J Paul Johnson
For her most recent short film, Lucy Gamades took on a tall order: shooting during an actual solar eclipse. Needless to say, that was a challenging task, but in the end, she and her small crew rose to the challenge and completed Mesopotamia, TX, a short film due to premiere in February at the 2025 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France.
The film is a treasure, a little slice-of-life shot as two disparate strangers meet when viewing a solar eclipse. The conceit of shooting during the eclipse is just part of the film’s appeal: it’s shot with a vintage ’70s B-movie vibe and its two protagonists are both richly drawn, uniquely compelling characters written with depth and complexity.
Lucy Gamades is originally from King of the Hill, Texas, and her filmmaking displays a penchant for the morbidly funny. She was a 2024 FLC Artists Academy finalist and a quarterfinalist in the 2024 Slamdance screenplay competition. Her work has also been recognized by SXSW Sydney, Fantastic Fest and the Bushwick Film Festival. She recently spoke with Film Obsessive Publisher J Paul Johnson about the conception and production of Mesopotamia, TX. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Welcome Lucy. So where on Earth is Mesopotamia, Texas?
Lucy Gamades: [Laughs] Well, it is on Enchanted Rock, actually. A state park in Texas is actually where we shot it. But the name comes from the concept of one of the characters mentioned like, Oh it’s fun that we still clap for the eclipses like we’re in ancient Mesopotamia. So the name of the movie came out of that spontaneous community that forms around the eclipse.
So the conceit here is that you literally shot this during a solar eclipse. When was that?
That was in April of last year.
And what came first? Was it the conceit of shooting during a solar eclipse, or was it the characters in the story that unfolds during it?
My creative producing partner, Michael [Spencer], came to me with the idea of shooting a movie during an eclipse about a year beforehand. I was hesitant at first. I don’t like doing things when it seems like it’s a gimmick, you know? Also, it sounded obviously very difficult to do.
Very difficult to do!
Yeah. And then we came up with an idea to shoot it on film as well. So increase the complication. But I mean, once we decided we were doing it, there were, like, six different stories that we had come up with. One was, like, a local bureaucrat running for reelection, throws in with an eclipse party, gets assassinated. That was way too expensive to do. So we scrapped that one. But there were five or six other ideas, and we went back and forth for a while, and I feel like I just woke up one morning and I was like, What if we do like the simplest possible thing?
We have these two characters, and they just have a little bit of a Before Sunrise type of moment, maybe but, I don’t know, the characters just came to me one morning, and it was like, Alright, that’s it. We’ve got it. We’re going to do it this way.
Before we talk about the two characters and the actors who play them, I would like to ask what challenges does shooting during an eclipse provide?
So we shot it, like I said, at Enchanted Rock, which is about a 400-foot climb up a tall—literally a rock. We brought three 16-millimeter Aaton XTRs up to the top, and we only had a ten-person crew because we wanted to keep it pretty small and we knew we needed the right people. A really scrappy team—we’d be staying in an Airbnb together. So it was had like a summer-camp vibe to the living situation. But we had to figure out how to get 200 pounds of equipment up to the top. We had to get a ticket to the park because eclipses are really popular, and I was calling into a radio contest. We didn’t even know if we were going to get the location to shoot at!
And then the eclipse itself, obviously, you have, four minutes and 26 seconds to get the shot, and if you miss it, you miss it. You can’t do any reshoots. So yeah, it was a lot of logistics, a lot of preproduction. And then we got up there and were like, Alright, this is it. We’ll do it, and we’ll see what happens.
It must have happened really quickly. How long did this shoot itself take once you were there?
Basically we shot it in chronological order because the light changes as the day progresses, even before totality. So for continuity, we just shot it in order. We got to the park at around 4:00 a.m. and waited for an hour until it opened, hiked up to the top. We probably started shooting around, I want to say 6:30 or 7:00 a.m., and then it was over by 3:30 p.m. So it was really quick day, really quick shoot. It was a blur!
Are the extras your own folks there, or were they just some of the assembled congregants awaiting the eclipse themselves?
Anyone who’s not either of the two lead actors is either someone who was just up there or is a crew member who’s buried in the background. When we were first planning, what’s funny, we had assumed there were going to be a ton of people there because we had to call in and tickets were really hard to get. But the weather was changing. That was, like, another difficulty that I forgot to mention. It was like, looking like it might be cloudy or it might maybe was going to rain.
I saw a cloud in the film, and I immediately thought to myself, oh, no!
I am now familiar with the European weather model, the Canadian weather model! [Laughs] We were trying to figure out, like do we drive to Dallas in the middle of the night and see if the cloud coverage might be better there? But at the end of the day, I was like, I think we should just stay here. I have a feeling. And I also have a feeling that if we go somewhere else, it’ll be fine here and there’ll be clouds there. But yeah, all the people who were there, the original concept of the script was like, Oh, it’s going to be really crowded, really packed, and there’s these two people who were there alone. And when we got up to the top, there were not that many people there. So we had to not entirely rewrite, but just, like, readjust the beginning of it when we got there because it wasn’t like, Oh, there’s nowhere to sit; there are plenty of places to sit!
