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Backroad Blues 2006/ 89 Minutes/ Colour/ USA Official Website / Trailer **Available soon on DVD Directed by Blake Eckard Cast: Tyler James, Alec Jennings, Christian Hansen, Ryan Madden, Mike Carroll, Brandon Marticke, Brent Jennings

SYNOPSIS:

A minor masterpiece, Backroad Blues is hilariously absurd and tragic—like America itself. Its Missourian drifter, Chip, reminds us that adaptability comes with the social territory of shallow opportunism; his survival is an endless, inhuman repetition of a wee range of behavior. Fellow rural drifter Kent (Alec Jennings, marvelous) is the opposite: an aching mass of humanity looking for work. The search for work is what’s important to Chip; job-as-destination matters to Kent, who needs to send money back home to his wife and 8-year-old daughter, and who dreams of creating for them a better life.

Along the way in this road movie (Kent’s truck is the main “indoor” setting), Kent’s comic explosions of frustration recall Elmer Fudd’s until his crushed spirit is no laughing matter. Kent embodies the perpetual frustration that many discover as they attempt to navigate what American myth assures them are easily accessed highways to success in the U.S. Too many of us end up living the blues on unpaved backroads.

Director Bio: Blake Eckard Blake Eckard was born February 4, 1980, in Northwest Missouri. Living on the Glaciated Plains, Eckard grew up building countertops, driving trucks, drinking beer and making movies. "A Simple Midwest Story," was shot in two weekends while Eckard was still in high school. Local friends and family made up the cast for the dark crime story. After three years of editing, “Story” screened at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City where the New York Press wrote of the picture, “Think a bleaker ‘Fargo’ on a shoestring.”