Directors Notes:

SYNOPSIS:
Dr. Randall & Sons' Traveling Medicine Show explores the moral and spiritual consequences of numbing away who we really are. It is a psychological Western that follows William Randall, a closeted sixteen-year-old boy who works as coin collector for his respected father’s traveling medicine show, pushed to the sidelines as his younger, more charismatic and masculine brother, Dylan, is both the show’s main attraction and the source of their father’s pride.

But as the Randalls traverse the cholera-stricken Wild West terrain, and as William continues repressing his true identity in an attempt to further gain his father’s affection, he is warned that his father may be a fraud, the medicine nothing more than piss and gin. Facing an identity crisis, William psychologically spirals, torn between embracing the true self he believes will keep him sidelined, or resorting to a misguided sense of strength that might turn into violence.

Dr. Randall & Sons deconstructs the masculine and mythological archetypes of the Western genre to explore something that feels very urgent in our world today: the horrific consequences of mythologizing ourselves, repressing and contorting our identity in a quixotic attempt to belong.

DIRECTOR'S VISION:
The script takes place in the year 1853. While this film is a western, the people at the time did not know what a “western” was: they just existed as living, breathing people. Thus, should you want to play the archetype (outlaw, doctor, etc.) that is perfectly fine but please ensure you are, first and foremost, playing a living, breathing human.

In the cholera-stricken Old West, the closeted son of a traveling doctor starts to suspect that his father is a conman. Dr. Randall & Sons' Traveling Medicine Show is a psychological Western that explores how enticing it is to sell a lie – even to ourselves.