Local filmmakers finish project 8 years in the making

WASILLA — It may have taken eight years, but a movie dreamed up in “a dimly lit garage” is finally making its way to the sliver screen.

Flimmakers Dean Mitchell and Mike Burns held a cast party and screening of their film “Proper Binge” on Friday night at the Valley Cinema. For the Wasilla writing and directing duo, the party marked the end (well, almost) of a process that began nearly a decade ago with a hastily-formed writing group.

“All the writers kept dropping out and it ended up being just me and Mike, and we wrote ‘Proper Binge,’” Mitchell explained during Friday’s event.

Although not an official premier, Mitchell said the film shown Friday night is close to a finished product.

“It’s still going to be re-tweaked a little bit,” he said.

The movie — which Mitchell said can best be described as having “comedic elements hidden under a dark cloud” — follows the lead character during his struggle with alcoholism. The theme of the film, he said, seemed to resonate with many of the 150 volunteers who eventually worked to produce it.

“What was so amazing about the whole thing was the subject matter of the film connected with so many people,” he said.

Executive producer Chery Manning was one of those people. Manning, who was seriously injured by a drunk driver more than two decades ago, said the film was a labor of love.

“This was a blast,” she said.

Manning’s job was to help line up donations and other material support for the movie, which was financed through donations and out of the filmmakers’ own pockets. The generosity by community members, she said, was one of the most gratifying parts of working on “Proper Binge.”

“I had friends, business owners, so many people I was able to talk to that donated,” she said.

The movie was filmed in the Valley with a cast and crew made up entirely of Southcentral Alaska residents. Actor Berick Cook, who plays the role of Jason in the film, said the movie actually helped forge right relationships between members of the Anchorage and Mat-Su film communities.

“There’s a whole film community that was almost disjointed between Wasilla and Anchorage but now they’ve kind of merged and become intertwined,” he said.

Cook said he plans to continue acting, and has seen many of the people who worked on “Proper Binge” begin to flourish in the local film community and beyond.

“It was a starting place for a lot of people,” he said.

Burns said making the movie was far from easy. There were hard drive crashes, audio mix-ups, casting snafus — pretty much anything you can imagine. He said he’s not exactly sure what kept he and Mitchell going through it all.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Passion.”

Mitchell said that when he and Burns began, he envisioned a much shorter process “from script to screen.”

“I thought I could take a year off and be done with it,” he said.

Instead, he and his filmmaking partner spent eight long years bringing their creation to life. But it wasn’t without a lot of help.

“Just to see that there were amazing people in the world who were willing to do this — I mean, people quit their jobs — it was kinda cool to see everything evolve fro two guys in a dimly-lit garage to 150 volunteers from all over the place.”

Both Burns and Mitchell said they plan to continue making movies, although Mitchell said he learned an important lesson about financing.

“I want to make sure there’s money beforehand because a lot of us ended up digging a little too deep into our own pockets,” he said.

Seeing the finished product, however, makes all that labor and money worthwhile.

“For it to turn out as good as it did blows my mind,” he said.

The duo said the next step after final edits are made is to start shopping the movie around to film festivals in an attempt to get the movie seen by a wider audience. Burns said that might be the most exciting part of the whole, long process.

“I’m still waiting to see what happens next.”

For more information about the film, visit the film’s Facebook page at facebook.com/properbinge.

Contact Matt Tunseth at matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.