By ASHLEY WORLEY/Staff Writer
In 2015, Grayson Lackey stepped into the lobby of the historic Liberty Hall. It was filled with faces he didn’t recognize. He was 16, homeschooled, raised on an East Texas cattle ranch and worked baling hay in a field.
He was also a filmmaker.
But his mother and father didn’t quite know it yet.
That night, Grayson’s parents accompanied him at the Tyler Film Festival. They had an edge of uncertainty about the event. While they loved movies, their family had never experienced local filmmaking.
Was this a hobby? A career? Where did this fit in their son’s life?
When Grayson walked in, he knew no one else in the room. By the time he walked out, he would meet someone who would become his closest friend and ultimately change the course of his career.
THE LOVE OF FILMMAKING
Today, Grayson Lackey is an award-winning director and cinematographer. He owns a Tyler studio, Pine Curtain Film Co., with his filmmaking partner Kenny Rigsby. Together, they produce commercials and verité documentaries—a style of documentary filmmaking that relies heavily on observation and unscripted scenes.
To capture these unfiltered moments, Grayson and Kenny spend extensive time with their subjects. To shoot their verité docu-series “Fighters,” they spent a year and half tailing local boxers.
“Following their careers, their lives, going back to their apartments and trying to craft a story through that. . . . That’s the main thing we do,” Grayson says.
Grayson also produces independent video projects between commercial and documentary jobs. Creating narrative films for a living is his goal, but independent filmmaking isn’t easy to finance.
“From a financial point of view, in order to make a film, you have to give people a reason to think it needs to exist,” he explains. “I think if anyone looked at . . . commercial filmmaking versus telling real people’s stories, there’s obviously more value here. But there’s barely any money in independent film. So, we have to do both.”
To keep their company afloat, Grayson and Kenny spend at least half their time doing commercials. This work funds the projects they’re passionate about.
For Grayson, filmmaking is therapy.
“I love directing stuff that comes from within myself, stuff that I’m processing, stuff that I’m thinking about.”
Grayson’s connection to the art of filmmaking motivates him to keep creating.
“This isn’t just a job to me,” he continues. “Filmmaking feels like a relationship. This is the thing that’s gotten me through so many things in my life.”
It was one of those difficult things in life that inspired his first short film.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Grayson began making videos just for fun. He and a group of friends recorded parodies of other films on a PlayStation Portable gaming console, since none of them had smartphones.
While his friends’ interest in filmmaking gradually waned, Grayson’s only grew.
“I just got obsessed with it, like everybody else,” Grayson says, “and then stayed obsessed with it.”
His first serious film originated from a dark event in his life.
“My dad had to move out of the house for a while,” Grayson says. “I was going through a ton of stuff and trying to figure all that out as a young teenager. And some sort of idea came to me. It’s like, I don’t know how to handle this . . . so I’m going to make a film about it.
“Don’t Run Away” depicts in “a broad sense . . . my relationship with my dad.”
The film, and the ones that came after it, act as narrative time capsules of Grayson’s past.
“It’s funny looking back on it, . . . you can see where I was in my head with each passing year and what I’m thinking about,” he says. “But that first film . . . helped me process a huge, dark point in my life. I think that’s what made me stick with it.”
FILMMAKING COMMUNITY
A year after it was made, “Don’t Run Away” was accepted as entry and for screening at the 2015 Downtown Tyler Film Festival in Liberty Hall.
“I love the festival,” Grayson says. “I give a lot of credit to it getting me started.”
After the screening of Grayson’s film, Justin Reese, the festival’s director, introduced himself to Grayson and his parents.
“He told them specifically: ‘He needs to keep doing this.’ I’ve had so many people help me in my career in so many ways, especially when I was younger. But I think without Justin . . . I’m not sure I’d be doing this right now,” says Grayson.
Justin’s encouragement changed Grayson’s skeptical parents. The sense of uncertainty as they’d walked through the door seemed to disappear.
“After that night,” Grayson says, “after they saw the director of the festival come up to them and say, ‘Hey, this guy has it,’ they were not only supportive, but pushed me to do it.”
Grayson’s continued to make shorts the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that.
Some of his films have played before audiences at film festivals in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Others, like his most recent work, have been part of the selections featured in the Downtown Tyler Film Festival.
Craig O’Daniel, Tyler Film Festival’s current director, says the festival, which screens dozens of films each fall, exists to help creatives like Grayson connect with one another.
“I’ve seen conversations happening, and that’s really how all that starts. … Anybody who’s making a film here in East Texas, we want to support that as much as we can,” O’Daniel says. “That’s the role of the festival, is to get as many people as possible to see our local filmmakers’ films.”
‘I USED TO PLAY PIANO’
Grayson’s most recent short, “I Used to Play Piano,” is a music-driven story about a musician who forgets how to play her instrument.
Grayson based the film off the experiences of his sister, Jordyn Lackey, who had quit writing music for years and then tried to resume.
“I was like, this is my thing and I’ve lost my thing,” Jordyn says of regaining her passion.
In an effort to start writing again, Jordyn sat down at a piano—an instrument she can play but isn’t “fluent” in.
The piano helped her breakthrough her writer’s block.
“People say that when you speak a different language, you can be more honest in the second language, because your original language you have too much baggage in, right?” Jordyn says.
“Same deal. And I thought now that I’m writing songs again, I need to do the thing that scares me—which is share them,” she says.
With its vulnerable, personal lyrics, Jordyn’s resulting breakthrough song moved Grayson.
“The end—one of the last lines of the last verse—is that she wants to be held,” Grayson says. “I know her very well, and I know what it took to say that. She’s obnoxiously shy when it comes to her music.”
Filming such an intimate story had its own set of challenges. But, according to Jordyn, her brother came well-equipped to meet them.
“He makes people feel comfortable. He’s kind. He’s direct, and he’s in charge, but he very much takes care of people,” she says.
RETURNING TO LIBERTY HALL
In 2024, Grayson stepped back into the lobby of Liberty Hall for the film festival. This time there were several familiar faces, including his friend Justin, who was one of the judges.
“It feels like it’s funny, too,” Grayson says. “Stuart Smith (a film critic for KLTV), who’s the MC this year, hadn’t MC’d in a while, and he was the MC when I first got started. I was actually sitting next to Justin the first night of this year’s festival. I was like, man, this takes me back. It feels like when I first got started.”
And, possibly, it feels like home
