(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Howdy, boys.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Howdy.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Hey.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Howdy.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's a warm Friday night somewhere under the stars of rural Oklahoma. And the band standing around a plastic picnic table at Ulysses drive-in restaurant is starting to tear it down.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Three, four. I'm a little nervous about what you think when you...
RASCOE: That high-energy, impromptu performance sets the tone for the rest of the new movie "The Rivals Of Amziah King." Amziah is a local beekeeper and musician known for his country one-liners and delicious honey. He's played by Academy Award-winner Matthew McConaughey. But one day, Amziah's hives are stolen. His former foster daughter, Kateri, played by first-time actress Angelina LookingGlass, starts a quest to hunt down the culprits. "The Rivals Of Amziah King" is directed by Andrew Patterson, who joins us now from his home in Edmond, Oklahoma. Thank you so much for being here.
ANDREW PATTERSON: Excited to be here. Thank you, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So let's start with the relationship between Amziah and his former foster daughter, Kateri. Where do we find them at the start of the film?
PATTERSON: Well, they've been separated for somewhere in the range of 10, 12 years. He was her foster father before, and she has had her own journey, and they reconnect in a cafe when he bumps into her as a waitress.
RASCOE: The thing about this movie is, it's funny and at times, like, really almost a little slapstick. (Laughter) But there's also this, like, quiet wisdom in it, and, you know, of course, I'm thinking of the potluck scene in particular.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING")
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: (As Amziah King) When's the last time you've been to a potluck?
ANGELINA LOOKINGGLASS: (As Kateri) I don't know if I ever have.
MCCONAUGHEY: (As Amziah King) Oh, dear sweet Jesus. Let me just tell you something. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to walk someone through a potluck. Food displayed out on the table is a higher point in my life than I traditionally admit 'cause there's truth and there's lies in every potluck. You see, there's a story in every dish.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Now, the brilliant Matthew McConaughey goes on to explain each dish and which ones to grab and which ones to avoid and the truth and the lie in each one. Like, what is he trying to teach Kateri there?
PATTERSON: I think it doesn't come from a place of being - him trying to teach her something. It's more of a way for me to see the two of them build a dynamic as a father and daughter. Anytime you're going to create a movie where you want people to care about a relationship, you have to build the dynamic in front of the viewer. And we do that for 10 or 15 minutes with these two, but this is sort of the start of that dynamic. And the potluck became kind of a vehicle in which to put a bunch of random things that were all probably my - came from my mind at one point or another.
RASCOE: And it also taught about the community. There's the woman who's taking care of her mother who can't see and keeps walking into those glass doors. Now, was that your idea?
PATTERSON: Yes, it was because the lady that cleaned my grandparents' home in West Texas - they were employing her well past her prime, and she was getting to be - I don't know, pushing 90. And they had sliding glass doors for whatever reason in a lot of their house. And she would just round the corner and just slam into one and just bam.
RASCOE: (Laughter)
PATTERSON: And we would just be kids, you know, 6, 7 years old...
RASCOE: And you would be laughing (laughter).
PATTERSON: And this lady would just - absolutely. And I had that written down. I had that written down. I had a bunch of little tales that I thought would be fun texture to get in the right movie.
RASCOE: Yes (laughter). Music is a huge part of this movie. Obviously, Amziah - he's a musician, and almost every scene is, like, filled with music. Is that something that is a part of your life?
PATTERSON: I did and can play piano. Now, in this movie, the music you're probably talking about is the live music, the diagetic stuff played in scene. And I would just say that that's a result of me feeling like I wanted to see a movie that utilized music in a new way, that sort of grafted in and out very organically. And I wrote this in a window when nobody was making movies with me. This is before I broke into the movie industry or Hollywood, as people say, I was in a kind of a weirdly safe place creatively because I had nobody telling me what to do.
And I just sort of wrote something that I wanted to see. I wanted to feel these pieces of music influence the story, come in and out of the tale, change the dynamic of the characters. And so I've always had this incredible relationship to music, kind of a weird one, in that I can produce it. I can identify what I think is special, songs that are special, and I'm able to utilize all that to synthesize it, hopefully, into something that moves people.
RASCOE: Yeah. Well, I - you know, I have to say, I have not seen a lot of films about beekeepers or beekeeping crime. What was your inspiration to kind of set this story in the honey industry?
PATTERSON: Initially, it was just because one of my best friends and their family owned a beekeeping operation, and I reached out to them and said, hey, what happens in this world that would cause drama that would put people at a disadvantage?
RASCOE: And you draw these parallels between the community of the people in the film and the communities of the bees. Talk more about that connection. And it also seems like you were using a lot of your community in this. So were you thinking about that, as well?
PATTERSON: I will say this. Some of those things emerge without them being intentional, if that makes sense. There are definitely parallels to the way I grew up or the way that a potluck looked like at the church. And those things weren't something that I attacked and thought, all right, I'm going to make a movie about community. It came out naturally as I wrote it.
And then the parallels became very clear in a certain draft, where I was like, oh, my goodness, a room full of humans eating food, a room full of humans making music, a room full of humans sharing at an event looks a whole lot like a hive, looks a whole lot like a colony. I sort of was surprised I hadn't seen it earlier and then just sort of thanked the script-writing gods for helping me identify it.
RASCOE: And there is a scene where Matthew McConaughey has thousands of bees landing on him. How did you do that?
PATTERSON: Because I had done a little bit of this before, I knew how to pull this off. The reality is, I was not going to bring either character on, either actor on, and that included Matthew, unless we were going to work with real bees. And the best part was, when I said to him, now, you know there's real bees in this movie. And he just looks, and he says, well, I just figured I was going to do it. And I said, OK, good. And yes, Matthew got stung one time in pre-production and turned out he was allergic.
RASCOE: Oh, no.
PATTERSON: He got stung in the forehead. Now he looks like a basset hound or a pumpkin. He can't see at all. And so we start to learn, OK, if we're going to do this, we have to be very careful about it.
RASCOE: What do you hope that people will learn about your home state from watching the movie?
PATTERSON: I would say it's almost stated in the movie. I think Amziah says something like...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING")
MCCONAUGHEY: (As Amziah King) Say they're not all bad or all good. You know, they're not just one thing. It all depends, you know, whether they're hot, hungry, young, old. Each one of them got a different fight in them, depending on the season or reason.
PATTERSON: I think any place where you go interact with the humans, you're going to find nuances like that. And I don't agree with everything that everybody in Oklahoma says or believes. But when I'm with them and I'm reasonable, I actually think that there's more nuance to all of it. And so if I was to say that - the thing I want people to know about where I'm from and that world is that we're not all one thing.
RASCOE: That's Andrew Patterson. He's the director of "The Rivals Of Amziah King," in theaters now. Thank you so much for joining us.
PATTERSON: I loved it. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing) One, two, three, four. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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