Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• A locally shot movie will have its premiere Saturday at Movies 8 in Boardman.

“Close Dat Back Door” — billed as “a story of betrayal, sex, drugs & lies” — is produced by Dean Butler, directed by Lauren Michelle, co-written by Charmaine Scott and shot by Ryan Freeman with a predominantly local cast.

It also stars Kaamel “Diezel” Hasaun. If you search his name on the free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi, it seems like Hasaun appears in every other film on that platform.

“He’s been in about 40 movies,” Butler said. “He’s just kind of trending right now. He’s all over the internet, Facebook, Instagram, kind of like a ladies man.”

Butler was able to get him in the movie by chance.

“I seen him out somewhere when we were actually working on the movie,” Butler said. “I seen him out, recognized him, told him I was working on the film and he was ready to work.”

Tashawn Fambro of Warren plays the brother of Hasaun’s character, who is, “Doing a lot of grimy stuff,” Fambro said, and his actions with women and minors are affecting their criminal activities.

Fambro, who also is known as rapper Murdah 1, said it was a challenge playing scenes opposite someone he’s watched so many times in other films.

“The tough part is playing a character when you’re dealing with one of the greatest people, whose movies on Tubi are number one,” Fambro said. “Playing your role and not messing up, you know what I mean? It’s showing them you can do the same thing they do … When I got into character mode, I had to do what I had to do.”

Saturday’s event starts at 6:30 p.m. at Movies 8, 469 Boardman-Poland Road, with most of the cast and crew in attendance. Tickets for the screening and $20 and are available in advance through Eventbrite. Any tickets remaining will be available at the door on Saturday.

Considering its star, the movie’s final destination shouldn’t be a surprise.

“I expect in the next two months, it’ll be put on Tubi, and we can start a part two and start other projects,” Butler said.

• Oftentimes, interviews include interesting items that, for one reason or another, don’t fit into the flow of the story.

This week’s Ticket includes an interview with Brantley Gilbert, who performs Sunday at the Canfield Fair.

In addition to talking about his upcoming album, Gilbert also talked about his recent tours with rock acts Five Finger Death Punch and Nickelback and how the genre demarcations between country and rock and hip hop are crumbling.

He credited two things that often are targets of complaints for accelerating those changes — music streaming and COVID-19

“God knows how much time was spent in the past taking songs that felt like they wanted to be rock songs, and we would add country instrumentation just to try to make it fit with everything else on the album,” Gilbert said. “Now those rules are out the window. You get to let songs be what they want to be.”

The tours with Five Finger and Nickelback came post-pandemic, when some concertgoers still were leery about public gatherings and artists were trying to come up with something different that might lure them back.

“It was amazing, man, it really was,” he said. “They’re both tours I’ll never forget. Look for more of that coming up in the years to come.”

The changing attitude also influenced the making of the new album.

” I can’t tell you how awesome it was to have a group of guys sitting around and waiting on you to tell them what they can’t do and being able to sit down with that group and go, ‘Hey, man, just do what feels right. Have fun. Knock it out of the park. We’ll see what happens.’ More often than not, what happened, what came natural for those guys is exactly what these songs needed.”

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com