Guerneville-based film ‘Stumptown’ to feature Broadway actress Brooke Tansley in lead role

It’s a long way from the palm trees of Fort Lauderdale to the redwoods of Northern California.

When professional photographer Vicky Scesa bought a house in Guerneville four years ago and moved across country with her husband and young daughter, she quickly discovered just how deep the chasm is between the two coasts.

The one-time New Yorker, whose brother is gay and considers herself progressive, was still shocked when she dropped her daughter off for her first day of preschool and saw a man in a dress dropping off his daughter as well. And just across the street, the abandoned Spooner’s trailer park was crawling with meth addicts.

“Initially, I was thinking, this was a show,” she recalled, while sitting in her sunny home perched on a ridgetop just about a mile from the trailer park, now a posh, glamping resort. “We thought, OK. This is what it’s like here. We’re just going to have to get used to it.”

Like an episode of Amazon’s “Transparent” (about a transgender father) crossed with an episode of AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” the eccentric river community ended up inspiring Scesa to write a script for her own short film, “Stumptown,” as the first narrative project for her video company, Pixel Grove Productions.

Filming started last November, with her friend and Broadway actress Brooke Tansley of Guerneville in the starring role and other locals filling out the small cast. The script follows the journey of five, diverse identities through a Sonoma-centric thicket of pot growing and immigration, family life and sexuality.

The town of Guerneville was first dubbed Stumptown in honor of the redwood stumps left in the wake of the logging boom that built San Francisco in the 1800s.

Name with meaning

Scesa found the name apt for her film, because like the stumps, her characters must also endure the challenges of an ever-changing social landscape.

“Living in the heart of this mystical town called Guerneville, it is easy to see that there is so much to be said about cultural differences,” she said. “There is a need for a better understanding of diversity.”

The dramedy “Stumptown” includes Maggie, a fortysomething woman in an abusive marriage, who finds sanctuary in her friendship with a young, twentysomething woman named Annie and romance with the son of Mexican immigrants, Ray, Jr.; as well as Annie’s father, Rick, who is a gay “Papa Bear,” pot grower and computer programmer. Like David Lynch’s quirky “Twin Peaks” TV series, it also stars a small town with lots of quirks and character.

“This is not so much a mystery as self-exploration,” Scesa explained. “When you live in the woods, it’s more about your state of being ... we call it river time. Things get done in the pace they will ... and that’s what the film is about.”

During the initial, two-week shoot in November, Scesa and her assistant, Dominique Columbo of Rohnert Park, filmed scenes on location at Goat Rock Beach, in a trailer in Duncans Mills, at Pat’s Bar in downtown Guerneville and at Gracianna Winery in Healdsburg.

Indie film mood

Her goal is to capture the mood of such indie movies as “Garden State” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” along with on-demand TV series like “Transparent” and the New York City dramedy, “Girls,” created by, and starring, Lena Dunham.

“Lena is about my age and having lived in New York, I can relate,” she said. “But the tone of my piece is different. You can’t compare it to New York ... in the show ‘Girls,’ there’s this nervous New York energy about it. They are always moving on to the next job, and the next guy.”

Instead, the visuals and soundtrack to “Stumptown” evoke the richness and diversity of the region, where the beauty of the forest stands in stark contrast to the darker currents of life on the edge.

“I want to show the visual beauty and calmness and fog and redwoods,” she said. “But you get shocked when the abusive husband is banging on the door, and you’ve got this anger and ugliness, and quite a bit of dark comedy, I like to think.”

Although Scesa had planned to complete the second half of the film in February - including a pivotal scene of Ray, Jr., and his father pruning the storied grape vines of Wine Country - Mother Nature had other plans, and she has taken a rain check.

But the dark storm clouds offered a silver lining, as the delay inspired Sceca to transform her existing footage into a trailer and a pilot for a TV script, with 12 episodes for on-demand streaming.

“We want to pitch the trailer and pilot, with the second half of the film as the second episode,” she said. “Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu are the ones with on-demand options. I think there’s more opportunity there to tell the many stories, instead of being limited to a short film.”

For the future, Scesa hopes to assemble a strong team around her so she doesn’t have to wear so many hats.

“For the series, I’d like to have a writing team to work with, or to co-write together,” she said. “I dream of sitting at a round table with a team of people.”

Originally a graphic designer, Scesa transitioned early into professional photography, shooting sporting events and celebrity appearances for the NFL in Miami. Later, while living in Panama with her husband, she starting teaching photography and naturally took up cinematography as a way to capture that country’s rich and exotic culture.

Film classes

In 2014, she moved to California to become a filmmaker, taking workshops and classes to get herself up to speed, including NYU graduate Brian Antonson’s class in digital filmmaking at Santa Rosa Junior College.

“He was a cameraman for The Discovery Channel,” she said. “He lit a fire for me ... I took everything, and I ran with it.

It was in that class that she wrote the synopsis for “Stumptown.” Although she tried to find a writer in Los Angeles, she ended up writing the script herself with help from Tansley, who is a producer as well as a SAG (Screen Writer’s Guild) actress with Hollywood credentials.

“She’s been a huge mentor for me,” she said.

“For a script, you have to write as if you are seeing it. The novel is metaphorical. In script form, it’s very literal, like you are writing for a toddler.”

One of Scesa’s big-picture goals is to change the male-dominated aspect of the film industry, and she views “Stumptown” as a step in the right direction, with a team of mostly women running the show.

As the mother of a young girl - Safi, 6 - Scesa hopes the narrative project will inspire other women to pursue their dreams as well.

“This film is not only important for redefining the state of our current culture, but for redefining the culture that is film, as well,” she said.

“Women deserve an open door into roles such as directors, producers and cinematographers.”

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.