Pop-Culturalist.com

Ben Winchell, Will Brittain, and Aimee Teegarden are the stars of Joe Hall’s The Road to Galena.

The film follows one man’s pursuit of personal fulfillment over traditional success. Cole Baird (Ben Winchell) has everything—a beautiful wife, successful career, large home, and membership to an elite country club.

Behind the facade, however, is a man trapped by his surroundings and falling ever behind in the pursuit of his life’s dream.

Not strong enough to confront his father’s expectations, he left his true love, his best friend, and a fulfilling life in small-town America to embark on a legal career—intent to, one day, return.

Now the rising star in Washington social circles and the youngest managing partner in the history of a powerhouse D.C. law firm, Cole is given the choice to continue the path of success in a life to which he never aspired or to return to the community that nurtured him.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Joe, Ben, Will, and Aimee about the project.

PC: Joe, I want to start with you. As the writer, producer, and director of The Road to Galena, can you share the genesis of this story?
Joe: This is a story that I’ve thought about for a long time. It’s about the notion that people carry their hopes and dreams with them. Oftentimes, they’ll carry them their whole lives and never speak them out loud. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be harder if you had this chance to pursue your dream, but to do it, you had to give up all the trappings of success?”

I was out on the Eastern Shore on a trip with one of my sons. On the drive with all of this beautiful landscape, the story came to me. I built it from there.

It’s a story that I hope everyone can see a bit of themselves in. People keep asking me if it’s autobiographical, and I think everyone hopefully is going to be able to see a bit of themselves in it.

PC: Ben, Aimee, and Will, at the center of this story is a friendship between your three characters. How were you all able to build that bond while filming during a pandemic?
Will: Luckily, these guys are really cool, so it wasn’t hard at all. It was effortless. These are all great actors and great people to be around.

Ben: We all got along really quickly. It also helped that we were all living in pretty much what felt like camp. We spent all our time together. We were all in this little bubble. I had a great time working with these two. I felt like we really created a fun little friendship, especially on set. It felt like camp.

Aimee: Joe set a really wonderful tone. Beyond even camp, it was shooting during a pandemic on the Eastern Shore. It became very much a family. These guys are wonderful. I think it shows up on screen: the relationships and ties that we built.

PC: There’s a beautiful line within the film about the dreams that don’t go away and once you realize them you can’t help but get out of their way. For each of you, when did you discover that you wanted to be a storyteller and that the arts were your calling?
Joe: I’ve always had an interest in telling stories. I like writing stories, and shooting them has been a lifelong interest of mine. It was a real gift to have a chance to get this story out, which was a personal one. It was a gift to be able to get this story out with such a wonderful cast and crew to bring it to life and at a time when I feel it’s a message that people need to hear.

Ben: I was young. I started doing theater when I was five or six, and I fell in love with the idea of playing someone who isn’t me on stage. I still love the stage. But it was in middle school when I really realized I love the idea of storytelling. Thankfully I had a little bit of a head start in being able to have fun with it from the age of five. I loved the idea of telling stories, whether it was on stage or on camera—writing, acting, everything that’s encompassed within the idea of what storytelling is.

Aimee: I was pretty young. I was lucky enough to have grown up in LA. My mom was a hygienist. My dad was a chemical engineer. They were not in the industry at all. But I really loved I Love Lucy. She was the be-all, end-all. There was something about that TV show and Lucille Ball. I didn’t understand what she did, but the way that she did it was so captivating. I started doing some commercials. It built from there. As I’ve gotten further in my career, the medium that I use for storytelling has evolved from being on camera to writing and directing.

Will: Mine’s easy. I was sixteen and all the pretty girls were in there. So I was like, “There you go.”

PC: Ben, there’s a moment when your character confronts his father and explains the toll that living up to his expectations has had on him. You brought so much conviction with that scene in particular. How did you prepare for that moment?
Ben: It was a lot of looking inward and working with Joe to find the desperation that is coming out of him. I remember that day on set was frustrating because it was a lot. It was a long scene. It was a heavy scene. Going off of what Will said earlier, it was really helpful that we had all that rehearsal time and were able to have conversations prior. It was really trusting that what Joe had written was exactly what needed to be said. Having Joe guiding me through all of those aspects really helped bring that scene to life. So at the end of the day, it was trusting Joe in the early processes during rehearsals and having conversations about that scene—and with Jay [Sanders] as well, who played my father. He and I talked a lot about that scene and stayed up the night prior dissecting it and going over it. It was great. It was a lot of fun.

Joe: There was a lot of great collaboration in that scene. Ben had great insights into the emotion of that moment. Jay was awesome. He had some really interesting insights into where his character was in that moment and where he was from a mindset perspective. A lot of that was unspoken at that point. He expressed the weight of the burden that he was bringing to the scene. That was great. They performed it beautifully, but it was the result of a lot of collaboration there.

PC: Aimee, like you were saying earlier, in addition to the work that you’ve done on screen, you’ve started writing and directing. How has your work behind the camera affected the way that you approach your work on screen and vice versa?
Aimee: Oh gosh. It definitely has. It’s even changed the way that I watch television and movies. I think about setups, camera lenses, and the production value. I’m like, “If you cut out this or that, what’s the transition piece? Where would I have ended it?” I’ve been very lucky to have grown up working on a television set. All of those years and hours spent between setups, asking questions and working with people who have been so open and have informed my education in that way. It’s given me a different perspective on film and TV.

PC: Will, similar to Ben’s character, your character is someone that is trying to provide for his family. There’s a heartbreaking moment towards the end of the film, which we don’t need to go into detail on, but how did you prepare for that? What was your decompression after filming that scene?
Will: You try to come in on your toes and lean on your director. You have a lot of people around you in a very emotionally charged environment. We had such a great crew.

PC: Joe, this is your feature film debut as a writer and director. Did anything surprise you about the experience? What’s been the biggest takeaway that you’re going to apply to future projects?
Joe: Honestly, for my first feature film, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. It was such a remarkably collaborative group and everybody enjoyed each other’s company. Everyone respected each other. Anytime you go through something like this for the first time, there are a lot of technical things you learn that will be helpful in the next go-around.

But for me, it was a terrific experience. It motivates me to move quickly on the next one. We ended up with a really beautiful film, and it’s the result of the hard work of every single person on that crew. Every single person on that crew had their part in telling the story, as did everyone in the cast. I take great pride in collaboration. I think we deliver our best when everybody has a chance to do what they do well. We were blessed with a really wonderfully talented group of folks.

PC: Ben, Aimee, and Will, you’ve worked on projects of all sizes. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you as a creative?
Aimee: I love the freedom of it. I love that it’s a scrappy crew. That’s how it tends to be. These are people who are really passionate about a project. There’s so much more freedom in storytelling, the characters, and the nuances that you don’t necessarily get with a bigger project that’s meant for a very specific audience or distribution.

Ben: I completely agree with Aimee. I think that everybody that shows up wants to be there. There’s a lot of heart there. Everybody’s there because they want to make a story as opposed to just a paycheck on something that might be on a larger scale. I find that with working on indies you find people who really love storytelling rather than people who want to make a movie for the sake of making a movie. I’ve always appreciated that about indie filmmaking.

Will: You’re on the same level too. As an actor, you get treated like you’re the bee’s knees on bigger productions. It’s nice to do movies where everyone is on the same level in terms of their investment in the project. You’re all there working to make a good movie.

Make sure to follow Joe (Twitter/Instagram), Ben (Instagram), Aimee (Twitter/Instagram), and Will (Twitter/Instagram). Road to Galena is out in select theaters and wherever you stream movies.