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Kentucky Theatre Screens "100 Proof' Thursday

Kentuckians made critically acclaimed 1997 film

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

It's been more than 10 years, and Jeremy Horton hasn't ­directed a movie since.

But rarely does a month pass that he doesn't hear from ­someone about 100 Proof, the critically lauded movie that he and producer George Maranville made, inspired by a 1986 murder spree in Lexington.

”I'll get a random call or ­letter,“ says Horton, 38, now the executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party. ”I am never able to completely leave this behind.“

Not that he wants to.

Horton is proud of his one and only directing effort, which ­received strong reviews and remains the only film by ­Kentuckians, written and ­produced in Kentucky, to be an official selection of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

Horton and Maranville, 45, recently watched the movie for the first time in years.

”It holds up,“ they say.

Local audiences will get a chance to judge for themselves when 100 Proof gets something of a 10th anniversary ­screening at The Kentucky Theatre on ­Thursday night.

Horton, whose primary background was in theater, was inspired to create the movie when he discovered he lived in a ­notorious residence: the ­apartment building that was once home to Tina Hickey Powell, who with LaFonda Fay Foster murdered five people the night of April 23, 1986.

The writer-director was ­interested in exploring the circumstances that led to such violence, and he teamed with Maranville to make the movie.

The film, inspired by the rampage but not directly about it, starred film and TV actor Pamela Holden Stewart and Lexington ­actor Tara Bellando as the women, named Rae and Carla. Lexington native Jim Varney, best known as the commercial and film character Ernest P. Worrell, was cast as Rae's evil father. The movie also gave Lexington stage actors Joe Gatton, Kevin Hardesty and Ed Desiato screen time when it was hard to come by.

And though the film was made in the mid-1990s, moviemaking was different then.

Today, reasonably affordable digital technology has created a community of filmmakers at varying levels of seriousness, and premieres of locally shot films are common.

But when Horton and ­Maranville started filming, ­filmmakers were in the twilight of the analog filmmaking era. They shot 100 Proof on 16 mm film, which was blown up to 35 mm for Sundance and the theatrical release.

No digital filming. No Final Cut Pro. The men were shooting expensive cans of film that ran 11 minutes each and slicing up the reels in a Louisville editing suite.

”It gave us a sense of pride, like writing something on a manual typewriter,“ Horton says. ”There was no spell check, and you had to think about what you were going to say and how it would be ­structured before you wrote.“

Maranville has similar pride, though maybe not such romantic recollections of making his movie the old-school way.

”It was torture,“ he says. ”I could never go back to that.“

Unlike Horton, Maranville has continued to work in film. He has produced, edited and written more films, including Louisville director Archie Borders' 2004 film Paper Cut.

Later this year, ­Maranville plans to get behind the ­camera to shoot another movie in ­Lexington. The film, a crime drama called Character ­Assassination, won't be as dark as 100 Proof, he says.

”That was a tough shoot, tough subject matter,“ Maranville says of the graphic film, which revolted some viewers to the point they came out of the theater yelling at the filmmakers for what they put on the screen.

”We were more shocking than some movies that were made in the past 10 years to shock people,“ he says.

Maranville says part of the reason to bring back 100 Proof, which has been released on VHS but not on DVD, is to ­reinforce awareness of ­filmmaking in ­Kentucky and the need to ­institute tax incentives to ­encourage ­filmmakers to work here. The screening also will celebrate the movie's place in ”Kentucky film lore,“ Maranville says.

Part of that lore is that Horton, who was hailed for ”a dazzling debut“ by The New York Post and received similar praise in other venues, has not directed since.

”It was a good thing to have done that I wanted to do and needed to do,“ Horton says. ”But I tend to have a lot of interests. I'm not saying never, but it could or couldn't happen and it would all be the same.

”If I do do it again, I'd like to think people would expect I would do something good.“