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By: RYAN LEE
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Oscar-winning filmmaker and Georgia native Ray McKinnon ("The Accountant") describes his latest feature, “Randy and the Mob,” as “in the spirit of a Doris Day movie set in the Deep South — only odder, and in drag.”
“When I used to watch Doris Day movies, even as a kid, you just had this sense that there would be peril, but everybody was going to end up all right, including the audience,” says McKinnon, who is in town to celebrate the national opening of “Randy and the Mob” in Atlanta on Sept. 21. The movie opens in wide release around the country after that.
“You weren’t going to be put through the wringer, so you could relax from the very beginning of the movie,” he says.
With "Randy," McKinnon was eager to deliver a light-hearted comedy to audiences and himself after exploring darker themes in his most recent project, 2004’s “Chrystal,” which starred Billy Bob Thorton.
Filmed just outside Atlanta, “Randy and the Mob” drops in on the life of Randy Pearson (McKinnon), a small-town big-shot struggling to operate several businesses, from a storage facility to a truck stop. Living hand-to-mouth and indebted to the IRS, Randy gets mixed up with an Atlanta mafia syndicate that becomes impatient with his inability to pay back his loans.
Facing a life-or-death deadline from the mob, Randy is forced to patch-up the relationship with the only person who can help him, his estranged gay twin, Cecil (also played by McKinnon). The relationship between Randy and Cecil is a defining storyline in “Randy and the Mob,” and their attempts at reconciliation are the key to the film’s success, McKinnon says.
“When you bring into a plot two brothers, two twins, one is gay and one is straight and they’re barely speaking, you know as an audience member that that’s going to come home to roost at some point,” he says. “That’s going to have to be dealt with.”
Another major element of “Randy and the Mob” is the character Tino, who is sent by the mafia to Randy’s small town to ensure he meets his financial obligations. Like other characters in the “eclectic stranger comes to small town” genre, Tino winds up giving the town a “Queer Eye”-type makeover by dispensing advice about work, relationships, fashion and northern Italian cooking.
McKinnon erupts in laughter at the characterization of Tino as a metrosexual, but says it accurately describes the man on whom the character is based, Walton Goggins, who plays the robotic-sounding Tino in the film.
“He’s very much in touch with all of his multi-faceted sides,” McKinnon jokes about Goggins. “He’s very stylish, and you wanna talk about a house done up — boy, that boy!”
MCKINNON WEARS MANY HATS in “randy and the Mob” — from writing and directing the movie, to his dual role as Randy and Cecil.
“In many ways, Cecil was the — I don’t know if ‘easier character’ is the right word — but because he’s so much more relaxed than Randy, and much more secure, it didn’t require as much energy,” says McKinnon, who is straight.
McKinnon acted the role of Randy for two days before first transitioning into Cecil, a moment filled with anxiety.
“We stopped production so I could go back to hair and make-up so I could become Cecil,” McKinnon says. “I felt quite a bit of pressure to do justice to Cecil.”
To capture the essence of a Southern gay man, McKinnon reflected on people he knew growing up in Adel, Ga., — men who were obviously gay, even if McKinnon didn’t realize it until years later. He also channeled the many gay mentors he’s had in his decades of acting.
“[When doing a theater production], you’re together six nights a week, every night, and that’s kind of a bonding situation,” McKinnon says. “And so there were quite a few gay men in my life that I respected as artists but also as people, and Cecil, and the other gay character, Bill, was partly me wanting to pay homage to the gay men that I had known in my life.
In exploring Cecil, McKinnon wanted to look at the humorous — “There’s nothing funnier than a Southern gay man” — and the deeper question of what type of gay man chooses to live in the conservative, rural South.
“Not all gay men move to the city, and it takes a certain person with a certain kind of mentality and attitude to [stay in a small town],” says McKinnon, who adds that even those who do flock to bigger cities like Atlanta ...
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