This story begins with two guys – John Charles Meyer, who was a political consultant:
"I had just gotten burned out on D.C. I was going through a divorce. I had worked in politics for ten years. I was a little bit burned out on that as well."
And Peter Wilson.
"He was, I think I’m getting this right, first chair violinists of the White House Chamber Orchestra. He played for I think seven presidents across 30 years."
Peter’s aunt was the one who introduced John’s parents – so the two are lifelong friends who reunited after John moved to Los Angeles to try his luck as an actor.
"My folks put me on a community theater stage when I was a little kid, and then I went off to college, convinced that you’d have to be crazy to try to pursue it as a profession, so didn’t do it until I was 33."
He was cast in many TV shows – Mike and Molly, The Vampire Diaries, NCIS and Hawaii 5-0.
"I was either the guy they hauled in first, and then they realized part way through the episode, 'Oh, he’s got an alibi, or his DNA doesn’t check out.' I kept getting that role. Or I would sometimes get the weirdo derelict boyfriend who lives in a van down by the river."
He also starred in a feature film called the Millenium Bug, about a giant insect that comes out once every thousand years, and while the premise was kind of goofy, he liked the director.
"And then suddenly, years later, he reached out to me and said, ‘Hey. Man. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I hike the Grand Canyon like twice a year and I’ve written a script about it, and I kind of wrote it with you in mind. Would you like to do another film, and I said absolutely! I’d never hiked the Grand Canyon, so I was pretty excited about it."
Granite Rapids Moon tells the story of a happily married father of two who is shaken by a message written in a birthday card for his daughter. He leaves his family for a week-long trek through the Grand Canyon, reminding him of an earlier trip with another woman and a clay souvenir he bought.
"Check it out! Gift shop at the rim!” he tells her.
“Johnny!” she replies. “We're backpacking -- minimal weight.”
“You brought oranges. They're heavy,” he counters.
“Yeah, but my pack gets lighter as we eat them. That thing is going to feel even heavier on the way out.”
“Heavier? What the laws of physics change down here?”
“That's going to feel like a bowling ball in a few days.”
“Fine. I'll leave it here.”
“Too late now. Pack out what you pack in. Remember? You're stuck with it now!”
“Fine! I like it."
The making of this film was a story in itself – relying on a crew and cast of eight.
“No electricity. No lights. No showers,” Meyer recalls. “Six days in 20-degree weather and eight days in 95-degree weather, and all of it with food, water and film gear on our backs through 82 miles of trails.”
When it came time to score the film, John Meyer reached out to his old friend Peter Wilson, now conductor of the Waynesboro Symphony.
"He said, ‘Hey, man, if you ever want to record a score with my orchestra, we can probably do it for you reasonably inexpensively,’ and I called him up a couple of years ago and said, ‘Hey, I think I want to do that.’"
And that, he says, was an essential element.
"It’s hard to overstate how dry and uninteresting a movie can be if you strip out music. It sets the mood. It sets the tone. It makes you immediately understand how to feel about what’s going on, maybe before you even hear any dialogue or understand what it is that you’re watching on the screen."
Musicians from the Waynesboro Symphony will be guests of honor when the film is shown at the Violet Crown Theater in Charlottesville on April 30th, and suburban Richmond will play host on April 27th at the Ashland Theater with proceeds to benefit American River Restoration. Meyer will answer questions after that screening, and he’ll be joined by the writer/director Kenneth Cran, and conductor Wilson in Charlottesville.
More showings are planned in Norfolk and Northern Virginia, before Meyer and Cran take it to other parts of the country. They’ll finish their North American tour with a two-man hike through the Grand Canyon in December. I’m Sandy Hausman.
4/27 @ 6:15pm & 8:15pm Ashland Theatre, Richmond VA (benefitting American River Restoration)
4/28 @ 7:30pm Naro Cinema, Norfolk VA (benefitting Tidewater Appalachian Trail Club)
4/29 @ 6:00pm American University, Washington DC
4/30 @ 7:00pm & 7:30pm Violet Crown, Charlottesville VA (benefitting Grand Canyon Conservancy)
5/1 @ 7:15pm Cinema Arts Theater, Fairfax VA (benefitting Grand Canyon Conservancy)
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
