Jim Cummings, not to be confused with the voice actor of the same name; is an American director and actor. As a filmmaker, actor, and composer, he’s previously worked as a producer on the Internet comedy company CollegeHumor.
In a recent interview with our colleagues over at the Kinda Nerdy Show, Cummings sat with KJ to discuss his project The Last Stop in Yuma County.
KJ: The Last Stop in Yuma County. How excited are you that it’s about to come out?
JIM: I am so thankful. It has been many months of traveling with the film around the world. It’s played at many top film festivals and it’s been really nice to walk red carpets, but it’s also kind of like a daydream. People haven’t been able to see it yet. It’s just been small theaters at film festivals. And so now it’s finally coming to theaters tomorrow in America, and then it’ll also be on VOD. So the vast majority of the people that will see the film will see it tomorrow and the next day. It’s funny, we’re like, you travel with it all over the world, but then it’s probably like 500 people, 600 people that have seen the film so far. So it’ll be really nice to be able to get that into the world finally.
KJ: You mentioned how much you’ve been traveling around with the film, but the film itself, I did want to ask because it is set mainly in the diner. Was this a smaller set? Because it’s a big cast. Was it a smaller set that you were all working on together mostly?
JIM: Yeah, we all committed to it. So it’s a movie ranch that’s very famous called The Four Aces in Palmdale, California. And it is really desolate. It’s very remote. There’s no running water. There’s no electricity. If you want either of those, you have to pay to pump it in, which we did. And we shot there for a month. And the closest bit of culture or civilization is about a 35-minute drive away where our motels were. And it was really unique. We all kind of dressed up in wardrobe and, you know, it was very hot during the day, the desert, and a very cold night. And so we all fully committed to being there for a month and making this movie. And it’s really good. I’m glad that we did that. I’m glad that we actually shot it on location and not on some stage or something. It was a really fun experience to actively be stuck in a diner like our characters were.
KJ: I know, Jim, that you’ve talked before, and I always appreciate when I’m talking to someone who I feel like is a champion for what they do. And I wanted to share your story because we do have a lot of filmmakers that tune in with us. I actually just finished working with PopCon last weekend, which has an international film festival and wanted to kind of allow you to share, because whether you realize how special it is or not, you really, you know, you went out there and decided, you know, the job I have is not working for me. This isn’t how I want to do things. And you sort of, I mean, you really blazed your own trail. Can you talk about that?
JIM: Yeah, sure. Um, thank you. That’s a very kind, uh, very kind thing. I didn’t know anybody noticed. Thank you. Um, yeah, I was a producer for many years. I grew up in New Orleans. I was a production assistant. I thought I was going to be a production assistant for the rest of my life. I worked at big companies and small companies, and then I made a short film on a weekend, uh, called Thunder Road and submitted it to Sundance and it got in and then it won. the Grand Jury Prize in 2016 and then ever since I have been making my own things and trying to help others make their things. I feel like if I hadn’t had the small encouragement that I had had from friends and people on the internet, I never would have gotten off the couch to do something on my own. I thought it was very timid. It’s very lonely making movies on your own. You feel like you’re crazy and nobody wants to support you. And then as soon as you start to do stuff and putting on the internet, people tend to be nice or they want to help out. They give notes. And I’ve been very, very lucky, I feel. I’ve been able to make my little stories and people keep showing up at movie theaters to see them. So I’m going to keep doing it.
KJ: Do you feel like you want to keep doing it your way and staying in that independent filmmaking where you have that control? Or is there a certain type of movie or offer or something that you would say, all right, let’s step out of the box a little bit and maybe go into the bigger production?
JIM: I don’t know. That’s a really good question. And that the conflict, you know, as old as time, I don’t know, I feel like I haven’t, I don’t know if I’d make very good movies that way, to be honest. Like, I feel like, right, I mean, I feel like, you know, you have so much freedom to make stuff independently, you get to make jokes that are riskier, you get to do real violence and um show off more of the human spirit rather than um you know sanitized uh corporate kind of content for shareholders i don’t know i i feel like i’ve met executives who are cool and there’s some companies that are doing some really fun stuff um a24 certainly but as of now i’m really enjoying making smaller things with my friends because I have that kind of freedom. So I think I’m going to keep doing this until somebody comes and knocks on our door with an equal offer of freedom. But as of now, I’m going to keep doing the stuff that makes me happy.
KJ: You know, I get that. My story, Jim, I spent a gazillion years. I actually started in radio when I was a teenager at the little station where I grew up in Wisconsin. And there was literally one day where a program director said to me, and I don’t know how big a nerd you are. I’d love to talk about that. But he said, people don’t care about Star Wars as much as you do. I need you to talk about The Bachelorette. That’s what they care about. And I was like, but I don’t care about that. And I literally started a podcast two days later so I could talk about Star Wars as much as I want. And now I have an independent media company. I get to do stuff like this. So I get what you’re saying, where it’s like, oh, man, maybe I could go back to that someday. But I really like doing my little stories and talking about what I want, right?
JIM: Often that’s the stuff that’s most successful. People can kind of see through the falsities of things. They understand what that’s like. Most people spend their whole lives having to do things that they’re not happy with, or work for jobs that they don’t actually believe in. If you can make something that’s authentic and from your heart, that kind of giddiness and excitement is contagious. People like to see people who care about things. And yeah, that’s certainly been the foundation of my career.
KJ: I want to go back to Thunder Road, because that was a big turning point for you. And you did a Kickstarter for that, correct? That is a scary, scary thing to do, Jim.
JIM: Well, I’m very lucky. I did about five Kickstarters beforehand for my friend Danny, who is the director. I never thought of myself as a director, but I had some experience in running campaigns for him so that when the time came to do ours, Even after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, I still couldn’t get the money from Hollywood to be able to make a feature of the short film. And so we had to get a Kickstarter. Necessity is the mother of invention, I feel like. Because we had to do it, we were able to do it in a way that was… free and independent, and then people wanted to help out the underdogs, the people that had to go to Kickstarter to make their movies. But no, I feel like I’ve gotten better at it. And now, since the success of Thunder Road and running that Kickstarter campaign, we ran a WeFunder campaign, which is a crowd equity platform, and you can sell shares of the movie directly to the public. And we raised $350,000 in 12 days. So we were able to translate. I know, isn’t that wild? But we’re able to translate the success of our previous campaigns and Kickstarter into this new campaign and raise some serious money to make the full budget of our movie. And I think I’ll do it again.
For the full interview, check it out on YouTube:
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