Dallas native and filmmaker Tanner Beard (Legend of Hell’s Gate) returns to his roots for his new short film, Radio Telescope. Tanner premiered this short at the Dallas International Film Festival which is the same festival that jumpstarted his career a decade ago.
Set in 1984, Radio Telescope follows a former NASA Scientist and his young son as they make a discovery in his make-shift laboratory located in the garage.
Tanner graduated from the New York Film Academy in Hollywood and is a film and television actor, CEO of Silver Sail Entertainment , Co-Founder Mammoth Film Festival ™ and has written and directed several motion pictures, series and documentaries over the last few decades. As a Producer, Tanner has quickly blazed a trail of big films and successes producing films starring Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Cate Blanchette, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Antonio Banderas, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Val Kilmer and Brad Pitt. As an actor Tanner has had roles in “The Letter,” starring Winona Ryder and James Franco. Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” and SXSW darlings “Sylvio” and “Barracuda”, starring “Fargo’s” Allison Tolman. “We Summon The Darkness”, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and many more.
Check out our interview with Tanner:
I hear that you had kind of a full circle moment at the Dallas International Film Festival with the premiere of Radio Telescope. What was it like returning to that festival that jump started your career?
Tanner: Yeah, it was like a homecoming, you know, when you go back to your old alma mater. That’s definitely what it felt like— or going back and visiting like a college you used to go to or something, but it definitely shows you how time flies by us, for sure. But it was cool. A lot of the same people that were at Dallas International Film Festival were there when I was there my first time as a younger man, so I think it was just really welcoming. My parents are close to there and my cousin was with me, he starred in the movie. Even though I’m not from Dallas proper, Dallas always seems like a big family affair, so I’m I’m a big fan.
Did it kind of bring back a lot of memories to the first time you were there?
Tanner: Yeah, I was even kind of retracing some steps. I was walking around with a buddy of mine, Alex, who produced the film, he hadn’t really been there so I was like, ‘Yeah, dude, here’s where the Mavericks play.’ But actually last time I was here was the first red carpet I ever walked. So I was I’m kind of a history nerd anyway, so I was going down memory lane kind of big time. It was lovely.
Can you explain briefly what Radio Telescope is about?
Tanner: Yeah, so it is a short film, that’s what we’re calling it, but it’s more like an episode of something, you know, like an episode of “Black Mirror” or something like that. The story, we decided, couldn’t be told in like a feature film version. I mean, it could, I guess you could do anything that way, right? But we wanted it to be good. But it was just a smaller story about a NASA scientist in like themid 80s, we’ll just call it 1984, and he’s been kind of tinkering around in his garage. He’s been let go from NASA and he’s kind of built this makeshift laboratory in his garage. He’s kind of starting to lose the respect of his family a little bit, you know, it’s like he’s in there maybe trying to contact aliens or just hear some sort of like— he keeps receiving these frequencies from space. He’s hanging out there with his son, spending some time with his son, and his son kind of proposes some simple questions that leads to them finding a discovery, and the audience kind of gets to go on a ride they didn’t know they signed up for. What do they say? You’ll pay for the whole seat, but you’re only use the edge of it.
This is very much a scientific period piece, was there a lot of research that went into writing the script for this?
Tanner: I would say research saved the script. The Golden Record, it’s a thing you can look up, but NASA joined forces with a few different private organizations and they actually built what they call the Golden Record. They sent out Voyager One and Voyager Two into space in the 70s. There was a team of people that put 90 different songs on the Golden Record, they put images of Earth, animals, languages being spoken, like just in case anybody was out there. It comes with a record player and it’s made of gold so it’ll last forever… I just went down a wormhole, a rabbit hole if you will, of this idea and we incorporated that in the script, and it really legitimized his occupation at NASA and it really legitimized the idea of hearing frequencies back. But that was a huge part of bringing some kind of authenticity to what we made, that’s obviously all just pretend, but to have that honesty in there, some real data and some things like that, gave the actors a place to go, gave me a place to go to, you know, keep the direction and it made the writing a lot easier when you can just use facts. So yeah, the Golden Record, look it up. It’s pretty cool.
And the set looked incredibly authentic as well, based on the trailer. Where do you find all that stuff?
Tanner: That’s a good question. So, we started looking and we were getting on Ebay— I live in Los Angeles, and I don’t know why I don’t just go and search around, you know, the backyard of old movie prop studios and stuff, which eventually is exactly what we did, and then we found everything. We stumbled upon a warehouse that specializes in that kind of old mechanics, old instruments, you know, old radars and satellites and everything else. I was just like a kid in a candy store. I had great set designers too, but I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take that one. I want that one. Look at the lights on that one. Ohh that one’s got some nice beatbox. Let’s take that one.’ So I just got to have so much fun cherry picking each and every one of the items that this scientist may have swindled away from his time at NASA. He knew where to get it, you know, the character’s a kindguy, but he’s a little sketch when you think about what he’s got in his garage. So, that was a lot of fun. But the set, in my opinion, we built a theme park so the actors could come and ride that ride.
Speaking of your actors, you mentioned that your cousin stars in the movie. Where did you find the rest of your cast and what was it like working with all them?
Tanner: Well, hats off to Alexandra Chando, a great friend of mine and we do the Mammoth Film Festival together. She’s been one of our four horsemen for a long time. But we cast the kids with good old fashioned casting. Ashley Eberbach, my other producer, really stepped up to the plate and helped me find these amazing kids. There’s pieces of movies I grew up with— like The Sandlot, there’s kids playing baseball in the street. I’m an 80s kid, born in 84, so that was really important to the authenticity. But Alexandra Chando really stepped up to the plate for me to play the wife. She just brought so much to that character.
