Taglines: Every secret dies somewhere.
“Get Low” is a magical and moving blend of folk tale, fable and real-life legend. Spun in the Southern storytelling tradition, it is about the mysterious 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party… while he was still alive.
Academy Award winner Robert Duvall, Golden Globe winner Bill Murray, Academy Award winner Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black form an ensemble of unforgettable characters who bring to life the surprising last act of Felix Bush, a life-long maverick and misfit who has been nearly swallowed up by the power of his town’s sinister myths about him – until he sets out to make a shocking confession in front of his own memorial service. The result is a comic, poignant, at times haunting tale about the snowballing nature of secrets, stories, heartbreak and the desire for redemption.
Based on a true story of a hermit who lived for forty years in the Tennessee woods, Felix Bush (Duvall) decides it is time to plan his funeral. But his funeral will not be any old macabre occasion. Organized by a local undertaker played by Bill Murray and his sidekick played by Lucas Black, the funeral will be more party than memorial and an event to which anyone and everyone will be invited and at which Bush will reveal a long kept secret.
It is an American folktale that has been passed down by storytellers for decades, spreading across distance and time to take on the proportions of a larger-than-life legend: that of the eccentric hermit known as Felix “Bush,” who temporarily came out of hiding to throw a grand funeral bash for himself — while he was still very much alive and kicking. Now, the story has taken on another incarnation: inspiring a motion picture that peers behind the folklore to unfold the colorful drama of a man’s last-ditch quest for redemption.
Like many classic American yarns, the story of Felix “Bush” is based in truth. The real Felix “Bush” Breazeale lived in Kingston, Tennessee in the 1930s. Born into a prominent Southern family, he was nevertheless renown for his wild and offbeat ways. For years, Felix famously dwelled completely alone, refusing all company save for his beloved mule, in the deep, deep woods. Then, suddenly, Felix decided that, before he died, he’d like to know in advance what people were going to say about him after he was gone. Thus was born his wild idea for a “living funeral,” which would soon command national attention.
To draw a crowd to this highly irregular memorial, Felix sold lottery tickets offering his valuable plot of land as the prize; and the ploy worked. In the end, it was said that as many as 12,000 “mourners” from at least 14 different states showed up on June 26, 1938 — including a Life Magazine photographer and major newspaper reporters — to pay their respects to Felix . . . . as he watched it all transpire. Afterwards, Felix explained to the Roane County Banner: “Just wanted to hear what the preacher had to say about me while I am alive.”
The story has been told and retold since that day, and a few generations later, screenwriter Chris Provenzano (Mad Men) was at a Thanksgiving Dinner when the entertaining yarn was spun once again, this time by his friend Scott Seeke – whose grandfather-in-law, a retired undertaker, had been sharing the tale of Felix’s offbeat funeral for decades.
Provenzano, however, was more than just amused. He was struck immediately by the magic, mystery and open questions at the heart of the story. He wondered: Why had Felix done it? What was he looking for? What terrible, gnawing secrets might have driven him into his unusual backwoods life and what might have suddenly urged Felix, late in life, to so openly and urgently seek amends before it was too late?
Those questions lie at the heart of the screenplay Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell (Blood Diamond) would ultimately write, as they dug deeper into the legend and fictionalized the facts that had been lost to time. (When it came to inner motives, the real Felix “Bush” had kept largely mum, mentioning only in passing that there was a woman he wanted whom he could never have.)
Imagining the background to Felix “Bush’s” story, Provenzano and Mitchell carved out an array of both historical characters (such as the Reverend Charles Jackson, who did indeed preach at Felix’s funeral party) and fictional characters (including the morally challenged funeral home owner, Frank Quinn, and the alluring widow, Maddie Darrow, whose undisclosed past with Felix leads to shocking revelations of an unsolved murder), each of whom is seeking the answer to why Felix is planning a funeral . . . . and each of whom has his or her own reasons to care about the outcome.
Felix himself was fully fleshed as a man filled to overflowing with secrets and regrets, a tough, rugged , diehard individualist whose seclusion and primal backwoods knowledge has won him a supernatural reputation that has, up till now, allowed no one to know his true heart.
Casting Get Low
To get Get Low off the ground, the filmmakers knew they would need a highly skillful and creative actor in the lead role of Felix – someone capable of making a character who seems right out of a backwoods fable feel palpably real and alive. They found that quality in Robert Duvall, one of America’s most diverse and adored actors, and winner of the Academy Award® for his performance as a broken-down country singer trying to turn his life around in Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies.
Duvall has long been drawn to richly flawed, complicated characters and he immediately agreed to the role of Felix once he read the screenplay. In fact, he says it reminded him of the film that gave him his first big break: the American classic, To Kill A Mockingbird, based on the beloved Southern Gothic novel about the power of prejudice by Harper Lee, and adapted for the screen by Horton Foote, who won the Academy Award® for his work.
Duvall explains: “The writing of this script reminded me of my friend, Horton Foote, who recently passed away. There are wonderful things to this script, things like you find in a Horton Foote script—just with more of an edge. This movie offers a deep slice of humanity, and with the great actors we have, we’ve tried to make it as real as possible.”
He was also attracted to his character’s unusual POV: a tough, no-nonsense man’s open-eyed, honest acknowledgement of his encroaching demise and all that it might mean. Notes Duvall: “I thought Felix was a very important part and a wonderful character to do at this point in my career. Felix has been maybe not such a great guy at various points in his life, but now he’s moved to ask for certain forgiveness at the end.”
