“My Spin on Outlaw Romance” | Adam Carter Rehmeier, Carolina Caroline
Desperate to escape her small West Texas town, Caroline Daniels runs away with a charismatic con man who takes her on a romantic crime spree through the American South. But as confidence games escalate into more elaborate heists, Caroline transforms into a criminal icon and notorious bank robber, ultimately internalizing the central truth of every con: There's no lie more convincing than the one you tell yourself.
Acclaimed director Adam Carter Rehmeier’s romantic crime thriller stars Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) and Kyle Gallner (Dinner in America) as two Bonnie and Clyde-esque renegades weaving a path of crime and passion across the American Southeast. Also starring Kyra Sedgwick, the film features a wide-ranging country music soundtrack, with tracks from artists such as Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Loretta Lynn, and over a dozen others.
Carolina Caroline screens Saturday, May 2. at 4:30 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival. Ahead of the screening, Rehmeier graciously took the time to answer this year’s filmmaker questionnaire. Below, his individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I grew up in a rural community in Nebraska. I grew up on a steady diet of ‘80s blockbusters in our town theater, The Pioneer 3, and was obsessed with horror films in the VHS boom. My friends and I used to emulate some of the horror stuff and make our own versions, while one dude's mom ran camera. I messed around with 4-track recorders and camcorders in high school, made music videos and weird shit. In college at UNL, I saw David Lynch's Eraserhead and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon in the same month. It had a huge impact on me, and I felt very compelled to learn the craft.
I transferred to film school at Columbia College Chicago. I preferred to shoot on the streets and on location with available light versus working on the sound stages, and I learned exponentially more working with local filmmaker John Covert, who became my mentor. I shot two features before my second year of film school then moved out to LA and took any job I could get, usually operating, sometimes cutting. I spent the significant part of a decade working in the documentary space, while messing with the page in my downtime. I shot my first feature, The Bunny Game, in 2008. It got BANNED IN THE UK in 2011.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
Typically, I generate my own screenplays, but I read Tom Dean's script for Carolina and I could just see it, visually, right away. So that was exciting. There were elements I wanted to change—to shape it into more of a country-western vibe—and that was super liberating, to not be married to ideas the way I am sometimes when I’ve developed and written something solo. I love ‘70s road movies, stuff like Badlands, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. This was an opportunity to put my spin on outlaw romance, and essentially make more of a ‘70s-feeling road movie set against an early aughts backdrop.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you’re bringing to the festival, or both).
Again, everything points back to seeing Eraserhead and Meshes of the Afternoon my first year of college. I think I was just struck by how singular these visions were, and that really inspired me as a young artist. I wasn’t afraid to wear many hats. Sometimes on a low budget movie, it’s the only way to get things done. On my first two features, I did everything: wrote, directed, shot, edited, sound design and composed the score. Those invaluable experiences give you the language to delegate work later on.
Tell us about a location that’s held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
This film was a clusterfuck, location-wise. We did nearly 100 locations on a 25-day schedule. I still have nightmares about it. Plus we were losing locations left and right, especially banks — some of the rural Kentuckians were scared of copy-cat style bank robbing, so we were really up against it on the bank front. My production designer, Francesca, was overly chill and optimistic and kept finding solutions: one bank was abandoned, and she had to build out from scratch, and another was 75 miles away and across the river into Indiana.
The roadhouse at the end of the movie is probably my favorite location in the film. I fought to pack it full of people and it was our last day of production, 3PM call. We shot some car mount stuff of Caroline driving to South Carolina while G&E got dialed at the roadhouse for night exteriors. We couldn't even light until after lunch, and then we had to shoot the scene where they pull in and THEN go inside and shoot the most emotional part of the movie. High page count, swarms of extras, gunfire. In a perfect world, the work would have been spread over two days, but this is where you have to buckle down on an indie film and just get shit done.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
Dolemite & Dolemite 2: The Human Tornado @ The New Bev // Rudy Ray Moore rhyming his way through the Q&A.
Fantastic Planet @ The Cinefamily with a live band playing score + actors doing the voices.
The Northville Cemetery Massacre @ The New Bev // insanely good biker film, director’s cut, 35mm print that hadn’t been screened since its premiere 30 years before — which developed bad vinegar syndrome afterwards.
Jackass + Jackass 2 double-bill @ The New Bev w/ Knoxville, Tremaine, Bangs, & Kosick in attendance.