The line between fact and fiction is mighty blurred in Nick Citton’s My Good Man’s Gone.
On the one hand, the feature is clearly a work of fiction: A brother and sister from the big city roll into an Arkansas town (population 89) to figure out what to do with everything their estranged father left behind when he slipped and died in the bathtub.
But that Arkansas town – fittingly called Story – and the festival of the dead it hosts each year is very much a real one, and its people and places feature prominently in writer-director Citton’s work of fiction, which screens at the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Citton ended up in Story because the father of one of his leads (Cheryl Nichols) used to be the town’s sheriff.
“She said, ‘It’s a physically beautiful part of the country, and I think you would really like it,’ so we went back on a research trip, and I basically interviewed the whole town,” recalls Citton, screenwriter of 2013 VIFF hit That Burning Feeling.
“I knew the production value would go through the roof if we shot there.”
Because of the town’s unique character, Citton and his small crew didn’t have to alter much in order to adapt the town to the script; quite the opposite.
“When we got to the town, people would come out of the woodwork, and we got a jail for free, and we got a high school for free, so I really wrote to the place, even when we were there shooting,” says Citton.
Story had an impact on Citton – but it wasn’t hard to say goodbye.
“The night before we left, we literally drove from house to house and said our goodbyes to the whole town,” laughs Citton, who divides his time between Vancouver and New York.
“It really felt like an experience I wouldn’t normally be able to have.”
• My Good Man’s Gone screens Sept. 29 and Oct. 3 as part of the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival. VIFF.org