But I got to hand it to my cousin, Russell [Quinn]. I got really lucky— he’s cheap labor (laughs). But I got really lucky because my cousin is a phenomenal actor. Like I feel like I have a Harrison Ford mixed with Kurt Russell every time I want to use my own family member. So, to have that kind of actor at your arsenal, and this is my god, probably our 8th or 10th film? I don’t even know how many movies we’ve done together, which is really cool if you can lose count, but we’ve been making movies since we were kids. And what’s cool is that we’re still doing it, but now the paychecks are better. But he was amazing in it. I think both of us went to a few places, creatively, artistically, that we’ve never been before. But I think we wanted to, especially coming out of the hiatus of COVID, we really wanted to just go out and exercise that muscle we hadn’t got to in a while and be very grateful to do so. But we made a fun little presentation. The cars are fun, the set was fun, but working with family can be difficult and for some reason me and Russell don’t really have that problem. If anything, we’re grateful for it. You know, they say don’t work with your friends, but maybe work with your family. It was a great experience and he’s phenomenal in it. He’s won several acting accolades from it. It’s well deserved.
Are there plans to maybe turn this into a feature length film or to kind of turn it into multiple episodes?
Tanner: Yes. Thank you for asking because that’s something that we’ve been pondering. Obviously, there’s a lot going on with the idea of writing things right now and just the future of this business. It’s May, what’s it going to look like in June? What’s it going to look like in July? I don’t really claim to be a writer but I got so enthralled with this story and I did write it so maybe I guess, I’m a bit of a writer, but I just knew what I wanted to see. And we’d talked about it so much, it’s like, ‘well, let me just just write it.’ But I kept going because it was so fun. I mean, halfway through post, I was like, ‘wouldn’t it be fun if this guy, you know, did this and that now?’ So we actually wrote like seven episodes of an entire series just from sitting around chatting about it. So, there’s an entire series that we were talking about, but the idea was to make this one for a feature film we are working on, not with similar characters, but the vein of what we did with Radio Telescope was really just a precursor of style and the way we wanted to tell the story with the group of people that we didn’t get to work with in a long time. Just getting the old band back together and play the music, I think is what it was, before we go on tour, you know, making a feature. That was a terrible analogy, but you kind of get it, right?
Yeah. That’s really cool. So Radio Telescope is going to be more feature length, but can you clarify also having a serialized aspect too? I just wanted to make sure I understood what you meant by that.
Tanner: There isn’t a feature version of Radio Telescope, but there are six more episodes, so to speak. This runs about 16-17 minutes that we’ve chopped it down to, like I said, we were like, ‘No, we’re not trying to make like an independent film series here, but this is kind of an archetype episode if we were to keep going with this story.’ I’ve actually looked at this piece and I’m like, ‘man, that would be a great way to start off a movie and then just continue on.’ So the options are there and I think that’s what we wanted to do with this. This was also a Mammoth Media Institute project. We didn’t premiere it at Mammoth Film Festival, but we have since put it in the festival circuit so people can see it because, you know, this is just a film festival movie. It’s not like you’ll be able to watch this on YouTube in a year from now when it’s over. It literally has this festival run, so I appreciate you even talking about it because I want a lot of people to see this because, you know, in about eight more months, nobody will be able to see Radio Telescope. And we did build this to watch in a theater. You know what I mean? The sound design, the visuals, we shot on specific lenses that are just reminiscent of those good old times, you know, your coke and popcorn in the movie theater. And that’s really what it’s for. So, we’re having a blast getting out there in the film festival world with this particular project, but wouldn’t it be fun to, you know, see the story again, you’re like, ‘Radio Telescope? Didn’t I see that already?’ And then we’re on to something else, maybe television series wise or something. But it’s written. We’ll see what happens but it’s been fun so far.
What festivals is it going to be shown at?
Tanner: Like I said, we did get to play at Dallas. That was what felt like our kind of premiere even though we had shown it at Mammoth Film Festival. We just played Seattle. The big one that we’re doing is actually on the 27th of this month. We’re playing at the Directors Guild for the Malibu Film Festival. We were incredibly flattered to be chosen for that. There’s not a lot of spots available. And that’s our new hometown. Kind of like how Dallas was for me, this is for the entire cast. It is where everybody lives. We’re very honored to be there. We’re playing London Sci-Fi Festival on June 1. I’m really sad I can’t go to that, I will still be in Albuquerque shooting. But that one’s gonna be a really big one. And if you follow us on Instagram, we’re always trying to keep people updated because— I know that sounds so egotistical, but Radio Telescope, because we’ve been playing so many festivals around the nation and the world, hell we won at Cannes. Not the Cannes Film Festival, but a film festival in Cannes was very gracious to us when we’re actually going back to France, so that’ll be fun. But as I ramble on, the best places to watch is to follow us on Instagram and you can hopefully find a film festival somewhere in the nation that might be close, but we’re very, very grateful that we’re being accepted and recognized. I think this thing has won over 40 awards already, which is unheard of. And I don’t mean just the movie, like our art department has been recognized, our producers have been recognized, visuals, Alexandra Chando as an actor, Russell Quinn as an actor, he’s won multiple awards, even the kids in the movie, Jude Freeman has done a great job, your old pal Tan has won a few awards. So, it’s been really cool to get recognized like that because it makes you want to get out there and go do it again. Sometimes this business doesn’t always give you positivity, so this has been really, really positive and encouraging for not only myself but the entire cast and crew.
Congratulations on all of the awards.
Tanner: Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. It’s a family event so I’m just really happy for everybody that was involved because everybody kind of bled for this thing, you know? It’s not like we had $100,000 budget or anything like that. But we made it look alright.
You mentioned following the film on Instagram. What is the handle?
Tanner: @silversailentertainment. Silver Sail Entertainment is the production company I’ve had for 15 years now.
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