CA: Sonoma Pot Film Getting Good Buzz

Katelyn Baker;3059857 said:

“Green Is Gold,” a critically acclaimed new independent film from Sonoma filmmaker Ryon Baxter, is set amid the ever-shifting cannabis industry of Northern California. But according to its writer, director, editor and star, the gentle drama is hardly what most people might expect from a movie about pot growers.

“It’s not some ‘stoner comedy,’ and it’s not one of those hyper-violent crime movies,” Baxter says of the long-in-the-works film, a low-budget coming-of-age story about two estranged brothers whose father goes to prison, and who gradually bond while trying to make a living growing and distributing medicinal cannabis in California. In the film, Baxter and his real-life brother Jimmy Baxter play the siblings. The movie won the Audience Favorite award at the recent Los Angeles Film Festival, and has been selected to screen this weekend at the 39th annual Mill Valley Film Festival. Baxter recently made a deal with Samuel Goldwyn films to distribute the movie, a rare achievement for a first-time effort by a freshman filmmaker.

The timing, of course - with California set to vote in November on legalizing all recreational and medicinal marijuana use - could not be better.

“I was inspired to make a film that might crystalize what’s happening with the medical marijuana movement,” says Baxter, who himself founded a short-lived medicinal marijuana collective in Sonoma, and - like the character he plays in the film - once did a short stint in jail, due to what he describes as confusing conflicts between state and federal drug laws. A recent film school graduate with a life-long love of movies, Baxter decided six years ago to turn some of his colorful life experiences into a screenplay.

“I knew I was privy to some insider perspective,” he acknowledges, “and I wanted to present what I knew in a non-sensational way. That the film has been so well-received is a nice surprise, and it’s super exciting.”

Baxter was born and raised in the Sonoma Valley, but left the area at age 9, moving with his mother to Plumas County, in northeast California. He returned to Sonoma in 2009, where several members of his family still reside.

When he decided to make the film here, many of his friends and family helped. His best decision, he believes, was casting Jimmy.

“I guess it was out of necessity more than anything, that I cast myself,” he says. “I didn’t have money to cast actors from Hollywood. But my little brother is super talented. And he already had a built-in chemistry, so I was relying on that when I cast him.”

Baxter says he did five different drafts of the script, but ended up having to rewrite several scenes “on the fly” because of various production issues, and the legendary vagaries of filming a movie with nearly no budget.

“It was a pretty big learning process,” he says. “We were swarmed by bees one day. One scene, we had to shoot under a house, where it was 105 degrees, and there were all these black widows crawling on us. There was even a snake. But I guess that’s what happens when you have to film in places you get to use for free.”

Principle photography was done just over three years ago, and the film took a total of 25 days to shoot. Baxter’s cast and crew filmed mostly in Sonoma County, and he suspects that audience members may recognize a few of the locations, including one shot along Highway 101.

“I intentionally made the setting pretty nondescript,” he allows, “avoiding specific names of towns or places, so it could technically be taking place anywhere in Northern California, rather than specifically in Sonoma. When people think Sonoma, they think wine, not medical cannabis.”

In fact, Baxter says, he hopes people won’t view his film as being only about marijuana.

“It’s a love story about brothers,” he says. “It’s a story of these how these two brothers’ relationship grows stronger during difficult times. Cannabis just happens to be the backdrop.”

That said, the Mill Valley Film Festival has included “Green Is Gold” as part of its pot-focused “Smoke Screens” category, a curated series of films, panels, and musical performances on Saturday, Oct. 8, all dealing in some way with the issue of marijuana, drug laws and medicinal cannabis.

Baxter guesses that what his film brings to the conversation is a perspective that few people ever bring forward.

“The industry is largely built on little ma-and-pa farms, trying to make it in a very tough political and economic environment,” he says. “From my observation, most people growing cannabis are hard-working people coming together to try and make a better life for themselves. I really tried to portray the characters in a way where the audience could become invested in their successes and failures.”

News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Sonoma Pot Film Getting Good Buzz
Author: David Templeton
Contact: (707) 938-2111
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: Sonoma Index-Tribune

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