Interview with the director of “Last Stop in Yuma County” on Making Indies

With his first feature film, “The Last Stop in Yuma County,” released in theaters this week, Francis Galluppi is on the rise. The western-tinged neo-noir stars Jim Cummings as an anonymous traveling knife salesman who finds himself in a unique position after witnessing a restaurant robbery while carrying a crate of his sharp goods. The film charmed audiences on the genre festival circuit last fall and established Galluppi as a director worth watching. But as he nears the end of a five-year journey, the director hasn’t lost sight of how difficult it was to get his first project off the ground.

“I had two kids in the time it took me to make this movie,” Galluppi said during a recent Zoom conversation with IndieWire. “My daughter’s first words were ‘Last stop in Yuma County.’ »

Originally a musician by trade, Galluppi says he initially felt compelled to get into film after spending countless hours watching Hitchcock and Fellini films in the back of his tour van. But he almost saw his directing career disappear before it truly began after a negative experience traveling to Cincinnati to debut his first microbudget short film at a small festival.

“It was a terrible showing; no one showed up,” Galluppi recalls. “It was an 8 a.m. screening the day after opening night. And I flew there at a time when I really didn’t have any money, and I was like, “Damn, this was a waste of time.” »

But the disappointing premiere led to a chance meeting with James Claeys, a friend in the fashion industry who saw the artistic potential in Galluppi’s early work. Claeys offered the young director $50,000 with no strings attached to develop his next project. Sensing an opportunity to make his first feature film, Galluppi began brainstorming ideas about an eclectic group of drifters stuck in a gas station restaurant waiting for a fuel truck that eventually became “The Last Stop in County Yuma.”

Galluppi originally planned to make the film on a budget of $50,000, but his script quickly attracted the attention of bigger investors. But as the prospect of a much larger budget appeared before his eyes, he began to realize that those resources would only come if he compromised on key aspects of the film, such as his insistence on casting Cummings as the knife seller.

“I ended up handing the script over to this company that said, ‘We’ll do this for $5 million.’ And I was like, “Oh my God, this is crazy!” And I quickly understood that it was a game of names. You get this person with this much value, and that justifies a $5 million budget. And if you can’t find that person, you don’t have a movie. It felt like it wasn’t the movie I had in mind,” he said. “So once the option expired with that company, I just decided, ‘I’m going to do this film myself with everything we have.'”

Back at square one and jaded by the development process, Galluppi focused on crafting his dream version of “Yuma County” without worrying about his lack of funds. He ultimately settled on a vision for the film that could be made for around $1 million and began assembling a cast and crew.

“I just started trying to act like we had money. I started making shotlists and photoboards and writing letters to all these actors and hiring department heads and getting producers involved,” he said. “Basically anything you can do for no money.”

It didn’t take long for the film to be ready to shoot, but Galluppi still couldn’t afford to pay for it. He turned to Claeys, whose $50,000 donation had set the whole film in motion. At this point, Claeys was so invested in the project at hand that he sold his house to finance the rest, giving Galluppi a level of creative freedom that few first-time directors enjoy.

“I’m getting to the point where I have my dream cast, everything is listed and ready to go, and we have no money. So James, the one who invested the development money, ended up selling his house to finance it,” he said. “True story, he was joking with me like, ‘Hey, what if I sold my house?’ I’m like, ‘This is crazy, don’t fucking do that.’ Then one morning I called him and said, “Hey, I don’t know if you’re serious or not, but if you are, here’s what it means.” There will be no one on set to tell us what to do. We can make the movie that’s on the page. And he sold his house, and we were up and running a month later. It was as independent as possible. No one was there for a paycheck, everyone was there for the right reasons because they believed in the project.

In many ways, Galluppi fulfilled the dream that so many independent filmmakers pursue in life: creative control over his first feature, followed by a bustling festival run that led to a theatrical release. Now that he’s had the opportunity to look back at that dream from the other side, Galluppi says he’s aware that it involves more compromise than most people expect. But he also recognized that for a true movie buff, the thrills of independent cinema are enough to justify the detrimental toll it takes on their lifestyle.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘You realize this is my life, right?’ I’m going to write films that no one wants to make. I’m going to have a hard time finding money, it’s going to take me years and we’re probably not going to make any money from this,” he said. “Making an independent film takes a lot of time. But if you love it, you have no choice.

A Well Go USA release, “The Last Stop in Yuma County” hits select theaters and VOD platforms on Friday, May 10.