After an extended cinematic debut in theaters, Austin-made comedy film The Long Shot will hit streaming services Friday, April 10. The story follows a familiar Austin issue: trying to save an old green space from redevelopment.
The Long Shot, directed by Austin Nichols, stars Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars) and Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) as they attempt to preserve the Austin Municipal Golf Course, or "Muny."
In the film, this course is as Old Austin as it gets: It's run by Ray Mueller (Hansen) who lives in an airstream on the course, because rent is too high in the city. Its regulars are an odd mix of hippies, cowboys, and one guy who likes to cosplay as a knight, and the price to play is dirt cheap. This sprawling course is situated in the heart of West Central Austin — making it expensive to hold onto, and a developer's dream.
For most Austinites, this should be sounding more documentary than 90s-esque ensemble comedy at this point, since The Long Shot is basically telling the very real story of Lion's Municipal Golf Course, or "Muny," give or take a few details. Ever since its lease with UT Austin expired in 2019, Muny has been under threat of being sold to the highest bidder.
Currently, the Muny Foundation is hoping to raise funds to purchase the land itself. Of course, this nostalgic, absurdist, and raunchy comedy fictionalizes the struggle, but the idea is the same: Muny needs saving, and the people who love Austin come together to do it.
The plot hinges on a wild Muny tradition called the "Loose Cannon" — a big, costumed, community grassroots event that the crew has 48 hours to pull off in order to raise $180K. Otherwise, Muny gets sold to a California AI tech bro who's gone behind his new transplant girlfriend Sam's back (Palicki) to scoop up the land for his new headquarters.
Adrianne Palicki and Ryan Hansen in The Long Shot. Photo courtesy of Vantage Media
Film director Austin Nichols is a born-and-raised Austinite, and a golfer to boot. Though Nichols has directed television in the past, this is his directorial debut for film, and he was as surprised as anyone to find himself directing a comedy about Austin.
"I didn't really see my first movie as being a comedy," he says to CultureMap. "But the people showed up, the money showed up, the actors showed up, the crew, everybody just kind of fell in love with it, and ... it sort of took on its own momentum."
He frames the creative pursuit as an inevitability. "Sometimes you kinda gotta listen to the universe, and it was saying, make it," he says.
Since this is such an Austin-centric movie, the cast is largely Texan. Palicki has lived in Austin since her Friday Night Lights days. Most of the rest of the cast lives in Austin or Houston, or has deep Texas roots. It's a deliberate choice, Nichols says, to cast people who genuinely understand the place.
The film makes the most of its hometown, too. Locations include Deep Eddy Cabaret, the Yellow Rose, and Mama Dearest, a sleeper-hit bar, per Nichols, with taxidermied animals, nude paintings, and money on the walls. Krause Springs stands in for Barton Springs and Willie Nelson's own "Willie's Cut and Putt" golf course provides those wide-open green spaces.
Nichols hopes to strike a balance between moralizing and real entertainment.
"Really, the most important thing to me is to entertain an audience. And I want to make people feel something," he says. "And maybe there's a little bit of a wake-up call in there — to hang on to our beloved spaces, our parks, our favorite coffee shops. The second that a city becomes cool and really valuable, let's not just knock everything down and start building more hotels."
The Long Shot, distributed by Vantage Media, recently showed at Violet Crown Cinema where demand for screenings extended the run by a week, with several Q&As. The movie is available to stream starting April 10 on Amazon, Fandango, and Apple.
