Hometown story Young director returns to Bangor to shoot indie film about childhood

Through bushes, gardens and low-hanging trees, the cry, “They’re coming!” sounds out from a shaded treehouse. Suddenly, water balloons pelt its side, leaving a wet trail of spent, rubbery artillery shells. And then, “Cut!’

Welcome to a day of filming for “The Mushing Mill,” an independently financed film being shot almost exclusively in the Bangor area.

On the roof of the dreamy Honeycomb Hideout, the film’s writer and director, Josh Gass, a 1998 graduate of Bangor High School, recoups from the take and readies for the next. Below, a small, intimate film crew casually mills about. And with filming paused for a moment, the handful of young children who make up the film’s cast wander between the tree-fort set and a tent set up alongside a large garden patch which serves as the production’s costume department.

Set in Bangor, “The Mushing Mill” follows the story of neighborhood kids during the summer of 1990. Over that summer, a split occurs between the older and younger kids, as the two groups’ life perspectives begin to change with their coming adolescence. Ambushes in the woods and water-balloon bombings ensue.

“What we’re really trying to explore is the relationships between the kids,” Gass explained quickly between takes. “It’s their world versus the world of adults.”

Today’s set actually is a borrowed back yard on outer Kenduskeag Avenue in Bangor. Gass and company built the treehouse set on the property last year. During this summer’s 18-day shoot, the crew also filmed on Elm Street, in the Bangor Gardens, and in the town of Greenville. Gass, who attends the University of Southern California Film School in Los Angeles, said he chose to come back to Bangor to make his feature because it just made sense for the film.

Gass is a hands-on director all afternoon; a little bit coach and mentor and a little bit of a kid himself, he’s like a professional big brother. He clearly explains and walks through the scenes and smooths out any problems as they arise with his cast of very young actors.

Most of the film’s 20 or so cast members and extras are between the ages of 9 and 12 and were selected

from an open casting call held last spring at Bangor High School. And, aside from a few key crew members, everyone involved in the production is volunteering their time.

When finished, the film is expected to be feature-length – about an hour and a half – shot entirely on 16mm film. The Super 16 camera and its operator were rented and imported from New York state for the production. The rest of the equipment was rented from Edgewood Studios, a company based in Vermont, where the film’s postproduction, which includes such crucial tasks as editing and scoring, is expected to take place. It will be nearly a year before the film is ready for audience viewing.

After repeating the attack scene half a dozen times for the camera, an impromptu water-balloon fight erupts on the wrong side of the camera amongst the young crew. At which point it becomes impossible to tell who’s playing and enjoying themselves more on this summer afternoon: the kid actors spending part of their summer before the camera or the fledging film crew that is supposed to be filming them.

For Gass and most of the film’s crew, this is familiar territory. Gass wrote the story based on his childhood experiences with his own friends, who now comprise most of the film crew. According to one of those friends, producer Jeff Bowers, the production is, in a sense, a culmination of their friendship and mutual interest in film.

“It seems in some ways making this movie almost feels like the end of our childhood. After this, I’m probably going to end up getting a real job and then I won’t be able to spend time with my friends making movies anymore,” said Bowers, who’s enrolled at Tufts University. “But for other people like Josh, this is big for him because he wants to be a director.”

By noon, satisfied with results of the morning’s shoot, cast and crew break for a generously donated lunch and some lazing in the afternoon sun.

And while the feel on the set is surprisingly professional overall, it’s hard not to get the impression that this is a group of neighborhood kids just playing around with a whole cast of younger brothers and sisters finally getting the satisfaction of playing with the big kids.

Unfortunately, it can’t all be play for the young auteur. Gass said he wrote the story and finished the script with John Nelson in about six months, but has been working to get the film into production for nearly two years. Gass and company wanted to start filming last summer but ran into the classic stumbling block for all filmmakers: money.

Instead, they filmed what they could and created a teaser trailer to show potential investors (films can indeed be an investment, albeit a risky one). And while having a trailer before an actual film may sound like a rather backward approach to some, it worked well for the aspiring filmmakers. Based on the strength of what they had shot so far, they were able to snag investors – although many of those investors are friends and family.

However, raising money to produce a film is only part of the filmmaker’s struggle. Next comes the task of securing distribution so that the film actually is shown. One way to make this happen is shopping the movie around at film festivals, which the producer and director say they plan to do with “The Mushing Mill.”

The filmmakers credit the Bangor community for the success of their shoot. According to Bowers, area police and businesses all have been a great help.

“Everyone around here has been absolutely fantastic; we were wondering why people don’t film here in Bangor every day,” Bowers said.

“I don’t think that we could have made this film, because our budget is so low, without using the Bangor community as a crutch,” Gass added.

While a film set and shot in Bangor easily will generate interest in the Bangor area, one might ask, what’s the potential appeal to movie audiences elsewhere?

“This movie paints what it’s like to be a kid. Every single time I read the script I think that this is what it’s exactly like to be a kid,” Bowers said. “Josh wrote the script very well and he really captured what it was like for us as kids. Especially the part of childhood where your imagination becomes a reality and even though you know that your water-balloon wars aren’t the most important thing in the world, to you, right then, they are.”