Director - Craig Laurence Rice

“I try to present a human being that you are unable to forget” - A. Kurosawa


Our story is simple, raw, realistic, and messy. It is a portrait of souls sinking into melancholia and succumbing to the desolated environment they find themselves in. Our story paints life on the lower economic strata, a world intent on crushing hope. The characters’ day to day struggles leave them empty, diminished, purposeless. Their lives consist of ‘get money’, 'get alcohol’, ‘get drugs,’ in an effort to mask their limited options. 

Yet even in that bleak world, life endures and hope manages to take root. A father is devoted to his daughter and will do everything he can to protect her. He has a vision for a better future for her; one free of the factors in her environment that threaten to drag her down. 

My approach to film directing is much like a conductor of an orchestra, leading the many artists on the production team to collaborate and create a singular visual composition. I rely on the cinematic images to reveal the soul of the characters and the drama of the story in every frame of the final motion picture.

In all my works – fictional and nonfictional, there is an element of exploration of the social topics of the day. I believe it is important to allow our life and times to influence the stories we tell. I, like all members of our team, have a vast lived experience that we can bring to our stories. By welcoming that lived experience into the filmmaking process, by embedding real life and a reflection of the current times into our efforts, we can better convey the humanity of our stories.

The audience for Can’t Buy Grace will experience an environment of rundown homes, cafes, failed farms, vacant shops, a population diminished by poverty, drugs, alcohol, lack of opportunity, and depression, a population that struggles to keep their heads above water anyway they can. 

The film is told from Jen’s perspective. He has grown up in a small rural town where everyone knows everybody and their secrets. Jen has a young daughter, Grace, for whom he strives to give a better life. The story is about his quest to rescue his daughter; to save her  from her addicted mother, and the forces in their depressed small town that would be her destruction, her loss of innocence. With that as his aim, Jen devises a plan. But his plan has problems. Sometimes a person must do a bad thing for the right reason. 

We will use wide shots, long distant & strong compositions, short focal length, some motion with each shot and limited handheld camera work. The scenes of high conflict, high confrontation and violence will be handheld in a documentary style. The remaining scenes will be in a moving fluid manner design around blocking and staging work with the actors. The film contains a lot of night images and is on the edge of neo-realism, film- noir.

Films similar to “Can’t But Grace” include “Nomadland”, “Winter’s Bone”, “Frozen River”, “Biutful”, “Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always”, and “Galveston”. The images in our films will evoke the style of the still photography of Gordon Parks, Nan Goldin, Bruce Davidson, Stefan Erfurt, and Jacob Aue Sobol 

We will cast actors who can achieve the emotional palette of our story and create the subtext and dramatic range of the story.

Sound design will be naturalistic with a hint of expressionism. Music was my first art form. The music in our film will come from varied musical sources and will underscore and propel the story’s emotional through-line. 

We believe this film’s message of love and hope  will stick with the audience for a long time. 

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In my early years as a director, I was fortunate to work with many  extremely gifted theatrical actors. While living in New York, I worked for a year at the Public Theater for Joseph Papp and followed that up with four years with The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. My time working in rehearsals and performances with these wonderful actor shaped me as a director. 

Here are some of the actors I have directed on film/video:

  • Ed Asner – We Teach Our Children (Co- Producer, Director)

  • Howard Rollins Jr. – Sissi (Producer, Assoc. Director)

  • Prince – Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge, music videos, and concerts. (Producer, Director)

  • Gordan Parks – Half Past Autum (Ex. Producer, Director)

  • Pete Seeger – John Henry (Director)

  • George Clinton – Graffiti Bridge, Music video (Producer, Director)

  • David Strathairn  -  Brother From Another Planet (Asst. Director)

  • Ernie Hudson – Penitentiary 2  (Asst. Director) 

  • Griffin Dunne -   Almost You ( Asst. Director)

  • Desmond Tutu – Rainbow Warrior (Director)

  • Patti Labelle – Yo Mister (Director)

  • Diana Ross – It’s About the Music (Producer and Co- Director)

  • Mavis Staple – Time Waits For No One (Director)

  • Kim Basinger – Yo Mister, Electric Chair (Co-Director)