The filmmakers recruited a wealth of talent, including veteran Austin Production Designer, Andy Blackwood (Love and .45, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5, The Journeyman) and Austin Director of Photography Levy Castleberry (Sweet Thing, Sed). For the music, the filmmakers called upon the steel-pedal guitar driven sounds of Friends of Dean Martinez to score the film. Several other bands recorded original songs for the movie. Luna covered Jerry Reedıs theme song from Smokey and the Bandit. Out of Austin, Brown Whörnet, Viper Horse, DJs Trey Lopez and Resinthol contributed new songs. Marc De Gli Antoni, formerly of Soul Coughing, became inspired to record two new songs after watching the film during a post-production sound session in San Francisco.

Filming began in Austin and San Antonio, then left the Hill Country to shoot on the back roads of West Texas. The next stop was Marfa, TX and the Chinati Foundation. The Chinati contains dozens of symmetrically aligned aluminum sculptures designed by the father of minimalist sculpture, the late Donald Judd. The crew had unprecedented access to Juddıs striking art spaces and grabbed some amazing shots. The production then headed to the stark dunes of White Sands, New Mexico for a quick day of shooting (without a permit). After being escorted off the grounds by Linda the friendly National Park Ranger, the production traveled to the Grand Canyon for a quick shot, then went on to the annual Burning Man event in Nevada. This temporary city of over 25,000 people camped in the middle of a dry lake bed provided a stunning, post-apocalyptic backdrop for the film. After a few days of shooting and wandering around the desert in a blissful stupor, the crew left Burning Man and headed to their final destination: Los Angeles. The production culminated in Hollywood with a climactic scene featuring Dean Haglund, the blonde haired nerd from the Fox series X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, and the former host of MTV's 120 Minutes, Dave Kendall.

MANHOOD IN THE 80s

"Pacman, pink neon and that fleurishy font they used to write the title Risky Business says it all." - Ryan Junell, Actor

At it's core Radio Free Steve is an attempt by the filmmakers to cope with having grown up in Texas in the 80s. The driving force behind Steve is his attempts to define himself as man. His movie, with all its cussing, car chases, mutant killings, and woman bashing, is his attempt at reconciling the contradictions of what it means to be a man in America. Masculinity as portrayed in movies, has shaped a whole generation's views of what it means to be a man: violent, gun-loving, car-obsessed men, epitomized by Charlton Heston. "I've always been fascinated with Charlton Heston," says Beesley. "I even had a Planet of the Apes lunchbox. He was the ultimate masculine figure in every way. Ironically, the monkeys in that show were completely making fun of manhood and being a man in general... Charlton Heston was the enemy, a violent dangerous thing. And the funny part was that Charlton didn't have a clue and kept on being violent and manly, until he sees the Statue of Liberty at the end. Then he's like, 'Oh yeah... man is bad. But I'll kill you, you goddamn dirty apes.' The contradictions are amazing."

Contradictions also arise when examining how masculinity was portrayed on television in the 80s as compared to what adult male figures expected of their children growing up in Texas.

"Growing up in West Texas and trying to understand masculinity and manhood was very complicated," says Junell. "On the one hand, my friends and I had our frat-jock, good-'ol boy fathers trying to set an example of what it meant to be a man. But in the early 80s we were eating up what television and MTV defined as manhood: glam rock men in cheatah-patterned leotards with teased hair and hungry-like-the-wolf attitudes towards scoring babes and strutting their shit. I mean... Pacman, pink neon and that fleurishy font they used to write the title Risky Business says it all. This is very different than what my father and other West Texas adults were selling me. It's not our fault we are who we are. I blame the 80s and MTV. I'm certain Duran Duran completely confused my inner jock," says Junell.

However, Radio Free Steve is not just about growing up in the 80s in Texas. "Our heads have been in the 80s for the past year," says Junell. "It's been really hard. We don't intend on bringing back the 80s because we're so sick of it now. There's definitely some nostalgia elements in the movie, but I want people to appreciate our shitty After Effects work, too."

The last part of the film satirizes the California web gold rush of the late 90s. "Its about abandoning old institutionalized media for new, more promising ones," says Beesley. "In the film Steve drives off blindly to meet his destiny in California, driven by the hope of becoming a VJ which is the evolutionary next step from being a radio DJ. It parallels many peoples' moves from old media, like film and print, to new media, like digital video and the web. We just wanted to make fun of all the over-blown enthusiasm for the 'dot com revolution'. It's all about money and the cheesy people. It's about people with idealistic visions trying to be revolutionary only to get caught up in money and greed. I mean, that's why Ryan and I are in California. To sell out big, yo!"

