A first-time filmmaker from Nebraska made her directorial debut last week with the movie “Going for Two.”
Katherine Welch Markel started working on the screenplay in 2014, and it took three years to raise funds for production. She grew up in Nebraska, moved to Los Angeles to work as an actress, stage director and playwright, and finally moved back to Omaha to work on her film.
“Of course it’s a dream come true,” Welch Markel said. “Anybody that ever writes a screenplay [knows] all you want to do is see it, you know, reach reality.”
“Going for Two” follows tween Jimmy Moriarty and his best friend Frankie, avid Cornhusker fans coming of age during the 1983 football season. Without the help of their loving but distant parents, the two diagnose Jimmy with an undescended testicle, and spend most of the movie trying to raise money for an operation to cure him.
“It’s very innocent,” Welch Markel said. “There is nothing salacious about this. It’s very sweet. It’s really about two kids coming together to solve problems in a way that we don’t have to do.”
She said that she was surprised to receive feedback from her husband’s college friends that they’d had concerns of their own while going through puberty.
She collaborated with producer Dana Altman, who was born and raised in Omaha.
“It was really important for me to have somebody that boots on the ground that absolutely knew the ethos of the state and understood Cornhusker football and all of the nuances of our fandom,” Welch Markel said.
Actor Victoria Blade played Frankie’s mom, a frantic but loving Irish- American mom of five. She said she was drawn to the unique screenplay and welcoming environment on set.
“It’s fun to come to something like this and just see the heart and soul and sweat and tears that everybody’s putting into it,” Blade said. “You feel like you’re an integral part of this family that comes together to make a film.”
“Going for Two” is now showing in theaters across Nebraska and a few theaters in Council Bluffs, Iowa.