The occasion was the first public screening here of Existo, easily the most talked-about feature to be produced in Nashville in years. Shot, cast, produced, post-produced, and financed locally, the futuristic political satire is the brainchild of director Coke Sams and coscreenwriter/star Bruce Arntson, who convinced virtually every theater actor and technician in town to lend a hand. The result represents an almost two-year investment for most of its cast and crew--not to mention the latest hope for a Nashville-generated feature that will galvanize the city's perpetually nascent film community.

This Friday, Existo begins a week-long run at Regal Cinemas' Green Hills Commons 16--a booking with implications that go far beyond Nashville. What makes this booking so important is the possibility it creates for an alternative distribution route, a way to get true independent features into theaters across the country. If Regal's experiment with Existo works, it could pave the way for other offbeat films to supply the originality and nerve missing from too many in-cost-only "indies."

Originality and nerve are Existo's strongest calling cards. Its creators managed to identify two commercially moribund genres--musicals and political satire--only to combine them. Set in an immediate future that's part Road Warrior, part Rocky Horror, and all Music City, the movie opens with America in the grip of the Religious Right. Arts funding has been abolished, and television feeds the (literally) dip-brained populace the screeds of televangelist Armand Glasscock (Mike Montgomery).

The threat of martially enforced blandness is enough to awaken the dormant Existo (Arntson), a performance-artist superhero who's been inactive for years. Obsessed with sex, suicide, and Little Debbies, Existo starts up an incendiary cabaret act that incites the bohemian underground to wage a full-scale art attack on America's malls and suburbs.

The Right strikes back, aided by an oily turncoat (Mark Cabus) and a conservative Mata Hari (Jenny Littleton) who becomes the target of the hero's divining-rod pelvis. Meanwhile, Existo's exasperated girlfriend (Jackie Welch) joins a haphazard assassination squad that falls apart over how to art-direct the hit. Not to worry--the movie ends happily with singing, dancing, exploding bad guys, and just a whiff of the apocalypse.

Any film this scattershot by design is bound to be uneven, and indeed Existo stumbles over patches of slack pacing and self-indulgence among the belly laughs. Plus some of its topical barbs would've seemed a lot sharper before the Republican Revolution's recent collapse.

As in one of John Waters' satiric kitschfests, though, the occasional duds are the price you pay for the zingers--which include the anarchic finale and, yes, those phallic pogo sticks. And with memorable bits from the cream of Nashville's theater community, as well as surreal production numbers and a genuine political point of view, the result is the year's most original American indie to date.

Existo made its premiere as a midnight show at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in April, and it again played at midnight in June at the Atlanta Film Festival. Yet the Nashville screenings seem to have made the strongest impact. For one thing, the two sold-out screenings, and the hundreds of patrons who were turned away, created instant word of mouth. "This is what it feels like to be a hometown hero," director Sams says.

More important, though, were the perks associated with the Tennessee Independent Spirit prize that Existo picked up at the festival. One was a Directors Guild of America screening last month in L.A. sponsored by the NIFF and the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission. According to Peter Kurland, who coproduced Existo with Clarke Gallivan, the invitation-only screening led to soundtrack and distribution inquiries.

Another effect is the Regal booking, which came about through the Knoxville-based theater chain's partnership with the NIFF. The audience response to Existo prompted Regal to book it for a week, starting Friday, with an option to hold it over; if the film does particularly well, the chain may book it into theaters in two more cities.

If this strategy works, Regal will have the makings of a functioning alternate distribution route--by which the theater chain could funnel low-budget, quality films without distribution deals into megaplexes across the country. The filmmakers would bear most of the brunt of promotion and advertising, but they'd at least get a shot at a theatrical run. And indie filmmakers are becoming masters of guerrilla marketing tactics--the Existo gang included.

"I'm telling people to buy a ticket to Existo, even if they're seeing another movie," Peter Kurland says. Coke Sams is even more direct. "We want everybody over the age of 18 to see it," he says. "This is something you could only have in Nashville. There's a true spirit of eccentricity here you can't afford in L.A."