{"id":14351,"date":"2020-12-02T00:44:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T07:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=14351"},"modified":"2020-12-02T00:44:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T07:44:13","slug":"filmmakers-life-career-a-road-less-traveled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/02\/filmmakers-life-career-a-road-less-traveled\/","title":{"rendered":"Filmmaker\u2019s Life, Career A \u2018Road Less Traveled\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Local filmmaker Aric Iverson, second from left, addresses the audience at the Twin Falls film festival in 2019 where he won an award for his acting in the film he wrote and directed called Road Less Traveled. Photo credit: Aric Iverson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Plotwise, Aric Iverson\u2019s indie movie couldn\u2019t be further from the local filmmaker\u2019s own bio. But the film\u2019s title\u2014Road Less Traveled\u2014sums up the lifelong Idahoan\u2019s life journey superbly. It\u2019s not every day that an award-winning writer-director can also claim mixed martial arts championships, professional snowboarding sponsorships, renowned custom tilesetting skills, and a departure from the Jehovah\u2019s Witness religion in his teenage years that also saw him drop out of school.<\/p>\n

Yet those are exactly the experiences the Bellevue resident can draw on as he doubles down on what has inadvertently become his deepest passion\u2014auteur filmmaking. On Thanksgiving Day, Iverson released, for free, on YouTube, the 12-minute, 25-second film he wrote, directed, starred in and produced on a total budget of zero dollars, but has been selected by more than two dozen film festivals nationally and garnered him nearly a dozen festival circuit awards, including a best actor nod at the Twin Falls Sandwiches Film Festival in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my first film, so I really wasn\u2019t even thinking I\u2019d be selected by any of the festivals,\u201d Iverson said. \u201cSometimes we weren\u2019t even sure what budget category to select because we did it on a zero-dollar budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Numerous \u201claurels\u201d\u2014awards and recognitions from film festivals\u2014now grace the movie poster for Road Less Traveled. Photo credit: Aric Iverson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iverson comes by his humility honestly. There\u2019s something about professional snowboarding and competitive fighting that, despite the exhilarating highs, at some point you\u2019re always brought back down to Earth. And then there was his teenage years as a member of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, a religion known for putting the interest of God before the particular interests of any human. Iverson said the faith was never his cup of tea, but being in the religion meant he had to tear down his Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme posters and become what he described as \u201ca closet martial arts practitioner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid, I wanted to be Van Damme,\u201d Iverson explained. \u201cSo my road to acting and my road to fighting coincided from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iverson\u2019s athletic accomplishments and experiences were not the only plot points in his life that brought lessons of highs and lows. Already in the mid 2000s, Iverson was writing screenplays, something he did in the hopes of developing characters that he could play himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy first passion was acting and I just felt I needed to create some characters myself,\u201d Iverson explained.<\/p>\n

He did this superbly, too. One of the scripts, \u201cRotten Wood Creek,\u201d was optioned by a production company in Los Angeles. It even had an experienced director from the UK attached to it in Nick Cohen, best known for a feature film called \u201cThe Reeds,\u201d among dozens of other directing and writing credits. Then the Great Recession hit in 2007 and by 2008 funding and development fell through.<\/p>\n

Another script, \u201cFallacy,\u201d has its own special anecdote attached to it. One night, when Iverson was tending bar in Hailey, a Hollywood actor was a patron and noticed Iverson\u2019s first name\u2014Aric. The actor said the best script he\u2019d ever read was written by some guy also named Aric. Iverson asked about the title of the script; the actor replied, \u201cFallacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose experiences made me finally say, \u2018Screw it, I think I need to make the entire movie myself,\u2019\u201d Iverson said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Iverson wrote \u201cRoad Less Traveled\u201d and put together an acting ensemble and a crew that included mostly first-timers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a team of people helping out any way they could,\u201d Iverson said. \u201cI learned so much about the entire filmmaking process, things I couldn\u2019t even imagine before. There\u2019s so much involved with making a movie, it\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hard work involved with being a filmmaker is something that doesn\u2019t phase Iverson. For that, he credits his father, Cliff Iverson, who founded and operated the family\u2019s successful tilesetting company, Lei\u2019s Custom Tile, which has made a name for itself working on the interiors of many high-profile north Valley estates. He also credits MMA training.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraining is harder than a fight ever is, if you\u2019re training right,\u201d Iverson explained.<\/p>\n

As for the creativity, Iverson says that\u2019s the DNA legacy of his mom. His mother, Rhonda Iverson, is a renowned artist specializing in plein air.<\/p>\n

Credit for rolling with life\u2019s punches, though, falls on the shoulders of Iverson, the accomplished athlete. The bumps and bruises acquired in snowboarding and fighting are not failures or losses. If understood correctly, they are lessons learned\u2014the ingredient of any great work of art. \u201cRoad Less Traveled\u201d is Iverson\u2019s first punch thrown, but it\u2019s clear there will always be more.<\/p>\n

\n

Facebook: Road Less Traveled Short Film<\/p>\n

https:\/\/bit.ly\/37ixjXC<\/p>\n

Watch at:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/bit.ly\/3lpGpXH<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine Plotwise, Aric Iverson\u2019s indie movie couldn\u2019t be further from the local filmmaker\u2019s own bio. But the film\u2019s title\u2014Road Less Traveled\u2014sums up the lifelong Idahoan\u2019s life journey superbly. It\u2019s not every day that an award-winning writer-director can also claim mixed martial arts championships, professional snowboarding sponsorships, renowned custom tilesetting skills, and a departure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-news","9":"category-slider"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}