Movie Spotlight: Showdown in Secret City

In 2020, an internet meme showed what happens when you ask an AI to write a Batman movie. It was bad. It was so bad that a Tennessee comedy troupe decided to build an entire feature film around laughing at it. Six years later, the joke stopped being funny.

Showdown in Secret City is the fourth film from Big ‘N Funky Productions, the Pigeon Forge outfit run by Vinnie Vineyard, Travis Graves, Kandi Thompson, and Luke Walker, who all play exaggerated versions of themselves on screen. The film is set in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, once known as The Secret City for its role in the Manhattan Project, where a rogue AI named Fritz decides the crew’s low-budget comedies would run a lot smoother without any actual humans involved.

The Batman meme that wouldn’t die

The whole thing started as a joke about a joke. “When we were filming our first movie The Hike, Travis found an internet meme where A.I. tried to write a Batman movie,” Vineyard said. “It was so bad it was funny. Like really really funny. He wanted to make it a skit for our Youtube channel, but we later decided to develop it into a film exposing how silly A.I. is. Boy, were we wrong.” That original meme script survives almost untouched inside the movie as “Guano-Man,” a deliberately terrible superhero screenplay that becomes a smash hit anyway. “The only thing we changed were a few points here and there for punchiness and the Batman character names,” Vineyard said. “That was legit A.I. in 2020. It is scary how much better it has become in 6 years.”

Oak Ridge has its own mythology

Big ‘N Funky has spent four films now mining the legends of the Great Smoky Mountains, and Oak Ridge came with its own folklore built in. “If you have lived near Oak Ridge for any length of time, you have heard of the bonkers legends and lore of that place,” Vineyard said. “While interviewing people for the film, we heard tall tales of weaponized sharks, dark matter, and interdimensional portals. So why not an Artificial Intelligence that wants to make a movie?” Showdown in Secret City is the fourth entry in the group’s Smoky Mountain Chronicles, following The Hike, WJHC AM, and Camp Smokey. A fifth, Lu’s Last Stop, is currently filming.

John Henry, updated

The film opens with the John Henry legend before pivoting to Fritz, and that parallel was there from the start. “I loved the John Henry story since I was a kid and always wanted to do something with it,” Vineyard said. “I wanted to show the audience the first man vs machine story, and then we made up one that could be the final one.”

Playing yourself, four movies in

Vineyard, Thompson, Graves, and Walker have each played wildly different characters across the Smoky Mountain Chronicles, a pervy radio station manager here, a post-apocalyptic demon hunter there. This time they just played themselves. “It seems like the characters I play have been the most similar to who I actually am,” Vineyard said. “One reason we casted ourselves as ‘Big N Funky as an exaggerated version of the real Big N Funky’ was because our fans from pro wrestling, our paranormal show, and our sketch comedy wanted us to be ourselves in one of our movies. We finally gave them what they wanted.”

Finding a secret lab without a location scout

Nobody outside Oak Ridge really knows what the inside of a national laboratory looks like, which Vineyard said gave the production some cover. The lab’s interiors ended up being a brand new chiropractor’s office, an abandoned post office, a music studio, and a roller rink. One shot came together by accident entirely: a scene following a character into a building was filmed during the actual demolition of an old factory in Newport, Tennessee. “The smoldering fire piles were wonderful cosmic coincidence,” Vineyard said. “They looked great on film. It was golden hour, too. We just had to appease a few nosey homeless people with our tales of being pro wrestlers and they left us alone after that.”

A comedy with something to say

Underneath the jokes, Vineyard is arguing for something specific. “My own daughter, a massively talented artist, has given up trying to create anything anymore because she feels like there is no point in it if AI can do it for free and society wants what A.I. burps out,” he said. “This movie is a silly little comedy, but I feel it is paramount for us as a species to take a stand in whatever ways we can. This is how we took ours.” He put it more bluntly when asked what he hopes people argue about once the credits roll. “I hope there is no discussion. I hope, as a society, that we reject machine made art and encourage humans to keep doing that for us. If A.I. wants to cure cancer, glory-glory, halleluiah. But if it wants to paint a pretty picture, let it keep that noise to itself.”

What to know before you press play

“If you miss old school comedy movies, this is the one,” Vineyard said. “We are proud of how this one turned out, and we feel like the jokes land and the point was made. Also, Relay is funktastic, and if you are curious about the other legends and lore in the Smoky Mountain Chronicles, all of our movies are there on Relay, as well as our other comedies that we appear in and self produce. We hope you enjoy them, and as always, believe in the funk.”

Comedy

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Streaming now on Relay.