Throngs turn out to audition for ‘Sudsy Slim Rides Again’

WASILLA — Even as her film ‘Find Me’ was closing out its festival run at the Equinox Film Fest on Saturday at Mat-Su College, Kitty Mahoney was across town at Valley Performing Arts, where half of Wasilla-Palmer micropolitan area, it seemed, was lining up to audition for ‘Sudsy Slim Rides Again’.

The second effort of brothers Chad and Darin Carpenter of Tundra Comics fame, ‘Sudsy Slim’ isn’t a sequel, per se, to their 2015 cult hit ‘Moose the Movie’, but as Chad puts it, it does ‘take place in the same universe.’

Mahoney, a 2011 Colony High grad, sat in as second casting director, as scores of auditioners braved her scrutiny for a shot at the limelight.

“It’s so inspiring,” Mahoney said of the success of ‘Moose’ which included theater runs throughout much of the lower 48. “It’s really a light for the Valley and Alaska in general… It’s a really shiny piece of work for Alaska to be proud of.”

Gangrene Gulch, the fictional town in ‘Moose’ is referred to once in the new script, but that’s the extent of the connection between the films. ‘Sudsy Slim’ makes its home in Scratcher Pass, to be shot starting in late May in Hatcher Pass, the old buildings of Independence Mine serving as the fictional town’s setting.

“Moose was more of a creature feature and this is much more of a comedy-western-hesit-buddy film,” Carpenter said. “It’s equally ridiculous to Moose, but in a totally different way — but again, very Alaskan.”

Carpenter said the turnout in two hours at Saturday’s audition at VPA had already exceeded the turnout of two days of casting in Anchorage, and that spots for all parts remained open.

“We’re pretty much open to everything at this point,” Carpenter said. “We have some ideas of who we want in certain roles, but we want to be open to everybody in case somebody knocks us out.”

Much of the cast of ‘Moose’ was on hand to audition for ‘Sudsy’, including Raymond Chapman, the star of ‘Find Me’ who played the role of crusty, bearded Rupert in ‘Moose’. Chapman stuck around to help others read for parts.

“Nothing’s guaranteed,” Chapman said. “Just because, as Chad would say, ‘I know the band’, it doesn’t mean I’m guaranteed a spot.”

Chapman said the success of ‘Moose’ has created opportunities for local actors and filmmakers that may not have existed before.

“’Moose’ premiered out here at the Wasilla theater and stayed 13 weeks and it sold out in places like Salt Lake City and even made it as far as L.A. for a week,” Chapman said. “It’s a good chance for people, locally, to get their talent out there and be seen by more people.”

Carpenter said the budget for ‘Sudsy Slim’ is coming in at somewhere around $150,000, up from the $100,000 it took to make ‘Moose’.

Much of that upgrade is going toward camera equipment.

“Bigger, better, faster stronger, shooting it on 4k camera,” Carpenter said. “I’m a techno idiot, but it’s four times the camera we had for ‘Moose’. There’s great things technologically you can do today that as an independent film you couldn’t do before.”

The fund-raising, as always, is crowdsourced.

“Basically we’re doing a Kickstarter campaign and we’re getting a lot now,” Carpenter said. “For $50 you get your name in the credits and a copy when it comes out. We’ve already got at least 250 people on that just recently. That’s the way it’s going to be made. Like we said about ‘Moose’, ‘it’s a movie made by a community.’ Tundra throws in a chunk here and there to help keep it going.”

Though filming is still two months away, Carpenter already has plans for his third movie.

“Hopefully we’ll just grow as time goes on,” he said. “For the third movie, there is one secret I can say. I would like the lead role to be a woman. In ‘Moose’ it was mostly Zack, the park ranger. The third, I’d like to flip it around to make it more inclusive.”

Across town at the Equinox Film Festival, a third annual event showcasing films made by women from all across North America, Mahoney’s work, one of just two Alaskan films of the 36 shown, stood out from the field. Most of the others were shorter in duration and even shorter on plot, not wanting too much story to get in the way of showing off cinematic chops.

‘Find Me’, by contrast, features six characters with speaking roles — a lot of story to squeeze into just 24 minutes, told mostly in the form of flashbacks as a disillusioned young man pens his suicide note.

“I’m more of a storyteller than a technically minded person,” Mahoney said. “I just got hired with a production company in Anchorage that makes advertisements. That’s really going to whip me into shape… I figure I’ll learn as much as I can from that experience and eventually get back into narrative storytelling — that’s my passion.”

Until then, Mahoney hopes ‘Find Me’ can do some good in the world.

“’Find Me’ is coming to the end of the festival circuit. We had the option of running it another year, but I think that for the level it’s at, we should pull it now,” she said. “I’d like to contact some suicide awareness organizations and offer it to them to see if they want to do something with it.”

Mahoney’s previous passion project — creating a film department at UAA may have died with her graduation. Seeing no film major option at UAA, Mahoney figured out a way to cobble together her own course of study by meshing elements from the journalism and theater departments. She pitched it to the dean, he approved it, and in 2015, Mahoney became the first Seawolf to graduate with a degree in film. To date, she’s the only one.

“I’ve heard some of those classes have faded away, but I’m not sure,” Mahoney said. “I have hopes they’ll pick it back up and do something else with it.”