10 November 17–23, 2022 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2014 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | Contents | Unfair Park | sChUtze | featUre | night+Day | CUltUre | Movies | Dish | MUsiC | ClassifieD | Camelot Is Not a Silly Place David Lowery goes back to the Arthurian well with a stunning short film. by Danny GallaGher D irector David Lowery’s epic adventure The Green Knight may have been snubbed by last year’s Oscars, but it became one of the most discussed and lauded films of the 2021 movie season. It also fulfilled a lifelong dream for Low- ery, who grew up reading the adventures of King Arthur and his knights. “There’s more about them to discover,” Lowery says. “I always find there’s far more to unpack than I expected. I grew up loving King Arthur stories all through my childhood and into high school. I love those stories. I love tales of knights going on quests, and most of the ones I learned were centered around King Arthur, and by re-reading them, there’s all sorts of ele- ments about our history, religion, ethics and morality that I wasn’t clocking as a child.” Since Lowery is one of those filmmak- ers who always has a project in the works, he immediately jumped into his adapta- tion of Peter Pan and Wendy for Disney following the completion of The Green Knight. But he couldn’t resist dipping his toes into the mythical medieval realm just one more time. The Oak Thorn and the Old Rose of Love is a short film Lowrey shot at MPS Studios in Dallas. It’s loosely related to the events of The Green Knight in that both take place in the same literary universe but they’re un- connected chronologically. The 20-minute film will be released on a special Blu-Ray edition of The Green Knight coming out on Nov. 25. “It’s connected in that it’s based on an- other story from the canon of Arthurian lore,” Lowery says. “While I was research- ing The Green Knight and all of the legends surrounding that particular story, I came upon so many others, and this one I really liked. When I had the opportunity to make a short film set in the same world, this is the one that came to mind.” Lowery says he also jumped at the chance to work with the short film’s prin- cipal cast including Jackie Earle Haley, who played Freddy Krueger in 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and Rorschach in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, and Sylvia Hoeks, who played the cold and relentless Nexus-9 replicant Luv in Blade Runner 2049. “I’ve been a fan of both of these actors for a long time, and we put the movie together very quickly,” Lowery says. “There’s a very short list of people who I thought would be right for it.” The 20-minute film took three months to create, with only three days of shooting on the MPS Studios lot in Dallas. Lowery says the short focuses more on the dialogue be- tween these two characters than on the ac- tion surrounding them. “This one felt right to adapt but at the heart of it, it seemed like it was a great op- portunity to write something for two great actors,” Lowery says. “My movies are often very quiet and don’t have a lot of dialogue in them, and I really wanted to focus on some- thing between these two characters and the balance of power between the two charac- ters and the dialogue.” There’s not much that can be revealed without giving away the short central story. However, it’s jam-packed with Lowery’s sig- nature touch for capturing symbolism in delicate scenes of quiet beauty, relating the kind of Arthurian mythical story that actu- ally speaks more to the present than anyone might realize. “You just don’t think about the world being so similar in the 14th century as it is now and it’s remarkable how the same is- sues and same dynamics were at play then that we see in the narratives around us in the present day,” Lowery says. “Looking at these stories now in 2022 with an under- standing of British imperialism even as I knew it as a child and the way Western culture has spread across the globe is way different from the way we perceive it. I grew up without understanding what co- lonialism was and as an adult, I do under- stand it and look at it with different perspectives from the way others did be- fore me.” ▼ TheaTer The CurTain rises Pocket Sandwich theatre will let the PoPcorn Fly again with itS new SPace in carrollton. by DaNNy GallaGher T he show that closed Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Dallas will open its new theater in downtown Carrollton. The popular melodrama theater com- pany announced it will open its newly reno- vated theater on Elm Street in Carrollton on Friday, Nov. 25, starting with a month-long run of its annual holiday musical Ebenezer Scrooge, written by theater founder Joe Dickinson. “It’s been an experience,” says Nick Haley, one of the theater’s partners, who took over for co-founder Rodney Dobbs fol- lowing his retirement in 2021. “Certainly, it’s new for all of us since our last place. We were there for 30-some-odd years and with the supply chain issues and everything, it’s definitely been a learning experience — but we’ve gotten to a point where we’re confi- dent that we can put on Scrooge.” The owners of Pocket Sandwich The- atre’s last location on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas decided not to extend its lease in July 2021. Just shy of its 41st anniversary, the the- ater company was forced to move out by the end of the year. Pocket Sandwich found its new Carrollton location the following De- cember and started the long process of mov- ing and renovating it into a theater space. The theater originally planned to open last summer with its Captain Blood pirate melodrama, but supply chain issues forced it to move the opening date to Halloween with its Dracula show. More issues forced a an- other move of the opening date to the holi- days with Ebenezer Scrooge, the same show that closed the old space in December 2021. Haley says the group will go ahead with a run of Dracula starting on New Year’s Eve, “Since we’ve already rehearsed it and we’ve got the show ready to go.” There are still some finishing touches to make the space a new home for Pocket Sandwich’s patient and devoted fans. “We went through painstaking efforts to make it as familiar as a setup with several benefits and improvements behind the scenes,” Haley says. “There’s more storage space, more backstage space for the actors. There’s not a bad seat in the house.” Some of the creature comforts that made the original space so memorable will return in the Carrollton theater. One of these is the fa- mous “Lucy” statue of the football-yanking character from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, which holds the ashes of founder Joe Dickin- son and other devoted performers and writers who’ve died since the theater was founded. The one item fans have asked about the most is Bruce the Moose, the giant moose head that hung over the rear wall of the Mocking- bird Lane location surrounded by photos of the theater’s many performers and writers. “He will be back,” Haley says of Bruce. “We have not yet determined where he’s go- ing to go but we couldn’t envision the the- ater space without his droopy moose face hanging over us.” Haley says the theater company and staff are confident that their decision to move to downtown Carrollton will pay off. “We fit,” Haley says. “We feel like we just fit. The space itself, a lot of good work has gone into it.” He also says he’s confident the fans will take to the new space with the same love and devotion that kept them going for 41 years. “We’ve had a lot of conversations and we even asked patrons what they thought,” Haley says. “The vast majority of the response we got was that Carrolton is a little closer and it’s more centralized in the metroplex. There’s a lot of excitement about it. They’re excited. I think they’re as excited as we are.” Sylvia Hoeks and Jackie Earle Haley star in David Lowery’s short film The Oak Thorn and The Old Rose of Love. Eric Zachanowich / A24 Films ▼ Culture
