Now it’s a local film crew and a comic strip creator turning the cameras on fellow Alaskans in “Moose the Movie.”
Wasilla resident and international comic strip talent Chad Carpenter with brother Darin wrote a campy comedy, somehow mingling flannel with sci-fi elements.
The cloven-hoved ungulate we all know in the yard is now a red-eyed, two-legged menace rising extra slowly from a foggy watery underworld to the banging of tribal drums and the ahhs of medieval breathy men.
"It turned into a movie made by a community" Chad Carpenter
The collision of music-driven tension with slow moving taxidermy work does set you up on the ledge of laughter.
“I thought it’d be a little movie made by me, my brother, and friends. It turned into a movie made by a community,” Carpenter said in awe. All are local actors except three.
Everything was donated from cupcakes to vehicles. A guitar that needs to be smashed, Done. A historic town backdrop, Granted. Anyone got a barbeque? Yes. How about an RV? Here. Now, crowd of strangers, sway your hips in silence together and pretend you have music, Awkward, but OK.
The laughs are what likely rounded up 90 extras, unending props and donations, and $64,185 in online Kickstarter money through 508 backers.
"Instead of waiting for a studio to pick it up, we'll do it ourselves" Chad Carpenter
"The goal," Carpenter said, "is to have this one successful enough to make more, and to build an industry here."
Carpenter has already done the unlikely. Tundra, the comic strip, is in more than 550 newspapers across the world, all without the help of a syndicate. "I want to apply the business model for Tundra to the movie. Instead of waiting for a studio to pick it up, we'll do it ourselves." Coming soon to a Wasilla theater first.
The Palmer film crew, Sons of Winter Productions, will debut its first feature-length film with "Moose."
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