Gill Holland
Gill Holland gets things done. People toss around the term “independent producer,” but this industry veteran has produced over 100 films, including Ana Asensio's Most Beautiful Island, which won 2017's SXSW Grand Jury Award. Gill's record label, sonaBLAST!, is thriving with over 60 million streams on Spotify and Pandora, and his artists are placing songs directly into his films, as well as into this summer's hipster hit, The Big Sick, and loads of television series. Plus -- something you don't hear every day about movie and music producers -- Gill is one of the world's foremost sustainable developers, greening the Bluegrass State of Kentucky.
Mr. Holland's opus covers considerable history, and considerable ground: 15 years ago in New York, he launched sonaBLAST! -- then 11 years ago he and his wife, urban planner Augusta Brown, moved to her native Louisville, where they and their team have been remarkably prolific. I ask about his latest offering, director Harris Doran's Beauty Mark -- which just won the Breakout Performance award for actress Auden Thornton at the 2017 Los Angeles Film Festival. Gill promptly gets cultural, and historical:
“That was filmed in the Portland neighborhood, which got flooded during the Great Flood of 1937, then again in 1945, and suffered about eight decades of disinvestment. It's a part of town we're trying to help revitalize. Very historic. Henry Clay, the great Kentucky statesman, actually owned most of Portland. He won it in a poker match! Abraham Lincoln worked on the Portland Canal as a teenager. We shot the movie in that neighborhood, with a lot of local talent, behind the scenes and in front of the camera.”
Gill Holland in NuLu
Since Beauty Mark, with its wrenching socio-economic issues, may prove relatable to many, and significant to many more, I ask the film's executive producer about its origins.
“The woman whose story -- it's loosely based on actress/co-producer Ashley Kate Adams’ personal history -- is from Louisville. I met her, and she had been working with this writer-director from New York, Harris [Doran], and he was looking for some other places to shoot the movie, and I was like, 'Why doesn't he shoot in Louisville? Come on! I'll buy him the plane ticket if I have to!'
“We got him to come to Louisville -- he'd never been; he lives in Brooklyn. It's fun shooting movies not in New York or L.A., because there's something new for the audience to see: stories and places that are unfamiliar. We have friends who own coffee shops -- and we have some buildings and properties, I can give free rent to the production. A lot of people came out and put a lot of sweat equity into the project, so we're super-excited.”
Beauty Mark contains several sonaBLAST! Tracks, so I ask Gill how that part of the process comes together.
“If you make low-budget movies, you have to use low-budget music. If you're not shooting with Julia Roberts, you're also not going to get a David Bowie song in your movie -- so I was always trying to scout new music, so I could get inexpensive, good music for my movies. Then when I moved to Louisville -- I married a native -- I discovered all this amazing talent. The town is on fire, there's so much music, and it goes back to the Louisville Orchestra in the '50s, and then the punk scene in the '80s. Then everybody from Jim James and My Morning Jacket to Lionel Hampton.
Ben Sollee
“One of the early signings [to sonaBLAST!] was Ben Sollee, who ended up being the composer for Beauty Mark. We did a documentary a couple of years ago, Jillian Schlesinger's Maidentrip: about Laura Dekker, the 14-year-old Dutch girl who became the youngest person to sail around the world solo. Ben Sollee scored that -- he'd never scored a movie before, and I was like, 'Hey, you play cello, that's like a box of wood; a sailboat's like a box of wood; why don't you explore this movie?' -- and we just passed 10 million spins on Spotify just for tracks from that soundtrack.”
Another act on sonaBLAST!, Quiet Hollers, have just released their new album, Amen Breaks, and their tour dates can be found here. There are many more.
James Lindsay, sonaBLAST! artist
I squeeze in a quick question about the greening of the Bluegrass State, which Gill happily answers.
“When we were expecting our first child, all of a sudden your whole worldview shifts drastically! You start thinking about: 'What kind of world is this human -- my child -- going to inherit? Then you start thinking about: We're all part of this climate-change reality; we're all contributing to it; we've all benefited from it -- from the coal that was burned to build the town of Louisville, for example. How do we make sure that we're not just using everything up for our own generation?
“One thing led to another, and my wife and I bought this building, and it's the greenest commercial building in the state of Kentucky -- I was like, 'Let's make this an independently-powered building. Just like we work outside of the Hollywood system -- we're pretty close; we're 72% self-sufficient.”
I like a nice plot twist. Turns out as well that the Kentucky Coal Museum, in Benham, recently added solar panels to its roof.
And back to homegrown music we go, as the soundtrack for Beauty Mark includes multiple tracks from Louisville natives the Broken Spurs (whom Gill calls, “an epically strong live act” in the vein of the Rolling Stones and AC/DC, even opening for the latter), and proto-punks the Debauchees (“I think they might be 20 years old now -- I just love that band”).
“Beauty Mark, the fun thing there was that Harris fell in love with all the local music, and I was like, 'Great, a lot of them are on our label, so I can give you free music. The bands are excited, they get exposure. Harris and the investors are excited, because they don't have to spend money for that line-item. And we have a soundtrack on iTunes -- so it's a win-win-win for all parties.”
Following its world premiere in Los Angeles, Beauty Mark next makes its Kentucky premiere, with director and special guests, July 28, at the Flyover Film Festival, in Louisville.
And for cinefiles:
Louisville Film Society: Official Site