WEST VIRGINIA (LOOTPRESS) – The rich and storied history of the state of West Virginia is as fascinating as that of any other area throughout the United States. But despite deep cultural and socioeconomic roots dating back well over a century, “The Mountain State” is a pocket of America which arguably has been subject to vast underrepresentation in the mediums of film, music and literature.
With Redneck Army, Nashville-based writing duo Mark Brown and Whitni Resides look to breathe life into facets of Appalachian history which previously ran the risk of being lost to time altogether. Inspired by the Coal Wars and similar conflicts of the early 1900s, the pair have translated these critical events into a gripping script which has already received a number of accolades, including the award for Outstanding Drama Script at the 2022 Catalyst Content Festival and a coveted recommendation from The Black List.
Taking time from the demanding work of facilitating the stories’ effective manifestation to the screen – which will include on-site visits to locations throughout West Virginia – Brown and Resides spoke to LOOTPRESS about the project’s origins, the creative process, and their vision moving forward.
“ I learned in high school about the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Coal Wars, and I had been kicking the idea in my head for years,” Resides says of the project, which details the largest labor uprising in the history of the United States. “I just remember thinking, ‘how have I not heard about these events until now or seen this in a movie or a TV show?’”
Having carried the idea around for a number of years, Resides saw an opportunity to explore the concepts more thoroughly when the COVID-19 pandemic all but brought society as a whole to a screeching halt.
Joining in on these sessions would be Brown, who Resides had previously met in an acting class. When presented with the idea for what would become Redneck Army, Brown jumped at the chance to work on the project, and together the two ran a digital writer’s room in the midst of a nationwide lockdown.
“It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I was lucky enough to meet Mark in my acting class,” she says. “I knew he was a fantastic writer, so I pitched the idea and we started getting to work on the TV show.”
“When I got on to Zoom with Whitni, hearing the story itself along with her passion for the story and the characters themselves that she had already created, it was just something that felt undeniable,” Brown exclaims, detailing how the association came to be.
“We were fortunate in a sense – which I hate to say, as it was due to being in quarantine – that we had the time to actually run a writer’s room. So, we did exactly what every television writer on the planet was doing at the time. We spent hours and hours on Zoom working on the story arc and character arcs. We broke story and bounced ideas off of each other, and we actually wrote the entire first season, which I know sounds kind of crazy. But we banged out 450 pages and wrote the entire first season of the show out during that time.”
The series, which Brown refers to as historical fiction, comprises characters and events pulled directly from the real-life happenings of the coal conflicts during the early 1900s, with creative liberties having been taken as means of more effectively moving the narrative along or incorporating voices which may have otherwise been excluded.
“Everything that happened in the show actually did happen in West Virginia in 1920. So, every single thing that happens to any of these characters is something that did happen to somebody back in that time,” he clarifies. “It might be a character that we created. Or, what you have to do a lot of times, is take a couple of characters and combine them. Because at the end of the day, you can only get so many characters on screen.
We did like there were certain historical markers that we had to stick to. Like, you’ve got to have the shootout; you’ve got to have Sid [Hatfield’s] assassination; you’ve got to have the [1921 protest] march; because that’s the story. You know, you can’t really mess with those, and you really can’t change the order of them either because the shootout led to the court cases, which led to Sid’s assassination, which led to the march, which led to the battle [of Blair Mountain.] So, some of it was kind of laid out for us.”
Representation of southern folk in the media since the inception of film and television has been a mixed bag to say the least. Less than flattering depictions of individuals from southern areas – with particular emphasis on West Virginia – has become a running gag of sorts in popular culture, with projects such as The Wrong Turn establishing difficult-to-shake associations, intentionally or otherwise.
As southerners in their own right, the Redneck Army showrunners make clear their intentions to adequately depict the characters portrayed, and to refrain from engaging in cliche characterizations which could threaten to dilute the very serious and significant subject matter and hand.
“Mark and I were born and raised in the South. We’re very passionate about telling a southern story and depicting these characters as they should be depicted,” says Resides. “They were in a system that was just terrible, that led them to take up arms to fight for their rights. We wanted to make sure that when this story was told, these small town characters were depicted in a good light, and that we got to the message of everything, which is that fighting for your rights is justified, and sometimes it’s extremely necessary.”
With a complete first-season script for Redneck Army in hand and a considerable buzz already emerging with regard to the project, the writers are steadfast in the occasionally arduous process of bringing the story to life. Scouting for shooting locations is already in the works, and it is clear that Brown and Resides share at least a bit of the resilient spirit inherent within the West Virginians represented in the series, as Resides explains.
“There is all the time and work that we’ve put into it, but it’s really the idea of honoring what those people did that helps keep us going. They deserve to be heard, so we should work as hard as they worked to give them that voice. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
The official Redneck Army Instagram page can he found here.