Tony Revolori is stung by the strange beauty of ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’

With “The Rivals of Amziah King” hitting theaters on Aug. 14, now feels like the right time to revisit one scene we have not been able to shake since we first watched it at South by Southwest last year. It involves a honey extractor, a ponytail and a decision no character should ever make near spinning machinery. We’ll simply say this: keep your hair tied back and maybe stand a few feet farther away from the equipment than you think you need to if you want to keep your scalp.

The man at the center of that unforgettable, wince-inducing scene is Tony Revolori (technically it’s his stunt double brother, Mario) who plays Colmar, a banjo-toting musician who wanders into the orbit of Matthew McConaughey’s weathered, philosophizing beekeeper, Amziah King. It’s a small role with an enormous imprint. When we got Revolori on the line, we had to ask him about that scene.

“It’s apparently based on a real story that [the film’s director and writer, Andrew Patterson] was told about by another friend of a friend,” Revolori says. “True story.”

Somehow that makes it worse. And better. And it’s exactly the kind of detail that defines Patterson’s world — the sort of small-town life many folks in North Texas would recognize immediately, where beauty and danger sit at the same kitchen table, passing the cornbread.

A ponytail and a bear jar

Playing Colmar left a mark on Revolori, and not just a metaphorical one. The scene changed his relationship with his own hair.

“It definitely made me reconsider growing my hair out as long as I used to have it,” he says with a laugh. “How to be careful with having a good ponytail.”

Fair enough. The sequence is a masterclass in tonal whiplash — the horror of the injury colliding with the deadpan absurdity of a small town scrambling to preserve the removed skin in a giant bear-shaped honey jar. Dialogue about the “head meat” and grafting somehow becomes both stomach-turning and strangely tender. It’s the whole film in miniature: gruesome one second, achingly human the next.

Patterson — the filmmaker behind the equally as good “The Vast of Night,” a small-town 1950s story centered on what could be humanity’s first contact with something beyond our world — threads the cinematic needle beautifully, Revolori suggests.

“[Patterson] ran a tight, well-prepared set — the kind where you actually make your days,” Revolori says. “But within that structure, there was still real room to play, to experiment, to find the scene. It wasn’t rigid. It was organized enough to give you freedom.”

A musical keepsake

Every actor leaves a set with something. Revolori, to his credit, did not pocket the soon-to-be-infamous honey bear jar, though we wouldn’t have blamed him. But Colmar’s world still followed him home in the form of portable souvenirs.

“What I did take was Colmar’s banjo,” he confesses. “My little Deering banjo. So, that I did steal, if you will.”

It’s a fitting keepsake for his character — Colmar spends much of the film guarding his banjo skills like a state secret, unwilling to give anyone a “free show.” That defensiveness melts, eventually, and the film’s most transcendent stretch arrives around the halfway mark, when Colmar finally lets the music pour out.

Surrender is the beating heart of the movie. McConaughey’s Amziah is forever coaxing the guarded souls around him to soften. “You just gotta drop some of that armor you got on you,” he tells one nervous performer. “This is a safe place. I promise you. This is music.”

Dropping the armor

Drop the armor, let people in, trust the music, it’s Amziah’s creed through the film, and a lesson Revolori took home.

“Friends have really helped me learn to drop the armor and let them in and be vulnerable, which I think is a very difficult thing for men to do, especially nowadays,” he says. “But I think leaning on them is a form of therapy that is so very necessary.”

A film about bees, banjos and small-town scandal turns out to zero in on courage it takes to be seen. Colmar learns it the hard way. Revolori, it seems, learned it too.

Part community fable, part quiet character study, “The Rivals of Amziah King” is about how we’re all part of one hive that can’t survive without workers, that patience beats cleverness and that even your enemies are hurting somewhere underneath the armor. It’s sweet without being saccharine, dark without being cruel and it lingers like honey on the tongue. So, let this one sting you a little.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” opens in theaters on Aug. 14.