The musician and actor Colson Baker — who is better known by his stage-name Machine Gun Kelly, or MGK — will receive the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s Discovery Award on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 27, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively report. Earlier in the day, he will be interviewed in front of a festival audience by yours truly for THR’s Awards Chatter podcast.
On the podcast, the 32-year-old will discuss his colorful life, varied career and the film he is bringing with him to the fest, Tim Sutton’s Taurus, on which he served as an executive producer and in which he stars opposite his real-life fiancée, Megan Fox, as a self-destructive rock star “whose limitless success seems matched only by his bottomless despair,” to quote THR’s review.
Taurus had its world premiere at February’s Berlin Film Festival, screened at April’s Tribeca Film Festival and will be released in select theaters later this year by RLJE Films, which acquired it in May. But SCAD Savannah Film Festival attendees will be able to watch it on the night of Oct. 27 at a 9:30 p.m. Lucas Theatre screening that will be followed by the presentation of the Discovery Award — previous recipients of which include Kodi Smit-McPhee (2021), Steven Yeun (2020), Aldis Hodge (2019), Stephan James (2018) and Mahershala Ali (2016) — and a separate Q&A with Baker. (Tickets will go on sale Oct. 3.)
Baker is best known for the music he has made as Machine Gun Kelly, which includes four Billboard top 10 albums (his 2012 debut studio album Lace Up, 2015’s General Admission and two that hit number one, 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall and 2022’s Mainstream Sellout) and single (“Bad Things,” with Camila Cabello). But he has also racked up a number of impressive acting credits under his own name, including Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film Beyond the Lights (2014), Cameron Crowe’s 2016 TV series Roadies, Susanne Bier’s film Bird Box (2018) and Jeff Tremaine’s film The Dirt (2019).
Baker’s Awards Chatter episode is but one part of a star-studded season for the podcast, which is nearing its 500th episode. Adam Sandler, the star of Netflix’s Hustle, will record an episode in front of an audience at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Oct. 15. Michelle Yeoh, the star of A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, will record an episode in front of students at Chapman University on Oct. 16. And other special guests will soon be announced.
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