(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/12/22) A close circle of Kalamazoo film workers weren't expecting their first flopped foray into the local movie industry to be mentioned more than a decade later.
Then one of the actors decided to run for Governor.
This past week, speculation around Tudor Dixon and her previous acting gigs in two low-budget movies and a vampire web series have circulated across social media. Different voices on platforms like Twitter have taken part in theorizing what all Dixon's IMDB page is about.
However, a MIRS review of all of Dixon's cinematic performances found the hard-to-find videos to contain Dixon doing nothing more risqué than what would be found on a daytime soap opera. The movies, themselves, are unsettling, bad and hard to watch.
They were the handiwork of young, struggling artists from Kalamazoo who were hoping to make a name for themselves, but found their work so sharply panned, the productions stopped about 10 years ago.
Dixon's acting resume includes playing the coke-dealing married mistress Emma in the 2008 melodramatic soap opera-esque “LexiBaby,” the screaming victim of a zombie attack in the 2009 raunchy slasher-comedy "Buddy BeBop vs. the Living Dead," and a vampire in the 2010-2011 web series "Transitions: The Series," where she appeared flirting with a woman – and soon-to-be vampire victim – at a costume party. Transitions ended up having a second season called “Inception of Chaos,” but only a few episodes were produced.
The latest stream of theories around Dixon's acting career – and if there was ever a defaming romantic scene she performed in – kicked off when a Democratic political consultant tweeted that a "little birdie" informed him that “someone found the dirty videos" and that Dixon was holed up in the office of her lawyers all day plotting out damage control.
Lawyer Charlie Spies, a strategic political law counselor, clapped back at the social media dialogue and said that his office hosted Dixon on Aug. 10 to go over a lieutenant governor pick, fundraising and meetings with the Michigan GOP and the Republican National Committee (RNC) on how to drive Republican voter turnout.
However, comments on Dixon's acting career have been underway since before the August primary election where Dixon won the GOP nomination for governor.
For example, on Jun. 8, the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) published a YouTube advertisement packed with scenes from Dixon's time on the "Transitions: The Series" web series, where a homeless man is turned into a vampire and joins a supernatural clan.
Dixon plays Claire, a sword-wielding vampire who speaks with a British accent. While there were non-pornographic sex scenes in the series – where the cast members were still somewhat clothed with it being implied that they were having sex – the majority of scenes did not feature Dixon, except for one where she enters the room to slice off a woman's head.
When the MDP uploaded the video, "Transitions: The Series" producer Chad Ream removed all of the episodes that Dixon was involved in. Ream also mailed a cease and desist letter in hopes that the MDP video would be taken down.
"That really irritated me because I didn't ask to be part of it. The other participants in the project didn't ask to be involved," Ream told MIRS. "Should all people involved in politics … let's go back to high school – did they participate in plays? These projects were over 10 years ago, a different chapter in people's lives."
Ream explained that nobody got paid directly for their participation on the "Transitions: The Series" project, telling MIRS it was an "all-volunteer cast" and was significantly funded by a film incentive that was available in Michigan more than a decade ago.
"At that point in time, new opportunities were emerging, and as a business, I wanted to expand upon possible opportunities. What better way to practice your craft than to go out and do it?" he said.
"Buddy Bebop vs. The Living Dead" doesn’t have much of Dixon. In her one scene, she wails in a white dress as she is quickly dispatched by zombies. Of the three movies featuring Dixon, it is the only one available on Amazon Prime.
"I believe that you said you watched some of it, so I certainly hope you don’t think that was ever a career goal of mine," Dixon told The Detroit News during a May interview.
Dixon said her grandmother spotted a newspaper ad that the movie production company was looking for talent and suggested Dixon try it out for fun. Again, she was never paid for her performances and they were not viewed by many people.
Ream met Dixon when she auditioned for "LexiBaby.” When "LexiBaby" came out in 2008 in a Kalamazoo theater with $13 per-person tickets, Dixon was 31-years-old with no children.
"This is just purely from my point of view, when I first met her I understood that she had some media background following college," he said, "The irony is, when the show was being produced, efforts were made to help spread the word to get viewers to watch it, and unfortunately, it's getting more attention today for all of the wrong reasons."
"LexiBaby" was the most difficult to find out of Dixon's film performances, and was described as disastrously bad by many of those involved in the project.
After the original showing at the Kalamazoo State Theater during January 2009, the Kalamazoo Gazette wrote that there might be "a good movie somewhere in" it, but ultimately compared it to a "run-on sentence" with a plot that "goes on and on."
Ream specifically described it as an incomplete project.
MIRS was able to obtain a copy of the finished film, which was never distributed.
The loosely wound narrative attempts to assemble a ping-pong effect of lives that interact in a series of inane coincidences that result in a climax that showed no previous connection to anything else.
Dixon plays a woman by the name of Emma, who is the ex-girlfriend of Rex. Both are former cocaine addicts who decide to go on the hunt for drugs after a series of other events that have no connection, but have melodramatic over-the-top implications.
Rex and Emma end up doing drugs and sleeping together in a scene that would be at home on a day-time soap opera like "The Young and The Restless" or "As The World Turns," which is to say skin on a back is shown and a strangely out-of-place Blues Brothers arm tattoo turns up.
Emma’s husband shows up and murders Rex, who at one point falls on the floor – the moment where the most nudity is shown.
He is in his underpants and Dixon is draped in a black satin blanket clutched to her chest. Any attempts to paint this scene as untoward in any way is sorely lacking, like the movie itself.
