On the Big Screen

As the Richmond International Film Festival returns, we highlight cinema projects with local connections

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Stage & Screen

The 15th annual Richmond International Film Festival runs Sept. 22-27 at various city venues. It is screening more than 180 films of all varieties from around the world, complemented by workshops, panel discussions, a virtual cinema lineup and live music. This year’s fest also includes a selection of filmmakers with local connections.

Andy Edmunds, director of the Virginia Film Office, wrote a screenplay he initially thought someone else would direct. Instead, Edmunds took the reins for his feature film debut, “The Cashier,” which opens RIFF today, Sept. 22, at The Byrd Theatre. The screening has sold out, but those interested in attending can wait at the door for seats that may open due to no-shows.

Richmond-based playwright, actor and voice-over artist Bo Wilson’s 2016 stage play, “The Charitable Sisterhood of the Second Trinity Victory Church,” as he observes, “went all the way around the world to come back to Richmond as a film.” The picture screens Thursday, Sept. 24, at BTM Movieland at Boulevard Square.

Chris Harcum, who lived and performed locally during the 1990s, and Aimee Todoroff, a resident of New York, planned to produce their short, “The Save,” in a New York City Airbnb. Then the filming rules changed, forcing them to pivot. The resulting product screens Saturday, Sept. 26, at Movieland.  

As with almost any artistic endeavor, one must expect the unexpected. 

'Who, Me?' 

Edmunds pitches the “The Cashier” as, “What if the Coen brothers made an R-rated Hallmark movie?” In his answer, Richmonders will see several recognizable faces from area stages, as well as from screens beyond the River City. It includes Daphne Maxwell Reid as Glenda, the eponymous cashier; Michael Marundé as Atlee and Aaron, twins who create trouble; and additional cast members Wendy Carter, Anthony D. Charity, Joe Inscoe, Bryan K. Landis, Tim Reid and Irene Ziegler. 

Two separate 2018 news items inspired Edmunds to wonder: What if a would-be domestic terrorist, while purchasing supplies for the pipe bombs he wants to mail to politicians he doesn’t like, also purchased a lottery ticket worth $1.6 billion — and then lost it? 

“Life is a dichotomy of vulgarity and beauty, and that’s what this movie is about,” Edmunds reflects. “Life is messy, and we see heroes and villains and hypocrisy, but, essentially, it’s about the facade people wear when they’re moving through the world. People are the way they are because of the information they consume.” 

Initially, Edmunds planned to make a short and to film it in 2020, but then came the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2022 holiday season, he sat down at his computer and produced a 110-page script in just a few days. And while the story is not autobiographical, he says it took him 50 years to write. “It’s a compendium of my real feelings on extremism, hate and intolerance when all that collides with unyielding magnanimity.”

He didn’t think the Hollywood machine would ever green-light such a mixed-breed story, so he set out to make a movie he wanted to see — which sounds easier than it turned out to be.

Edmunds grew up in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County. His father was an attorney and civil rights activist, while his mother’s musical and ballet prowess took her through the prestigious Juilliard School. “I grew up under an umbrella of intellectual curiosity and moral justice, combined with a passion for art and music,” Edmunds recalled in a 2021 interview with Medium. “If Atticus Finch and Carol Burnett had a baby, I guess that would be me.”

In 1979, Edmunds moved to Richmond to pursue a career as a rock guitarist. He played in several regional groups, and met his wife, Andrea, in 1986 while he was still performing in Spectrum. His musical aspirations led him to convince friends, including filmmaker John Parks, to make a music video. Edmunds personally delivered the tape to MTV’s New York headquarters, and a sympathetic programmer put “Hard to Make a Livin’” into rotation for a while; Nickelodeon even used the music. However, Edmunds didn’t have an actual record. 

He eventually turned to film location scouting and production while playing music at night. By 1996, married with a son on the way, Edmunds needed a consistent paycheck and health insurance. He used lessons learned from his music video production to approach the Virginia Film Office with the novel idea of digitizing their film location photography files. He offered to undertake the project for free. Rita McClenny, then the department’s commissioner, instead gave him a paying job. “And here I am, 30 years later,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve gotten to work with some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, incredibly talented and hard-working people intent on making the best of this crazy business.” 

