For veteran actor and Farmingdale College alum William Fichtner, his new project Cold Brook, was not only a labor of love that was a decade-plus in the making, but became a love letter to his hometown of Buffalo and a chance to work on a film with two of his best friends—actors Kim Coates and Cain DeVore.
“This was something that was written for a couple of best friends and written by a couple of best friends,” Fichtner explained. “It’s the trust Cain and Bill put in each other to take this journey, not knowing if we could really do this, get through it all and never give up.”
The story is based about two maintenance men from a small town Western New York who embark on an extraordinary adventure that touches on coming home, a universal journey everyone experiences at some point. The seeds for it were planted when Fichtner and Coates met on the set of the 2001 war movie Black Hawk Down, a film that found its crew hunkering down on location in Morocco for five months. It was here that the duo formed a longstanding relationship (“I met my best friend at the age of 44.”) Fichtner came up with the idea for this project starring him and Coates, then reached out to DeVore to go about writing a script that took roughly a decade to write and constantly rework. Over the course of time, Fichtner went from being a co-writer and a lead actor, to producing, directing, helping out with filling roles and doing a fair bit of location scouting. As is the case with any movie project, funding proved to be the first enormous hurdle. It was one that was cleared with the help of a pair of Canadian producers.
“Through Coates, I met a couple of Canadian producers—this woman Sara Shaak and Shayne Putzlocher. They really dug it, especially Sara. She called me and we had a chance to talk about it. I met her when she was in L.A. and she really wanted to start working on something down in the States,” Fichtner said. “She’s from Calgary. She read the script and said she wanted to be a big part of it. I told her she could be as big a part of it as she wanted, just help me raise the money. And then over the next four months, we pretty much had enough that we thought we were in the ballgame and thought we could make this film.”
Tax incentives for filming in Western New York introduced by Senator Pat Gallivan that came out of a meeting the Buffalo native and some other filmmakers had with the local representative helped ease the financial burden on the film and enabled Fichtner to realize his dream of having Cold Brook shoot in and around his hometown. Along the way, Fichtner surrounded himself and Coates with notable character actors Mary Lynn Rajskub (24, Mr. Show), Robin Weigert (Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy), Harold Perrineau (Oz, Lost) and Brad Henke (Orange Is the New Black) along with dozens of local residents who auditioned for secondary and tertiary roles. Like much of the other aspects of Cold Brook, it proved to be a challenging, yet rewarding, task.
“I had to cast 23 speaking roles that had to be hired locally in Buffalo. These were a lot of people who’d never been in a film,” Fichtner recalled. “So we went through a casting process. There is a lot of talent out there. You just have to talk to them and have them stop acting and be in the moment. All of a sudden, you’ve got some really interesting folks. I was really happy with that end.”
The 20-day shoot took place in summer 2017. And while the challenges getting to that point were rather large, more formidable obstacles came up in the post-production stage that involved the jack-of-all-trades actor going back in and tweaking.
“Producing and the making-of took about 80 percent of my energy. The toughest part was when we finished and went through the editing and post-production—it was hard. Finding the right music and other details. I found that when we wrapped the film up and ran out of money, I looked at the film and watched it for the next 32 days in a row and wrote 56 notes of things I could have done better,” he said. “The only way I was going to change them, and they were tiny things, was to open the film back up. That meant I’d have to run a new print, color correct and redo a lot of things. And it would cost, but we’d be done. I have a massively understanding wife. I said, ‘Darling, I’ve got 56 notes.’ She said, ‘I’m sure you do. So go fix ‘em.’ So I hopped in there and it’s good because I watch the film now and it’s a movie that I wanted to make from the beginning.”
Cold Brook is currently in the can and getting accolades in the form of winning awards at film festivals in Woodstock, Napa Valley and the Gasparilla International Film Festival. Fichtner is currently showing his project at his alma maters of SUNY Brockport and SUNY Farmingdale, as well as SUNY Cortland, where some of it was shot. The experience Fichtner had between inspiration and his end result has left him hugely satisfied.
“If I never make another movie in my life, I wanted to walk away from this knowing that no matter what you think of it, I hope you like it and get the journey. But it’s the movie that we set out to make. It’s been the highlight of my time in this business.”
