November 11, 2013
By Kaitlin Schmidt – Features Editor
Jerry Deal moved around a lot as a kid. He went to three different high schools and one of them was San Marcos High School. As a freshman, he made the varsity baseball team and, had his family not moved a year later, he may have become a baseball star instead of a filmmaker.
“I was very shy as a kid and it’s hard enough to make friends normally, but when you move around a lot it’s impossible,” Deal said. “I wrote a lot and kept journals to get all of my thoughts and feelings out.”
After high school, Deal went on to the University of Texas in Austin and then to Los Angeles to write screenplays.
“I was getting paid to write screenplays – which was great -but the movies weren’t getting made,” Deal said.
Seventeen screenplays later, Deal was frustrated with the way the traditional film development process worked. So, with his movie “Dreams Awake” he decided to direct and produce the film.
“Dreams Awake” is the first film to be completely written, shot and edited in the Mt. Shasta area in California. Deal has a home there and got the idea for the movie one particularly “cinematic” day as he looked out over the mountains and wondered why no one had ever made a full-length film there.
The film follows Hope, played by Erin Gray, as she tries to unravel the mystery of her parents death. It is a spritual journey that can only be experienced.
Erin Gray was filming “Ghouls” in Romania and her last shot for the movie was her laying on the cobblestone streets with her guts spilled out and ghouls eating her.
“I was thinking, ‘Is this really where my film career has taken me?’ Right then and there I called out to the universe for my next film to be something I really cared about,” Gray said.
She spent 24 hours wrapping “Ghouls” and another 12 hours flying back to California. When she turned her phone back on, her agent was calling.
Gray had an audition, but she was too tired to go. She declined.
“My agent called me back and said that the filmmakers really, really wanted me. That’s something actors really, really like to hear,” Gray said. “She also said that they would wait for me. So I took my time showering and getting ready.”
Gray likes to read the full script, have a feel for the characters and have time to develop hers before going on an audition. But this one was going to be cold reading.
“They handed me the script and I read the scene and was immediately transported back to a time 20 ago when I was at a flea market in New York City,” Gray said. “I picked up a book that turned out to be a journal chronicling the Civil War and the journal was written by my reat-grandmother. The scene they had me read was when my character finds the journals of her parents. It was really easy for me to bring up the feelings I had way back then and put that into the scene.”
Deal said when she auditioned, he knew right then and there that she was the one for the film.
“Dreams Awake” screened in Austin on Thursday, Nov. 7 and Deal showed the trailer for his next film, “One Hand Clapping,” which will begin filming around Austin and Lockhart this spring.
For more information, visit dreamsawakemovie.com.
Story: http://www.sanmarcosrecord.com/content/first-movie-filmed-mt-shasta-screens-austin
