Sulphur's culture, identity on display in ‘Daddy War Bucks'

American Press

3 days ago

Filmmaker Jake Abraham introduces his short film 'Daddy War Bucks' during a screening in Texas. The film is set in Southwest Louisiana in 1951. (Special to the American Press)
Twenty-year-old Jake Abraham has entered the film festival circuit with his 19-minute short film 'Daddy War Bucks.'
It's an actor-driven chamber piece designed to hold attention through performance and script rather than spectacle, Abraham said.
Set in Sulphur 1951, the film follows two mortgage bankers embroiled in a 'scheme' to repossess an elderly man's home. One is the boss. The other is his conflicted subordinate. As the film unfolds — through charged dialogue and quietly escalating stakes — something darker bubbles beneath the surface.
'Daddy War Bucks,' filmed in 2024, is Abraham's second short film.
He grew up in Allen, Texas. Though he has no formal film training or education, he jumped into the film industry a few months after graduating high school with his 2022 short film, 'Best Played Loud' — an exploration into the 1960s musical transition from folk music into rock and roll.
His tangible experience extends to his work on the set of bigger productions, like the CW series 'Walker.' But he has been making videos since his middle and high school years. He and his friends would spend their time creating videos for YouTube, but he realized filmmaking was his passion when the hobby became a priority.
'All you need is a camera and a couple of people to help you out, and you can really make whatever you want. And at the beginning, they were, you know, of course, really bad and very amateurish,' he recalled. 'We wouldn't get something right, we wouldn't get something done, and everybody would say, 'Oh, well, that's OK.' And then I remember thinking to myself, 'I want to get this done. Like, I really care about what this thing is going to look like'.And that was something that kind of revealed itself to me, that I wanted to take it more seriously and pursue it in a more formal manner.'
Now he runs his production company, Mausoleum Films.
He and a crew of about 25 filmed 'Daddy War Bucks' in Texas last year, but the film is set in Southwest Louisiana. Most of his father's family is from the Sulphur area. Abraham wanted to honor an area with personal meaning to him.
'I think the whole state of Louisiana is extremely fascinating, and we go frequently. And I just love the culture and the identity that it has. And I wanted to explore it through the lens of a period piece,' he said 'It's set right after the Second World War and is about a group of disillusioned individuals in the workforce. And it kind of reveals itself to be a family story by the end of it. In that way, it becomes really kind of personal.'
It's no easy task to tell a complete story — one with a beginning, middle and end — in under 20 minutes, Abraham said. It's even harder to craft a short, complete story that emotionally involves the audience, but that it was he worked to achieve with 'Daddy War Bucks.'
'I didn't try to just make it, you know, a moment.I tried to make characters and a story that you could follow and invest yourself in and leave you with something to think about when it was over.'
Abraham is personally inspired by directors like Ingmar Berman, Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson. But, the first step in becoming a filmmaker is to 'find what you like to make and stick with it.'
The next step is to not rush the filmmaking process.
'It's easy to get lost in certain aspects or forego certain aspects … and I find oftentimes that if I'm going to see it on screen, or hear it on screen, I want the most detail and attention paid to that thing. Because that's what's going to make the film resonate. That's, that's what's going to keep it on film forever, essentially.'
Abraham plans to produce a feature-length film after getting a few more short films under his belt. And while 'Daddy War Bucks' isn't available for streaming yet, it will be screened at film festivals this year.