Indie helmer Alex Steyermark is setting Kyle Gallner (upcoming Elgin James’ Little Birds) with an electric guitar in Losers Take All, a postcard to an era where grassroots promoting of garage bands didn’t come about with a myspace page, and when the indie rock landscape was bands such as Sonic Youth, Black Flag and Minor Threat. Filming has already begun, scribes Andrew Pope and Winn Coslick are producing with Mike S. Ryan (Junebug) – Pope and Ryan just exec-produced Meek’s Cutoff. Andrew Meyer and Roger Rawlings are executive producing. Filming is taking place in Memphis, Tennessee. Steyermark previously directed a pair I’ve never seen in Prey for Rock and Roll – so he has some experience working in the “genre”.
Written by Pope and Coslick, from a story by Rawlings and Ed Bradin, set in the world of mid-1980’s American independent rock music, follows a fictional punk/pop band “The Fingers” as they stumble, stagger and strum their way in what everyone thinks is the opposite direction of success–commercial or otherwise. But they are in the right place at the right time and the public is eager to embrace the D.I.Y. sounds of the underground, whether those in the underground-“The Fingers” included-like it or not. It’s a raucous love letter to an era when for most bands, life meant touring around the country in a cramped van, sleeping on the floors of strangers, selling your records after each show, and where fans were earned through powerful live shows at small clubs, reviews in ‘zines, and do-it-yourself promotions.
The cast is comprised of Allison Scagliotti, Tania Raymonde, Alexia Rasmussen, Aaron Himelstein, Billy Kay, Adam Herschman and newcomer Peter Brensinger.
Top-Forty musician Marshall Crenshaw, who co-penned the Golden Globe and Grammy nominated title track to the hit comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, will work with the actors to put together a band whose sound recalls the Indie/Punk/D.I.Y. days of 1980’s college radio. This past winter, he and Memphis’ own Scott Bomar produced and recorded original songs for the film at Bomar’s Electrophonic Recording with local Memphis musicians.
