Short and Sweet: “Don’t You Go Nowhere”

Welcome to Short and Sweet, our Q&A series with the people behind shorts films paying at Austin film festivals. This time, it’s Bryan Poyser and his latest, musical drama, “Don’t You Go Nowhere.”

The new short from the two-time Independent Spirit Award nominated director of Love & Air Sex and Lovers of Hate is set one night in a smoky jazz club, where a veteran singer (played by legit Austin jazz legend Mac Mcintosh) gets into a call-and-response battle with a woman in the crowd (another Austin musical mainstay, Taméca Jones).

The Austin-shot short (filmed in the beloved jazz venue C-Boys) is playing not one but two local festivals this week: the ongoing Austin Film Festival, and the upcoming hybrid music and movies mélange of Sound Unseen ATX

Austin Chronicle So, you assembled a who’s who of Austin’s jazz scene here. Big jazz fan?

Bryan Poyser: I’m actually more of a blues fan, though I enjoy jazz. But, I came to know about the Michael Hale Trio and Mac through a Chronicle listing back in October 2019. My wife and I were out for her birthday dinner and we had a couple hours left on the babysitter-clock and I saw this listing about a jazz band playing at Half Step on Rainey Street. We went and were just rocked by Mac and his voice and charisma and the tightness of the band and we both had the same thought – somebody’s gotta put these guys in a movie!

AC I’ve talked with directors about filming in a club, and they often say it’s a great idea until you try to do it. How did you settle on C-Boys, and what were the filmmaking challenges?

BP: One of the folks who came on board as a producer very early on to help the film was Marc Fort, formerly of the Texas Music Office, currently of HAAM and a prolific musician himself. He was able to leverage his deep contacts in the music scene and talked Steve Wertheimer, owner of the Continental Club and C-Boys, into offering us a reasonable rate to have the club for two days. It had all the things an indie filmmaker looks for: ample parking, hardly any windows (so we could easily shoot day for night), a “holding” area for the actors and our hair & make-up person (aka the “Jade Room” upstairs), and best of all, ready-made production design. The inside of the club looked perfect – we barely moved anything!

AC: When you’re putting two singers like Mac and Taméca together and let them bounce off each other, how much of directing them is about just getting out of the way?

BP: Yup, getting out of the way is right. I approached Mac with the script first and after he said he’d do it, he asked me who I was thinking of for the other singer. I asked him if he knew Taméca Jones – I only knew her from hearing her songs on KUTX but I wrote the part with her in mind. He had a big laugh and said “yeah, I know Taméca!” He would come to her shows for years and got to know her and even had his eye on her drummer, Michael Hale, for when he started his own band about 8 years ago. So, the fact that they already had this rapport and love for each other made directing them a breeze.

AC:The whole short is based around a call-and-response version of Eddie Vinson’s “Wait a Minute Baby.” Who picked the song, and was that always what you were using?

BP: Ha, well, I guess you could say Mac – or maybe Jimmie Vaughan?- picked the song without knowing it. In February of 2020 when I decided to just go ahead and write this script for Mac and the band and Taméca, having no idea if they’d say yes, I needed a song to structure the story around. I got on YouTube and came across this fan-shot video from years ago of Mac performing that song with Jimmie Vaughan at C-Boys. I wasn’t familiar with it but the lyrics hit the themes of the film perfectly so I knew that had to be the one.

“Don’t You Go Nowhere” plays as part of the Austin Film Festival’s Shorts 10: Everything’s Shorter in Texas, Wed., Nov. 2, 6:30pm, Rollins Theatre at Long Center, 701 W. Riverside, and the Sound Unseen ATX Festival as part of the Shorts Program, Sat., Nov. 5, 7:15pm, AFS Cinema, 6259 Middle Fiskville Road.