Shotgun Stories

Shotgun Stories is a 2007 American independent Southern Gothic family drama revenge film directed and written by Jeff Nichols and produced by David Gordon Green, Lisa Muskat, and Nichols.

His feature directorial debut, the focuses on two sets of redneck half-brothers in rural southeastern Arkansas who start a feud against each other following the death of their shared biological father, an abusive alcoholic who leaves his first family and later starts a second family after getting sober and becoming a Christian. The first set of brothers, are led by Son Hayes (portrayed by Michael Shannon), a working-class fish farmer, whereas the second set of brothers are led by Cleaman Hayes (portrayed by Michael Abbott Jr.), a middle-class cotton and soybean farmer.

Son decides to crash the funeral of the father who abandoned him and his two brothers, Kid (portrayed by Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (portrayed by Douglas Ligon), and berate his father in front of the attendees. This provokes Cleaman and his three brothers to bring wrath on his half-brothers in a feud throughout the film.

Filming took place on location in the counties of Lonoke, Pulaski, and Arkansas around the towns of England, Scott, Keo, and Stuttgart in Arkansas during 2004, on a budget of $250,000.