"Mystery Highway" (2021)

"Mystery Highway" is a 2021 feature film directed by Clarke M. Smith and produced by Analise Nelson and Raechyl Esther Borman.  David S. Dawson was Executive Producer, and he and Smith wrote the wraparound story. It starred  Randy Davison, James Steinberg,  Rachel Elizabeth Ames, Christopher Cendana, Whitney Wegman-Wood, Larry Poole, and Walter M. Nowosad Jr.  It was Smith’s fifth San Diego based film, and second feature (after “The Ethereal Plane” in 2004).

After moving to San Diego, CA in 2009, Smith dreamed of making another feature film.  His first had some success at the AFM and a distribution deal in Thailand.  Ever since, he wanted to further such success and do it again, and with a much higher quality film.  In time, Mystery Highway would be that film.

## Realizing the Script

Around 2017, Smith’s sales agent suggested he use some of his existing films, and create a “wrapper” feature out of them.  This would involve coming up with a story that would “wrap” around the shorts and connect them somehow. At the time, Smith had directed 3 shorts shot in qualifying HD (“Crazy Joe”, “Stover Hill”, and “The Loyal Remnant”).

Besides those 3 films, he planned to also use the yet to be made You Are Me. As these were not likely long enough to turn into a 90 minute feature, he asked Patrick Lavender if he could include his film, Dark Chocolate (which Smith worked on, and edited).  With these films selected, it turned into an interesting way to have the films be connected by a theme.  The theme was traditional characters of the macabre, and in each film there was a ghost, aliens, a serial killer, the devil, and a robot.

The first draft was titled “Bar Talk” which was very simply about a group of writers or actors who meet up at a bar/restaurant and talk about or pitch their stories/ideas. Each character tells their story - which is the short film that they appear in, and plays out. The short’s theme played out like they had an assignment to write in this genre.

Actors had been secured, which at the time were slated to have Mike Brayden be the introducer of Stover Hill, and Jay Jee be the introducer of The Loyal Remnant. The others were Randy Davison, Christopher Cendana, and James Steinberg.

Smith asked director of photography Mike Peterson and the people at Intellexual Entertainment if they were interested in the project, as they had just come off completion of “You Are Me”. Coincidentally, they were developing their own wrapper feature with scary shorts, but nothing was shot yet.  This would perhaps be a good warm up for them in realizing their project.

Smith secured the Moose Lodge, which had been used before for scenes in “Crazy Joe. Peterson went and scouted it, and things were falling into place.  That's when Jason Lethert took a look at the script, and thoroughly hated it. Smith and Lethert had collaborated on other films, but for the most part, didn’t agree on their writings.  Smith then set out to pen a couple different alternate ideas, one of which was like an alien apocalypse with a group of people huddled together in a bar, having escaped the aliens and anarchy outside.  Of course, they settle down and to pass the time, start telling the stories. That didn’t go very far.

David S. Dawson to the rescue.  David came up with the idea for it to be a Twilight Zone style movie, with a DJ in the place of Rod Serling, and doing a weekly radio drama series.  To get the other actors in the story, he put them as a group of truckers listening in on the show - which is how it ended up being.  Dawson accepted the role as Executive Producer. At this point in the planning, producers Alalise and Raechyl had been trying to secure the project as a low budget SAG production.  Unfortunately, SAG had a stipulation about using existing footage, and actors receiving a lot of money as a “reuse” fee. There was very little money in the budget, so it was decided to go non-SAG.  Unfortunately, Jay Jee was unable to appear in the film due to this.  As well, Mike Brayden had to drop out - not because of SAG but because he was a new father of two and could only accept paying work.  Raquel Ames replaced Jay, and instead of Randy being the introducer of “You Are Me” as originally intended, he introduced Stover Hill (intended for Brayden).  Larry Poole was brought in to introduce “You Are Me”.

Finally, Smith and Dawson still felt the feature would be too short, based on the new script.  Dawson delivered a 48hr short he produced called “Discontinuance”. It was decided to have a second female trucker, and they brought in co-star Whitney Wegman-Wood from that film.

With the final six actors cast, Smith wrote a rough draft based on Dawson’s idea, and they had a script.  Jason Lethert came on, and though thought it was a significant improvement, felt the connecting story should be just that - a story, and not just truckers gabbing away.  He penned out some treatments for more intricate stories, but Smith correctly assumed the team would not want to do anything more than the previously agreed upon two shooting days, and that was not enough production time for Lethert’s ideas. His contribution ended up being a re-working of some of the DJ dialogue.

