COLUMBIA — The premise of local filmmaker Chris Bickel’s latest effort "Pater Noster and the Mission of Light," is almost too perfect.
The film centers around a record store employee whose discovery of a rare vinyl from the 1970s draws her into a hippie commune cult, with predictably disastrous consequences. It feels like a story that should have been told before, and one that someone like Bickel is perfectly suited to tell.
Bickel has a lengthy history in Columbia as a hardcore punk rocker, experimental producer and devoted record collector and hawker. In 2017, he started cranking out independent films, starting with “The Theta Girl,” a film that feels like Bickel spent a lifetime crafting.
As it turns out, though, the idea for the film, and the sprawling accompanying soundtrack, came well ahead of the story.
A still from "Pater Noster and the Mission of Light," an independent horror film shot and produced by Columbia filmmaker and musician Chris Bickel. (Photo provided)
“In (2022), I hooked up with this really cool couple, Rob and Shauna Tansey, who are these gearheads that just picks up all these old cars and always have cool stuff. I ended up using some of their cars in 'Bad Girls,'” explained Bickel.
Shauna Tansey texted Bickel one day, "Hey, by the way, I just bought this old school bus. And I'm thinking about painting it with like a psychedelic paint job, like the Furthur bus." The Further bus was featured in the 1969 documentary, "Merry Band of Pranksters."
That initial inspiration — as well as his own encounter with a record by Ya Ho Wa 13 the house band for real-life cult, The Source Family — led to story behind “Pater Noster.”
And, in another twist, Bickel embarked on the soundtrack’s creation well before the script was in hand.
A still from "Pater Noster and the Mission of Light," an independent horror film shot and produced by Columbia filmmaker and musician Chris Bickel. (Photo provided)
“I realized before I even wrote the script that I wanted to have a band, and to do so I wanted to record a whole album of the songs before the script was even finished,” Bickel recalled of the fake band he created for the project.
Bickel reached out to a bevy of local musician friends, gave them "a general idea of what's gonna go on in the movie," and asked the artists to each bring a song. "And so that's what we did," he said. "And it all kind of came together pretty quick.”
Utilizing a large core group of players that included long-time collaborators like Stan Gardner and the Jam Room’s Jay Matheson -- both of whom played with Bickel in the impetuously conceptual hard-rock party band Confederate Fagg -- as well as local artists and multi-instrumentalists like Marshall Brown and Sean Thomson who could conjure up the retro vibes and “psychedelic head-music,” Bickel’s soundtrack quickly took on a life of its own. It includes everything from Pink Floyd-esque space ruminations to stoner rock romps to hippie-folk singer/songwriter-isms, all tied together by Bickel’s sonic tinkering and distinctive vision.
A still from "Pater Noster and the Mission of Light," an independent horror film shot and produced by Columbia filmmaker and musician Chris Bickel. (Photo provided)
“It was a weird ask, but I told everybody to write something as if it’s being made in 1972, but you're just on the cusp of things, ahead of the game,” he said of the soundtrack prompt. “It was sort of all over the place, but I thought that that's what it would be like if there was this cult of people that were all highly intelligent and they were just really in tune with music and art at the time.”
Two singles have already been released. One a sprightly Joe Buck Roberts (Debbie & the Skanks) led hippie-folk number, the other a creepy Gardner-penned proto-post-punk number submerged in a swirl of special effects.
Bickel plans to release a song a week over the next few months, using the steady drip as a way to finish funding the film’s post-production and release costs. As of Nov. 28, Bickel raised more than $23,000, according to Indie Gogo, far surpassing his $16,000 goal.
A still from "Pater Noster and the Mission of Light," an independent horror film shot and produced by Columbia filmmaker and musician Chris Bickel. (Photo provided)
“I thought that this would be the best way to promote the crowdfunding campaign without begging every day," he said. Bickel said the music offers value beyond asking folks to "please give us money."
"Hopefully, people would enjoy the music and want to buy the soundtrack," he said. The soundtrack is available in a number of different vinyl variants. "If they preorder it, then I have the money to work with to finish all the movie stuff.”
More information about Bickel’s crowdfunding campaign for the film can be found at indiegogo.com
