Real life finds way into reels

PROVO — Tom Russell somberly finished his phone call and let the news sink in. His wife, Angie, who had been battling cancer, only had a few more days to live. Taking a moment to regain himself, he returned to the set where he was directing a movie.

That night, Russell, a Brigham Young University film professor, was directing a scene where a principal character accepts the loss of his wife to cancer and for the first time allows his heart to break. The cast and crew maintained an air of reverence as they realized what the scene meant for their vulnerable director.

Less than a week later, on July 5 at 1 a.m., Angie Russell died.

"Every time I see that scene in the movie it's moving to me, not just because of the content of it, but because I remember that crew," Tom Russell said. "There was a warmth and kindness and camaraderie and mutual respect. There were all the mistakes that happen on movies and then some, but just about everybody finished that film kind of grateful for the experience."

Russell insists he did not intend for "Mr. Dungbeetle," the movie he wrote and directed, to be so autobiographical. Around the time filming began, Angie Russell decided to stop her chemotherapy treatments. Before she told her husband she made him promise he would finish the movie.

"I see a lot of her in it," Russell said, "I see a lot of me in it."

Russell had written a movie called "Mental," a short film that explored the idea of what helping other people another requires.

"I thought, it's really interesting how people will tend to try to seek out that help or will try to kind of impose help instead of really listening and finding out where somebody is and going to them there," Russell said.

The same idea of helping others was maintained in the revised version of "Mental," now renamed "Mr. Dungbeetle," but when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, the script evolved to encompass the idea of facing and overcoming personal challenges.

"It's a frightening time, and it's a time that tries your faith. It's a time that kind of brings you out so that idea of facing and confronting fear was central to me," Russell said.

"Mr. Dungbeetle" is about five schizophrenic patients who escape from a low-security mental institution and the doctor who comes after them. Their leader, Phillip, has recently read about the dungbeetle, an insect worshiped by the Egyptians for its supposed selfless quality of shouldering others' burdens.