If It Bleeds, It Leads

One year. That’s the longest that Oklahoma City-based director Mickey Reece has gone without making a movie in decades. Reece has “either 29 or 30” feature films under his belt, and wasn’t totally sure how many he had directed at this point in his career before settling on the number 30.

“A lot of them are not good,” says Reece. “For people to be like, ‘That’s crazy. That’s impressive,’ It’s like, well, you got to see the first couple. I mean, they’re not anything impressive.”

Reece, who grew up in Newcastle, Oklahoma, has come a long way from his high school days of shooting on tape in his parents’ house, using his friends as actors and crew. Now Reece’s features hit the festival circuit and typically go on international tour before being picked up on streaming. By the time his last film Country Gold (tagged by critics as “A Cinematic Country Classic”) premiered at Fantasia International Film Fest in Montreal in 2022, Reece was well into the throes of his next project, The Cool Tenor, this time with the Hollywood machine behind him. The Cool Tenor was proving to be a much larger movie than Reece had experience making, and his first foray into development hell. 

“And I got bored with it,” says Reece on The Cool Tenor. “And I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna write something that I know can get funded and that we can do pretty cheap.’”

Enter Reece’s latest flick, Every Heavy Thing, which also premiered at Fantasia Film Fest this past July. This sleek, saturated indie techno-thriller seems to be the antithesis of Hollywood bloat (shot for $300K in Oklahoma City using Reece’s favorite stable of actors and crew) and perhaps is a cure for the creative agitation Reece suffered during his unintentional hiatus. 

“That’s the beauty of indie movies. Everyone is doing that labor of love because they love it,” says actress Kaylene Snarsky, who plays Cheyenne in the film. “That’s what we all want to do, is pour ourselves into a piece of something that isn’t just shiny and spoon feeding you, you know?”

W.W.B.D.P.D? (What Would Brian De Palma Do?)

It’s likely Reece’s (nearly) continuous creative practice that has helped hone the skill and confidence that he exhibits in Every Heavy Thing, which he described as a “Brian De Palma movie from memory.”

“We’re not trying to remake one of these movies. We’re just going to go with that as our basis,” says Reece. “So whenever we’re having trouble making a choice, we can be like, ‘Oh, well, what would Brian De Palma do in this situation?’” 

The film follows Joe (Josh Fadem), an ad seller at one of the last alt-weekly newspapers in fictional Hightown City, who witnesses a murder that may be connected to a string of missing women cases. His life quickly unravels as intrepid newbie reporter Cheyenne (Snarsky) begins investigating the missing women and discovers a Big Tech bigwig (James Urbaniak) may be involved. As the tension ratchets, Joe rapidly loses his grip on reality. 

Divulging too much more, such as the role of lounge singer Whitney Bluewill (played by horror legend Barbara Crampton), will spoil the ride, but audiences should know what they’re gearing up for: violence, nudity, kidnapping, dark comedy and Chekov’s XX ARM KYK Tactical semi-automatic shotgun, among other surprises. 

Audiences know to buckle up from the very first few seconds, as the top of the film has a photosensitivity warning, indicating that the visual effects throughout could trigger seizures in people with epilepsy. During some of Joe’s nightmares—or are they hallucinations? visions?—Joe enters a tech miasma of glitch effects and city footage that looks like something from Tron. (Fun fact: the film’s cityscape footage is actually from Tesla car cameras.)

“Every time there’s like a glitch that’s analog, that’s real. We literally sent it to a glitch artist,” says Reece, explaining that all the effects were done via analog equipment. “And then he takes it and gives me five different versions of the scene, because the glitch is always different, because the analog glitch is like … it’s always going to be different. It’s not like something that you create the exact moment you want it.”

Nicholas Poss’ electronic, sometimes droning, soundscape and score are pitch-perfect throughout and also make use of analog techniques. 

“Nick is such a nerd,” says Reece. “He’s got a good job. He works at ACM[@UCO], so he’s just like, ‘I’m gonna use this money [from Every Heavy Thing] to buy all these old vintage synths that he’s using, and then learn how to use them. So that’s it—his music is amazing, but also it’s presented through the instrumentation that an ’80s techno thriller would have been presented through.”

While there are no accidents in this film, especially regarding casting (Reece said every cast member save one is playing a part he wrote for the actor who performs the role), Matt Couch’s production design or Jack Odell’s costuming, Reece and Snarsky evaded lines of questioning about the presence of specific themes.

“With Every Heavy Thing, all that stuff is in there,” says Reece in response to questions about themes of repressed sexuality and desire within the film. “But we’re not saying anything specific about it. It’s not on the nose; it’s there for you and for the critic to dissect.”

“I’ll Take Care of the Rest”

While this is Snarsky’s first Reece film, she has been a performer since the age of 3 and has a bachelor’s degree in dance and arts management from Oklahoma City University. Where some indie directors may push boundaries or limits, especially on a provocative and charged thriller like Every Heavy Thing, Snarsky experienced nothing like that on set.

“I’m an intimacy coordinator as well, and I’m somebody who is not afraid to advocate for myself,” says Snarsky, who works on other feature film sets to coordinate sex or nudity sequences. Snarsky, who had a nude scene and some stunt work in the film, felt comfortable on set. As Every Heavy Thing was her second feature as an actress, she recalls how much having a mostly Oklahoma-based cast and crew mattered to her. 

“Oklahoma filmmaking, the crew that we had, the people that come together for projects like this, just create an environment of safety and community,” she says.

That said, Reece wasn’t afraid to push Snarsky’s performance and help her grow as an actress during shooting, which she welcomed.

“Coming from a theater background, that’s something I had to learn a lot. Being on camera is a very different process, and you don’t need to do as much as you think you do, because the camera works like a human eye, and it can see every thought that you have,” says Snarsky. 

One day, Snarsky recalled, a conversation with Reece helped her shift her performance in the film and transformed her on-camera craft.

“Because Mickey was like, it looks like you’re ‘Acting.’ And I totally, I totally was ‘Acting.’ I was trying to give something, because that’s what my brain went to do. But that’s not what you need to do on camera. On camera, you have to have a thought. And that says plenty,” says Snarsky. 

Some of Reece’s strengths as a director come from plenty of experience in front of the camera, including starring in his most recent feature, Country Gold. According to Mickey Reece’s BELLE ÎLE, a short documentary about his perspective as a director and artist, he originally wanted to be an actor. As Reece states in the doc, “Sometimes I just had to step in and play whatever part we didn’t have anyone for, whether it was fitting or not.”

That perspective has been critical in directing actors who take his script from the page and transform it into a performance for the screen. 

“And I’ve definitely had actors that didn't really understand the material, but it’s like, it’s OK. You don’t need to, just do what you do,” says Reece. “Like I always say, just go out into the field, put your glove in the air, and then I’ll take care of the rest.”

It’s Reece’s strong commitment to his vision and storytelling, his truly unique perspective on the world and his desire to improve at his craft that have launched him into this next phase of his career—and Every Heavy Thing has plenty for audiences to sink their teeth into.

“I’m never in a place to sit back and reflect, because I’m always trying to do something better. I’m always trying, always wanting more,” says Reece. “You got to get better with every movie.”

To keep up with the latest for both Mickey Reece and Kaylene Snarsky, you can follow them on Instagram at @mickeyreece and @kaytothelene.