To many, Oklahoma’s filmmaking culture is still in its infancy, with major stars and legendary directors only recently beginning to bring high-profile productions to our state, resulting in box boffice blockbusters and prestige television series.
But anyone who believes that that kind of deep, creative filmmaking spirit is a recent development for Oklahoma doesn’t know Mickey Reece.
A stalwart figure in the state’s defiantly indie and DIY moviemaking scene, Reece has made dozens of films since discovering the passion as a teenager, developing a signature style that’s equal parts comedic, disturbing, brow-raisingly odd, and often compellingly uncomfortable.
It’s a style that began to strike a strange chord with indie audiences in more recent years, with films like “Climate of the Hunter,” “Agnes,” and 2022’s “Country Gold” all picking up underground buzz and streaming sales.
With his newest offering, “Every Heavy Thing,” currently defying both genre and easy explanation across the American and European festival circuits, Reece is readying for a three-day retrospective screening event at OKC’s new Oklahoma Film Exchange January 15th through 17th, with Q&A panels, cast reunions, and a number of films that have only ever screened publicly once before.
It’s a rare opportunity for viewers to revisit the early days of his gonzo filmmaking, when he and his friends built an outsider audience for themselves through one-time screening parties at the old Oklahoma Contemporary space, a time when Reece said he was learning on the fly and had no concept of a burgeoning scene.
Mickey Reece: I didn't know. I was just making movies how I knew how to make them.
We essentially, like, built a community out of those Oklahoma Contemporary screenings that we used to do. A lot of people were going to those and were really cool, but we were not at all involved in the film scene. We were doing that, and I was just making these movies, and, you know, wasn't thinking about the audience, because we only showed them one time.
So it was like, my audience is like, they'll watch whatever I'm gonna put out. So I'm really making movies for myself.
Brett Fieldcamp: Since picking up his parents’ camcorder at the age of 13 and jumping into moviemaking as a lark with his friends, Reece has been aiming for the kind of oddball awkwardness that’s always made him laugh, describing all of his films, no matter how dark or esoteric, as absolutely being intended as comedy, albeit filtered through techniques and framing ideas he’s picked up from a steady diet of Scorsese, De Palma, and Bergman.
But he still sidesteps any prodding to describe his own style, preferring instead to simply focus on surprising himself and his audience with whatever new ideas he feels he hasn’t already explored.
Mickey Reece: It's definitely interpreting my own influences and like, if I sense that I'm doing something to placate an audience, it won't come out on the page. I won't write it. I'll be like, Nah, I can't do that. And I'll come up with another idea.
Because I like all kinds of movies, so I wouldn't be betraying myself or my sensibilities if I made something that was completely different than what I would expect for myself or an audience would expect for myself. But like, I don't know what that is, because I don't know how to do it.
Like I said, I'll always stop myself if I feel like it's getting like, “Oh, I've seen this before.”
Brett Fieldcamp: That commitment to surprise – and sometimes even outright shock – is what helped Reece to develop a hungry, homegrown base of fans across Oklahoma City in his early days of DIY screening events. Some would even go on to be collaborators and cast members, many of whom will be reuniting for the first time during the retrospective’s panel events.
But the three-day retrospective isn’t just for reunions and random looks back. It’s also a way for Reece to honor his best friend and lifelong collaborator Dustin Sanchez, who died in 2025 after decades of close creative partnership.
Mickey Reece: You know, we were friends since we were 14, and we started making movies together.
He died in August of 2025, and before that, he went to Mexico, and he was like, “Here, take all my stuff. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, because I'm going to Mexico.” It was mostly, like, camera gear, and a bunch of camera equipment, stuff that he bought.
He said, “but this tub, guard this one with your life.” And when he died, I opened up the tub, and it was everything that we had done together since we were 14.
What a way to, like, deal with that and process that grief whenever you just have a whole lifetime of, you know, music and movies and stuff that we had made. So essentially, the retrospective is just an excuse to have a Dustin night. It's a three-day retrospective, but one of those nights is a Dustin night.
So that was kind of the motivation of it.
Brett Fieldcamp: This event, then, is a full-circle moment for Reece, and an opportunity to connect the dots between his work from adolescence all the way through his adulthood and raising the question of where he might take his work, his friends, and his decidedly weird and singular style from here.
Mickey Reece: I don't know. All I know is this, so I don't really know how to compare it.
I would be talking about this completely different if, like, I didn't feel so much love and respect here, and it was not always that way.
Yeah, I guess the only thing I can say is we'll see, you know?
We'll see.
Brett Fieldcamp: The three-night Mickey Reece Retrospective event screens at the Oklahoma Film Exchange in OKC’s Film Row January 15th through 17th.
For tickets and a complete rundown of the event’s films and panels, visit oklahomafilmexchange.com.
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