Sissy Spacek, another actor whose work has been a staple of modern American filmmaking and an Oscar® winner for her incisive portrait of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter, was also drawn to the film’s writing. “When I read the script, I never knew what was going to happen next,” Spacek says. “It’s so NOT a formula film and the script had so much depth — it’s a great group of characters in this odd, peculiar story that is really about something.”
Spacek was especially moved by the journey of the strong, independent widow, Maddie, the old flame who thinks she is the only person on earth to have ever loved Felix, only to discover the terrible and long-hidden reason he never fully loved her back. “My character really is the emotional center of the film,” she notes. “There’s a lot of unrequited love here with both Maddie and Felix. It’s kind of sweet and it’s kind of sad that these two people can’t really see what’s going on right in front of them. And for me, what was also quite amazing is that, at my age, I get to be ‘The Girl.’”
The icing on the cake for Spacek was the chance to work so closely with Robert Duvall. She comments: “Robert Duvall has embodied this character. When he came on set, he just was Felix, which meant all I had to do was react to him. He was fantastic—working with him was so easy.”
Easy, but also intense, Spacek says. “It’s been very combustible while we were making the film. Things happened in the scenes that took us to places that we didn’t really expect. It just really felt like something different and wonderful.”
Spacek also was thrilled to work with another member of the cast – Bill Murray, the Oscar® nominated star whose work in such films as Lost in Translation, Groundhog Day, Rushmore, Broken Flowers and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou has explored the borderlands where comedy and drama meet.
Murray takes on the vivid role of feisty, snake-oil salesman Frank Quinn, of Quinn’s Funeral Home, who matches wits with Felix as he tries to make a mint off the “living funeral,” while simultaneously attempting his own awkward stab at connection.
Shooting Get Low
With a folkloric screenplay and a stellar cast, the filmmakers needed just one more element to allow Get Low to soar: an authentic landscape to bring the story’s dense, Appalachian woods and New Deal-era towns come to life. Both Dean Zanuck and Aaron Schneider agreed that production could only take place on location in the historic reaches of the American South.
Ultimately, the film was shot in Georgia. There, the filmmakers were able to hunt up a very special collection of locations that have changed little since the Great Depression, including the small town of Crawfordville (population 572); the Gaither Plantation, a historic (and allegedly haunted) 1800s cotton plantation, in Covington; a beautiful old church near Sparta; and Pickett’s Mill Battlefield, a Civil War site and State Park near Dallas, Georgia.
To carry out his vision, Schneider recruited an artistic team headed by Oscar®-nominated production designer Geoffrey Kirkland whose diverse work has included forays into both the past and future in films such as The Right Stuff, Children of Men and Bugsy Malone. Says Kirkland: “We started in Atlanta and set off, driving and driving, in search of 1930’s America.”
Kirkland and Schneider worked closely with rising cinematographer David Boyd — who also worked on Schneider’s Oscar®-winning short, Two Soldiers, and has shot for two of television’s most acclaimed series, Friday Night Lights and Deadwood – to forge a look for the film that honors both the wildness of Felix’s soul and the lure of civilized contact that calls him back.
Also joining the design team was twice Academy Award®-nominated costume designer Julie Weiss, whose films range from Frida and American Beauty to Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys and the comedy Blades of Glory. Weiss says it was more than the costuming challenges that drew her to the project. “When I first read Get Low I knew how important it was to be a part of this film. It was a chance to work with Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Bill Murray – and a chance to have everyday discussions about our observations on life and how one might approach his or her own eulogy. The experience was all about simple laughter drawn from the memories of shared pain,” she concludes.
All of the film’s design ideas and emotions would converge at the crux of the story: the creation of Felix’s famous funeral party. To spark a festive atmosphere, the production recruited the Grammy-nominated, Nashville-based band, the Steeldrivers, to play their rootsy, Bluegrass soul on camera (the real Felix “Bush” hired the Friendly Eight Octet of Chattanooga to play the funeral.) The Steeldrivers were even joined by music lover Bill Murray on his mandolin between takes, further setting the mood.
To inspire locals to come out as extras for the large funeral crowd scenes, the film’s actors took a page right out of the script – going on local radio to invite citizens of Georgia to appear in the film in exchange for free food, raffled prizes and a chance to meet the Academy Award®-winning cast. In the end, over 600 people showed up at 5am on a crisp March morning to bring Felix “Bush’s” service to life.
Although there were any number of potential snafus — one day the set was threatened by tornadoes; another day it was snowing – cast and crew’s unabated passion for the project kept spirits high. To a person, everyone involved in Get Low cites the movie as a deep bonding experience filled with the very things Felix “Bush” comes, at the last possible moment in his life, to desire: the simple power of kindness, conversation and communion.
Get Low (2010)
Directed by: Aaron Schneider
Starring by: Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Gerald McRaney, Bill Cobbs, Scott Cooper, Lori Beth Sikes, Linds Edwards, Andrea Powell, Chandler Riggs, Danny Vinson
Screenplay by: Chris Provenzano
Production Design by: Geoffrey Kirkland
Cinematography by: David Boyd
Film Editing by: Aaron Schneider
Costume Design by: Julie Weiss
Set Decoration by: Frank Galline
Art Direction by: Korey Washington
Music by: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some thematic material and brief violent content.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: July 30, 2010
