Today I’ve released the fourth short film I directed “The Landlord.”
“The Landlord” is a film noir style film about a broken radiator. Jimmy (Derek Minter) and Christine (Joy Tweedie) are living a great life in their new apartment, except their radiator keeps breaking. Tony (Loren Bryant), the landlord must keep coming over to fix that darn contraption. Jimmy begins to suspect foul play when the radiator continues to break, and Tony begins to spend time in the apartment doing other things.
More of my thoughts (with spoilers) after the jump:
Initially “The Landlord” started out as wildly different script. It was conceived originally as a comedy in an office titled Computer Problems. I wrote the story along with Eric and Steve. The script was pitched for the project that would become “Laid Off.” After we wrapped production on “Laid Off” we all still wanted to shoot “Computer Problems.”
At the time I was really big into film noir and wondered if that’s how me might shoot it stylistically. The story fit but the setting did not. The problem was that I couldn’t justify shooting the low key lighting style in an IT office. About a month before production I consulted with Brian Fuller. After our conversation I rewrote the script much like you see it today.
It was a really fun project to shoot. We knew we didn’t have much money but for a variety of reasons this was going to be OK. First off the nature of shooting film noir lended itself to that. Lee the DP and I sat down early on and decided what we wanted the look of the film to be. Obviously we were working with in the genre conventions so we decided to to shoot in black and white. We also chose to shoot video to get that deep depth of field that noirs were always trying to achieve. We used extreme angles, odd framings and nice pools of light and dark which allow for some degree of expressionism.
Genre films are fun because they’re off beat, stylized and they have their own vernacular that you get to work in. As a writer I got to play a lot with dialogue. I love that old Billy Wilder whip smart dialogue. I don’t think I quite pulled it off but being clever is like being cool, it never quite works if you’ve got to try for it.
Joy, who plays the lead actress, was indispensable as our production designer. Friday night before Saturday shooting Joy went to pick up a key prop for the film, a radiator. But it wasn’t there. Where were we going to get a radiator at 8 o’ clock on a Friday night? I was two hours out of town picking up an actor. An hour later she called me up “Do you want white or black?” 9 o clock on a Friday with no budget and she came to me with options!
That sums up how production went. Major problem! The whole production is falling apart! Solution! Wow you guys are awesome and saved the production! Isaac Groenendyk and Rachel Kuyvenhoven were amazing producers. From locking down the locations to taking care of crafty to making sure everything was done right they were on top of it.
Derek Minter gave a great performance in the lead role. He had that kind of brash masculinity that you need in noir. But it also served to underscore the twist at the end of the film.
Post-production was a little bit different this was the first film I directed that I didn’t edit myself. Eric Nondahl did a good job. We had great open lines of communication. And I think it turned out great.
Objectively this probably isn’t my favorite of my films. I don’t think everything works the way I conceived it. The dialogue is a little to cute and the story gets a little lost. I take it a little personally because I have to own the flaws personally but live and learn.
In the end we got the film made and seen by some people, and that’s an achievement all it’s own. It’s a fun genre piece and played great at it’s initial screening. The audience totally got the double entendres (and even implied a few that I’d not thought of). I’ve had people tell me that it’s their favorite of my films and others who tell me it’s their least favorite. I take both as complements in a way. I’d rather the audience have a strong reaction to it one way or the other than go “Meh, it was OK.”
