‘At Any Price’ to hit screens this weekend

In mid-July of 2011, a Hollywood movie crew came to the Iowa Speedway during a race weekend to film scenes for an at-the-time unnamed movie starring Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid.

Since then, we’ve come to learn a bit more about the film, titled “At Any Price,” in which an ambitious seed distributor named Henry Whipple (played by Quaid) dreams of handing over his family’s farming empire to his son, Dean (played by Efron). Meanwhile, Dean has his sights set on a career as a professional race car driver.

In the competitive world of modern agriculture, Henry becomes the focus of a high-stakes investigation into the family business. When the lies he has been living become exposed, both father and son are pushed into an unexpected crisis that threatens the family’s entire livelihood.

“At Any Price” was directed by Ramin Bahrani, who also wrote the screenplay. The filmmaker said he spent six months in the Midwest, filming also in Illinois for portions of the movie.

“I’d ride with the farmers in their massive, 48-row air-conditioned GPS planters and they’d talk with me, almost like a therapy session,” he said. “A lot of the stories and emotions in the movie came from those conversations with real farmers.”

Having worked primarily with low-budget, small cast films, Bahrani said the stories he heard in the heartland seemed like the perfect opportunity to enlarge his cast and to expand the scope of the story to include religion, business and politics. He said he wanted to tell a story with complex characters that would appeal to audiences outside the New York City market and the film festival circuit.

“The two phrases I heard most were ‘Expand or die,’ and ‘Get big or get out,’” he said. “These mantras fuel American and global dreams for success.”

Bahrani said modern farmers run multi-million-dollar businesses with highly advanced technology, while doubling as genetically modified seed salesmen who constantly check the global markets on their smartphones. He added this creates immense pressure for those in agribusiness.

“I wanted to know what happened to a man when he values expansion of business over his family, his neighbor, his community and ultimately himself,” he said. “Can his family stay together in this intensely competitive world?”

The film was produced by Black Bear Pictures and is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. It opened last month in New York City and Los Angeles, and began opening in other metropolitan markets earlier this month.

Friday is its national debut, and it will be screened at the Capitol II this weekend and early next week. The film is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for sexual content and language.