Act One

My first exposure to the works of Allen C. Gardner was with his latest offering: the horror-comedy Cold Feet (2020). I watched that as a festival screener and appreciated how he and his producing-directing partner, Brad Ellis, worked their low-budget in crafting an engaging film. . . .

Now, I've gone back to the beginning to watch their earlier works. In this, their first joint-project, Ellis-Gardner do it right -- with Gardner writing what he knows (the frustrations of being an aspiring screenwriter) with Ellis working around the sets-locations he knows he can get to shoot their scenes (effectively, with skill).

One of my all-time favorite, repeat viewing films is Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation (2002); it is no accident we see that theatrical one-sheet on the wall of Kevin Hansen's (Gardner) apartment.

The set up, here, is that Hansen scored a big pay day with his disaster-parody blockbuster that got turned into a straight action piece. The film bombs, but the studio still believes in Hansen. So they pressure him to come up with a comedy script.

At the urging of his agent to "write what he knows," slowly, Hansen does just that: his personal life works its way into the script and plays out in real time, on screen (only not as kinetic as a Kaufman flick).

So, while it's not shot in grainy black and white like Kevin Smith's debut, Clerks, what we have is more Chasing Amy: a charming, mature film filled with sincerity about the ups and downs of show business. It's a wonderful throwback to those '90s indies by Miramax and Fox Searchlight, such as the million-dollar budgeted Kicking and Screaming (1995), that came to mind as I watched Act One.