As a film commissioner, Edmunds guided some prestige projects to Virginia, including Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” Terrence Malick’s “The New World,” Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal,” and Rodrigo Garcia’s “Raymond & Ray.” Several high-profile miniseries have also filmed in the commonwealth; among them are HBO’s “John Adams,” created through Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s production company, Playtone, and Ethan Hawke’s “The Good Lord Bird.” 

By watching and assisting movies getting made, Edmunds learned how to run a set and avoid some pitfalls. He also benefitted from meeting a group of homegrown and experienced moviemakers, who helped him develop his skills in front of and behind the camera. This group evolved into his production team for “The Cashier.”

The script germinated over time. When Edmunds thought it was polished enough, he passed the screenplay around for discernment. He also submitted it to The Black List, an online writers’ forum that accepts creative work for review by industry members. “The Cashier” finished in the top 4% of submissions. “So, I knew it didn’t suck,” Edmunds says.

To direct his film, he originally envisioned Vince Gilligan, who is from the region and brought to the world “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” and “Pluribus.” Due to the movie’s provocative mixture, he also considered Jordan Peele, who created “Get Out” and “Nope.” However, signing either one would probably have taken years and a big budget, as would attracting marquee actors. 

Friends urged Edmunds to take the director’s chair himself. “And I realized that I have all this talent right here, with people I’ve been working with for 30 years,” he reflects. Entering his mid-60s, Edmunds also considered how fast time can slip away. “Finally, I just said, ‘We gotta make this thing.’”

Then came the “pushing the boulder up the hill phase” of trying to garner financial backing, “which is the plight of any indie filmmaker,” Edmunds says with a shrug. “So, basically, we leveraged our life.” The backing also came from friends, family and fools, as the saying goes.

Edmunds wanted to involve as much Virginia talent as possible, so he turned to casting director Anne Chapman. With few exceptions, she filled the character roster with names known here. The film’s producers and production designer camped out at Edmunds’ Varina home. His son, Evan, operated the drone camera.   

“Filmmaking is not a solo sport,” Edmunds says, “it’s a collaboration. And between what’s written in the script and the facts on the ground, there can be wide differences, and you got to be open to whatever’s coming at you on a given day. Making a movie is disaster management.” 

Aiming for a customary downtime in filmmaking, Edmunds began shooting two days before Thanksgiving in 2025 and scheduled another 15 days before Christmas. “Most everybody could go home at the end of the day and sleep in their own beds,” he says.

Although Edmunds didn’t write the script with the holidays in mind, some festive decorations were up during on-location shooting. “And so, we leaned into it a little,” Edmunds says. “We even added a line where a character blurts out, ‘It’s a Christmas miracle!’”

It Came From Down Under

A playwright may dream of one day getting a call from Hollywood. Bo Wilson did not anticipate his invitation to the dream machine coming, instead, from an Australian faith-based production company. 

The property in question was his 2014 play, “The Charitable Sisterhood of the Second Trinity Victory Church.” As Wilson explains, it’s a comedy “with some slightly ribald bits.” It found success locally as a world premiere by Virginia Repertory Theatre, directed by Bruce Miller, on the Hanover Tavern stage. 

“Charitable Sisterhood” is a one-set show that takes place in a church basement during a clothing drive for the unhoused. A group of women becomes trapped when a torrential storm washes out roads.

Wilson recalls that the renowned stage designer Fred Voelpel, then director of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut, once told him, when it comes to the arts, “You never know who’s going to be in the elevator.” Making the art is one thing. Predicting where, or if, the creation will travel and what opportunities may open for it, is another. 

In 2014, Wilson’s play “The Boatwright” premiered at the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Civic Theatre. It won two national awards, and the script was picked up for distribution by Dramatic Publishing. “I didn’t know about the community theater angle,” Wilson says. “But, at the time, the Grand Rapids company had a budget of $1.4 million, a staff of 12 and a big facility with two spaces.”

Further, Dramatic Publishing sent two representatives to catch the show. After the performance, Wilson took them aside and told them that while “The Boatwright” is a fine play, “If you want to make some real money, I got this show, 'The Charitable Sisterhood' …"

The success of "Charitable Sisterhood” led to a sequel, “The Charitable Sisterhood Christmas Spectacular.” Since its 2017 premiere, it's been chosen for about 20 performances per year around the country and been produced in seven foreign countries. 

