Jessica Michael Davis knows how the title of her movie sounds. “Escaping Ohio” conjures images of fleeing the Buckeye State for greener pastures. Or, as Davis said, to put it more succinctly, “It sounds like a diss.”
She wants to assure people that is not the case. “It really is, in my opinion at least, a love letter to Ohio and being proud of where I came from,” she said.
Local audiences will have a chance to see “Escaping Ohio” when it makes its Akron debut tomorrow at House Three Thirty. Filmed in and around the city, the movie follows two best friends, Sam (played by Davis) and JJ (played by Collin Kelly-Sordelet), who are on the cusp of big changes as they prepare for life after college. Sam is eager to leave Ohio for California, but JJ is on a mission to convince her to stay.
The idea for “Escaping Ohio” sprouted during the pandemic. Davis and Kelly-Sordelet met through actress Emily Bergl. She plays Sam’s mom in “Escaping Ohio,” but before that Bergl was Davis’ acting coach at the Tom Todoroff Conservatory in New York City and Kelly-Sordelet’s co-star in an off-Broadway play. Frustrated by the halt in their careers due to the coronavirus, Davis and Kelly-Sordelet decided to write something together.
“Just based off the banter that we had, I immediately had the idea for the two characters that are in ‘Escaping Ohio,’ Sam and JJ,” Davis said. “I sat down to write the script for the short film, and it just kind of came out of me like vomit almost. And it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized how personal it was.”
After production on the short film wrapped, Davis felt like there was more of the story to tell, so she decided to turn it into a feature film, her first. “Escaping Ohio” had its Hollywood premiere in July, followed by stops at the Vashon Island Film Festival in Washington, the Twin Cities Film Festival in Minnesota and the Washington West Film Festival in Virginia, where Davis won the award for Outstanding Directorial Debut.
Family Night: Escaping Ohio Experience
Wednesday, Dec. 13, at 6:30 p.m.
House Three Thirty (532 W. Market St.)
Tickets can be purchased for $10 here.
Akron and Northeast Ohio play large roles in “Escaping Ohio,” and locals will recognize many locations in the film: Swensons on South Hawkins Avenue, Handel’s on Eastwood Avenue, and the recently demolished Akron Rubber Bowl among others.
Davis, who grew up in the Ellet neighborhood, was interested in acting and directing from a young age. When she was 9, she performed a scene from “Harry Potter” during her school talent show. (She cast herself as Harry.) At age 10 she wrote a sequel to her favorite movie, “School of Rock.” (She sent it to the film’s director, Richard Linklater.) And although she had dreams of escaping Ohio like her film’s main character, she said those feelings weren’t black and white.
“[It] isn’t so much because … you’re leaving somewhere bad. It’s actually the opposite–it’s so good,” Davis said. “That actually made it harder to leave because it’s this great thing, and it’s so comfortable. But it’s also the danger of it, too.”
She continued, “I feel like a lot of teen movies, they want to escape because they have it so bad or because they have this Ivy League college they want to go to. I wanted to tell a different type of story. It’s like, no, you can actually have it really good, but still feel in your gut that you’re meant for something more, something different.”
