The evolution of the new short film The Fabulous Flocks pretty much mirrors the twists and turns of a stock car race.
The project started during COVID in 2020 as a feature-length screenplay, with Allegra Demeroff inspired by her husband Jeff Kaminsky's family history connections to the origins of NASCAR. Then in 2023, when the writers and actors strikes happened, the couple fundraised around $60,000 and turned it into their own TV series project. That plan eventually morphed a 21-minute short film.
The film centers around Leonard "Peachtree" Williams, a real-life moonshine kingpin in Alabama. With the FBI breathing down his neck, Williams turns in 1924 to his young nephew Carl Flock, a crackerjack driver, to ferry the merchandise in better and faster ways.
Flock's work in Atlanta paved the way for his younger siblings Bob, Fonty and Tim to become NASCAR drivers, with Tim making it into the circuit's Hall of Fame in 2014. Meanwhile, a mechanic of that time, Red Vogt, was hired initially by Williams and later worked on the moonshine cars of another trafficker, Raymond Parks, before eventually supplying the first NASCAR-race winning car and working as the circuit's original master mechanic.
The Fabulous Flocks is set to screen August 7th at the Cobb International Film Festival in Marietta, Georgia. It debuted earlier this spring at the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival in Iowa.
"This all started at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019, when my husband said that his family were early NASCAR drivers and I really didn't believe him because he's such a prankster," Deberoff recalled in a chat with the Cobb County Courier. "He said, 'Oh yeah, I have a great-uncle who's in the NASCAR Hall of Fame and there were women drivers and Tim rode with a monkey."
"And I'm like, 'Yeah, right,'," she continued. "I did a quick Google search and lo and behold, everything he said was correct, including the monkey."
The Flock brothers competed together in NASCAR's inaugural Strictly Stock race at the Charlotte Speedway on June 19th, 1949. A month later, all three brothers (Bob, Fonty, Tim) and their sister, Ethel Mobley, raced at the Daytona Beach Road Course. It's the only time four siblings have competed in the same NASCAR race.
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