Independent film "Oildale" coming to Redding and Chico next weekend
An independent film just being released combines country music, family and veterans; and it's coming to Redding and Chico next weekend.
It's called "Oildale" set in the Bakersfield area, Kern County. It features country music, a broken family struggling to survive, physically and emotionally, and veterans who are both healing and healed.
I sat down with the director and writer. Lynn Salt's parents were both military and she has a heart for veterans, especially from Vietnam.
"Americans, and younger generations need to start to understand, how important it is to understand that we have veterans who are living on the streets right now, who should have medical help if they need it, who should have housing, and people who don't understand post traumatic stress, they need to start learning," said Lynn.
No spoilers here, but a country music contest is central to the plot.
"We used to go up to hear Merle Haggard. There's a good tie-in. I guess Merle lived locally here, we understand. So we could see Merle and we thought it would be really great to do a movie around the whole Bakersfield sound, which is a music genre. And then we started toying with some different story ideas, and Lynn noticed the veterans that were around Bakersfield, a lot of homeless veterans, but just veterans in general. And so she incorporated that theme into the movie," said David Mueller.
It's about an hour and a half. If you'd like to see "Oildale," it will be shown in Chico next Friday on October 4, at the El Rey theater at 6:00 p.m.
Then it will be shown at the Cascade Theatre in Redding the next day, a week from Saturday on October 5 at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets are $10, and the proceeds will be split with Veterans Resource Centers of America in both cities.
