Win Free Tickets To The Premiere of HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
Posted by Jarrod Whaley
Five free tickets for the 2/27 premiere of HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE are up for grabs! Call 423-300-MORT and leave Morty a voicemail. Vent your spleen, or air your neuroses, to everyone’s least favorite “psychotherapist.” The five funniest voicemails between now and 11:59 PM PDT on Friday, Feb. 26 will win free tickets. Winners will be notified by phone.
Get dialing!
5Q: JOHN SHEEDY / THE TIJUANA PROJECT
Posted by CQ Central
John Sheedy
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of THE TIJUANA PROJECT, from concept to financing.
The concept for the Tijuana Project was shared with me by Victor Villaseñor, author of Rain of Gold. I was looking for a story of hope about kids living and surviving in an inhospitable place and he told me about the kids in the Tijuana garbage dump and a school that was built for them right next to the dump. I only had $1,000 to start with, but after seeing the apocalyptic environment where these kids and their families lived and worked I knew I had to do the film. Read more
Tags: 5Q, CQ20, DOCUMENTARY, John Sheedy, Tijuana Project.
5Q: ERIC D. HOWELL / ANA’S PLAYGROUND
Posted by CQ Central
Eric D. Howell
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of ANA’S PLAYGROUND, from concept to financing.
It started as a writing experiment. I didn’t want to use any dialogue in the film and was trying to play with the empathy of the audience. Soon I discovered that the story was a provocative piece that could be an effective tool. At that point I made a very clear mission statement: I set out to make a film that would reach the broadest audience possible, to raise the most amount of awareness about children affected by war & violence, and the organizations working to improve their lives. The entire production was made possible through charitable cash and in-kind donations made to our fiscal sponsor IFP Minnesota. Screening rights of the film are being offered to non-profit organizations working to help children living in violent conditions.
Tags: 5Q, Ana's Playground, CQ20, DRAMA, Eric D. Howell, short.
5Q: MATTHEW BISSONNETTE / PASSENGER SIDE
Posted by CQ Central
Matt Bissonnette
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of PASSENGER SIDE, from concept to financing.
Well, I had always wanted to make a road movie, so I lifted the idea from the Wilco song “Passenger Side”, and then situated it in Los Angeles, as I live there, and it’s a big car town, and it’s sort of near to Modesto (relative to say Montreal, my home town), which is, of course, the location of American Grafitti, a movie I really like, and one I was thinking about while making Passenger Side.
Corey Marr, my trusty producer, raised the money through television pre-sales from our favorite people, Movie Central and The Movie Network, and then later Telefilm Canada stepped in with some finishing funds, so it was half capitalism, half socialism, like Vermont. Read more
Tags: 5Q, COMEDY, Corey Marr, CQ20, Matthew Bissonnette, Passenger Side.
5Q: Zach Weintraub / BUMMER SUMMER
Posted by CQ Central
Zach Weintraub
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of BUMMER SUMMER, from writing to financing.
My writing process spanned a couple of years, and saw the film take on various incarnations. I started writing it as a very traditional screenplay about halfway through film school in New York because I had been warned that graduating without a feature script was the worst error that an aspiring director could commit. Just before my senior year I was getting exposed to a lot of the great new no-budget work that was coming out and was inspired to try my hand at it. So the screenplay changed a lot as I started writing it realistically according to my means. But I never even finished a complete draft. The dialogue was all so long-winded and mouthpiece-y, and all of the characters just sounded like me, so I scrapped it and wrote a detailed outline instead. That was what we shot from. I recruited friend/classmate Nandan Rao to move to Olympia, WA (my hometown) with me to shoot/co-produce the film. Because we were first-timers, we gave ourselves about six months to feel everything out before shooting anything. This time was also spent fundraising, which was a dismal failure. We threw events like a roller-disco, a garden pizza party, and an art show/raucous dance party (a bad combo for fragile ceramic pieces). Altogether, we milked less than a grand out of it all. Because the film coincided with my college graduation, I was able to finance it using gift money and some excess student loan money that I sneakily neglected to return to the loan company. It was an absurdly cheap movie, but I don’t think that’s apparent at all.
Tags: 5Q, Bummer Summer, CQ20, DRAMA, Nandan Rao, world premiere, Zach Weintraub.
5Q: CULLEN HOBACK / FrICTION
Posted by CQ Central
Cullen Hoback
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of FrICTION, from concept to financing.
In the summer of 07′, I made an agreement with a private high school wherein I would teach film a couple hours a day (paycheck…) if they would let me spend the rest of the time working on my own projects with my writing partner Jerome Schwartz. So while driving in a short bus to pick up my co-writer Jerome from the airport, I was struck with a crazy idea. There were all of these resources available– food, lodging, transport, and a well of filmmaking equipment. Additionally, the arts program was struggling from a small number of students and a lack of structure (explained in the film)–I realized the creation of a film would give the program a purpose. I had also noticed that the couple ‘running’ the program had a seemingly tenuous relationship; and both hadn’t grown out of the fame-craving phase. So I had a setting, I had a subject, but I didn’t have a plot. Read more
Tags: 5Q, COMEDY, CQ20, Cullen Hoback, DRAMA, FrICTION, Jerome Schwartz, Monster Camp, world premiere.
5Q: JARROD WHALEY / HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
Posted by CQ Central
Jarrod Whaley
The core concept of the film–that it would be built around an inscrutably shady character who makes his meager living by working out of his vehicle–came out of a conversation I overheard somewhere. The details of the conversation elude me given that this took place nearly four years ago now, but one of the “conversationalists” was telling the other about an experience he’d had with a weird computer repairman who would only meet his customers in liquor store parking lots in a beat-up old van. Something about that scenario suggested to me the potential for some rather dark and awkward humor. That being the kind of humor I’m attracted to, I stole the idea and started trying to flesh it out with my own details. Read more
Tags: COMEDY, CQ20, Hell Is Other People, Jarrod Whaley, Richard Johnson, world premiere.