Georgia-born actor, director and writer Ray McKinnon grew up in Adel and began his career on stage in Atlanta.
Currently, McKinnon is back in Atlanta for the remake of “Footloose,” with writer-director Craig Brewer (“Hustle and Flow”) and cast members Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell and Julianne Hough. Newcomer Kenny Wormald takes the role of Ren McCormack, originally played by Kevin Bacon. McKinnon plays McCormack’s uncle, Wes Warnicker.
McKinnon’s first film, a dark comedy called “The Accountant,” won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2002. His two indie features, “Chrystal” (2005), and “Randy and the Mob” (2007), became critical favorites, winning numerous festival awards.
But McKinnon probably is best known for his quirky and nuanced television and movie characters, from crazy Dwayne Dobber on “Designing Women” and Vernon T. Waldrip in “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” to the spooky Reverend H.W. Smith on HBO’s “Deadwood.”
Recently, he starred as Coach Cotton in the surprise blockbuster “The Blind Side,” also filmed in Atlanta. And he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Lonzo Choat opposite Hal Holbrook in the acclaimed indie film “That Evening Sun.”
McKinnon sat down at the Loews Hotel in Midtown to talk about acting, filmmaking and his Georgia roots.
Q. Did you start out acting in high school in Adel?
A. No. I wanted to but I didn’t have the nerve. My mother was the town’s English teacher, trying to stop people from ending their sentences with prepositions. She’d be disappointed. Because that ain’t where it’s at.
Q. When did you come to Atlanta?
A. In the mid-’80s. I got an internship at the Alliance Theatre. I auditioned for my first play and I didn’t get in it so I quit for a few months and took a class and really tried to get better at the craft. Eventually, the Horizon Theatre gave me a really nice, lead role in a play called “Deadfall,” and it gave me confidence to move forward.
Q. And you landed a small part in “Driving Miss Daisy.”
A. It was my first movie audition. We all auditioned in the same room — all of us, for the same role. It was bizarre.
Q. Atlanta wasn’t exactly a big movie town then, was it?
A. Burt Reynolds was one of the first Southern filmmakers, and for me, a great influence. He was both Southern and the smartest guy in the room, which was rare in films. Growing up in Adel, we identified with him, as so many other Southern kids did. He made “Sharky’s Machine” here.
Q. The remake of “Footloose” with Craig Brewer is rather surprising. Was that your attraction?
A. As a filmmaker who has spent his career reflecting more rural pockets of the South, one of the driving forces behind me doing that was that the reflection we saw oftentimes in films didn’t feel authentic to us. All people need their reality reflected in art in some way they recognize.
Craig’s script was a story I recognized, as a person who grew up in a small town, and as a person who goes back to that small town. That’s what he brought to it and he lives in that world, too. He loves all the people in that story, and it comes out on the page.
Q. You’ve played some really funny Southern characters and you’ve played some really nasty ones, such as Snake in “Chrystal” and Lonzo in “That Evening Sun.” Where do they come from?
A. I was afraid when I quit drinking that I would lose my darkness. But all my therapists would say that hasn’t happened, yet. I suspect in regards to Alonzo, he came from a background where self-esteem was not highly prized. His culture beat his self-esteem down.
Snake was just an amalgamation of characters that I’ve met along the way, in the woods and sticks of South Georgia. There’s some scary, crazy dudes that Snake is a reflection of.
Q. What are you working on now?
A. I’m adapting a book called “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War” for an HBO pilot. It’s a nonfiction account of a Virginia man who was the first in his family to get a college education.
He kind of pulls back everybody’s covers in a way that I kind of compare to a Southern Hunter S. Thompson. Definitely very provocative writing. My job is to turn it into a fictional narrative. We’ll see what happens.
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