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To Live and Eat in L.A. with Ben Gourley

January 10, 2008

Filmmaker Ben Gourley--the star, writer and co-producer of the road comedy Moving McAllister (Magnolia, Jan. 29)--has lived in Los Angeles for about a year now and is enjoying himself, but admits that nothing he picked up in his Utah upbringing could prepare him for eating out in L.A.

 

“I miss being able to stretch out in a restaurant and swing my arms around,” Gourley told us in an interview earlier today.  “Every place is so crowded and there’re just too many people. But it’s warm, really warm.”

 

Gourley was born in Salt Lake City and graduated from Brigham Young University in 2003 with a degree in film production. Moving McAllister was shot in 2005, primarily in Salt Lake City, Provo and southern Utah. The

behind-the-scenes material from these shoots, along with a deleted scene, can be viewed in the supplemental section of the DVD. According to Gourley, all he had to do was provide the footage to Magnolia, and they did the rest.

 

“I loved working with Magnolia,” Gourley told us. “Magnolia put together the bonus features with footage that we took on the set. They did such a good job with that and the film, in general. It’s nice to find a company who does what they say they’re going to do.”

 

Next up for the filmmaker is Repo Man, another independent project that Gourley produced and wrote and in which he stars, along with Jason Mewes and Izabella Miko. He describes the film, which he also directed, as “more of a quirky buddy company in the vein of something like Safe Men.”

 

Gourley and his production team in the middle of post-production on Repo Man and has no plans to show the film to possible distributors until it is completed.

 

“Nobody’s seen it yet and I don’t want anyone to see it until it’s done,” he told us. “I’ve shown uncompleted films—ones in various stages of production--before, and that hasn’t been a good idea.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on January 10, 2008 | Comments (0)