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| Director finds happy days with latest film |
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WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — Take a failing small company, mix with two marriages already collapsing, a sneaky corporate merger, a couple of innovative farmers and some amorous cows, and you get “Moola” – an independent film from director Don Most.
The film is Most’s, but its name comes from a sketch by California artist Leigh Rubin, whose cartoon, Rubes, is syndicated to several hundred publications – including Farm World and Marketplace. Rubin also contributed sketches for the movie’s animated opening credits.
Most said he had several working titles, including “Big Deal,” for the movie, when he saw one of Rubin’s famous bovine cartoons featuring a cow in a convertible with MOOLA emblazoned on the license plate.
It caught the attention of Gregg Daniel, a production representative on the film, as well. Most said Daniel suggested changing the movie’s title.
“At first, I was taken aback,” Most explained, “and I wasn’t sure.” But after showing it to several colleagues, he reconsidered – and “Moola” it was.
The film, distributed by Allumination Filmworks of Woodland Hills, Calif., is on its surface the story of how one profitable idea can save a business that seems to have exhausted its potential. Steve and his wife, Nora, Harry, Jonas and “Wild Bill” are five partners who each own a stake in the patent of chemiluminescent technology, under the name OmniGlow Light Sticks.
While driving past a dairy farm, a military vehicle accidentally drops a crate of light sticks, which are discovered by farmers Herb and Kevin Zissner (Jeff Olsen, Cragun Foulger). It doesn’t take long for them to figure out they can be mounted above the tails of their dairy cows and, when broken, they will glow and indicate which cows are in heat and ready to be inseminated.
When the Zissners call OmniGlow to share their idea, Steve (William Mapother) and Harry (Daniel Baldwin) are wallowing in failure – their business is losing money, their marriages are on the skids and both are facing middle age with the feeling they’ve somehow missed the success boat despite all their hard work.
Added to this is a large agribusiness, AFI, trying to buy out OmniGlow’s idea for a song before a rival takeover company can get wind of the potential of the light-stick technology. The buyout seems a godsend for the five partners, but last-minute double-dealing and backstabbing sets them up against one another, and each must decide between financial success and loyalty to friends.
“It ultimately brings into question, what is our perception of success?” explained Most, who helped develop the storyline.
For such weighty issues, “Moola” is a comedy that earns the label. It’s a small, independent film, but the story is good, the production quality is high and the cast of five partners – rounded out by actors Charlotte Ross (Nora), Curtis Armstrong (Jonas) and Ernie Grunwald “Wild Bill”) – have an easy chemistry that makes their working relationships believable.
Most envisions the small, fictional OmniGlow as something of a Rocky Balboa up against the Apollo Creed of agribusiness, AFI (headed by J.T. Montgomery – a delightfully smarmy Doug Hutchison, who imagines himself a corporate Napoleon), which has had the monopoly on cow heat-detection and is threatened by the OmniGlow technology.
The real Omniglow LLC – whose story inspired the movie – was not facing any sort of buyout when Idaho farmer Kevin Herriott contacted its owners in 1993 with his idea for the Bovine Beacon (see article on page 10). Nor were any of the business partners in the process of getting divorced.
“There is much of me in Steve,” admitted co-founder Stan Holland, who is also an executive producer of “Moola,” though he said he lacks Steve’s anxiety attacks.
He described his favorite scene – completely fictional – as when the five partners are meeting with J.T. to hear AFI’s buyout proposal. The partners’ attorney has severely underestimated the worth of their technology, but naturally none of them admit this as J.T. offers them first 10, then 20 times what they’re expecting.
As each partner reacts with their own brand of disbelief – Steve and Nora leave the boardroom to deal with his anxiety attack, Wild Bill doodles, Harry clamors to sign on the dotted line and Jonas tries to shut Harry’s big mouth before he ruins the deal – J.T. sees it all as a negotiation ploy and, in a panic, keeps upping his offer. It’s the misunderstandings and how each character reacts, and either talks or doesn’t, that Holland enjoys.
“I like humor that’s based in fact, that could actually happen,” he said. “This could happen.”
Most, who is Holland’s brother-in-law as well as an actor/director, saw the story possibilities in the Bovine Beacon’s beginnings six years ago, but just recently was able to release the film.
“I’m really glad that it’s out for the general public now,” Most said of the process it took from idea to reality.
Though “Moola,” rated PG-13, is available for sale or rental only on DVD through Amazon.com and outlets such as Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery – among others – Leigh Rubin’s animated opening sequence can be viewed online through YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJgM-WLkL0k |
| 5/21/2008 |
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