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Directed by Clarke M. Smith, Mystery Highway is a feature film from 2023 that was made by Analise Nelson and Raechyl Esther Borman. David S. Dawson served as the executive producer and alongside Smith, crafted the wraparound story. The film cast included Randy Davison, James Steinberg, Rachel Elizabeth Ames, Christopher Cendana, Whitney Wegman-Wood, Larry Poole, and Walter M. Nowosad Jr. This marks Smith’s fifth movie set in San Diego and his second feature film after ‘The Ethereal Plane’ in 2004.
Smith had been looking to shoot another feature film ever since his first one saw relative success at the AFM. During his venture to San Diego CA, Smith hoped to shoot another feature film thanks to the distribution deal in Thailand he had gotten. He intended to shoot films of much higher quality and wondered how he could accomplish that. More on that later, but Mystery Highway would eventually fulfill Smith’s expectations.
The first title of the draft was Bar Talk, which basically focused on a group of writers or actors who meet up in a bar or restaurant and pitch story ideas to one another. Each of them has a pictorial representation of their tales which they narrate and are cast in. Their short film plays out. The short’s theme was that they had an assignment to write in this particular genre.
Some performers have already been cast including Mike Brayden who is supposed to portray the narrator of Stover Hill and Jay Jee who is set to portray the narrator of The Loyal Remnant. Randy Davison, Christopher Cendana, and James Steinberg are other performers.
Smith contacted, the director of photography, Mike Peterson, and the crew at Intellectual Entertainment, as they had just completed a
project titled You Are Me, to get their thoughts on the current project. Interestingly, their own wrapper feature with scary shorts was still in the planning stage, so this might have served as a great warm-up for them to realize their project.
Smith reserved the Moose Lodge that was previously utilized for scenes of Crazy Joe. Peterson went ahead to check it out and things were starting to click. At that moment, Jason Lethert read through the script and despised it. Smith and Lethert had a history of collaborating on other films but, for the most part, never liked their collective writings. He then set out to write a few different alternate ideas such as an alien apocalypse scenario, where he envisioned a bar full of people secluded at a bar, waiting out the chaos outside. As always, they get comfortable and begin to tell stories to pass the time. Unfortunately, that did not go very far.
David S. Dawson is a lifesaver. He came up with the concept of it being filmed as a movie in the style of Twilight Zone, except it would have a DJ instead of Rod Serling and instead of the TV series, it would be a weekly radio show. To create the other characters in the story, he turned them into a bunch of truckers who were listening to the show, which is how it was made. Dawson took the position of Executive Producer. At this stage of the project’s development, producers Alalise and Raechyl have already been trying to collar the project as a low-budget SAG production. It was blessed that there was some existing footage, but the stipulations of SAG came with the caveat that whenever the footage was used, there was a huge payout as a reuse fee. With all these conditions, the budget was close to nothing, so the decision was made to go non-SAG. Due to this, I’m afraid Jay Jee could not participate in the film. And Mike Brayden had to back out as well- not because of SAG, but because he was a new father of two and could only accept work that paid.
The actress Jay was replaced by Raquel Ames and now instead of Randy introducing You Are Me to the public, his role was switched to Randy who introduced Stover Hill as intended for Brayden. The introduction for You Are Me was done by Larry Poole.
In the end, Smith and Dawson still, based on the updated script, held the opinion that the feature would be too short. Dawson submitted a 48-hour short “Discontinuance” he produced. It was decided to add a second female trucker and they fetched Whitney Wegman-Wood gas from the film co-starring her.
Dawson’s idea gave them a script and Smith prepared the first draft after they had cast the last 6 actors. With his addition, Jason Lethert came on and, while thinking he made a substantial improvement, believed the framing narrative should solely be a narrative and none of the long drone from the truck drivers. He assumed correctly, that Smith did not want to spend anything more than the previously agreed two days as I Am Now What You Said I Am required. His input was modifying some of the dialogue spoken by the DJ.
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