Northern Virginia | June/July-2006
Crazy Like a Fox Screens at Cannes and alongside Cruise

With a lifetime of study and professional credits in writing, directing and composing music, Richard Squires knew the score. “Two million dollars is not a lot of money,” he told Piedmont Film Festival goers in Warrenton, in April (see story, next page). Not if you’re producing a feature film to compete with Hollywood. When Crazy Like a Fox opened at screens in New York and Washington, D.C. on May 5, it went head to head with Mission: Impossible, a film that cost $100 million to make. Compare Squires’ total marketing budget of less than $50,000 with MI’s $150 million quest for viewers. The odds of “breaking through” for such a small movie made Squires’ business plan the real mission impossible.

Then he signed on with Media Luna, the Cologne, Germany-based foreign film distributor. Next thing the Middleburg filmmaker knew, his first feature had been placed at Cannes, the world’s most prestigious film festival, on the French Riviera the last ten days of May.

The film’s themes—land speculation, eradication of history as it’s “written” on the landscape, residential development and how all of these things enhance or threaten both society and the environment—are far-reaching.

But the story is unique to Northern Virginia.

Nat Banks (played by Emmy nominee Roger Rees) lives on Virginia land that was farmed by Lord Fairfax in a house called Greenwood, where the framers of the Constitution hatched their Revolutionary ideas. He may have inherited a fourth-generation housekeeper, a priceless wardrobe of military regalia and a heap of tall tales, but the well’s dry. This funny snippet of dialog between Banks and his cousin says it all:

COUSIN: Hey, isn’t that Granddad’s sport coat?
BANKS: Yeah, I think so.
COUSIN: Well lookee here, I got the pants!

To pay the bills Banks reluctantly shakes on a deal with the big-city buyer to preserve the plantation house and the working farm. When he’s handed an eviction notice ten seconds after settlement, Banks goes berserk. His wife Amy (played by two-time Academy Award nominee Mary McDonnell) complies with the law and moves into a rental with their two teenagers. But not Banks. In an act of civil disobedience that’s part Henry David Thoreau and part Huck Finn, Nat Banks dons his Confederate battle garb, grabs his sword and hides out in a cave down by the river. Squatting on his former property and living off the land, Banks gets crazier by the day, reciting Shakespeare and hatching vague plans to take back his swindled legacy.

Meanwhile, back in civilization, the new owners face steep opposition from locals who side with the Bankses. Doing everything they can to prevent Greenwood from being subdivided, neighbors risk their jobs and even break the law themselves to prevent what they see as gross injustice.

Squires based his tale on the life of Nat Morison, the eccentric gentleman farmer” of western Loudon’s historic Welbourne plantation. (Not to be confused with Old Welbourne, which is younger, quips Squires, who once lived at Welbourne.) What audiences make of Crazy Like a Foxhalf a world away at the Cannes Film Festival will have everything to do with the film’s commercial success.

So what’s his advice to Northern Virginia filmmakers? Make no mistake, says Richard Squires, “to get into this business you have to have a strong will and a willingness to take risks.” In other words, you’ve got to be crazy. Crazy like a fox.