San Diego Comic-Con 2011: Bellflower- Getting Past The Destruction

The cast and crew of the soon to be released film, Bellflower, stopped by San Diego Comic-Con this year to give movie fans a small peek into Medusa’s gang and what it took to push the long awaited flick into production. The group, who were first timers to the convention, was a jokey bunch that clearly had a lot of chemistry on and off screen. It’s important to note first that the film’s writer, Evan Glodell, was the proverbial jack of all trades when it came to the making of Bellflower. Besides putting the indie script together, Glodell played the part of director, producer, cinematographer, editor, leading actor and, essentially, casting director. With so many hats to wear, it’s a wonder he had any energy left to give to promoting his baby but, I was one of the lucky few to be able to steal a little of his time and pick the brains of the Bellflower cast.

Bellflower is the atypical tale of two friends who, while anticipating an apocalyptic disaster, build homemade flame throwers and war weapons and incorporate them into their vintage battle car, Medusa. As time goes on, their lives and the lives of those around them begin to fall apart as romantic relationships crumble and the Medusa Gang project begins to deteriorate along with them. The inspiration for the love-turned-sour storyline was taken directly from Glodell’s personal experiences. He describes the real life situation as having been excessively intense and the most terrible thing he had been through at that time and, in between trying to make sense of the situation, the idea for Bellflower was born.

Bellflower was quite the work in progress and even with burning motivation for the movie, it didn’t manifest as easily as one would have thought. Glodell’s first attempt at production started in 2003 and continuous roadblocks kept getting in the way. Subsequently, he says a sort of “panic attack” is what finally prompted him to finish the movie while realizing that just getting a scene, any scene, started was the first step to get the project snowballing. Glodell should have heaved a sigh of relief by the end of filming but things only became crazier for him when he finally had the finished product in hand and Sundance Film Festival decided to pick up Bellflower. The film was so well received, however, that all the blood, sweat, tears, and anxiety put into the movie made the struggle well worth it in the end.

Finding a stellar cast that could mesh with the unusual script was of the utmost importance to Glodell. The actors were able to talk a little bit about how their roles came about and it was overwhelmingly evident that they were all on board from the start. The female lead of Bellflower was played by Jessie Wiseman, a former theater actress, who Glodell had met in Los Angeles years ago. At the time when they met, he was concentrating on short films that he described as “abstract but about the same subject matter” and always had Wiseman in mind for his big project. Tyler Dawson was discovered by Glodell in a theater play like Wiseman, and was another actor that he couldn’t resist having. By the time shooting for Bellflower started, Glodell and Dawson had become close friends, even becoming roommates at one point. Lastly, the decision to include Vince Grashaw, a big fan of Evan’s abstruse films as well as another of his long-time friends, was made along with actress Rebekah Brandes, completing the Bellflower circle. When asked why Glodell went with the decision to cast himself as the lead, he explained that he didn’t have the resources to find a lead that he would have been happy with and due to the complex nature of his character, it might have been hard to find someone who could accurately comprehend what he was looking for, as he had a hard enough time with it himself. In the end, he says he was able to understand his own character’s intricacies more and more as time went on.

After talking to the minds behind Bellflower, it seems only obvious to realize that the story, already being so personal to Glodell, runs almost parallel to the process it took to get the movie off of the ground. Evan states that, for example, the ominous and looming car in the film, named Medusa, acts as a God-like representation to the characters. Everything around them is beginning to fall apart and all of their hope is put into building the combat vehicle. If the characters can just finish what they’ve started and get it done, in the same staggering way that Glodell was forced to do with Bellflower, then everyone’s lives will be better. Evan agrees it was an accurate depiction of what it was like to make his long anticipated project.

Bellflower won’t keep the general public waiting much longer, however, with an August release date set for Glodell’s first, and hopefully not last, feature film.

Images courtesy of Joel Hodge and IMDB.