Anchored In Arkansas

Now in its third year, the Bentonville Film Festival -- which starts Tuesday -- will screen 38 feature-length films that will spotlight talent from around the world -- and, sometimes, from our own back yard. The competition film "Parker's Anchor," for example, boasts a bevy of Northwest Arkansas connections. Co-writer, actor and executive producer Ryan Schwartzman is a native of Winslow, and Fayetteville's own Actors Casting Agency -- founded by Mark Landon Smith -- helped cast the movie with notable regional actors that include Steven Marzolf, Warren Rosenaur, Vickie Hilliard, Julie Gabel and Jason Suel as well as Smith himself.

Three of the movie's participants are Los Angeles residents with local roots. Sarah Colonna, Brandon Keener and Elizabeth Barnes are all former Arkansas residents who graduated from the University of Arkansas and moved to the West Coast to pursue careers in entertainment. All three found great success in the notoriously competitive industry.

When actor/comedian/author Sarah Colonna graduated from the UA in 1996 and moved to California immediately afterward, it was a daunting journey. Though she had visited her father in Orange County every summer for much of her life, she knew no one in Los Angeles.

Known for her quick wit and facility with comedic parts in college, she was soon drawn to her original ambition from her high school days: stand-up comedy.

"Starting stand-up in Los Angeles is certainly one of the hardest ways to do it," she says. "You're starting with all of these other people who are experienced, because there were places they could perform where they came from. It definitely is a different style, especially since you're no longer relying on someone else's words -- in stand-up, they're all yours."

Colonna soon found a peer network forming around her, and she was careful to learn by watching others.

"I was lucky to meet other comedians while doing it, so I found sort of a support group," she says. "And we all kind of kept each other going in different ways. If I saw someone 'move up' or succeed outside of where we all started, it made me feel like, 'OK, this is something achievable.'"

Soon after, industry professionals started taking note of her talents. She appeared in several televised stand-up specials and became a series regular on "Scare Tactics," a popular hidden camera show. In 2008, Colonna started making appearances as a roundtable guest on the E! Entertainment Television hit "Chelsea Lately," starring Chelsea Handler. By this time, she says, she was starting to get recognized at the restaurant where she worked.

"I had this mentality that, no matter what I did, I wasn't quitting," remembers Colonna. "I got a writing job [on 'Chelsea Lately'], and I went in to tell my boss, but I told him I wanted to keep my weekend shifts. He said, 'No. You've got a full-time job. You're not coming here on the weekends.'"

She reluctantly let go of her day job -- and never looked back. She's written two best-selling books and most recently filmed the CW pilot "Insatiable" as a series regular. She also celebrated a very happy personal event in 2016 when she married Seattle Seahawk Jon Ryan.

"My parents were always really supportive," says Colonna of the early days in Los Angeles when she would send copies of the commercials she was booking to her mother so she could show all of the friends and family back home in Arkansas. "It helps to have someone be super-proud of you. Even if it seemed small to me, my mom would make me feel like it was a really big deal, and she would make me realize I needed to be grateful."

Brandon Keener and Elizabeth Barnes joined Colonna in Los Angeles at the beginning of 1998. As natives of Fort Smith, the two had known each other since high school. They married in 1996, and after graduating from the UA a year later, headed to Los Angeles, a destination they decided on since Colonna would offer a friendly face in the big city.

After a few restaurant gigs, Keener found a position at a marketing company and juggled theatrical auditions with his full-time job. Commercial work came quickly, though, followed by TV and film roles. His lengthy resume includes movies directed by the likes of Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh, multiple TV roles in shows like "Justified," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "NYPD Blue" and a plethora of voice-over work in some of the video game industry's most popular series including "Fallout" and "Halo." And the future looks bright: A movie shot at the end of last year called "Step Into: Miss Laura's" will debut in June, the movie "Folie, Adieu," in which he starred, is in post-production, and he'll soon travel to Hawaii to film a part for the television show "Hawaii Five-0."

Meanwhile, Barnes found herself moving in an unexpected direction shortly after their arrival in L.A. when she worked with a theater company behind the scenes.

"I was starting to feel more comfortable behind the scenes," she says. "I got a crummy commercial agent and went on a few auditions. I would go on these auditions and just be miserable. I was thinking, 'I don't think I could do this for a really long time. What else can I do?'" She started looking around the industry for the niche that she was destined for. She found it in casting.

"In college, I liked costume design and directing and putting things together -- [casting a show] was like designing a show, but helping design it with the actors." Emotionally, she says, she wrestled with the idea of quitting the career for which she had studied so diligently in college. "But not once have I thought, 'Oh, I wish I could go on an audition.' Everything I learned in in school, I still use every day -- it's just that no one is filming me using it."

Barnes now runs her own independent casting agency, has 46 casting credits on her IMDb resume and has been nominated for three primetime Emmys for casting. In addition to casting "Parker's Anchor," she also worked on "Step Into: Miss Laura's" and cast the Jenji Kohan show "Glow," which debuts on Netflix in June. She and Keener are raising two children, ages 9 and 6, neither of whom has any interest in working in the industry. Yet.

"On occasion, we'll get a request for a 'real father/daughter,' especially for commercials," says Keener. "I asked my daughter if she wanted to go with me. She said, 'Now, if they pick us, do we get to be on TV?' and I said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'Oh, no, definitely not.'"

The trio says they are thrilled to be back in their home state making movies. They all plan to make it home for the premiere on May 4.

Barnes says that a scene in the movie was shot with a drone on New Year's Eve at the downtown Last Night celebration.

"It shows the community -- so many people came out and did background work, so it's full of Fayetteville," she says. "If I weren't from here, I would wish that I was after seeing this movie."

"Parker's Anchor" will screen at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday in Cinetransformer Apple Blossom.

NAN What's Up on 04/28/2017