Write a comment"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment. Full effort is full victory." - Gandhi
Smarter people than me have probably spoken eloquently about the relationship between art and an audience. To me, it's just like any other relationship. It requires patience and, maybe most importantly, effort. If you have any nieces or nephews, you don't critique the kid when they hand you something they made in art class.
"Charlie, nice try, but your line work is lacking and using the plain red crayon is pedestrian at best."
No, you appreciate the effort they put into it. The fact they made it for you makes it special. You have to temper your expectations. If that kid hands you something that's art gallery worthy, you might worry there's a hidden camera somewhere to gauge your reaction for some ludicrous reality show.
I've been writing regularly for over 25 years at this point. It's not exactly a point of pride, but more to give you context. Over that time period, friends of mine or friends of friends have approached me to assist them with their writing projects. Some have been stage plays, some screenplays. One friend asked me to collaborate on a novel with them.
After they asked, I said, "I've never been good at descriptions. Dialogue, I can help you with. Besides that, I'd suggest you seek out pros for your prose."
This particular friend never followed up with me regarding that collaboration. Can't imagine why.
When I worked at the Lowe's store in Clay, NY, we had a cast of characters. There was this one particular guy that worked as a morning custodian. We'll call him Jud. Jud was not a fan of working. He was caught in the men's room, sleeping in a bathroom stall on more than one occasion.
I have this habit of agreeing to help someone, even if it is to my own detriment. Jud had been kind to me, for the most part, so when he asked if he could tag along when I went on lunch, I didn't have an issue with it. He would go with me to get food and then just chat with me while we walked around stores that were in the area until our lunch was over.
This was all fine for a while. He got wind of the fact that I wrote and my goal was to eventually produce a film. I had a couple of screenplays that were finished that I planned to shop around. Jud was immediately interested.
"Hey, y'know, you never asked me if I had any ideas for a movie."
This came completely out of the blue. I was about two bites into my Whopper before he asked that. After he did, I paused and part of a pickle fell from my mouth and onto the tray.
"You dropped a pickle," Jud told me.
I finished chewing and swallowed. "I didn't know you had any ideas. I'm sorry I didn't ask."
"It's okay, man. They're good ideas."
I nodded. "Is that so?"
"Million dollar ideas, man."
"Cool."
There was a long pause. Jud just stared at me. I cleared my throat.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Did you want to tell me about one of them?"
"No. They're my ideas. I don't want you stealing them."
I nodded, taking another bite of my burger. "I get it. I wouldn't want anyone stealing my ideas."
Jud played with his necklace. For no particular reason, Jud wore a necklace that bore a pendant in the shape of a bullet. This was not to indicate he was any kind of sniper. This was stainless steel. He wasn't a veteran; he was a weirdo.
The rest of the meal went by relatively uneventfully. I drove us back to the building and we went our separate ways and to our respective posts. At the end of the day, Jud approached me with a folded piece of paper.
He handed it to me. "Let me know what you think. We'll talk about it over lunch tomorrow."
Jud grinned, walking past me. I unfolded the piece of paper. It was three separate notes:
Ghost in bed
Cemetery built on
Ghost sex scene
I flipped over the page, hoping for more notes.
Blank.
I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. Out of the corner of my eye, Jud was standing there, smiling as though he had just won the lotto.
The next morning, I had a pit in my stomach. I didn't want to go to lunch with him because I didn't know what to say about his note. This guy was completely enthralled with his own idea. I dreaded every minute leading up to lunch.
As per usual, we went to Burger King. He would buy cheeseburgers and put his full weight down in order to flatten them into some weird meat pancake before gnashing his teeth into it. After some awkward silence, and condiments dripping out of every side of what used to be a normally shaped burger, he smirked at me.
"Did you get started on my idea?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't know what you..."
He cut me off. "It's pretty straightforward. There's a cemetery on a hill and some land developers build houses on top of the cemetery. Then the ghosts spook out the new tenants of the house and the ghost has sex with the mother, like, a bunch of times."
"Do you have anything written..."
Wait a minute...
I stopped. "Isn't this just "Poltergeist"? The house, the cemetery."
Jud rolled his eyes. "I knew you were going to say that. No, it's not that. This is different. This has sex in it."
"Yeah, you said that. How does the ghost have...you know what? No. That's okay. You don't have..."
"Oh, I can tell you. There's this show on A&E..."
