Almost fifteen years ago, longtime friends and filmmakers Clifford Wildman and Luis Caffesse began work on SUBTOPIA: The Story of Hueco Canyon, a feature length faux documentary about a central Texas HOA that devolves into chaos after a change in leadership. Working with a tiny budget and a crew of just Wildman and Caffesse themselves, they assembled a talented crew of Austin actors (including Lowell Bartholomee, Hilah Johnson, Ellie McBride, Ken Edwards, Liz Fisher, and Lana Dieterich) and started filming.
“About 2010, we shot the first version of it,” Wildman says. “[But] we didn't really like where it was going at first. So we set it aside, then we had a couple of brainstorms about how to kind of refactor the plot to allow us to go back and shoot. We did a second round of shooting with the actors. And then, I like to say that life got in the way.”
“So it sort of languished on a shelf, as so many projects do,” Caffesse says. “And a lot of people have asked us, you know, why it wasn't finished back when we started. And I wish that there was a dramatic reason that I could tell you, but it fell apart for the same reason that so many independent productions do – just kind of lack of resources and life responsibilities and things.”
Years passed and SUBTOPIA was essentially forgotten. But then, last year, Caffesse needed an impressive 50th birthday present for his best friend Wildman (long story short, Wildman had arranged for a private theatre screening of Barry Lyndon for Caffesse’s 40th and now Caffesse wanted to do his friend one better).
“And about a little over a year before his birthday, it hit me that the best thing I could possibly do is sit in a movie theater with my best friend and watch the movie that we hadn't been able to finish,” Caffesse remembers. “So I spent a little over a year filming the footage that we needed, filling in the remaining holes. The movie was already there. The spine was there. The story was there. It really just needed a lot of polish and that's basically what I spent a year doing and then surprised Cliff on his birthday by taking him to an empty movie theater. And the two of us were able to sit down and watch it for the first time together.”
“It was amazing,” Wildman says. ”I had no expectations going in. I knew that there was going to be some sort of surprise. And I'm not afraid to say I cried. It was a very emotional experience. It was a milestone for both of us.”
At that point, Caffesse thought the story of SUBTOPIA had come to an end. “I mean, you know, I had spent so long finishing this thing and my entire focus honestly was just to make Cliff laugh and to give him a good experience for his birthday,” Caffesse says. “So to me, we get to that screening and that's the finish line, right? We're done. I'm done. We've seen the movie, it's over. And at that point, it somehow had never occurred to me that we would share it with other people. The thought just hadn't crossed my mind. But, you know, Cliff was so excited after we saw it, he was like, oh, we should send it out. And my first thought was where? Where are we gonna send this? And then we saw AFF’s deadline was just a few weeks away. And so we sent it in. We've always loved the [Austin Film] Festival. We've had short films play there and it's such a great part of the Austin tradition. So we sent it in and yeah, we were pleasantly, pleasantly surprised when they called us a few months later and said that they wanted to play the premiere.”
Now, instead of sitting on a shelf and gathering dust, SUBTOPIA will screen twice during the Austin Film Festival — October 27th at the Rollins Theater at the Long Center at 2:30 and Halloween night at 6:15 pm at the Galaxy.
Wildman and Caffesse say the long delay in production might’ve worked to the film’s advantage. “I think that the first cuts of the movie that we had [years ago] felt somewhat absurd and maybe a little farther from [reality] than we wanted,” Wildman says. “America has gotten a lot more absurd over the last 15 years. So now it feels very timely and relatable to some of the things that we're seeing in our country right now.”
“I mean, we felt like when we started, we were making this very absurdist sort of satirical take on things,” Caffesse says. “And to hear people today, nearly 15 years later, tell us how timely and relevant it seems… it's great to hear as a filmmaker.”
