King Snakes

Based on true events, King Snake traces the hard heritage of the tiny, faded towns along one bend of a great river. Founded by hustlers, moonshiners and savage criminals, the anarchic spirit of the area lives on in their modern day descendants.

Three stories, told by a common narrator with a ground level view of the action, detail the lurid and reckless search for adventure that rules the lives and deaths of so many of the half-wild inhabitants of this still primitive place. There is Leon Runkle, direct progeny of infamous river pirates who terrorized their section of the big water in brutally imaginative ways. Five generations later, he honors his forbearers by instinctively pursuing a life of risk, reward, and destiny. His territory is a vast and historied bottomland forest, where the cooking of corn liquor has given over to the farming of high-grade marijuana, but the lawless nature of the country and his notorious bloodline remain. He is the “Copperhead” savvy, dangerous, camouflaged, and relentlessly obeying what he sees as the natural order of things.

"Constrictor" recounts a fateful run-in with a legendary local madman. With "suffocating muscles" and lensless eyeglasses, Big Randall dances to no cadence but that of his own wild composition. When he is unexpectedly supplied with alcohol and deposited back home by clueless teenagers, a familiar and terrible chain of events is set in motion. Through a long night that will live forever in local lore, Big Randall prepares himself and the stage of his world for an epic confrontation.

The final installment is a vivid turning point in the life of Donnie Elder - The King of Them All. Visionary, warrior, outlaw farmer and lay theorist, Donnie is a man more driven than any to find that elusive step up, into a world of greatness and legacy. From solving ancient mysteries to embarking on crazed, mayhemic missions, he runs headfirst and tirelessly after a life that always seems to be pulling away. With little more than burning desires and one loyal apprentice, he pursues his outlandish destiny, heedless of the grim realities that separate him from that world of success into which he will never be welcomed. His is a tale of the doomed, and of their unwillingness to go quietly into the obscurity demanded by lives of poverty and limited choices.

King Snake is ultimately a story of lives lived walled off from any normal world. In a place where violence of action and heroic substance abuse serve as surrogates for atavistic adventure, its characters are absurdly humorous, frightening, and tragically American.