RAY MCKINNON (
WRITER/DIRECTOR/ “RANDY PEARSON”/ “CECIL PEARSON”)
Ray McKinnon was born and raised in Adel, Georgia, attended Valdosta State College, and began his acting career on stage in Atlanta. McKinnon has been writing, in one form or another, since he was in his teens and has been writing screenplays for the past fifteen years. Along with his wife, Lisa Blount, and Walton Goggins, he is a founder of their production company, Ginny Mule Pictures. In 2001, he wrote and directed his first film, the 38-minute short THE ACCOUNTANT, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 2002. His first feature was the critically acclaimed CHRYSTAL, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Lisa Blount; RANDY AND THE MOB is the trio’s third film, made along with their CHRYSTAL partner, producer David Koplan. As an actor, McKinnon has been in numerous films and television shows including BUGSY, O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?, APOLLO 13 and THE MISSING. He was most recently seen on the acclaimed HBO series, Deadwood, as the Reverend H. W. Smith, and is featured in the upcoming CBS miniseries Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry.
WALTON GOGGINS (PRODUCER, “TINO ARMANI”)
Walton Goggins plays “Detective Shane Vendrell” on the Golden Globe winning series The Shield, now in its sixth season. Raised in the small town of Lithia Springs, Georgia, Walton has been working in front of the camera for well over fifteen years, starring in countless feature films, television shows and MOWs. He had the distinct honor of playing “Sammy,” Robert Duvall’s trustworthy friend, in THE APOSTLE for October Films. A few feature credits include THE BOURNE IDENTITY, SHANGHAI NOON opposite Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, MAJOR LEAGUE III, JOYRIDE directed by John Dahl, WAYWARD SON, RED DIRT and Billy Bob Thornton’s DADDY AND THEM. He recently co-starred in the independent feature, THE ARCHITECT, THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN opposite Anthony Hopkins, and WINGED CREATURES with Kate Beckinsale and Forrest Whittaker. These are just a few in a long list of credits that are testament to this actor’s versatility.
Walton has also been taking his turn behind the camera. Goggins, along with Ray McKinnon and Lisa Blount, his partners at Ginny Mule Pictures, won an Academy Award for their short film, THE ACCOUNTANT, which he produced and starred in. The team next produced, directed and starred in their first feature, CHRYSTAL, starring Billy Bob Thornton, which was accepted into the 2005 Sundance Film Festival’s Dramatic Competition.
DAVID KOPLAN (
PRODUCER)
David Koplan is the founder of Timbergrove Entertainment. In 2001, Koplan founded Timbergrove in order to develop and produce the kinds of films that he enjoys most — intelligent, character and story driven works that have the potential for mainstream appeal.
In 2003, Koplan produced Ray McKinnon’s first feature film CHRYSTAL, which starred Academy Award Winner Billy Bob Thornton and Lisa Blount. The film appeared in dramatic competition at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released by First Look Films. Also in 2003, Koplan worked with Pulitzer Prize nominated playwright Adam Rapp to produce his feature film WINTER PASSING, which stars Ed Harris, Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel. The film made its premiere at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and was theatrically released in February 2006.
Besides RANDY AND THE MOB, Koplan recently completed postproduction on BLACKBIRD, written and directed by Adam Rapp, an adaptation of Mr. Rapp’s award winning play of the same title. BLACKBIRD recently made its premiere at the 2007 South by Southwest Film Festival.
In February 2007, Koplan completed production on the film noir thriller THE LAST LULLABY, which stars Tom Sizemore (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, HEAT) and Sasha Alexander (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III and NCIS.) LULLABY is currently in postproduction in Los Angeles. Koplan is a graduate from the University of Virginia and serves on the board of the Virginia Film Festival.
LISA BLOUNT (
PRODUCER/ “CHARLOTTE PEARSON”)
Lisa Blount, a native Arkansan, was born in Fayetteville to a family whose Ozark roots go back over 200 years. As a child, her family moved frequently throughout the state and she developed an early love of Arkansas music, from rockabilly to Delta blues. At the age of 19 while attending the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Universal Pictures set up a production office in Toad Suck, Arkansas, where fellow Arkansan Jim Bridges was preparing to shoot his autobiographical 9-30-55. He chose Lisa to play the female lead in the first movie for which she ever auditioned. She then moved to Hollywood, and her next break came soon after with AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. Since then, Lisa has appeared in countless film and television projects. She branched out into producing with THE ACCOUNTANT, written and directed by her husband Ray McKinnon, which won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2002. She then produced and starred in CHRYSTAL, also written and directed by Ray; for her acclaimed performance, she won the Best Actress Award at the Stockholm Film Festival. Lisa is currently working on her debut album – all Southern roots music.
