Rainbow Around the Sun-Full Trailer

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Kevin Ely and Beau Leland’s Rainbow Around the Sun, a feature-length musical built around the songs of star Matthew Alvin Brown, is the rare non-doc to find a place on the 24 Beats Per Minute sidebar at the South By Southwest Film Festival. Kevin and Beau answer the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everyone below; as always, you can check out the trailer for the film above. Rainbow Around the Sun premieres this Saturday at 10pm at the Alamo South Lamar in Austin.

Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.

Rainbow Around the Sun is a rock musical chronicling the fall and rise of a burned-out young musician with an overactive imagination. Whenever he is faced with an unpleasant reality, he retreats into madcap musical fantasies where he can control the people around him, until the loss of a loved one forces him to face his demons. Basically it’s 8 1/2 meets All That Jazz meets Hedwig, with a dash of The Polka Dot Polka. The music sounds like a collaboration between Harry Nilsson and Ween.

It’s an adaptation of an autobiographical album by our friend, co-writer and star, Matthew Alvin Brown. The three of us have been making shorts together in Oklahoma City for the last couple of years, and this is our first feature.

Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.

We all work in video and film production in some fashion; Beau pays the bills as a freelance shooter and editor, while I work full time in the video department of a church. Matt is a starving artist, and our producer Kim is the Operating Officer of our local film festival. Oklahoma City has a small but tightly knit filmmaking community, so when it came time to pull the trigger on this thing we had plenty of people give their time and talent for very little money. Very little money.

Have you been to SXSW before? If so, tell us about your funniest story from the experience. If not, what are you looking forward to re: the festival and/or the city of Austin?

None of us have been to SX before, but I did sit behind Harry Knowles at a screening of All About My Mother once. Does that count?

We’re really looking forward to seeing our film screened in front of a “real” audience. This is a labor of love for all of us, but it’s been an especially personal experience for Matt, so sitting next to him at the Alamo Drafthouse watching his baby get born into the world will be a special moment.

Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?

Beau says “Give me a Buster Keaton film and a Coen Brothers’ film, and I’ll make peace with the world.”

Kevin says: I don’t know if I could just pick two, but if the last five minutes of my life were the last five minutes of Before Sunset, I’d die happy.