A local filmmaker is celebrating the release of his latest production.
Robert Bellamy of JX3 Media wrote, directed, and produced "A Long Ride Home," a six-episode series that's streaming on Bell Fibe TV1 starting Thursday, February 26.
The show is about Mike Gale, a man who grew up in Chatham, but left when he was 16 because he was being abused by his father.
"Twenty-five years later, he gets a call from his mom that his dad was killed in prison," said Bellamy. "So he has to go back home and find out what's going on, but his dad was also the VP in a motorcycle club so there's a little bit of stuff that he has to skirt around."
The series came together from two different scripts that Bellamy was working on.
"I actually started the script about eight years ago about a lawyer that comes home with his daughter to live with his parents, and it just wasn't working," said Bellamy. "It the same time I was doing a podcast with Sid Vicious from wrestling, and he wanted to come to Canada to film. So I wrote a scene for him, and it was one of the scenes you actually see in the show. When COVID hit, and he couldn't come up anymore, I decided to combine those two scripts and create what we have now."
Filming took place last year at locations across Chatham-Kent, and most of the cast and crews are local.
"Our main lead is actually from London, but about 90 per cent of the cast and crews is from Chatham. There was just a couple of others from Windsor, London, and Peterborough," said Bellamy. "We were in Bothwell, we were at Spanky's, went to the GME (Game Master's Emporium). Anything local we could find is where we filmed."
All six episodes are available to stream now on Bell Fibe TV1 at https://tv1.bell.ca/fibetv1/shows/a-long-ride-home.
