RICHARD BAILEY

RICHARD BAILEY LIKES HIS JOB at Half Price Books. The White Rock-area resident does everything from loading stock to helping customers find their next read at the flagship store on Northwest Highway. “It’s a pleasure to work in a place where everybody in the city loves to be,” he says.

But “bookseller” isn’t the only job title on his resume. He’s also a filmmaker, poet and playwright. “If I’m awake and not at work, I’m working on these projects,” he says.

Bailey says he’s pursued these interests in one way or another since he was 18, when he got a job as an overnight radio broadcaster at a country and western station. With the freedom to plan his own show and six hours to fill, he “learned what it takes to build a story.”

After earning a filmmaking degree from the University of Texas, Bailey, who grew up on a east-central Texas farm, headed to Dallas and quickly found a job in advertising. In his spare time, he made two 16 mm short films that were featured in festivals. But traditional filmmaking is expensive — film stock, processing, lighting, talent — and he couldn’t afford to make any more. “I became dormant in film and moved to poetry and plays,” he says.

His poems have been featured in about 25 poetry journals, and his poetry collection “Revival” was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award. He’s also had some success with his plays. He was a semifinalist at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2012 for his play “A Ship of Human Skin.”

But even with these other creative outlets, Bailey never lost the desire to make films. When a friend showed him some scenes of the ocean that he shot using a DSLR camera, Bailey was impressed with the quality. He knew he had found a tool that would allow him to once again be a filmmaker.

Even with a full-time job, Bailey has managed to make three short films in the past two years, with another in post-production. His films have recently been featured in the Snake Alley Festival of Film in Burlington, Iowa, and the Flathead Lake International Cinemafest in Polson, Mont. In May the McKinney Avenue Cotemporary presented five of his films to a standing-room-only audience.

Bailey has almost finished the script for a full-length feature. His goal is to shoot a few scenes and get them up on Kickstarter by the first part of 2015 to try to fund the full production. “I’ll keep pushing the projects forward until there’s an insurmountable hedge,” he says. “So far, there hasn’t been one.”

For more information on Richard Bailey’s work, visit tropicpictures.com.