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PARK CITY — A Utah crew got to enjoy the spotlight at the Sundance Film Festival during the premiere of the movie "Omaha" Thursday, an experience director Cole Webley called "life altering."
"I don't think anything in my career will surpass the feeling of being the hometown kid and getting to come to Sundance," Webley said in the bustling press line before the screening at the Ray Theater. "There was no other place I was gonna make my first movie."
Shot all across northern Utah, "Omaha" is a movie about a father and his two children, evicted from their house in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and with nowhere to go.
John Maguro, who played the father, told KSL-TV, "To be opening here in Utah — that doesn't happen often, where you open a film where you shot it. So its really really unique and really special."
"Omaha" is a road trip film, moving along familiar corridors — across the West Desert on I-80 — flowing with the natural rhythm of children as they squirm and dance, fight and snack at an occasional Flying-J.
Writer and Utah resident Robert Machoian, a Sundance regular who also has a short film in the program, said the story came when he finished graduate school. "I was adjunct teaching. We had six kids. We were super poor," he told the crowd after the movie, during a panel.
For him, it wasn't hard to imagine a situation like the one depicted in the movie; a "tiny intimate story" in the words of Sundance senior programmer Charlie Sextro, that made a viewer feel as if this struggling family was in a spaceship — an early 90s Toyota Corolla All-Trac wagon — floating through an unforgiving world and always on the brink of permanent calamity.
Webley said he "found" Machoian while sitting in the audience seats of Sundance, at a screening of Machoian's film "The Killing of Two Lovers" in 2020. At the time, Webley said he thought, "Whoa, whoa, that guy lives in Utah, too? How do I not know him?" He was able to convince Machoian to let him read the script for "Omaha," written over a decade earlier.
Producer Preston Lee, a part-time resident of Park City, said there were some challenges making the movie as planned. "It was a 27-day shoot, which was quite a big thing to bite off for a little indie, but it worked out."
The children in the movie, 9-year-old Manchester, England, native Molly Belle Wright (who said she has been in "probably 11 movies" already), and 6-year-old Wyatt Solis, limited the schedule with rules governing the filming of children.
"Because of their ages, we could only have Wyatt in front of the camera for like three hours a day," Lee said. "And Molly for four hours, and then they had school."
Fatherhood, one of the most important ideas being explored in the movie, was in large part informed by the cast and crew of dads, according to Maguro. "I'm a father," he said, "so you kind of understand the rhythms of young kids, and how to work with them. ... We're all dads here, including our great (director of photography) and many of the keys were fathers."
Paul Meyers, director of photography, grew up in Provo. Meyers and Webley are BYU alums, Machoian is an associate professor of photography there.
"I think there was a care for the kids and an understanding of how to make it a fun experience," Maguro said, "but also get the best out of them."
There was only one actor that caused strife during shooting, the crew says — the dog. "That was the only diva I had on set," Webley said. "John, you were OK. But the dog!" The first dog actor had to be fired and a replacement brought in. This was news to Wright and Solis.
Thursday was the first time the two children saw the movie. "I started getting really emotional," Wright said to the crowd. "I'm shaking." Solis, matter-of-fact in a way only young kids can be, said, "One of my favorite parts was being able to be with my friends and be able to spend time with them."
Also in the crowd were Webley's five brothers and their spouses, along with his wife, all of whom had never seen the movie.
"I've tried to be a Sundance alumni for many years, but this is the right film," the director said.
Many in the cast and crew expressed the hope that the festival stays in Utah for years to come. "We don't know the future of what Sundance means to Utah, but for the last 20 years it's meant everything to me," Webley said.
Machoian's short film "The Long Valley," will be playing in the Short Film Program 5, with multiple screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City next week.