PHIL WALDEN (
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/CO-FOUNDER OF CAPRICORN PICTURES)
During Phil Walden’s four decades in the music industry, he was both pioneer and empire-builder, visionary and indefatigable businessman, a shaper of the course of American music who nurtured some of the most singular and vibrant voices our times have known. While still a student at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, Walden signed Otis Redding to his budding management firm. He developed an artist whose tragic 1967 death, at the age of 26, came on the cusp of one of the greatest songs of the era, “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay.”
Just a few years later, in 1969, Walden launched the Capricorn Records label – with which he is still synonymous – and introduced the Allman Brothers Band to the world (two generations on, the jam-rock scene the Allmans came to inspire is one of the strongest genres going). Other southern rock bands on the Capricorn label included the Marshall Tucker Band, Elvin Bishop, Sea Level, the Dixie Dregs, Delbert McClinton and Wet Willie. Walden remained a driving force in the music business until his death in 2006, forming the Velocette label which built on the breakthroughs of the 90’s, when Capricorn broke such modern-rock favorites as Cake and 311 to chartbusting mass appeal and kept faith with blues-rooted southern rock behind such tireless road warriors as Widespread Panic and Gov’t Mule.
Walden, who died in 2006, was one of an elite circle of music business insiders who never faded away amid shifting public tastes, or succumbed to the overtly corporate agenda driving the industry. Driven to bring this same passion to the movies, Walden formed Capricorn Pictures with Benjy Griffith; RANDY AND THE MOB is proud to be the Capricorn’s debut film and part of Walden’s amazing legacy.
BENJY GRIFFITH (
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/CO-FOUNDER OF CAPRICORN PICTURES)
A native of Macon, GA, Benjy Griffith received his B.A. from Mercer University in 1976. While attending Mercer, he worked as office boy and runner for Phil Walden and Capricorn Records, and later started Falling Start Records and Tapes. In 1979, he received his Masters of Arts in American Studies from Florida State University and returned to Georgia to teach English and Creative Writing at the college level while learning everything he could about the land market in Middle Georgia.
In 1983, he founded Southern Pine Plantations and began working full-time in the real estate business, concentrating primarily on farm and timberlands. From buying ten-acre tracts and reselling them for a profit, Griffith is now one of the largest private owners of timberlands in the United States, with holdings of over 120,000 acres stretching from Virginia to East Texas.
In 2003, Griffith, the son of renowned literary critic, biographer, English professor and playwright Ben W. Griffith, Jr., was ready to return to his creative roots. For his first project, he wrote a novel set in the 1930’s about a young boy who sells moonshine for his hard-driving father along the small river towns of the Ocmulgee. It is a story of what happens when love and greed and blood, and whiskey run together in the south, and the story takes you from shot houses and whorehouses to the court house. The novel, Whiskey Before Breakfast, is currently being offered to publishers through his agent Katharine Walton.
With similar interests in southern literature and culture, Griffith and his former boss Phil Walden began formulating the idea of starting a film company that would bring worthy southern works to the screen. Out of these discussions, Capricorn Pictures was formed, using the name that Walden had so successfully used to present the southern genre of rock music to the world. In this same vein, the goal of Capricorn Pictures is to assemble a catalogue of films that explores the rich cultural heritage and diversity of the south on film.
Griffith suffered a significant stroke in July of 2005 that severely impaired his right side and speech abilities. Though his intelligence and wit is fully intact, he no longer possesses the powerful command of language he once had. Griffith has been relentless in his therapy, recovering the use of his leg and much of his speech. He continues to improve significantly.
D. SCOTT LUMPKIN (
CO-PRODUCER)
D. Scott Lumpkin has worked on over 125 projects since starting his career in film. His experience runs the gamut from budget consultant to producer. He attended Troy State University and film school at the University of Southern California, where he worked on several student film projects and documentaries.
After numerous independent projects and commercials in Los Angeles, Scott began to develop a dream of making movies back home in the South. Believing that the South had a lot to offer and convinced that a local line producer who knew how to “speak the language” could be instrumental in making this dream come true, Scott formed Lumpkin Productions in 1994, based in Alabama.
Scott’s many recent feature film projects include ROCKET, FANBOYS, DOUBTING THOMAS, TYLER PERRY’S DADDY’S LITTLE GIRLS, HEAVENS FALL, COME EARLY MORNING, LONDON, FRANKENFISH, LOVE LIZA and many more.