## Shooting Details

### Trucker Scenes

Smith and Dawson discussed shooting a few evenings with the trucks parked outside with lighting. Dawson worked for an AV company in Oceanside, CA, and was instead able to secure the use of the warehouse, and two small moving trucks. Further, the team experimented with projectors on two video screens with a looping traffic shot - one for the backdrop outside the trucker’s windows, and the other hung above the truck to show as a reflection on the windshield. It worked out quite brilliantly.

Shooting began Friday, December 6, 2019.  Smith was working at Calfire and unable to get out early.  It was raining.  Traffic was terrible.  He was an hour late for the shoot, so Dawson directed the first few takes of Rachel Elizabeth Ames. Next up was Whitney Wegman-Wood.  Then they wrapped for the night.  Early the next morning, shooting continued with actors Randy Davison, Christopher Cendana, James Steinberg, and Larry Poole.

### DJ Scenes

It would be over a year before shooting of the DJ scenes would commence. That day was February 28, 2021. Unfortunately, during this time between shoots, and the reason for the delay, were some disagreements between Smith and the Intellexual group. Disagreements bad enough to splinter the team and go their separate ways. Dawson, however, stayed on as the executive producer and performed color correction on the trucker scenes. Subsequently, Merrick McCartha had been chosen to play DJ George Bell, but as part of the aforementioned disagreements, he too left the project.

Smith was now without the DJ scenes, or a DP and crew - or an actor. As evidenced by the full year, Smith finally found a new DP named Mason Windt. Smith asked Larry Poole if he had ideas or connections to an actor or an actual radio station.  He suggested Walter M. Nowosad Jr.  Smith looked at his youtube channel and videos, and thought he’d be perfect for the role. Though a real radio DJ booth never materialized, the small crew shot the scenes in Smith’s garage, and did a lot of set dressing.  Smith’s wife Leilani played the part of the unseen assistant. Clarke as well, played the ghost in the mid-end credits scene.

Dawson was originally going to edit, as he had the better computer system that could handle 6k footage. With all shooting finally done, and when things changed within the team, Dawson dropped out, and Smith assumed all editing duties.  Once the picture was locked, Dawson did color correction on the trucker scenes; Smith did color for the DJ scenes, as well as sound mixing.

### Music

Smith was able to utilize some older, existing music by Reber Clark to put in the film, as well as selections from his Ambiance collections .  Scouring Reber’s library, he found some perfect pieces of music for the opening DJ scenes and fanfare music used for his “weekly radio show” theme. For the remainder of the film, Reber had already composed the music for 5 out of the 6 short films, so Smith was able to go onto those scores for any needed music outside of the actual shorts.  Smith had put together a version of the Stover Hill theme with drums and other additions, and used it for the end credits, as well as a promo video. The rest of the end credits were a mix of Reber’s themes from each short, as well as the addition of the score for “Discontinuance”.

## Film Analysis

Smith has said he is interested in making Mystery Highway a series.  Perhaps sequel films, or an online series in which the same format is used, with Walter M. Nowosad Jr. back as the DJ for all stories.  Though the title ‘mystery’ signifies that the stories are going to be of the fantastic, scary, or otherworldly (like one expects say The Twilight Zone to be), Smith believes the format of the show could and should have a range of genres.  For example, the shorts could be comedic for one episode, where DJ George Bell tells his listeners that he is going to take a break from mysterious tales, and have a night of a few laughs.  Or a dramatic evening.   Or a western evening.

With a multitude of local San Diego filmmakers, there is a wealth of talent and material for such an endeavor, and Smith would invite them and their existing (or to-be-shot) shorts into the program.  Where Smith made 4 of the 6 shorts in the first film, and generally makes a film every 3-4 years on average, it would behoove the project to utilize more outside work. In fact, Smith would probably only have one short to use (likely the upcoming Greyson 2.0).

When Mystery Highway was nominated for Best Narrative Feature at the 2022 San Diego Film Awards, Smith (if the film won) had planned to use the acceptance speech as a springboard to continuing the series, and to tell the audience that he would be accepting submissions for other short films to be a part of it if interested. Alas, though Smith had expected the film to win via some inside information received (which turned out to be wrong), and when it didn’t, he lost some of the enthusiasm he had for the sequels/continued series.  When the time comes, he will revisit the idea.  Part of it also depends on how the film performs in the various streaming platforms it is on.

## Aftermath

Currently, "Mystery Highway" has two film festival entries to date. It won Best Best Feature Film (All Genre) Honorable Mention at the 2021 San Diego Movie Awards, and was nominated for Best Narrative Feature at the 2022 San Diego Film Awards.

The film is available on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi. Some others are Box Brazil, Reveel, Mometu, Nuclear Home Video, and Popsy on Plex.

## Video and Web Links

“Mystery Highway” at IMDb

Trailer

Promo

2022 Visual Audio Commentary (to come)