Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy McCullough and Jimmie Buchanan Jr.
Hi Amy and Jimmie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Our creative partnership started on an amateur adventure we took about 16 year ago. We we were living on a small sailboat, traveling from Portland, Oregon, to the Sea of Cortez. Neither of us had a sailing background, but we wanted to take some time while we were young to do something kind of crazy and spend more time together. Sailing and living on a cheap 27-foot boat from the ’70s was a way we could affordably do that as twentysomethings. So in 2008, we quit our jobs—as a music journalist (Amy) and semiconductor technician (Jimmie)—sold all of our belongings (other than a box each of memorabilia and our record collection), and set sail down the Pacific Coast.
Jimmie has played trumpet since he was a kid and started making homemade movies with his friends as a teenager. Amy plays guitar and has always enjoyed being creative: dressing up in costumes, drawing, and writing. When we were on the sailboat—particularly when we’d be at anchor for a few days—we had a lot of time on our hands. We were also going through a pretty unusual, amazing experience sailing on the ocean as a couple of landlubbers, so we sort of just naturally started writing songs together.
Songwriting blossomed into making music videos. Jimmie has a background in video production and is also the kind of person who will just figure out how to do things he wants to do. Armed with an old camcorder, a laptop, and a box of art supplies, we made several music videos—both live action and animated—to accompany our songs and started sharing them with friends while we were at sea.
We moved onto a 1979 Dodge camper van after our sailing trip and drove around the U.S., dispersed camping in national forests for about five months. We continued to make music and music videos along the way, often taking advantage of unique locations where we’d end up, such as a spooky forest in Wolf Gap, Virginia, which made an awesome setting for a music video for a song inspired by our love of Hammer horror films.
After our nomadic period, we settled in Austin, Texas, and starting making movies together. We write, shoot, and edit everything ourselves, and Jimmie writes and records all of our soundtracks (with supplemental contributions from Amy). We’ve made five feature films altogether. Our first was a Halloween horror/comedy called The Serum of Life (2011), starring a memorable demon baby named Fellow Ferguson who’s a modified Boglin hand puppet; Operation: RAVEN (2013), which premiered in association with the Austin Film Festival and stars Amy as a tough-as-nail police detective and Jimmie as a bizarre, weenie-roasting criminal mastermind; Beast Lover (2013), a strangely touching romance/horror/comedy featuring an ’80s dickwad husband, a lonely wife, a mysterious hunter, and a seemingly savage beast; Gary and the Underworld (2018), the tale of recently homeless man who happens upon an opportunity to take on the devil and help a stranger; and Work Dreams (2023), a twisted take on working for a living and the push and pull between towing the line and vagabond wanderlust. Over the years, our movies have premiered at festivals from Los Angeles and Berlin to Kansas City and Moscow.
The actors are all friends of ours; we pay for everything ourselves; and—unlike filmmakers who are looking for a big break or a studio bankroll—we primarily do this for fun, to be creative, to engage in something unique with our friends, and to document our lives together.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Making movies on no budget and relying completely on our own ingenuity and inventiveness has been challenging but also really rewarding. It’s a problem-solving experience that we enjoy. It’s mostly been a lot of fun and a way to have unique experiences and spend meaningful time together. Of course, we don’t always agree on what the best route for a story or an scene edit or a shot is, and we have to navigate those differences and arrive at something we’re both happy with. Amy is a planner, and Jimmie is a “let’s just do this” kind of guy, so those approaches can result in conflict, but they can also put us in happy middle ground where we get things done but have also coordinated enough to succeed.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The main thing that sets us apart from other filmmakers is that we handle every aspect of production ourselves. That includes writing, directing, cinematography, editing, set creation, soundtracks, makeup, special effects—truly everything. We do this outside of full-time jobs and on their own dime simply because we love being creative together and think the results are awesome. Rather than talk about making movies, we actually make them.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The main lesson we’ve learned is that you just have to do what you want to do. There’s no point in thinking you can’t make a movie because you don’t have X, Y, Z that people think you need to have to make a movie. Also, lack of funds can actually result in something way more creative and unique than what you might have done with a bigger budget. It’s important to embrace challenges as a way to get weird and inventive rather than let them discourage you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://vimeo.com/amyandjimmie
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boxcanyonboys/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PonyCanyonMusic
- Other: https://ponycanyon.bandcamp.com/music
Image Credits
All images can be credited to Amy McCullough and Jimmie Buchanan Jr.
The first is a candid shot of us on a haunted house ride called the Geisterschloss at the Prater, an amusement park in Vienna, Austria.
The others are all stills from our most recent feature-length movie, Work Dreams, which premiered at Kansas City Underground Film Festival in 2023 and also screened in Austin at AFS Cinema hosted by Hyperreal Film Club in 2023.
