COVER STORY
Breakdown breakout FILMMAKER CHRISTOPHER FITZPATRICK PRESENTS NEW ROCK-DOC OKLAHOMA BREAKDOWN ABOUT HOMEGROWN MUSIC LEGEND MIKE HOSTY AT THE DEADCENTER FILM FESTIVAL THIS YEAR. By Brett Fieldcamp
How do you measure success? By the time Fitzpatrick finished Sure, it could be money. It could be school at OU, he’d been fully connotoriety or your name in the minds verted into a lifelong Hosty fan, of people around the world but it could even as life took him down the path also be balance, consistency, and even of becoming a sports videographer, simple happiness. spending much of his career coverJust ask Mike Hosty. ing the Dallas Mavericks up close The local legend and stalwart songand personally. smith is the subject of new documenBut in the back of his head, he tary Oklahoma Breakdown, exploring always clung to one dream project. the musician’s own decades-long “I just always had that curios- Mike Hosty in a still from Oklahoma Breakdown. Photo provided. struggle with having missed the limeity and that big question about light, only to find a very different kind him. If I felt this way, did other hood and upbringing in a strictly reliity of translating Hosty’s live of success in the happiness and conpeople feel it?” Fitpatrick said. “So, gious household to the family he’s energy into a packaged product. tentment that comes with being a in 2016, I finally went freelance and made with his wife and son over the “He’s just so good live,” he said. hometown hero. some time freed up, and that’s when past couple decades. “There’s nothing like him. It just Ahead of the film’s Oklahoma preI was just like, ‘Man, I want to do a “It just evolved over time,” he said. doesn’t come across the same way miere at this year’s deadCenter Film documentary on you.’” “I started really learning his story and unless you’re sitting there in front of Festival, director Christopher Fitzpatrick admits that it took the finally hearing from and talking to him and he’s interacting with you and Fitzpatrick spoke these people in telling jokes in the middle of a song to Oklahoma the music while he’s playing kazoo and playing Gazette about world. They the drums with his feet.” Hosty’s improbwere all saying After all of the false starts, family able and indelible how highly matters, health scares, child rearing, career and about they thought of and countless re-evaluations that are his own longMike and how all covered in the film, Fitzpatrick says standing infatuahe’s one of the that Hosty has clearly grown to love tion that led to the most talented the little niche that he’s carved for creation of the guys they’d himself and the contentment and condocumentary. seen. I started fidence that comes with it. “Hosty could thinking, “In America, we do glorify being do what he does ‘Okay, I’m famous,” he said. “Sure, you think, in front of any reading this ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to be a rock star?’ audience in the right,’ and but then you think about the daily lifeworld and blow that’s when I style, about not being able to walk t hem away,” really started down the street. Well, Mike Hosty can. Fitzpatrick said. thinking that He’s chosen his own lifestyle for “I think we’ve this was a story himself. The value that Mike puts on all wondered worth telling.’” success is just being able to live life the over time and A m o n g way he wants to and to play music. As tried to figure Mike Hosty in a still from Oklahoma Breakdown. Photo provided. those more much as, or more than, anyone I’ve out, you know, traditionally ever met in my life, he really loves what why he wasn’t bigger.” project a little while to start coming famous fans of Hosty’s songs is he does.” Though he’s originally a Texas boy, together as he struggled to find the Stoney LaRue, the Texas-based Fitzpatrick and Hosty will be in atFitzpatrick went to school at OU in the story threads in Hosty’s humble country-rocker that first covered tendance to present the film, Oklahoma late 90s, and first came across Hosty “working musician” life and as Hosty Hosty’s showstopper “Oklahoma Breakdown: The Mike Hosty Story, at when the future one-man band was himself remained somewhat enigBreakdown” to massive regional 3 p.m. June 12 at Harkins Theatres still performing with the group Heater. matic to the filmmaker. success, becoming the biggestBricktown 16. It wasn’t until a little later, when he “I had to really work on my storyselling single in Texas in 2007. caught Hosty at The Deli around the telling,” he said. “One big interview we LaRue’s success with the song earliest days of his famous “residency” had that really gave it another level of finally catapulted Hosty’s songat the Campus Corner bar, that depth was when I started talking to writing onto the national stage, but Fitzpatrick really took notice of the him about his family background. also further proved that, while his singer’s effect on an audience. That’s when I knew that it was about songs could reach the masses, his “Everybody was there, and everymore than just music and that it needed own singular, unique persona was body was just dancing and having a to be more.” likely to stay buried in the great time,” Fitzpatrick recalled. “I From there, Fitzpatrick began Oklahoma underground. actually still credit Hosty’s music for delving further into Hosty’s family on Fitzpatrick thinks that’s at least how I learned to dance.” both sides of his life, from his childpartially because of the impossibilCOVER STORY OKGA Z ET TE .COM | J U N E 1 , 2 0 2 2 29
