Fast and Reliable

Tom Soper
Sean Morrison

Tom Soper

Documentary
Short Film

More About Fast and Reliable from Director, Tom Soper

I was a bike messenger when I first moved to New York. It’s a tough job, not well paid but addictive because of the freedom it gives a person to roam the city as a member of a loose collective of fiercely independent characters, each with their own tall stories to tell. Dexter Benjamin’s story is one of the most amazing. He is, in fact, an urban legend.

Shooting Dexter cycling the streets of New York wasn’t easy, of course, especially with a bulky Sony High Definition camera. When we followed him in a car, he’d get ahead of us in the traffic. When we tried to keep up on bicycles of our own, it was exhausting. If we’d wait at an intersection for him to go past, we’d get a couple of seconds and he was gone. Interviewing him back at the office was altogether easier. Dexter was frank and expansive about his life, and his colleagues, co-workers and friends were welcoming and allowed us to hang around endlessly as they went about the essential task of making a living. We thank them all. When all is said and done, this short film amounts to little more than a portrait of one man, but our hope is that it is an inspiration to many. Our thanks also to MediaRights for taking our film into their festival, we’re hugely proud to be a part of such a worthwhile venture.

FILMMAKER BIO

Tom Soper, Director and Producer

Tom Soper is a writer and filmmaker born in England and based in New York. He is the Producer of Living with Strangers, a narrative feature, and Hotel Almanya, a dramadoc shot in Istanbul and funded by the German Cultural Foundation. Tom has also written for the theater (productions at La Mama Etc. in London and at the Edinburgh Festival) and for commercial production companies in NY and London.

Sean Morrison, Co-Producer

Sean Morrison has been shooting since 1992 and has worked as a cinematographer with established talent such as Claire Danes, Madonna and Morgan Freeman. Among his narrative film credits is the short O Beautiful on which he served as Co-Producer, Director of Photography and Co-Director. The film won the Future Filmmaker Award at the 2002 Palm Springs International Film Festival and was an Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival.