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Carty Talkington Hits the Mark with Love and a .45
In Love and a .45, writer-director Carty Talkington has created a stylized, darkly comedic journey through the contemporary American landscape of murder, media, music, controlled substances and unbridled love. Fast-paced and infused with a refreshingly twisted take on pop culture, the film lures the viewer in with its peculiar charm before springing a plot and tone shift that at once stuns and captivates. Filled with unexpected strong performances and a rollicking musicality that often runs counterpoint to the dramatic mood, the film hardly plays like a directorial debut.
Though Talkington helped secure a deal with fledgling distributor Trimark Pictures by telling them his other films had all “burned up in a dorm room fire,” this is, in fact, his first feature film. Coming into motion pictures by way of the music business, where he formed and played guitar in two rock bands, and the theater, where he produced and directed plays for his independent company, Talkington wrote Love and a .45 intending to direct and even turned down some lucrative offers from producers looking to assign it to other directors. The film is currently playing to enthusiastic audiences on the festival circuit and will soon be released nationally. I met up with Carty Talkington to try to find out how he was able to put together such a compelling first film, where he came up with its $2 million budget, what brought him together with producer Darin Scott (Menace II Society, To Sleep with Anger) and how in the world they were able to sign Peter Fonda to play such a hilarious cameo role.
Tom Allen (MM): I saw the movie as a parody of past classics like Bonnie and Clyde, but refreshingly different from much of today’s fare which bangs you over the head with pop culture references and that kind of thing. Your approach is much more subtle. Was it important to you to find an original way of winking at our American film tradition?
Carty Talkington (CT): Yeah. At one point in the movie she goes, “We sort of remind me of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty…”—not Bonnie and Clyde, mind you, the actors who played them. I did want it to be fresh and one thing about the film, for better or worse, is it’s not a considered, contrived, clever little commentary. It was a very natural, intuitive process making this film. I took a stream of consciousness approach, even in the writing, which I did quickly, almost furiously. What I do, usually, when writing a script is write half of it and then rewrite the whole thing. I rewrote it pretty fast, in about two weeks. That’s the way I work, sort of in spurts. The every day discipline thing I still have a slight problem with, though I hope to develop that. Ideas percolate for a while and then I let them out.
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This story was published in the November 1994 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Talkington Hits the Mark with His "Western Psychedelic Road Opera" / A good screenplay, a lot of luck and a "small little lie" land Talkington $2 million in financing a directorial debut.
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