Acclaimed folk-blues singer-songwriter Chris Smither, who lives in Amherst, never expected to be cast in a Netflix movie — and he certainly never expected to be part of a project that won an Oscar.
“It’s pretty special, all the more because it was just a fluke, really,” Smither said. “I feel like I almost had nothing to do with it. It just fell into my lap. It fell into my lap because I spent a lot of time working. If I hadn’t been out there, it wouldn’t have happened, but at the same time, [it’s] not really a thing you could have planned for.”
On Sunday, March 15, Smither and the rest of the cast and crew of the movie “The Singers” won an Academy Award for “Best Live Action Short Film.” The 18-minute film, directed by Sam A. Davis, is a modern adaptation of the short story of the same name by Ivan Turgenev, which is about a group of bar patrons in Czarist Russia who have an impromptu singing competition.
In the movie, Smither plays an old man with nasal cannulas who sits at the bar and drinks a beer. When a cocky young man asserts that he can out-sing Smither’s character, the bartender kicks off an impromptu singing competition among all the patrons, for the prize of $100 and a free beer.
Like his castmates, Smither is not a professional actor, which was a deliberate choice in Davis’s filmmaking process; in fact, actor Mike Yung, also known as Michael Young, who plays the bartender, has been busking in New York City subways for decades.
The opportunity arrived when Smither’s manager and wife, Carol Young, received a call from Assistant Director Jack Piatt. He explained that Davis — an Oscar nominee for the 2023 short “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó” — specifically wanted to cast Smither in his next project.
“Carol came up to me. I was upstairs playing the guitar,” Smither said. “She said, ‘I got this call. I got a feeling this might be the real thing.’”
There was just one catch — Smither had to be in California in 48 hours, as filming would begin in three days.
“OK,” Smither recalled saying. “We got time.”
“I flew out, and, man, they just took over,” Smither said. “It was kind of insane, y’know, and all I had to do was what I was told. They dressed me. They fed me. They put me in a nice hotel.”
The filming process itself was likewise a unique experience — the movie didn’t have a script. It was improvised, with guidance from Davis, and it filmed over the course of four days.
“It was all in Sam’s head, and he would just give us cues, and we were supposed to just make up the lines to what he suggested, and we all just did. I mean, none of us were actors, but we had all been performing all our lives, so it wasn’t that big a stretch,” Smither said.
In fact, he was given a selection of songs for the movie, and chose “House of the Rising Sun” as a tribute to his New Orleans upbringing.
The ceremony itself felt like “a little side trip to Fantasyland,” Smither noted, adding that “everything was catered from the top to the bottom.” Worried about details such as which car to drive to the airport, a representative from Netflix told Smither and Young not to worry. As Smither describes it, they received “door-to-door service the whole way,” including a stay at a very nice hotel.
On the day of the Oscars, Smither and Young arrived by 4 p.m. to navigate a red carpet crowded with roughly 150 photographers and several photo stations where honorees were required to visit. By the time they reached the Dolby Theatre, they faced another long wait for the ceremony to begin — though an open bar provided plenty of entertainment. “I don’t drink, but it was fun watching everybody else!” Smither said with a laugh.
When the time came for actor Kumail Nanjiani, who was presenting the award for “Best Live Action Short Film,” to announce the winner, he opened the envelope and said, “And the Oscar goes to — it’s a tie! I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down. We’re gonna get through this.”
“The Singers” tied with the French short film “Two People Exchanging Saliva” — one of only seven ties in the history of the Oscars.
“I had never stood up and cheered so loud and so long,” Smither said of the experience. “All of us, we just exploded. It was just amazing.”
Although Smither didn’t have the opportunity to go on stage, he received a personal surprise when Nanjiani sought him out. During their exchange, the actor told Smither he was his favorite singer-songwriter — an admission that left the musician “over the moon.”
Nanjiani invited Smither and “The Singers” team to join the Vanity Fair afterparty. At one point, Smither said “I was in a Vera Wang tux, at one point standing next to Vera Wang, looking at Mick Jagger.” Other than those brief encounters, Smither admitted he didn’t have any other celebrity-sighting stories to share, because he’s “so woefully ignorant of pop culture and who’s who.”
Reflecting on his moment in the spotlight, Smither doesn’t necessarily want to get more acting roles. “I’m not gonna work at it, but I would be delighted if somebody saw [the movie]” and wanted to cast him in a production, he said. At this point in his life, he’s able to work as much or as little as he wants. His music career, however, will continue.
“I’m 81 years old,” Smither said. “It’s enough for me to just do all the gigs.”
“The Singers” is available to stream exclusively on Netflix. For more information about Chris Smither, visit smither.com.