A Different Survivor Story

Posted on March 11, 2015

Working as an executive producer on the long-running CBS reality show Survivor took David Burris ’87 all over the world. But for his big-screen debut as a director, Burris walked away from the hit series after an eight-year run to come home to North Carolina.

The World Made Straight, a thriller about duality and redemption set in western North Carolina during the 1970s, arrived in theaters early this year, with a DVD following.

The roots of The World Made Straight go back a few Survivor seasons. Shooting the show often took Burris to South Pacific locales, including the Philippines and Samoa. When he was going in that direction, Burris would stop off and visit Michael Wrenn, director of creative development for the New Zealand Film Commission in Wellington (and a friend of Burris’ since high school). In 2009, they decided they wanted to make a movie about and in North Carolina. They made a pact to do it within five years.

About that same time, Burris’ mom gave him a copy of The World Made Straight, North Carolina author Ron Rash’s 2006 novel, with the pronouncement, “You should make a movie out of this.” It wasn’t the first book she’d recommended to her son, but Straight turned out to be the right one — in part because the Burris and Rash families had been friends for more than half a century, and because of the story.

“It’s a beautiful book, a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old kid torn between two paths,” Burris said. “And it’s so North Carolina, too. The opening scene has the main character driving a truck to a friend’s house. A few pages in, I knew what he had under the seat and in the glove box, the T-shirt he was wearing, his haircut, what his friend’s house looked and smelled like, just from having grown up in North Carolina myself. We just had to do it as a movie.”

Burris exited Survivor in 2012, at the conclusion of production for season 26, Caramoan (which aired in 2013). He shot The World Made Straight in spring 2013, mostly in Madison and Buncombe counties in the mountains of western North Carolina. The action goes back and forth between the 1970s and a Civil War-era massacre in Madison County, with a running theme on how blood feuds die hard.

Thanks to Noah Wyle — a lead actor in the TV medical drama ER who plays a disgraced, drug-dealing ex-teacher in the movie — the cast has a solid amount of star power. Wyle’s antagonist is Americana music star Steve Earle as an Appalachian drug overlord who is soft-spoken and all the more terrifying for it. They emerge as surrogate father figures for the teenage protagonist, played by Jeremy Irvine, who starred in the World War I epic War Horse and, although he’s British, manages a remarkable western North Carolina accent.

Moviemaking has its stresses, but Burris said it’s a nice change of pace.

“At one point, I did have it in my head that I could keep working on Survivor while doing this movie,” Burris said. “But then I realized there aren’t 48 hours in a day or 14 days in a week. I loved Survivor and the people I worked with, and the traveling was great. It was a tough decision, and maybe I’ll go back at some point. Right now, though, it’s nice to have a break from the daily grind of a TV show. … Survivor was 24/7 and 365 days a year. I’d get calls on a ski slope on Christmas Day.”

With The World Made Straight as a calling card, Burris has three other projects in the works as a director and producer. If he goes back to globetrotting for Survivor, it probably won’t be anytime soon.

“I’ve got a couple of cool projects in the holster, percolating along … and I could see all three being shot in the next year and a half,” he said. “Knock on wood.”

— David Menconi

• Screening and panel discussion March 23 at Western Carolina University
• New York Times movie review
• Publishers Weekly review of the Ron Rash novel