With ‘T Bird,’ Indie Filmmaker Tackles Child Trafficking in Action-Packed Drama

When it comes to filmmaking, Hollywood outsiders are often scrubbed clean from the Teflon pan of the entertainment industry before they have a chance to stick.

Sometimes, however, a Hollywood outsider comes along who is tenacious enough—or ingenious enough—to make their creative endeavors cling to that show business upon which they long to cook.

Trevor Simms is a good example of such a cracked egg.

Simms, 38, gained traction in the world of indie filmmaking for his self-starring debut, Adrenochrome (2017), a brutal and surreal action film in which he plays an ex-Marine who foils a gang of Venice Beach psychos that kill people to extract a psychedelic compound from their victims’ adrenal glands.

That quintessential B-movie captivated me with its trippy violence, flawed characters, and unlikely hero. Nor was I alone. The film, now a gonzo classic, struck a nerve in the burgeoning streaming scene, receiving accolades from action-movie aficionados who desire features that are edgier than the commercial fare often found on screen.

As I wrote in my review at the time, “For those ready for a rollicking satire to celebrate an American Dream torn asunder, Adrenochrome is the right nightmare for you.”

With the release of Simms’s latest film, T Bird (2025), Simms plays a homeless man who breaks up a child-trafficking ring.

T Bird leans on the same underdog elements that made Adrenochrome an underground success, but with fewer psychedelic special effects and more grounded camerawork that demonstrates a maturity in the auteur’s storytelling that is more compelling and fitting for a mass audience.

Set amid the Westside during the COVID-19 pandemic, T Bird is a rudderless adult caught in a vicious cycle of bum fights, petty theft, and drug addiction.

Through a flashback, we learn that T Bird gets his name from the Thunderbird automobile from which he was kidnapped as a boy. As a product of child trafficking, T Bird’s background of abuse spurs his ongoing trauma and inability to function in day-to-day society.

So enters John, a child-trafficking pimp played by the late Tom Sizemore, and Andy Dick, a corrupt Child Protective Services worker played by himself. Together, these characters profit off struggling families and a strained foster care system.

T Bird’s vindication, as well as payoff for the audience, comes with him aiding in the rescue of two trafficked children, Mikayalah and Sunny, played by Mikaylah Jo-Mae and Sunny Alan-Moon, and the bond T Bird forms with them in the process.

Those scenes involving the kids tugged on my heartstrings and made my wife tear up.

With Simms, serving as starring actor, director, and co-writer, and Wyatt Denny as co-writer, along with minor roles for Bas Rutten as the RV Man and Don Harvey as Jack, the cast of talented Hollywood outliers add to the story’s gritty cache.

Curious where this next career step might lead, I had an opportunity to ask Simms questions regarding the making of his latest film.

Ryan Hyatt: Where are you from? How did you learn to act?

Trevor Simms: I’m from Kentucky. I think naturally people act outside of films or anything like that. They learn how to act to tell jokes, stories, trick people, etc. If you want to know how I learned how to act for film, I studied film in college at WKU, film studies in particular taught how to direct actors, so by learning how to direct actors, I learned how to act, and everything I learned there is based on common sense and instincts that I’ve always had.

Hyatt: Where did the idea for T Bird come from? Why the story of child trafficking and a homeless man hero?

Simms: T Bird started as an idea for someone else’s film, and I was supposed to be the actor. We started filming using my cameras and my production equipment and my production company. So, I picked up someone else’s idea about a homeless guy named T Bird and started running with it.

It wasn’t about a child trafficking ring, it was about a homeless guy who steals a working man’s kid. Then COVID-19 happened, and the guy who had the original idea was super scared to go out in public and all that, to the point where he dropped out of the film and basically said he’s out. So, that’s when I took the film and moved on with it on my own.

We shot the film in chronological order, and I had access to this family of kids in the desert who I became very close to during my Filmchella film festival run, and so, not sure how exactly I started using them, but I added these kids in the film and that’s how that got started.

Hyatt: Your YouTube channel includes clips you have taken from life in a homeless camp. How did documenting the life of homeless people contribute to the making of your film? What did you learn about them, and how did it prepare you for your role?

Simms: I started location scouting and, in turn, hanging out with homeless people during this time. I was watching them, giving them $5 to film them or use their encampment. I tried to pick up as much as I could to turn it into character traits. Like one homeless guy was a rapper and spoke like he was rapping a verse. Obviously these guys were mostly on speed. If they weren’t on speed, they were nodding out asleep and obviously on some kind of heroin or fentanyl. I would give them $5 for whatever reason to allow myself to film them, then I’d come back and they’d be passed out asleep, assumingely they spent the $5 to get high.

Hyatt: As an indie filmmaker, you probably have a lot of autonomy but not a lot of resources. With theater-going audiences shrinking, I’m curious how indie filmmaking and streaming might continue to evolve as a form of entertainment and delivery. Take us through the process of indie filmmaking from a financial perspective.