Can you talk about your two primary actors and their roles?
So I knew both of them. I had worked with Megan [Greener] on my last short film, Vanitas. She’s wonderful. She’s so funny. And her character is the quieter, more reserved one. She’s already up there alone when we meet her, and we learn why she’s there by herself. She is a little bit of, like, a religious woman, a lot more reserved than Nicky [Maindiratta], who is our other character who I had also known for a while. We had been friends for a long time, he’s been an actor since he was a child, and I’d always wanted to put him in something. And then this presented itself as a really fun way to work together.
But yeah, he is our protagonist at the beginning. We follow him on his way up to the rock. He’s there in the hopes that a girl that he wants to see again will be up there because she likes eclipses. But he doesn’t really put any effort into making sure that she’s there.
A little part of me wondered if she even really existed!
Exactly. Yeah. It’s very, very good question. She may not.
Well, I love the human connection between the two characters. And another thing I really enjoy about the film—frankly, I was smitten by it from the very start—is the vintage ’70s B-movie look and feel that comes right out of the graphic design, the color grading, the film stock, the grain, even the musical choice that’s used at the beginning.
I love movies from the ’70s. I always have. I run a Substack about movies from the 70s [called the 70s, probably.]. But going into this, Michael, my producer and I shot our last short on 16 mm as well. And we really just love the look. I love film. You just can’t really replicate it as hard as you try with digital. And for this, when we were talking about it, it was like, Well, you only get one take anyway, so we might as well shoot it on film. But the whole look and feel was inspired by … It’s like you put the least likely John Wayne in the middle of a Western was the vision for the first part. We had a whole bit that we had to cut, but about Nicky’s character he puts on this cowboy hat and this persona, but he obviously is not a cowboy.
Even just when we went up to the rock, too, for the first time, just the colors are so vibrant up there and beautiful. And I love putting color in stuff. It doesn’t have to be all dark all the time. Like, I think it was just lent itself really nicely, the location did.
And what about the music—“In the Shadow of the Valley”—that accompanies the opening credit sequence?
Yeah, Michael found the music for both the pieces actually just by chance. I had been thinking from the beginning that I wanted that type of Western-sounding, not honky-tonk, but, like, that music for the beginning that then would become very different by the end. Obviously, the last song is quite different. But, yeah, we found we were just going through different choices, and we found this one, and we also just thought, like “The Shadow of the Valley” was just an interesting title for it. And if you listen to the lyrics, it’s about being on your own and settling down in your valley, and I thought it was just like a funny juxtaposition to have: I keep climbing the mountain.
I just love it, and it could be the music used in a very, very different Western, but with utmost sincerity. But I just love the choice. And so I’m hearing you’re a film nerd Substack type, right? Can I have you talk about your own training, experience, influences? What’s bringing you, Lucy, to this point in time where you’re directing a film like this?
I went to BU for film school, which was, like, a great base layer. But I’ve been working in New York for several years. I moved here when I was 22 or 23, and I had this writing gig that was bad and did not pan out. And it was like a really fundamental New York experience. And then I worked in post production for a long time with a few different companies, had great experiences there. But I’ve always been a writer. I mean, I wrote stuff in school. I was always writing stuff on the side. And when the pandemic happened, it was like, Okay, well, I’m unemployed and all my friends who work in production are also unemployed.
So we wrote a little horror film. I didn’t direct that one—I produced it—but we made that. And then ever since then, we’ve made almost one film a year, Michael and I have, since then. And I directed a short called Vanitas, like I said, with Megan, two years ago. That was also again, a great experience, and shooting it on 16mm, I was like, Well, I want to shoot everything on this from now on. So yeah, that’s what led me up to this point. Just a lot of DIY, making friends with the crews that I work on. And doing it that way.
And so your film is going to enjoy a world premiere in France in, what, like ten days?
Yeah, I’m leaving tomorrow night, actually!
That is so exciting. I was going to ask if you were going to be there. Could you talk about your maybe expectations or hopes for that trip and for the festival?
Yeah, I’m very excited. I love France. I speak a little bit of French. When you make any movie, you submit and hope for the best and you know, you never know what’s going to happen. But we were very excited when we got the acceptance for this one. I’ve heard it’s a really great festival. There’s people from all over the world there. It’s all about short films, which is nice. I’m excited to meet people, like future collaborators, hopefully maybe a couple of distributors, other festivals. I’m just excited to go see who’s there and have a good time and obviously show my film to people, which is really nice.
That’s really thrilling. I’m excited for them to have the opportunity to see it. I really appreciated the opportunity to see it too. I hope from there it finds even a wider audience in the future.
Thank you so much, and thanks again for having me on.
