A Gray State movie review & film summary (2017)

David Crowley seemingly was a typical young Midwesterner who grew up playing army games and carrying guns. His best friend says that in high school they just assumed they would go into the military, and so they did. They shipped off to fight in Iraq, where Crowley saw people killed and began developing deeply distrustful views of the U.S. government.

Back in the U.S., he fell in love with and married a Texas Muslim dietician named Komel, who apparently converted to Christianity. Though ready to settle into married life, and believing his overseas military duty was done, Crowley was shocked when he was ordered to Afghanistan. Back in the war zone, he experienced what we hear called a “breakdown.”

On returning to civilian life, he entered film school while Komel worked to support them and their young daughter, Raniya. It’s worth noting that politics didn’t draw Crowley to filmmaking but vice versa. His dark suspicions of the government may have infused his vision for “Gray State,” but his ambitions were like those of many film-school grads. Seemingly surprised by the strength of the reactions to his trailer, he increasingly gravitated to the right-wingers who supported him, yet his main goal was a familiar one: Hollywood.

He went there looking to convert his screenplay and social media success into a $30 million movie, and Nelson interviews two executives who liked him and were interested in backing him. They found him a straight-up good guy, bright and articulate. Then Nelson plays them an audio tape on which Crowley laid out his plans for seducing them in the pitch meeting. The guys look shocked. They say the words indicate a guy who was “manipulative” and “insane.”

In the following months, no movie got made. Instead, Crowley drew further and further from friends and family, though his mental spiral—including new occult interests—apparently included Komel. When her worried sister drove 17 hours from Texas to see her, she wouldn’t come out of the house.