Event

Dearly Departed

Director: Timothy Runyon
Written by: David Bottrell and Jessie Jones

In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the
South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their
father's funeral, the Turpin's other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud
drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of
no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister,
Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than
two cents. As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, "When I
die, don't tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you." Amidst the chaos, the
Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to
pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral.