Mat-Su-made film set to hit the big screen this summer

See the trailer for Peaks and Valleys at https://vimeo.com/213645055

PALMER — Alaska’s burgeoning film scene is gradually growing beyond short films and documentaries and into the realm of full-length feature films.

Here in the Valley, as ‘Sudsy Slim Rides Again’, the encore effort of Chad Carpenter, whose 2015 comedy ‘Moose: The Movie’ became a cult classic that even found an audience in the Lower 48, gets set to begin filming in Hatcher Pass, another feature-length film is on target to hit theaters this summer. ‘Peaks and Valleys’, directed by Mike Burns with Chuck Baird as executive producer, was shot in the winter of 2016 and is now in the editing stage with an August 23 theatrical release at Valley Cinema in Wasilla on the horizon.

“I’m going to be stuck in my house until I’m done editing. It will be very dark; I’ll probably gain about 20 pounds and be weird socially,” Burns joked. “I don’t know if the carpet will be red, but there will definitely be a premiere and it won’t be in a small theater. Then we’ll send it to Amazon and some film festivals, too. We want to send it out in the world and see what happens.”

‘Peaks and Valleys’ stars just two actors — Kevin T. Bennett as Jack, a hard-nosed, mysterious loner living in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, and Colony High grad Kitty Mahoney as Bailey, a young woman wrapped in plastic and thrown from a plane, whose life is saved thanks only to Jack.

For the better part of two hours, Jack and Bailey interact with one another, find conflict and ultimately common ground and compassion. It’s a plot that seems, on the surface, a little like the 2006 film ‘Black Snake Moan’ starring Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci, but with Alaska itself cast in a supporting role as a beautiful, yet deadly test of survival, the story goes in a direction all its own.

“I would describe it as a thriller mystery, basically,” Burns said. “The main character, Jack, there’s a lot of mysterious things about him that remained unanswered until the end. But it’s a survival story, too. The girl is dropped in the middle of nowhere with no survival skills. Jack is that type of character where you’re wondering why he’s there. It builds up to a huge climax towards the end.”

Michael B. Dillon, who worked with Burns on his last feature film, ‘Proper Binge’, wrote the script for ‘Peaks and Valleys’. “Mike pitched me the idea,” Burns recalled. “He told me the ending before the rest and I said, ‘that’s an awesome idea.’ We finished the script — it really didn’t take that long.”

Then it was on to casting. Burns knew he wanted Bennett in the role of Jack, but auditioned for the role of Bailey. Mahoney, whose cinematic talents had mostly been used behind the camera, including the 24-minute short film ‘Find Me’, which she wrote and directed, was a can’t-miss pick for the role of Bailey. It’s her first starring role in a feature film.

Baird considers Bennett the ‘best actor in Alaska.’

“Kevin was the one actor I always wanted to work with,” Burns said. “I knew Kitty from some local productions. We had a couple of (casting) professionals come out from L.A. and we settled on Kitty — she was amazing.”

With few other things and no other people to serve as distractions, the storyline put added pressure on the writing and the acting. “It was shot in a cabin in Wasilla but it looks like it was in the middle of nowhere,” Baird said. “Mostly it’s two people in one location, which, if badly done, is terrible.”

To pace the scenes, Burns kept in mind the Spaghetti westerns of the 70s, in part because of who Bennett reminded him of.

“The pace is pretty slow but that’s sort of to showcase how powerful the beginning and ending are. It’s a slow burn,” Burns said. “Kevin reminds me of Clint Eastwood, whereas Kitty is the polar opposite. She’s a drug addict who speaks with a really fast dialogue while he’s slow and kind of menacing.”

“She’s city, he’s country,” Baird added.

Burns got his start in filmmaking in 2006 when a family friend gave him a little bit of money to make a documentary about how the skate park in Wasilla got built.

“It sounds kind of boring, but the more I looked into it, it was a good civics lesson,” Burns said. “How these horribly labeled kids raised a lot of their own funds. The story resonated all over, these kids with bad labels getting tickets for skateboarding on sidewalks and that they were able to overcome that.”

As Burns progressed, he partnered with Dean Q. Mitchell to form The Quake Brothers and formed the aptly named ‘1964 Motion Pictures.’

They produced mostly short films until in 2012 they began work on ‘Proper Binge’, a gritty feature-length drama about consequences and redemption in the life of a main character whose excessive drinking and debauched lifestyle winds up causing serious injury to a friend. That film was more than three years in the making and it would be the last for the duo.

“(Dean) kind of ended up being a family man,” Burns said. “I was looking for something else to do and then this came up. It’s my first time out as a solo director.”

Going solo proved harder in ways Burns hadn’t anticipated.

“I noticed (Dean) would take care of things you don’t even think about,” Burns said. “He’s a totally different personality and was able to handle different things. It was a challenge.”