This ran in last Friday’s Houston Chronicle. In order to view the article online you have to sign up for the Chronicle archives. To make it easier on everyone I figured I would just cut and paste the article below:
With a Bum, “Cowboy Smoke” gets Cannes screening / Director Moore steers clear of fest
By RON DICKER
For The Chronicle
CANNES, FRANCE - The neo-Western “Cowboy Smoke” made it to the Cannes Film Festival, bringing with it the hopes of Victoria filmmaker Will Moore and a primarily Victoria and Houston cast that includes former Oilers coach Bum Phillips.
The movie already screened here for distributors and other industry pros, leaving it to be peddled by a sales agent Moore hired.
“I get stressed thinking about it,” Moore, 31, said. “There’s definitely some pressure as far as getting the film sold and getting it out there. I imagine it will always be until I’m at a point in my career where I have people coming to me and offering me projects.”
Cowboy Smoke focuses on a video-game cowboy who wrangles a heap of trouble when he tries to become a real one. He hooks up with cattle ranchers who are running an illegal-immigration ring. The film was shot mainly in Victoria and moved to Phillips’ home in Goliad for his part as a boss who interviews the hero for a job.
Estella Perez, a recent Houston transplant to Los Angeles, James Paul of Houston and Victoria native Matt Johnston, the former host of the Discovery Channel’s It Takes a Thief, also appear in the movie.
Films in the six-figure budget range such as Moore’s are often hawked in Cannes’ Marche du Film, a bazaar with hundreds of booths inside the festival palace. But Fred deWysocki III, Moore’s sales agent from Fantastic Films International, is marketing Cowboy Smoke alongside movies that cost as much as $20 million. “It’s better to be a small fish in a big pond than one of many fish in a smaller pond,” deWysocki said.
Potential buyers come mostly by appointment to Fantastic’s chic hotel suite on the Croisette, the main drag that fronts the Mediterranean. DeWysocki shows the trailer or full-length version to any interested parties.
DeWysocki revealed that Cowboy Smoke already had generated sales in foreign territories, though he would not give specifics. Westerns are one of the few genres that can sell across the globe without stars, he said, and some countries can relate to the immigration issue raised by Cowboy Smoke. Moore said the 2003 Victoria immigrant tragedy, in which 19 Mexicans suffocated in a truck after being smuggled across the border, served as an inspiration.
The movie’s other principals have their own personal stake in its success.
“I’m invested in the movie in terms of the work,” said Paul, 31, a CPA who has juggled acting (he did a Roadrunner commercial), entrepreneurship (a production company and a chemical sales firm) and a job at Your Health Lab, a walk-in blood-testing firm.
Perez, who is on the TV series Prison Break, welcomed the additional platform of Cannes. “I’m constantly thinking about what could happen,” she said.
Johnston, who now lives in Austin, called the festival exposure validating. He said it was important for him to be seen in a variety of roles “to stay active in the business.”
For the auteur behind it all, however, Cannes represented a high-water mark in a fledgling career. Moore’s first film was the $20,000 cattle-ranching drama Wesley Cash (2004). He also has written a script called The Bail Bondsman that is waiting to be produced.
Moore’s interest in filmmaking took hold after he tried to play football at the University of Texas. Listed on the roster for the 1995 and 1996 seasons, Moore gave up when Coach Mack Brown told him and the other walk-ons that they would never play.
Moore began to work for his father, costume supervisor Stanley Moore, on the set of more of his movies, including The Faculty and We Were Soldiers. He was hooked.
He says he spent his entire savings on Wesley Cash, so he and producer Fagan Patterson of Victoria rustled up some investors for Cowboy Smoke. Traveling to Cannes was not in the budget. Just a few weeks before the festival, he decided to stay home, and the cast followed suit. Many expressed regret, even if some were aware that actors and filmmakers in movies that screen out of the various competitions do not wear tuxedos and gowns and walk up the red carpet. Besides, deWysocki assured Moore that his absence would not affect sales.
The married Moore, who is tending to his day job as a software salesman in Austin, said he would go inner-tubing if the anxiety of waiting for deWysocki’s sales reports became overwhelming.
“I would love to be there,” Moore said, “but the way I see it, there will be other opportunities.”
Still, the writer-director acknowledged, there is only one Cannes. Said Moore. “One of my main goals was to get a screening at Cannes. It’s huge.
