Medical drama filmed at North Texas hospital to debut at Dallas film festival
A Dallas-made film is playing at the Dallas International Film Festival.
“One In A Million” is written and directed by Tanner Beard and stars Ashley Greene, Russell Quinn and Roxton Garcia. Lou Diamond Phillips, Elizabeth Tabish, Andy Buckley, Wayne Knight and Flavor Flav co-star.
The medical drama was filmed on location at Dallas Medical Center.
“When a Texas family’s young son is struck by a rare and life-threatening disease, they are forced into a battle for his life that tests their faith, their endurance, and their bond as they fight to hold their family together,” the film’s logline reads.
“One In A Million” is produced by Silver Sail Entertainment, which Beard owns and moved to Fort Worth from Los Angeles last year.
The film will have its world premiere at the festival at 1 p.m. April 26 at the Texas Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Beard spoke with the Star-Telegram about making the movie in Dallas and how he assembled such an acclaimed cast.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Star-Telegram: Tanner, this is a medical drama based on true events. I’m curious how you found this family’s story?
Tanner Beard: My cousin Russell Quinn, who is also in “Blood Behind Us,” came to me and he’s like, “Man, my best friend growing up has this amazing story.” It was an amazing story where, regardless if you’re religious or not, the divine intervention definitely played a part in this kid making it. I just really got overwhelmed by the story and it being so close to my cousin and his friend. It was right there in front of us. You felt the trauma that not only the kid had to go through, but the entire family, and how that can really affect you.
I have a daughter of my own now and that perspective really changes. I don’t think I would have told the story in much of a different way, but there’s some emotions there that you really play up because you feel it, and that meant something to me. I know it is in the faith-based genre, but this is just a true story about what happened to these people and divine intervention definitely played a huge part. I think it’s going to really register with an audience, regardless of color or creed.
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S-T: This is a medical drama. Most of your work behind the camera has been more action-oriented. What was it like to make something new?
TB: It was a challenge. I think that was kind of fun and scary about it. Because I’m like, “Yeah, well, when do we get the helicopter scene?” [Laughs] Instead, it’s Ashley Greene crying for four hours today. She’s phenomenal in the film, by the way. Although my personal interest lies in movies where there’s guns and blood and guts and stuff — it’s a lot more fun if you can tell a story like this and just get to the honest truth about it, which I hope that we did.
There’s some motifs, because you’re telling a story. But, honestly, we just wanted to get to the honesty of it. That’s why I don’t even like to put a genre on this, because I just told the true story. But yeah, this one was a little different. I did try to add some interesting elements in it, tried to go a little Tim Burton here and there with some dream sequences that weren’t necessarily in the script. You’re in the hospital for a long time in this movie, and I wanted to break up the monotony a little bit while still keeping it true to the characters.
S-T: You mentioned Ashley Greene. Andy Buckley, Lou Diamond Phillips and Wayne Knight are all in this movie. When you pursued an actor for this, what was your pitch to them?
TB: We have a great community of friends and family. Actors are very particular on what they want to do. Luckily, Ashley Greene trailblazed everybody coming on board and trusting in this story.
We didn’t have a huge budget for this, but we had a huge ambition to make this movie. I have to shout out the hospital. which is not an actor in this film, but the Dallas Medical Center bent over backwards for us to have the production value that we did. I will always shout them out.
Lou Diamond Phillips, big shout out to our associate producer Jarod Einsohn, who was one phone call away from him. [Phillips] liked the story, liked the cast and came on. Elizabeth Tabish from “The Chosen” was somebody that I was so blown away with. It’s truly an ensemble cast. This is Ashley, Russell and Roxton’s [Garcia] movie. It’s about the family, but there’s so many elements that come into it. Even people like Wayne Knight, I got really lucky, we’re at the same management.
Then Andy Buckley was just a saint for coming on. He’s such a lovely person, maybe not the first person you’d think would play this role. He’s like the doctor that you hope your kid would have. For him to do so much comedy, and him have to come and be in this absolute medical drama, but still bring some charm to it. He knocked it out of the park
But yeah, incredible cast. I didn’t have to worry about casting Russell too much. Then Flavor Flav came on board to help us out with a small cameo in this. I don’t know how I’m friends with Flavor Flav, that’s just how weird Hollywood is. Life is funny.
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S-T: This movie is playing at the Dallas International Film Festival. How are you feeling about that?
TB: It’s like a homecoming. Dallas has such a great community of filmmakers. Fort Worth has such a great community of filmmakers. I just like to call it DFW. Everybody kind of runs and plays in everybody’s sandboxes and stuff over there. Yeah, I think we’re just lucky to be here.
But also making this one in Texas, too, makes a lot of sense to show here. We’re trying to do something here. If we’re not going to lead by example of shooting the movies here, like “Blood Behind Us” and “One In A Million,” then it sucks if you can’t get endorsed by the festivals here. But you also have to hit the criteria. If your movie sucks, you shouldn’t get in. I come from the film festival world, competition we took very serious. I know they do too here. There’s some great movies playing here. I just looked at the lineup like there’s some good movies here. It feels like an accomplishment for both of these pictures to be here.
Thank goodness for them to be around, because they have real press there. They have big time red carpets to make everybody feel special. You get hundreds and hundreds of people in this in the seats, so you can really see how your movie affects people before you might need to make a little tweak or something before it goes out next time. I’m so grateful that film festivals are still out there kicking ass, because not every one of them does what Dallas does and what Lone Star Film Festival does. We appreciate it as filmmakers.
“One In A Million” screens at 1 p.m. April 26 at the Texas Theatre.
