Cousin Chris' movie to World Premier at London Film Festival

Chris Daly, the son of John Daley (nephew of Mary Johnson - see previous posts) has some very interesting film news. Rather than me explain, I have published his email. Good Luck Chris!

Hi,

I'm Chris Daly, John Daly's middle son. I love the Mullaghbawn blog and keeping up with the news and events of my distant family all over the world. It's also been wonderful learning family history I never knew about. Thanks for that.

My friends and I have a film making it's world premiere at London's Film4 Frightfest August 21st through the 25th. We've been making short films for a while but this is our first feature length film. It's called Bubba's Chili Parlor. It's an homage to 70's drive-in B grade horror movies. It's done in a similar style to Grindhouse by Tarantino/Ramirez (I think they stole our idea!).

This really started about six or seven years ago. My friend and I had been bartending together for many years and at about the same time we both seemed to realise that life was passing us by. Neither of us ever intended to be bartenders. Bartending was a job we took with the idea of bigger and better things ahead. Joey, my friend, had always wanted to be a director. I'd always planned on being a writer. So we started making short films and entering them into festivals.
I wrote a screenplay called The Madness and entered it into a festival in 2005. It was my first attempt at a feature length screenplay and I only entered it into the one festival. It was awarded third place.

That was very encouraging.

With a local film festival coming up quickly, Dallas' Deep Ellum Film Festival, we got some friends together and made a short version of The Madness by taking the beginning and the ending and tying it together for a ten minute short film. We changed the title to Bubba's Chili Parlor and entered it into the festival and it was accepted. This was another big step for us. All our friends and family showed up to the theatre to see our work on the big screen.

My wife, Sarah (nee Hughes, also of Armagh descent) and I have two young boys, Duncan Denis and Xavier John. In 2005 they were both very young. Xavier was born in January of that year and Duncan is only 18 months older. I was working nights in the bar and watching them during the day. It was exhausting. I let Joey take over the rewrite of Bubba's Chili Parlor and he was the one who had the idea to make it into a B-movie homage. He actually changed it so much that we essentially had two screenplays at the end, which is great because now we've got another film to make!

We shopped our screenplay around and found a lot of people who were interested. Oh, lot's and lot's of people. The problem was nobody had the money at that time. "I'd love to make that movie, as soon as I'm done with this other thing", is what we heard a lot of. So we waited. We waited and we shopped it around to more people. Two years later we said "the hell with it". We were going to do it ourselves. So we got our friends together and Joey and I, along with another bartender friend, Mike (who played Bubba in our short) went out into east Texas and shot it ourselves. The only professionals on the shoot were the f/x guys, but of course it was their first film. So with no budget and no experience we went to work.

The town we shot in, Wills Point, went out of their way to help us. We met the man who runs the local haunted house and he turned out to be a jack of all trades. Whenever we found that we needed something he'd build it for us. The man who owned the restaurant and lakefront land we filmed on ended up letting us use it for free because he enjoyed it so much. When we needed zombie extras we put word out hoping to get 50. Almost 200 people showed up. With only three people doing makeup most of those extras had to sit outside for hours in Texas summer heat. And they waited and partied until dark when we started shooting the scene they were needed for. It was a wonderful time!

That was last summer. It's taken a lot of editing and still needs some work, but we were honored to not only be accepted into the Film4 Frightfest, but to be their featured film. In a festival filled with films made by professionals with large budgets, they appreciated what we were able to do with only several thousand dollars. For this they are honoring us. Not only will our movie premiere in the West End at the Odeon, but it will then be aired for all of the UK on the BBC's horror channel. The festival itself also has a distribution company and they would like to talk to us about a deal for distribution in the UK.

As of now Joey is shooting another feature, Mike is producing a feature that is about to start shooting in Austin, and I'm working on the rewrite of The Madness that the production company Mike is working for would like to do next... that is unless somebody in the UK makes a better offer!

If anyone wants to contact me, I'll gladly send my email and cell phone number. I'm really looking forward to my trip to London. Perhaps I'll be able to catch a Kids Love Lies show. I'd also love any information or advice anyone has about London. I'll be staying at the City Inn and the festival is in the West End.

Thanks so much for your time. I think that covers everything, but if you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks again,

Chris Daly

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