The first movie in our North Dakota filmmaking series will look at the 2022 “Tankhouse,” directed by Noam Tomaschoff. After a pretentious NYC theater couple are blacklisted from the industry, they make their way to Fargo to bring their brand of theater to the “podunk city.” Their New York City ideals comedically clash with their midwestern brethren as they try to establish a successful theater company.
Tomaschoff, who is based in Toronto, said that “Tankhouse” initially started out as a short film. At a festival where it was screened, producer Matt Cooper came up to him and expressed interest in making it into a feature film. Cooper asked if the story could be set in Fargo. “He had connections to different people in Fargo who really wanted to make a movie that was set in the place. He put it all together,” Tomaschoff said.
In major filmmaking hubs like New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, productions need to spend a lot of money on permits to secure locations. Tomaschoff said none of that was necessary to film in Fargo.
“It was the easiest part about it. The thing about Fargo is there is no film production there really. There is no film production in North Dakota because there is no tax incentive. It’s not a place where you go shoot stuff,” Tomaschoff said. “The upside of that is that people aren’t necessarily on their guard waiting for film crews to come and shoot. If you go to any store in L.A. or any room or any house, they’re like “it’s $1500 a day…” People were really excited to be involved in the movie… People were really accommodating.”
However, not everything about the filmmaking process was easy. As there are no film production warehouses in North Dakota, “if something broke we had to go to Minneapolis,” Tomaschoff said.
“We had to bring everything and we had to bring doubles so we wouldn’t run out of anything,” he continued.
As an independent film, Tomaschoff said they shot 14-hour days and also had to deal with the unpredictable September weather. Extras were hired locally while the principal cast was flown in from Los Angeles.
Tomaschoff said he would gladly come back to North Dakota to film. He said he would “scale production down a bit and take more advantage of the natural environment.”
“We didn’t get to see the Badlands and all that cool stuff,” he said.
Despite there being difficulties and long days, he has nothing but great memories from filming in Fargo.
“Anytime you shoot something somewhere you forever have memories and a bond with the place.”
“Tankhouse” is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video and Roku.
