Watch Today! Available to view on:

Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, Fandango, RedBox


Things Don’t Stay Fixed follows a worldly photojournalist, Sam Grace (William Gregory Lee, “Mentalist”) as he returns home to the Deep South in an attempt to stop his daughter, Nina (Melissa Saint-Amand, “Ozark”), from marrying and destroying her future. Sam’s return home becomes more telling as he discovers that he’s the one that has been stuck in the past all along. The southern gothic drama highlights the pain of family struggles, while also painting a picture of one's internal fight to let go of the past and look toward the future.

From director Bo Bartlett (Helga) and writer Sandra Deer, Things Don’t Stay Fixed also stars Tara Ochs (Selma) and Brenda Bynum (Sharky’s Machine).


Release Details

DVD + Digital HD Release: February 16, 2021

Digital Availability: Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, FandangoNOW and more


PG 13 (language)
100 mins.
Indican Pictures and
LionsGate 



Director Bo Bartlett

screenwriter Sandra Deer

executive producer Betsy Eby

producer Stacy Cunningham

co-producers Matt Garner & Jay Underwood

cinematographer Bryan Fowler

production designer Ben Coolik

costume designer Brandy White

editor Matt Garner

post-production Moonshine Post

music by Betsy Eby


When a worldly photojournalist returns to the Deep South to stop his daughter’s wedding and save her future, he realizes it is he who has been stuck in the past.


Things Don’t Stay Fixed is the first feature film by husband and wife team Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby whose company has previously produced documentary films. Bartlett is a Pew Fellow and graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (the school which bred David Lynch) and NYU’s Tisch film school. Bartlett is a celebrated painter. His cinematic narrative paintings have been collected by Directors Steve Martin, M. Knight Shyamalan and Dennis Hopper as well as museums throughout the country. Eby is a widely collected painter and musician whose works can be seen in galleries and museums throughout the country and Europe.


The film is produced by actress, writer and casting director Stacy Cunningham with a screenplay by Southern playwright and former Artistic Director of the Alliance Theater, Sandra Deer.

A collection of multiple talents, Things Don’t Stay Fixed features music by Executive Producer, Betsy Eby. Visually crafted under the seasoned eye of Director and American painter Bo Bartlett, each scene is composed like a masterwork of art in the American, narrative tradition.

Rivers, trains, and human dramas animate a small, forgotten mill town. Written for and shot in Bartlett’s hometown, Columbus Ga, Things Don’t Stay Fixed captures the rich and complex texture of Southern culture, from antebellum mansions and genteel traditions to independent women shucking patriarchal norms.


Inspired by Southern Gothic literary works of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers, Things Don’t Stay Fixed is a surreal and subtle hero’s journey. Utilizing powerful dreamlike imagery and psychological archetypes, the film glides through a visual stream of consciousness bending the Southern genre of films such as Cool Hand Luke, Driving Miss Daisy and Beasts of the Southern Wild.