The Fort Worth native’s film features formerly incarcerated actors and an unusual pay structure.

Fort Worth native Greg Kvedar wants to change the pay structure in independent films.

The Trinity Valley graduate produced two films in which everyone from Oscar-nominated lead Colman Domingo to the production assistant received the same salary. Ownership of the film was also divided equally based on the amount of time spent working on each stage of the project.

Sing Sing is based on the true story of men incarcerated in the New York City prison of the same name who find meaning in a theatrical rehabilitation program.

Kvedar and his longtime creative partner were able to successfully use this model in their film Jockey and felt that this system was especially important for Sing Sing given its content and stars. The cast included 13 men who served time at Sing Sing.

“To have them literally own their story and be on the same playing field as the star of the movie is saying… something very, very powerful,” Kvedar said. “You have the same intrinsic value as everyone else on this project, especially, you know, you just came out of a world and a system that is trying to make you worse.”

If you go

What: Screening of the film “Sing Sing”
When: 12:30 November 2
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell Street.
Tolerance: 10 dollars

Kvedar, who directed, co-wrote and produced the film, will be in Fort Worth for a screening of the film at the Lone Star Film Festival at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St. Co-writer and producer Clint Bentley will join him on stage for a post-film Q&A.

The project has been implemented for eight and a half years.

While working on a short documentary in a Kansas prison, Kvedar remembers seeing a young man and a rescue dog in a cell, which changed his previous ideas about maximum security prisons.

“It stopped me in my tracks because it upended my expectations of prison and prisoners, which were largely based on the movies I grew up with,” he said. “Here I witnessed something completely different. I saw healing happen in both directions between this person and the animal compassion camp.”

The tenderness of this moment prompted Kvedar to start searching for other similar programs, and he came across Rehabilitation through artwhich began in Sing Sing in the 1990s.

“I read this Article in Esquire magazine middle of the night production of a 2005 time travel musical comedy called Crack the Mummy Code, and I was just captivated by the playfulness of the work compared to the environment in which it was set,” he said. “I just wanted to experience the joy that these people have in the process, so that was the beginning of the journey.”

Kvedar and Bentley turned to Brent Buell, a real-life playwright and RTA volunteer.

To understand the story, Buell told them they needed to meet men who were graduates of the program and invited them to breakfast.

“Around the breakfast table there was this amazing energy, good humor, vulnerability, warmth and joy,” continued Kvedar. “We thought: If we could just capture that feeling in a film, we’d have something special.”

The duo then spent a year volunteering in a theater program at Green Haven, a maximum security prison in upstate New York.

As Kvedar and Bentley wrote, the script never matched the spirit they felt at the breakfast, Kvedar said. To achieve that level of authenticity, he said, formerly incarcerated men had to be part of the storytelling process.

“We invited the real Divine G and the real God Eye into the filmmaking process with us to help us develop the script, and then when we met Colman and he came on board… and the circle kept expanding,” Kvedar said. “We’re honored that it felt like a big community art project that involved everyone. And everyone really had a voice, and it seemed like it belonged to them.”

The film debuted at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival and was later acquired by A24, the film production company behind “Everything All At Once” and “The Pearl.”

Kvedar is grateful for all the attention surrounding the film, but said nothing compares to holding screenings in prisons where men see their experiences reflected on the big screen, performed by men who were also incarcerated.

“When one of these men (in the film) comes on stage after we meet the audience,” Kvedar said, “there’s an electricity that I’ve never seen in a theater before.”

Marketa Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at [email protected]. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of board members and financial sponsors. Learn more about our editorial independence policy Here.

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