The opening sneak previews of this year’s El Dorado Film Festival were born, in part, from last year’s El Dorado Film Festival: The Southern Arkansas gem’s opening night included both the hypnotic independent TV pilot Savage, and another new indie pilot that Savage helped inspire — the twisty and compelling Fixation.
Plenty of film festivals play solid, award-season films. But El Dorado further stands out by taking an active role in getting movies made, and that was never more clear than in Wednesday night’s sneak screenings.
Last year, Picture Pool Productions‘ Nicholas Logan, Bridget Regan and Brittany Fallow hosted a detailed panel on creating independent TV shows, with an eye toward selling them to networks or streamers once they’re complete, instead of going through a traditional development process that often requires overcoming lottery odds. During that panel, they described their plans for Savage, a small-town thriller rooted in delirious, swampy atmospherics.
On Wednesday night, they delivered. Savage, starring Regan as an alcoholic private investigator summoned to a mysterious town of 10 residents to see what happened to the missing eleventh, has a beguiling Twin Peaks kind of atmosphere, though it is set near that show’s geographic opposite, in one of the most isolated parts of Florida.
Among those inspired by last year’s Picture Pool panel was prolific filmmaker Alexander Jeffery, executive director of the El Dorado Film Festival. He and his Bespoke Works LLC partner, Paul Petersen, realized that a TV series might be the ideal format for a novel they were working to adapt, Fixation. It was written by local oral and maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Steven Smart.
Fixation‘s pilot is a twisty, character-first narrative with sophisticated structure and a magnificent last-minute rug pull. The craftsmanship is so high that cinematographer Joel Froome meticulously copied early ’90s lighting to make sure the film feels set in that time period.
Jefffery said Wednesday that he and Peterson initially believed Smart’s novel should be a TV show, but decided to write is as a feature film since they had never made a show before. But, Jeffery added: “It just never quite felt as right as it did when it was in the TV format. So it was really seeing what Nick and Brittany and Bridget did with Savage…. that got this going.”
Jeffery and Peterson assembled a team that includes Picture Pool’s Logan and Regan, as well as El Dorado Film Festival film committee chair Tamra Corley Davis. She is one of the executive producers of Fixation, and pops up in the film as a juror.
Jeffery even got El Dorado native William Ragsdale — who came to the festival last year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his horror classic Fright Night — to play a key role in Fixation.
And so, a year after Picture Pool’s 2025 El Dorado Film Festival presentation, both Savage and Fixation shared a stage for Wednesday night’s sneak screenings. The audience at the inviting, state-of-the-art South Arkansas Art Center — the anchor of a passionate local arts and music scene — included many of Dr. Smart’s former patients. A few were familiar with the semi-autobiographical Fixation, which is about a young Korean-American woman who suddenly dies after a dramatic cosmetic surgery.
Smart brought to the stage the courtly authority one longs for in a medical professional, and assured the audience that while some elements of Fixation were based in fact, one was not: Unlike the lead in Fixation (played by Brett Dalton), he never lost a patient during his residency.
His verdict on the adaptation of his novel?
“Alex and Paul have just done marvelous job with this,” he said. “I hope they make you want to see the next episode.”
Prolific DIY Storytelling, From Outside Hollywood
Wednesday’s screenings of Savage and Fixation were a testament to the power of DIY storytelling, born from longtime partnerships and friendships, far from the often slow and gridlocked decision-making of Hollywood. El Dorado is located about halfway between Little Rock and Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the Louisiana Film Prize, with which El Dorado often collaborates.
The El Dorado-Shreveport film corridor produces film after film thanks to an all-hands approach to projects in which a director on one movie might P.A. on another to thank the director of the first film for editing another project altogether. Everyone is well past the point of keeping track of who owes who for what. Everyone just works together to raise all boats.
Filmmakers like Jeffery, Clayton Henderson and Chris Alan Evans pop up frequently in the credits of both El Dorado Film Festival and Louisiana Film Prize films, and their films then go on to play far and wide. For example, Evans — who plays a lawyer in Fixation — has had a terrific run with his recent short film “toots,” which played top-tier festivals like Indy Shorts. He also co-wrote and starred in the outrageous stalker musical “Peeping Todd,” which was so successful as a short that it was made into a feature. It is directed by Evans’ co-writer, Josh Munds, and plays El Dorado on Saturday.
Henderson, a young, prolific filmmaker with close ties to the El Dorado and Shreveport scenes, enjoyed an admirable festival run for this recent short “Fast” that included the prestigious New Orleans Film Festival and Waco Independent Film Festival. Both, like El Dorado and the Louisiana Film Prize, are on our list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.
While big studios try to work out industrywide solutions to problems like distribution and AI, smaller creative teams like Picture Pool and Bespoke Films are just making things, confident that they’ll find an audience. It’s easy to see how both Savages and Fixation could make for addictive prestige television, if given a chance.
Main image: Brett Dalton in Fixation, courtesy of Bespoke Films.