’s a lot of positives that came out of it.”

New episodes of “Duster” air Thursdays on HBO Max.