Nicholls alum is ‘Targeted’

A movie script that started as a joke became a full-fledged feature film called “Targeted” for 2002 Nicholls graduate Jak Locke.

Most of the 19th century Western was filmed at familiar sites, including Wallace Ranch, Oncale Café, Purple Penguin, Mahler House, Laurel Valley Village, Castalanos and a few Terrebonne and Lafourche residences.

Locke majored in government and political science at Nicholls. He has a keen interest in politics, which he relates to entertainment.

“There is a lot of persona in politics,” he explained. “There are a lot of outlandish situations in politics. It is easy to see being accustomed to the way the news is presented to us.

“When you sit back and think about how nations are personified, it is natural for us to cobble these large nations into single individuals, and we don’t think about it. It is an absurdist thing to think about.”

Entertainment is Locke’s passion. He performs music to earn his keep, and has shot music videos and short films.

“I just did it to where I was making enough money to make a living,” he said. “I have always wanted to be an entertainer for as far back as I can remember.”

Several years ago, Locke came across a script he had written when he was 6-years-old. After reading it aloud to some friends, it was suggested that he should get a crew and film it.

On a whim, the Nicholls grad began reaching out to friends and contacts about putting together a production.

Zach Dufrene, a longtime friend, was tapped to play the lead role of Jimmy Makdon, a Chicago Pinkerton agent who embellishes his prowess at catching bad guys in the newspaper.

“I was on my computer, and he reached out to me via Facebook,” Dufrene said. “I was immediately interested because I have always had a passion for film. The thought of playing a lead character was pretty exciting to me.”

Dufrene’s only acting experience came as a background character in a play when he was 7-years old.

“I don’t know if that counts as acting experience,” he said, laughing.

In all, Locke’s film has a cast of 40 – 31 of whom have Lafourche and Terrebonne ties.

Filming included two different movies since Locke believed “Targeted” could be a serious film.

“I was looking at the scope of the whole project and thought it would be a shame to have all of these talented people working for a joke,” the director said. “I took the characters and settings from the film and wrote a new script with a very mature story. It is an action piece with a lot of twists and turns and very different from the script.

“We started calling the script I wrote when I was 6, the B-script, and the one I wrote in 2012, the A-script. Basically, it turned into a project of making two very separate movies. It was about seeing how much we could accomplish with a low budget.”

Locke only had $3,000 to film the 19th century flick.

“As a result, there were very few women cast in the film because to clothe one actress costs about $200 or $300,” he said. “That is why when I sat down and wrote the A-script, I wanted very strong female characters.”

One such character is a bounty huntress, played by Thibodaux native Angelique Riggs. Most recently, she appeared in “22 Jump Street,” which starred Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, and the TV show “Star Crossed.”

“It was a great learning experience. It was a crash course in stunt work,” Riggs said of her “Targeted” experience. “I had a lot of bruises, but they were worth it.”

The movie teams Makdon (Dufrene) with a bounty hunter named Samuel Barnet (played by Locke) in the hunt for a murderer in a California border town.

“They end up in a long series of increasingly treacherous situations with a lot of twist and turns. There is a lot of action with fistfights and gunfights,” Locke said. “It has all kinds of things to see in an action-packed Western.”

One such scene was a bar brawl filmed upstairs at Castalanos in downtown Houma.

“We improvised the entire fight sequence,” Riggs said. “We just went in and rehearsed one day to see what would look fake and what would look real. There is one part where I grab his hair and beat his head into the bar. One of the times, he actually hit his head hard. I am pretty sure he had a concussion.”

Dufrene said it was fun to see Locke get beaten.

“Jak gets his ass kicked by a girl, which was hilarious,” he said. “There is a lot of chaos in that scene.”

While the A-script is 45 minutes long and is more geared toward a feature film, the B-script, an ode to his 6-year-old self, casts Makdon as a naïve greenhorn, who, despite his age, is still childish. He teams up with a grizzled drunk – Barnet – to learn the ropes and earn a gun.

Locke said the script “goes into a million directions.”

“It is easy to tell at which points I got bored writing these individual scenes. The scenes just kind of end,” Locke said. “Literally, one of the lines in the movie is, ‘Well, we might as well go now. So let’s go.’ That is not the only scene that ends an obscure line. Once scene ends with the character getting drunk and then just looking at the bar maid and saying, ‘Bye-bye for now,’ then turns around and leaves.”

Locke wanted to shoot that as seriously as possible, which made for a great gag reel.

“Oh my God, the gag reel is going to take up its own DVD,” he said.

The dialogue was so repetitive, Dufrene said, it was difficult to keep a straight face.

“There was a scene where the dialogue was so elementary and so juvenile,” he said. “We just kept saying the same thing over and over again. We would say, ‘Let’s go,’ and then a few seconds later someone would say, ‘all right now, let’s go.’ You can tell it was from the perspective of a 6-year-old because it wasn’t sophisticated.”

Locke still has a few scenes to shoot and, after post-production, plans to release the DVD of “Targeted.”

“I am thinking of doing a separate release for all of the extra material because I do not want people to keep waiting and waiting when it has taken this long to produce,” he said.

Stay up-to-date with Locke and “Targeted” at www.jaklocke.com/targeted/about.htm.

TargetedCOURTESY PHOTO