How did you raise money to produce the film?

Simms: I just had money from hustling. I didn’t get any investment or raise any money in the traditional filmmaking way. It was totally funded by me. The first film, Adrenochrome, I did some crowdfunding and had a couple of investors put some money in. Not for T Bird—I paid for it all myself.

Hyatt: How did you get Tom Sizemore, Andy Dock, Bas Rutten, and Don Harvey to sign on to your film?

Simms: Tom Sizemore and I were already great friends after I hired him for my first film. We were very close, like best-friends close.

Andy Dick met my little brother while he was serving burgers at Burger Lounge. Andy had a crush on him and my little brother got his number for me after telling him I made movies. A lot of people were, and still, give me shit about using Andy in this film, but I used him in a way that doesn’t glorify him or make him look good in any way. He’s playing a child trafficker and goes by the same name—Andy Dick. He’s playing himself, and he gets killed.

Bas Rutten was friends with a guy who was the dad of a girl I used to date. The dad-guy who was a producer on a few movies back in the day loved T Bird, so we used his connection with this other guy who had known Bas Rutten from back in the day. Bas Rutten did the project for free. He wouldn’t take any money from me. He loves to act. I accidentally kneed him in the forehead and busted his head up. I felt really bad about that because not only did he work for free, but then he shows up, and I fuck up a stunt and bust his head open.

Don Harvey came from a connection I made after starting the acting class with Sizemore. So, one guy who’s in the movie owns a Nightclub, and his ex wife is a member of my yacht club. I had a crush on their daughter, so I sent over my first movie and then the work-in-progress private screener of T Bird. This nightclub guy owner really liked it and always wanted to be an actor. So, we had a meeting where I thought he was going to invest in the film, but I didn’t really push that. I don’t like pushing investment from people, I can see that people really don’t like parting from their money, so I ended up telling him we can start an acting class there with Tom Sizemore.

So, we started this acting class and from that acting class Don Harvey ended up coming into the picture. I didn’t even really ask, but I told him I was going to put him in the movie. I paid him $300 the night before and said you’re going to do this work in this movie. He had a choice, but he didn’t exercise it. It was a pretty strong move for me to assume he was playing that role. But yea, there wasn’t an offer—there was a claim to him. His role could have been bigger, but it was toward the end of the film. The film was pretty much done by that point. I just needed to wrap up a couple scenes with the kids.

Hyatt: How were you able to keep costs low with your locations, staffing, cast, and equipment?

Simms: I had already done Adrenochrome without any permits or location fees or crew and always used my own equipment. I just showed up and took over and started filming, whether it was the street or the highway, with four cop cars and a spray-painted Bentley.

I was always worried about how things would go while making my first movie—not anymore. I just go and do it.

I got caught many times, but I give them my Kentucky ID and tell them I’m making a project that isn’t commercial. They can tell I don’t have a lot of money and that I’m just a gritty filmmaker. I think it makes their day actually, the cops. They feel like they’ve been involved in something artistic and Hollywood-like. So they just give me a warning and let me keep shooting.

Hyatt: What has post-production been like? Promotion?

Simms: Post production took a long time, but I really didn’t focus on it all the way. Like, maybe a few hours a week. I had to redo the entire sound track, that’s what took so long. That and submitting and waiting for film festivals to screen it.

I completely re-cut it for Slamdance—a programmer suggested a different way to cut it, and I did that, thinking that it could premiere there at Slamdance. It didn’t.

Now that it’s out, I haven’t done any real marketing. I have a $30-a-week ad for YouTube to promote the trailer, and I’ll put some posts on Reddit that eventually show people a way to the film. It’s a lot to do everything by myself, I really wish I had someone who would do the promotion for me—but then there’s always something you gotta pay them, and until the movie makes money, I don’t really wanna keep paying out of my pocket.

I’m not making as much money as I used to when I first started the film. I’m going broke, actually. It sucks. The movie business isn’t lucrative unless you have millions of dollars to put into it at the beginning and a big name star.

Hyatt: In what ways does T Bird show you are developing as an actor and filmmaker? What’s in store for you next?

Simms: Well, I think T Bird is just a more sophisticated normal kind of movie, whereas Adrenochrome was a nutjob banger kind of film. T Bird makes people cry. Adrenochrome was like a party film that made people pick up their chair and smash it against the wall.

At the moment, I’m working on a low-budget commercial horror film called Death River about the Kern River, Native American folklore, skinwalkers, brain parasites, and some high-sex-drive teenagers. I’m trying to make a horror film that would be considered ‘commercial’ because this agent from Buchwald said that’s what I should do next, and if I can do that low-budget horror film, properly the industry will finally accept me as a director who can make something successful. He wants to make it where people hire me as a director. Which would be cool to actually have a job.

For a film that will hit your gut like an omelette, check out T Bird. For more about the making of T Bird, visit Reddit. For more about the auteur, visit The La-La Lander.