"No, no. No. I don't...that's okay," I took a bite of my Whopper, using my time chewing to figure out what to say next.
Jud leans back in his chair, shaking his head. "I get it. You don't understand the idea."
"I'm not sure what there is to understand. You don't have a plot. You have a couple of disparate ideas that have no connecting thread."
His eyes went wide and his face went flush. "The GHOST has SEX with the MOTHER! What don't you understand?"
Just to remind everyone: this was around noon in the middle of the week at a busy Burger King just down the road from a mall. Jud's outburst was noticed by everyone there and this one older lady in the corner, drinking her coffee, would have definitely clutched her pearls if she had been wearing any.
Jud sighs deeply. "Look. You work on what I gave you. Bring me in a draft and we can work on it together."
"I'm sorry, no."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly that. No. If you'd like to work on figuring out a plot with me, I can try working with that, but what you gave me doesn't even have enough plot for porno."
Jud began to swear at me, using words I won't repeat here. After about five minutes of berating me in public, he still expected a ride back to work. I drove him back (because I'm a schmuck) and we didn't talk much after that.
About a week or so later, Jud was called into the store manager's office and fired. Apparently, the bullet on the necklace he wore was hollowed out and he kept some kind of white powder in it. I think it turned out to be crushed caffeine pills but that explained the outbursts even if it didn't explain the cheeseburger crepes he was making himself at lunch.
Had Jud put in even a little effort, I would have been more than willing to help him with what he wanted to do. Chris Stuckmann's "Shelby Oaks" is the result of a lot of effort. Stuckmann is somewhat of an internet celebrity. He has been running his own YouTube channel for several years where he reviews movies on a regular basis. His camera set up is simple. He's professional and has a good set of knowledge. I may not always agree with his criticisms but I appreciate his reasoning.
"Shelby Oaks" is the result of a Kickstarter campaign that resulted in it raising quite a bit of money. After he finished the film, Mike Flanagan ("Gerald's Game", "Doctor Sleep") helped Stuckmann with some extra money for post-production. It's an amazing story and if my star rating was based solely on the extratextual aspects of the film, it would be a different story.
However, how a movie was made doesn't always matter as much as how successful the movie is. While, again, much effort was put forward to bring Stuckmann's vision to life, some of the camerawork/lighting choices look like a microstep above a student film. I'm not positive if that was because of the cameras they were using or perhaps a cinematographer that was untested, but the movie has this weird amatuer look to it.
Setting aside the visual aspect of the film, the script isn't all that great. The basic plot is a woman and her team of paranormal YouTubers go missing. Ultimately, all of them are found dead besides one and that one's sister goes out looking for her. There are extended sequences of the film where the sister, who is our main character, is just watching videos of the YouTube show.
So, we see the footage, we see the sister's reaction and then we see more of the footage. While some of the images in the footage are certainly creepy, the tension is constantly sapped anytime they cut back to the sister's reaction. I get the instinct, but the found footage aspect of the film needed to be weaved into the main plot better than it was.
Once the film finally gets going and the sister begins her search, the film trips over its own feet by turning it into a Satanic type story. It's nothing that hasn't been done before and, once you know where the film is going, you're just waiting for it to end.
The ending is telegraphed from a mile away. It's like getting in your car and you can see your destination 50 feet in front of you but your driver keeps pointing out landmarks instead of getting you to where you're going. Eventually, you lose your patience.
I appreciate Stuckmann's efforts with the film. I think he has passion and there are certain images in this film that are well composed, but they are few and far between. The main character makes a lot of dumb decisions and you kind of lose your empathy with her because she's clearly putting herself at great risk. Yes, it makes sense that she would look for her sister, but I would imagine most people would have some kind of back up to ensure they don't get into a creepy basement situation with a stranger.
In the end, "Shelby Oaks" feels like a promise Stuckmann is making with his audience to do better in the future. He certainly has potential and there is some good to come out of all of this. Unfortunately, it doesn't all come together like I had hoped. Stuckmann's effort shows through and that's what makes me look forward to what he has coming up next.
Unless it's about a haunted house with a horny ghost.
Shelby Oaks (2025)
Directed by Chris Stuckmann
Cast: Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton, III, Michael Beach, Sarah Durn, Keith David, Robin Bartlett
Runtime: 91 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (for violent content/gore, suicide and language)
Rating (out of ****): **"Shelby Oaks" is available on Hulu with a subscription.
