Seattle PI
Everything is coming together for Lynn Shelton, a local independent filmmaker that some would argue holds the keys to the Seattle film community’s future in her hands. “What we need” waxes George Wing, a Seattle-based screenwriter whose credits include Outsourced and 50 First Dates, “In order to succeed and become a viable market to bring in other projects, are two things: a prolific writer/director that lives and works here and a TV Show.” “More than one ideally,” he adds, “. . .of each.” Wing’s logic is based on the film scene in Austin, Texas which boasts two very big filmmaking fish, Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez, as well as in Portland with its two big filmmakers, Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. Meanwhile, everyone in Seattle is rooting for Lynn Shelton, an award-winning filmmaker who seems to be carrying on as if unworried, unhurried and undoubtably unfazed. After all, she’s already brought not only three feature-length films into fruition, one being the Sundance success story Humpday, a bro-mance that tests the loving limits of two hetero-bros, she’s also brought a Web-based TV show to our neck of the woods. That show is MTV’s $5 Cover. Now in its second season, Shelton takes over from where the show’s creator Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) left off. Reporter Shawn Telford recently sat down with Shelton over tea in Greenwood to discuss the Seattle filmmaking scene and her contributions to it.