By MICHAEL J. TITTINGER Daily Press Staff Writer
(Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a series following the efforts of local resident Matt Stanton to produce an independent feature film).
SOMEWHERE IN WESTERN TEXAS — As the rented blue minivan hiccuped its way along the dirt roads that define this stretch of God’s country, side door slung open and videotape rolling, it didn’t take long for budding filmmaker Matt Stanton to realize he was a long way from home.
With the tattered, rustic landscapes of such towns as Baird, Clyde and Putnam, Tex., rolling away as unassumingly as they had come into focus, the region’s timeless simplicity had him perched on seat’s edge.
“It’s perfect,” he remarked. “We fly two hours and we’re a world away, another time and era.”
That era left behind, albeit just for a four-day scouting trip last week in Western Texas, is modern-day Santa Monica, where Stanton tends bar nightly at the House of Billiards on Wilshire Boulevard. Serving up cold beers and billiard balls, the lanky, longhaired Ohio transplant is recognized throughout the city, if not by name than as the quick-witted “black cowboy.”
Bartending, however, is just a means to an end for Stanton, a theater major who graduated from Loyola Marymount in 2001 after a seven-year hiatus from school. His passion is “North Starr,” the screenplay he wrote as an acting
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 14, 2004. Read the original PDF.