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Lady in a Box
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Directed by Jeffrey Stanley Written by Jeffrey Stanley Produced by Matthew Myers Tai Burkholder Genre Runtime: 15 min Release Date: August 2006 Filmmaker's Website Send to Friends |
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Plot Outline
Ms. Pullman (Sarita Choudhury) is a court-appointed arbitrator who must take on the dreaded Helms family lead by bitter patriarch August (John Lordan), his underachieving son Brian (Luke Rosen) and his wily, widowed ex-son-in-law Jonny (Sean Hayden), an industrial plastics engineer who has created a strange deathbed keepsake in memory of his deceased wife Susan, a victim of the flesh-eating disease. Now the family is at odds over who should own it. A dark comedy about love, loss and greed.
Awards
AIVF-BVR Get It Made Package
Licensed for international broadcast by the Mini Movie Channel
Filmmaker Notes
Loosely inspired by the infamous Terri Schiavo case, the dark comedy LADY IN A BOX takes a satirical look at an American family's macabre desire to preserve the memory of a dead loved one. I hope these absurdly scheming characters, driven by a love which has decayed into malice, challenge your ethics, break your heart and make you smile. It started as a short play that I wrote in 2003 and directed three times with various casts over the following two years, most recently at the esteemed Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village in 2005.
I then decided to adapt it into a screenplay and later that year it won the AIVF-BVR Get It Made Package as publicized in the January-February 2006 issue of The Independent. The award was an equipment rental donation to help reduce production costs. I scheduled the shoot for May 2006 and began assembling a top-notch cast and crew of enthusiastic professionals who liked the script, knew my work as a screenwriter and playwright and trusted me as a director. I had worked with three of the cast members before; John Lordan, Luke Rosen and Sean Hayden had all previously appeared in my plays. Landing Sarita Choudhury, who took a real chance with me as a stranger and a first-time director, was a real thrill and I'm in her debt.
The movie was shot over two days using a Panasonic 24p AG-DVX100A mini-DV camcorder. I edited the movie myself, both picture and sound, at home on my laptop using Adobe Premiere Pro. I listed the editor in the end credits as Virgie Mae Whitworth (my great-grandmother's name) so that the movie didn't seem too horribly a vanity project with my name plastered all over it any more than necessary. I didn't bother crediting myself as Executive Producer but instead made up the name and logo Ponderosa Pictures even though I paid for the entire movie myself from meager personal finances. The entire cast and most of the crew were only paid in snacks and gratitude thanks to the SAG Short Film Agreement.
LADY IN A BOX was shot on location at the Abraham-Benziger House in Harlem, New York City. It used to be a private home, then a brothel and finally a nonprofit residence for the homeless, to which I made a generous donation to express my gratitude; it's a truly worthy organization. We shot in their community room. Initially the script called for the scene to be in August's own living room but we decided instead to place him in more of a nursing home situation. In order to help create that sense we threw some scrubs on our P.A. Greg Balla and had him walk down the stairs in the background when Brian opens the door to let Jonny and Ms. Pullman enter.
I wanted this story to happen near water because it felt thematically important. Water to me represents the womb, birth; but a grimy urban waterfront also represents decay and death. I couldn't find an ideal house right on the waterfront so I tried to create the illusion by shooting some establishing shots of the New York City post-industrial shoreline. I belong to a canoe club based in Brooklyn so a few weeks after principal photography I went out in a canoe with Director of Photography Peter Olsen to get some shots of the wasteland off of Red Hook. We shot lots of stuff but I wound up using only the birds--we had happened upon these three black cormorants drying their wings and I whispered for Peter to shoot them as I tried to steady the canoe.
I knew right away what I wanted to do with the footage. To me a black bird is a bad omen, a sign of death like a vulture. These birds weren't vultures but they look pretty similar and there happened to be three of them which was perfect: they'd symbolize the three men in my script fighting over the remains of a corpse. They became the bookend shots of my short. I also added in a tugboat horn sound effect at the opening as we dissolve from the first shot of the birds to the house. Hopefully it helps create the illusion that the house is indeed near the birds and the water.
Castlist
Sarita Choudhury - Ms. Pullman
John Lordan - August Helms
Sean Hayden - Johnny
Luke Rosen - Brian
Music
featuring the global dance hit "Sweet Lassi Dub" by The Bhutan Philharmonic
Sound
Joshua Hume
Cinematographers
Peter Olsen
Film Editors
Virgie Mae Whitworth
Art Direction
Bret Haines
Crewlist
Greg Balla
Screenings
Cannes Short Film Corner, FRANCE
Through Her Eyes Women of Color Film Festival, US
Reel Life Moviehouse, US
Buffalo Black & Asian Film Festival, UK