The ‘Small Lake City’ effect behind Sundance’s ‘The Strongest Man’

Filmmaker Kenny Riches' story of making of "The Strongest Man" is a classic Sundance Film Festival yarn about indie filmmaking, with a heart-wrenching local chapter.

It's the story of a bunch of Salt Lake City childhood friends who developed their own shorthand while growing up skateboarding. "Once you end up making skateboarding videos, you end up making other videos, and then you make other films," understates director/writer Riches, 33, now transplanted to Miami.

There's a rich poignancy to the "friend family" that Riches drew together to film the low-budget "The Strongest Man," his visually rich feature to be screened in the festival's Next category. The film is set in Miami, and yet Utah connections flavor "The Strongest Man." "Kenny has this magical ability to get us all tangled up in his projects," says Cara Despain, Riches' partner, an artist who served as the film's art director.

Getting his second feature film into Sundance, which opens Thursday in Park City, is only complicated by absence — the absence of David Fetzer, a lead player in that childhood crew. Fetzer starred in Riches' first feature, 2012's "Must Come Down," which was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign. The movie was shot in and around Salt Lake City, including Riches' childhood home in the Avenues.

That December, Fetzer died at age 30 of an accidental prescription drug overdose. His death spurred Riches and their friends to join Fetzer's mother, Betsy Ross, in launching The David Ross Fetzer Foundation to support emerging theater artists and filmmakers.

Shortly after the funeral, Riches received a fortune cookie with this inscription: "The road to success is often a lonely one." But that wasn't the route Riches, who earned an art degree from the University of Utah and founded Salt Lake City's former Kayo Gallery, was interested in taking.

Instead, he was inspired to finish the script and find funding for "The Strongest Man." There was one more detour along the way: another fundraising campaign to make short films out of scripts that Fetzer left behind.

Fetzer's artistic sensibility inspires the film, says Patrick Fugit ("Almost Famous," "Gone Girl"), another childhood friend now transplanted to Hollywood, who plays a German guru in "The Strongest Man."

"David is a huge part of this film, and anything creative that our group does together," he says. "Consciously and subconsciously, we're always seeking David's stamp of approval."

With his first film, Riches says, he worried about whether it was marketable. With "The Strongest Man," he decided he didn't want to worry about an audience's reaction. "I set out to make a film with my friends, and I just made the movie I wanted to make."

"The Strongest Man" is a deadpan dark comedy that features Miami as a central character. The film unfolds the story of Beef, a 30-something Cuban-American who spills his heart in spare Spanish monologues that are translated into English subtitles. He narrates his life as if he were explaining things to his grandchildren, even while he admits he doesn't want to have children.

Beef is a man with a tender, anxiety-ridden heart tucked inside a strong body. He loves doing tricks on his BMX bike, which he rides after working construction jobs with his best friend, Conan, whose aimless life disappoints his ambitious Korean parents. Beef does odd jobs for a rich art collector, and at her high-rise condo, he becomes enamored of Illi, her niece.

Illi cajoles Beef and Conan to attend a meditation class, led by a German guru, who coaches them to imagine their spirit animals. The pair's literal interpretation of their spirit animals leads to complications in their lives.

Riches' crew praises the director's artistic vision. "He loves details," says Andrew Shaw, who scored the film, which means he watched individual scenes hundreds of times. "He knows how to frame a shot perfectly."

Fugit adds: "It's hard to pull Kenny apart from the film. The deadpan of the film is very much Kenny. It's all so much Kenny."

The character of Beef is played by native Miami artist and metalworker Robert "Meatball" Lorie, who became one of Riches' guides to Miami when the Salt Laker moved to town with Despain. One of many local ties to the project is that Lorie's wife grew up in Salt Lake City with Despain. Beyond acting duties, Lorie played host to the Salt Lake City cast and crew during filming, many of whom slept on air mattresses at his house to save money.

"We shot in a lot of places that we probably weren't allowed to be," says Fugit of the guerrilla tactics employed on the low-budget film shoot. "We were flying by the seat of our pants."

Producer Jesse Brown tells a story about how he befriended the property manager of a high-rise building, who happened to be a former aspiring actor. The property manager allowed the crew to shoot repeatedly inside a condo for free; recently, a Telemundo crew paid $50,000 to shoot in the same location.

Paul Chamberlain, who grew up with Riches, plays Conan. Chamberlain, a Salt Lake City chef who has cooked at Fresco among other local restaurants, says it's stressful to watch himself on film because he's not an actor. He'd rather be catering for the cast and crew, as he did while playing just a small part in "Must Come Down." "I'm back of the house," he says. "I'm in the kitchen. I'm not really a people person."

He received acting tips from Fugit, but it also helped that Riches wrote the character for him. "He kind of wrote how I am in real life," Chamberlain says. "He understood what I could give him in a very clever way."

Shaw, who leads the Salt Lake garage rock band Color Animal, wrote music for the soundtrack, including "Light a Candle," which he plans to release as a single under his solo side project, Magic Mint. Also featured on the soundtrack is the violin playing of David Park, the Utah Symphony's assistant concertmaster, who plays Conan's father.

How Park was cast in his first acting job is a classic "Small Lake City" story. Producer Jesse Brown was talking to a friend, a waiter at Trolley Square's Desert Edge Pub, about the problem of finding an actor to play Conan's father. The waiter knew Park, a regular diner, who happened to be eating at the restaurant at the time, and then introduced Brown to Park.

Park says he has been around actors all his life, beginning with his years attending a private high school in Santa Monica with Jack Black and Gary Coleman. The small part in "The Strongest Man" offered him the chance to follow in the footsteps of his acclaimed mentor, Jascha Heifetz, who performed in the 1939 movie "They Shall Have Music" and contributed songs for the soundtrack.

For Riches and his crew, having a film selected to screen at their home state's internationally famous film festival fulfills their childhood dreams of hanging out together, having fun and making art.

"Their dream was to do what's happening now," Despain says.

ellenf@sltrib.com

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