CHASING MARY

Executive Producer: Ty Eckley

June 29, 1961, a rented two-door hardtop Buick rolls out of Livingston, Montana westbound on U.S. Hwy 90. The occupants, Mary Welsh Hemingway, husband Ernest and family friend/chauffeur George Brown begin the next to last day of the week-long automobile trip home to Ketchum, Idaho from Rochester, Minnesota where Ernest was hospitalized in Mayo Clinic. Mary leans forward from the back seat to sing softly in Ernest’s ear, futilely hoping to penetrate the gloom of his mental illness.

Meanwhile, fast forward to 2001. Mary Wells (a.k.a. MW), a postgraduate student at a vaunted Ivy League University, finds her faculty advisor is a devoted Ernest Hemingway aficionado. Though Ernest is of no interest as her topic, she is curious about his marriages. When the advisor presses her to declare her subject, she chooses Mary’s autobiography, How It Was, for her dual track literature-film/media doctoral dissertation. Irreverent, chafing at the expectations of her privileged upbringing, MW seeks her own identity to create a future beyond parental expectations.

As MW immerses in Mary’s book, she is amazed at the breadth of accomplishment in her own right well before becoming Ernest’s fourth and last wife. Drifting back to the mid-1960s, while Mary Hemingway clacks away at her autobiographical manuscript on her manual typewriter, she explains, “Hold on”, dear friends order me, “You haven’t told us anything about yourself.” Forty years before, Mary shouldered her way into the male dominated world of journalism. Adventurous of spirit professionally and in life, she forged her way into a volatile pre-World War 2 Europe to ply her trade, leaving two marriages behind along the way. Identifying with much of Mary’s story, the student soon finds herself struggling to separate reality from illusion, blending into those intersections as Mary’s companion in a state of magical realism.

In a metaphorical culmination, Mary suggests the student create a documentary retracing the entire trip alluded to in the opening scene as part of her dissertation. The poignancy of the Hemingway’s journey and its tragic conclusion, wrapped in the Americana of the route, results in a film that spills from academia into successfull screening at major film festivals in 2004, at last defining a clear path for MW’s life’s work.

Coming Soon

Night Flight

An Unlikely Friendship set against the racially charged backdrop of 1968 Buffalo NY and the crew/rowing scene. Brendan & Max, though from different walks of life, find common ground, kinship, and the desire to buck the system. Racist policy at the rowing club triggers Brendan to reach out to Max; they plot to get Max in the final regatta, despite the obstacles.

Plane People

In a world paralyzed by fear in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, PLANE PEOPLE is a unique 11-part series that details the ‘stories of hope’ those 7,000 stranded air travelers in Gander, Newfoundland found in their common humanity in the shadow of tragedy.

Based of on a true story: “The morning of September 12th, I awoke on a military cot in the math room of the Gander High School in Newfoundland, Canada. Our flight from Europe was on final approach to JFK when they closed the US airspace. We could see the Twin Towers burning out the window as our plane turned hard back over the Atlantic. The pilot came on the intercom and simply said: “America is at war”. The kindness, solidarity & hospitality that the people of Gander showed the many thousands of fellow stranded travelers during those tense days renewed our faith in mankind. Thank you Gander, forever & always!”

Xodus

After centuries of war the Earth is dead. The rich live in an orbiting city while the poor struggle in the wastelands on Earth. The city is terraforming Saturn’s largest moon Titan and will turn the Earth into a star. Those who do not serve the evil city and its warped cybernetic Queen will be left behind to die.

X0DUS tells the story of Caleb, a young Duke, whose idyllic life aboard the orbiting city is shattered when his father is murdered by the Queen and Caleb is thrown into the Earth’s apocalyptic deserts. Left for dead, he’s found by Red, a warrior maiden of the slave underclass who despises everything he represents. But Red and Caleb must unite forces if they are to stop the Queen from vaporizing the Earth.

X0DUS is a PG, live-action, virtual production feature film for fans of all the sci-fi movies we loved in the 80’s, like Star Wars, Dune, Mad Max and Flash Gordon. It’s thrill ride of a movie, using a revolutionary approach to independent filmmaking. Actors are filmed in a bluescreen volume, then embedded within a visual effects engine in real-time. This technique allows for spectacular environments but keeps the emotional connection with the audience by using real actors, eliminating the ‘uncanny valley’ curse from digital movies.

The film is helmed by Dean Yurke an award winning director and visual effects veteran who has credits on some of the biggest franchises of all time including STAR WARS, HARRY POTTER, TRANSFORMERS and the MCU.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF REGINA BROWN

In 1987, the nation was captivated and horrified when a Connecticut man was arrested for murdering his wife with a wood chipper. Two months later, a woman named Regina Brown, from the same town in Connecticut, vanished without a trace. Regina Brown was 35 years old when she disappeared. A doting mom, she left behind three children, a home, a flight attendant job, an abusive husband who was a pilot and a life in the small suburb of Newtown, CT. Five months earlier, Helle Crafts went missing. Helle also left behind three children, a home, a flight attendant job, an abusive husband who was a pilot and a life in the small suburb of Newtown, CT. Two months after Helle went missing, her husband Richard was arrested for her murder. The infamous “wood chipper murder” case overshadowed Regina’s case and her body was never found. Her case remains unsolved to this day. In an attempt to reinvigorate the search for Regina’s remains, this documentary will examine both cases in detail, the striking similarities as well as the glaring differences in police and media attention.