By Variety | Created at 2024-09-25 18:20:37 | Updated at 2024-09-30 11:32:24
4 days ago
A couple of years ago, Luke Barnett heard from his mother – even though it had been 20 years since she died. The actor-filmmaker received a text from an unknown number with a YouTube link to a video his mother had made when he was 16, telling him how proud she was of him. It was particularly jarring, as he didn’t have many photos and no video of her. It turned out, his friend Jon’s father had recently discovered it on an old VHS tape and had it put online.
“The video really shook me up,” says Barnett. “It took me back to my last conversation with my mom. She was in the hospital, in a coma, and they let me go in one last time.” He was just 17 at the time, and says it ended up being more like a confession. “From talking to people years later, I learned that this is a very common thing,” he says. Barnett began to mull over the idea – what would you do if you could have one last conversation with a loved one? “I felt like if I could incorporate it into a story, it might be a feeling a lot of people can relate to.”
Barnett was right, as his short film inspired by this experience, “The Crossing Over Express,” has received an outpouring of support and over a half million views in its first 72 hours since he posted it on X.
Barnett stars in the film as a man who pays what appears to be a doctor of sorts (played by Emmy nominee Dot-Marie Jones from “Glee”) who travels in the back of a large truck and can raise the dead – but only for two minutes at a time. It’s at once melancholy and hilarious, a thoughtful meditation on a very personal experience that also feels universal.
Barnett wrote and directed the film with his friend Tanner Thomason, with whom he’s collaborated on several projects, perhaps most notably the 2020 film “Faith Based,” which they both starred in and co-wrote with Vincent Masciale. The pair go way back. “Before we were collaborating on short and feature films, we collaborated weekends, serving booze at NoBar in North Hollywood,” notes Thomason. “Not only do I know the guy’s creative sensibilities, I know his drink order.” Thomason also immediately responded to the idea when Barnett told him the story. “First, it hit me in the gut, and I knew in that moment this was going to leave an impact on him.”
Barnett hadn’t directed before, and originally thought he would ask someone else to take the reins. “But the story is so personal that I started imagining myself next to the monitor, annoying the hell out of whoever I asked,” he admits. He decided to take the leap, with Thomason by his side. “Tanner is one of my best friends and someone I love writing with, so it made sense to ask him to do it with me. He has great instincts and ideas. I also knew he’d tell me if my performance wasn’t coming off as honest.”
The 11-minute short was shot in one day in Los Angeles on a “nearly non-existent budget,” according to Barnett, with “a skeleton crew of talented friends doing it because they believed in the idea.” With a limited time frame and such a personal story, Thomason admits the situation was stressful – “but in the best way.” He continues, “Not only are you trying to just execute the day and the plan you both agreed on, but you also want to find a way to give your friend the space and time to push their performance to the next level.”
“The Crossing Over Express” played some film festivals but Barnett notes it “didn’t get into any of the ones that can really change your career.” Short of the Week released it on YouTube, but the filmmaker really wanted to share it with the world – thus the unconventional release on X. Says Barnett, “I woke up the next day to hundreds of messages of people telling me how much it affected them.”
And the response keeps growing – something the pair couldn’t have predicted. “We hoped of course, but you never know,” say Barnett. “I think we knew we were onto something, in terms of it being a feeling a big audience might relate to, but we also wanted to put a sort of offbeat, darkly comedic spin on it. That can be a hard line to ride, and we were a bit nervous it wouldn’t work. This was my first time directing, so to have directors I’ve admired for many years tweeting about it… I’m a bit floored, to be honest.”
“The Crossing Over Express” is being developed as a series pitch to take out to production companies. Though the filmmakers are open to a feature idea, he says the responses have led him to think it would work best as a series.
Though he started as an actor, Barnett says he quit in 2012 when he started getting opportunities as a writer. “Faith Based,” which starred Jason Alexander, Margaret Cho and Lance Reddick, ended up getting a bit lost during the pandemic, but led Barnett to his manager, Courtney Petrakis, who he says really believed in him as a multi-hyphenate. He was encouraged to get back into performing, and is currently enjoying a recurring role on the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind.” But he says, “I’m a big believer in creating your own opportunities. I don’t want to wait for someone to choose me. As happy as I am with the roles I’ve been given, I really wanted to show people what I was capable of. I don’t know that I succeeded in that, and time will tell how many casting directors, directors, or showrunners see the short, but I can say it’s the proudest I’ve ever been of a performance.”
And he still has the video of his mother; he watched it right before they rolled on the short film. “Anything that comes from this short, acting-wise, I owe to her and my friend Jon’s dad, who sent it to me.”