A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Wilson grew up in Richmond, went to Virginia Tech and the National Theater Institute, married Richmond actress Jan Guarino, and wrote more than 40 plays, six of which are published. He found a living in writing, and sometimes narrating, industrial and training films.

Wilson also does voice work, which landed him in the Fallout video game universe and sends him to fan conventions. “You mean, you’ll fly me out there, put me up, give me a per diem, and what I do is autograph toys? Really?" he says with some humorous incredulity. "I saw ‘Galaxy Quest,’ I know this is a thing, but I’m not Bill Shatner. I’m not even Jonathan Frakes.”

According to Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 4 has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide and is widely available on subscription services. “So, by numbers alone, more people have heard me through Fallout than in anything else I’ll ever do in my life," Wilson reflects. "I don’t know what the karmic engines run on, but maybe they’re saying, ‘This guy’s been at it awhile. Let’s throw ’im a bone.’”

In April 2023, Wilson received a call from director and producer Dean Owen-Sims, who wanted to adapt "Charitable Sisterhood" for film. Although based in England, Owen-Sims is also on the advisory board of the Sydney Film School in Australia. 

“What drew me in were the characters," Owen-Sims said on the Raindance indie film festival website. "They weren’t just functional, they felt lived-in, contradictory, often funny, occasionally difficult — but flawed and real, three dimensional. And what speed! The source material reads like a 1950s movie, galloping along at quite a clip! The dialogue has a rhythm to it, too — fast, slightly heightened — and that gives the piece a natural momentum. It felt cinematic, even before it was a film.”

Wilson’s publisher cleared the production for film, and advance and post-production payments were scheduled. “I didn’t expect to make a dime from it,” Wilson adds.

Among nips and tucks to the script were modifications to references by an emergency room nurse about the amazing things people can shove in their bodies. “I told him, it’s funny," Wilson says with a chuckle, "but if you want to get rid of a laugh, that’s on you. He made maybe three sensitivity-driven edits. But I would say the text of the screenplay is 95% the text of the play.”

In the end, the efficiency of the production, Owen-Sims’ consistent updates and the time taken in post-production impressed Wilson. The finished film is making the rounds of various festivals and doing well with audiences. 

And you just never know who’ll be in the elevator.

Movies and Other Improvisations

The impetus for “The Save” was a news story about a man who hired two others to fake an abduction of his wife so that he, the husband, could appear to rescue her. This gave Chris Harcum, a New York-based playwright, screenwriter and actor, an idea for a comedic sketch framed by couples' counseling.

Harcum is not unaccustomed to including curious elements in dramatic interpretations. The first of what became several one-man shows was “Some Kind of Pink Breakfast.” In a 1999 performance at a Shockoe Bottom venue, he played 26 characters for an audience of three people, which included Clay McLeod Chapman, who became a playwright and author, and critic David Hintz Timberline. As Harcum relates in a recent essay, “Unexpectedly, David gave me a wonderful review and the Best Actor Award in Style Weekly for 1999.”

The writer turned the idea of a husband faking his wife’s kidnapping into a short film, which he directed and co-produced with his partner, Aimee Todoroff. However, the couple confronted a challenge when the regulations governing Airbnbs in New York changed. “We couldn’t film there for only the few days that we needed to rent it,” he recalls.

Instead, the cast and crew crammed into Harcum and Todoroff’s one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. “On the plus side,” Harcum says, “the production came to us for most of the shoot. Aimee did a lot of work to dress our apartment for the characters.” 

The change of venue also brought another potential problem: Manhattan is in a constant state of noisy flux. The troublesome sounds included the remodeling of a nearby school, construction of new apartments and the facade of the place next door getting a repainting job.

“I was panicking right up to the day before the shoot," Harcum says. "I even added a line for the husband to cover things: ‘You know I can’t do anything about the construction or the traffic.’ But, a miracle happened. The construction stopped for those few days. At test screenings, I got feedback that you don’t hear any background noise, so I added a bunch in post.”

The production entailed a role reversal for the duo: Harcum usually produces their films and Todoroff directs, but they switched for this one. 

“But, as with most things like this, we both wore multiple hats,” Harcum says. “She quietly made notes on the best takes. Those were the ones I always picked during the editing process. She did some very important intimacy direction. There is a scene at the end that wouldn’t have worked without what she did.”

Now, that’s entertainment.