WHY DIGITAL VIDEO?
The filmmakers set out to make a film that combined all the elements of an 80s B-movie while utilizing the flexibility and low-cost methods of digital video technology. Keeping the cost down with the ability to finish the movie using inexpensive consumer equipment appealed to the filmmakers. The only problem was trying to reconcile the digital video look with how it would have looked if it had been made using a video toaster in the 80s.

"It was extremely hard to create basic retro-video effects with such powerful digital tools like After Effects and EditDV," says Beesley. "While everyone else was trying to make their video look more like film, we were going the opposite direction. The plan has always been to run our crisp, clean DV footage through a few generations of old 3/4" video in order to give it the correct dated look. Levy Castleberry [the director of photography] is going to kill me."

"While everyone else was trying to make their video look more like film, we were going the opposite direction." - Jules Beesley, Director

Somehow, the filmmakers managed to finish almost the entire film on home equipment. They shot everything using the miniDV format on an XL-1 and with a Sony PC-1, both purchased by Junell with money made designing web pages in San Francisco. Jules Beesley and editor Jason Tucker finished the film on a G4 using EditDV, primarily because of its speed, stability, and 16:9 widescreen compatability. When it came time to do the sound, the filmmakers took the film to a professional, Pro Tools based studio, the Outpost Film Center in San Francisco. Supervising sound designer Dave Nelson and his team went over-the-top on the sound design, making sure that all of Steve's bodily noises rocked the house as they should.

STEVE'S MOVIE
The movie, ultimately, is Steve's movie. He was the guiding force behind most of the decisions. Says Beesley, "Throughout the whole process I constantly had to ask, 'What would Steve do [WWSD]? What kind of movie would he want to make?' I felt like I had to restrict everything to what this crossbow-toting, 80s guy on a road trip would have done. It was really scary because I was intentionally trying to make a bad movie. Wait, don't print that."

"Throughout the whole process I constantly had to ask, 'What would Steve do [WWSD]?'" - Jules Beesley, Director

By shooting a B-movie, the filmmakers thought they could have greater creative license. "The beauty of shooting in this style, is that it allows a great deal of freedom at a low-cost," says Beesley. "Ryan [Junell] and I came up with a story that we knew we could pull off for very little money. What better way to keep costs down than to make a movie that is about a movie shot on a home video camera by amateurs. It's not really a B-movie, it's about a B-movie. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Shooting in an improvisational and intentionally amateur style also sped up production. Says Beesley "We used only available light, shot about 80% handheld. We would shoot just a few takes and none of them would be perfect, but that was OK, because Steve wouldn't have been able to get a perfect take if he had made the film. We created a loose style by shooting loose. On the other hand, it was really hard to hold back and shoot things that were intentionally a bit off in order to keep the sense that this is basically Steve's home video we're watching."

THE MULLET FACTOR
The backbone of Steve's style is the now culturally infamous hairstyle known as the "mullet." Even if haven't heard of this word, you know the look: short on the top and sides, but long in the back. You may know it by other names: Camaro-hair, Hockey-Hair, Mud Flap, Short n' Long, 10-90 (10% on top, 90% on back). Steve is the newest addition to a pantheon of mullet-headed celebrities that include David Bowie, Billie Ray Cyrus, Michael Bolton, and Mel Gibson.

Says Beesley, "The mullet represents part of Steve's attempt at masculinity. Steve and Dirk are both constantly showing off for the camera and pretending to be something they're not. I felt like Steve wasn't terribly masculine, so he had to act super masculine to compensate. So he spits, acts tough and macho, treats Sheena like crap, and, of course, grows a mullet, the ultimate hairstyle for American males and ironically German housewives."

"I have always had deep respect for that haircut." - Ryan Junell, Actor

And how does Ryan Junell feel about growing a mullet for the movie? "I have always had deep respect for that haircut," says Junell. "There were always guys with the mullet in high school soccer and I always wanted to be just like them, but my mom would never let me grow it out that long. Our hometown, San Angelo, has the highest mullet per capita in the State of Texas! It's not foolish to wear a mullet. It's like when people wear rose-colored hippie glasses to see the world in a different way. I saw the world through silver-mirrored sunglasses. It made me want to talk with a thick drawl. It made me wanna frog pricks in the taint and call 'em "faggit". It made me want to gleek on a tirdface and flip the bird from the safety of my camaro. It's about becoming one of the people I didn't clearly understand, but knew very well, growing up. And what's weird is that I really felt like I could have been Steve if I had made different choices in life."