Interview:
Mike Akel,
writer/director,
"The Tiny Life of Butcher Duke"
In writer/director Mike Akel’s Austin-shot comedy The Tiny Life of Butcher Duke, a tennis coach receives an unexpected shot at redemption 20 years after a bitter failure left him angry and broken. In 1998, Butcher Duke (Mike Akel) lost a tennis match to former pro Creek Thomson, a defeat that cost Duke the grand prize of a double-wide mobile home. Cut to today and Duke is a widower living with his mother and estranged from his daughter Emily (Emily Hiott). Fate comes knocking when Creek’s son Delta (Chad Werner) proposes a tennis match against Duke in a desperate bid to drum up publicity for the failing tiny house business Delta's running in the absence of his IRS-fugitive father. The prize: a brand-new tiny house, which Butcher needs more than anything in his life. Except, perhaps, to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter Emily. The Tiny Life of Butcher Duke is a sequel to 2000's mockumentary Butcher's 15, which depicted the 1998 tennis match between Duke and Thomson. The Tiny Life of Butcher Duke will screen 2:45 p.m. Saturday, April 27 during the Hill Country Film Festival at the Fritztown Cinema in Fredericksburg. Mike Akel previously wrote and directed 2006’s Chalk and 2011’s An Ordinary Family. He also serves as the executive producer of the Chad Werner-directed Adonis Complex, which will screen 8:15 p.m. Friday, April 26 during the Hill Country Film Festival at the Fritztown Cinema in Fredericksburg. Akel, Werner, and Hiott—also a star of Adonis Complex—previously collaborated on the 2017 mockumentary web series pilot Todd Bless You, which Akel plans to turn into a feature film.
Aired: April 18, 2019 Web sites: http://www.hillcountryff.com/ |
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