Post by fordprefect on Feb 3, 2016 19:31:35 GMT
Hi, Steven.
I posted your trailer to your short back in May 2014, in the "Library" section, and had been looking for the finished short by checking your website. Im glad you found the board and posted the link to it.
I can see why it garnered awards. Congrats on your film! Great cinematography, I love the shot of the boy coming out of the ottoman. Casting was really well done, and acting was solid. The guy reminded me of Hugh Dancy.
This is just a general aside, because I think your movie was well made and not exploitative. But instead of focusing on the man's experience of of the sexual assault of his wife/gf, I wish a film would focus on the women, themselves. It can be done without being exploitative. First and foremost, the women were the targets of the EAR, and they suffered the greatest. I think you imparted the violence and ugliness of the situation, through the male actor's emotions, which is good, because a lot of people hear about the EAR and it only piques their lowest interest. They want to make exploitative gore/terror/horror films.
But anyway, it would be great if more movies would be made from the woman's experience, and not of her experience through a man's p.o.v., yet again. I do sympathize with the men who were terrorized by EAR, but the truth is, after many of these assaults, many of these men left their gfs and wives. In part because they felt ear emasculated them and/or they blamed themselves for not saving the woman, or they just didnt want to deal with the victim's trauma, and just up and left. And I dont sympathize with any of that behavior. Somehow, these men shrank the tragedy of what happened to the women down to something of less important than what they themselves suffered. These women were not treated well by society in general, who told them to 'get over' the rape, told them to act like it never happened, or that it was somehow a less violent crime because rape 'isnt that bad.' And if you dont think they thought like this , read some of the victim's experiences with friends, family and coworkers after the rapes. And not shockingly, many of these attitudes have not changed, at base, over the last 40 years. Look at the rate of sexual assault against women and girls, and then the insignificant number of convictions. Back in the 70s, society cared so much about the victims of sexual assault, they gave them a whole 3 years to prosecute until the statute of limitations were up. And now, nearly 40 years later, what s the average ? Isnt California a whopping 6 or 7 years now? For a felony that is second only to murder.
So it would be great if some films had the sexual assaulted survivor's p.o.v., because frankly, these attitudes toward rape have to be broken, and film offers the rare experience of vicariously feeling emotions and understanding things through another human being's experience.
Thank you for the support and the kind words. Out of curiosity, how did you come across my trailer in May 2014?
I do appreciate your points about the woman's p.o.v. and society's lack of empathy towards rape victims is indeed horrific...so understand that I am not trying to diminish the victims in any way or glorify the crime, but translating concepts into cinema isn't a simple, linear task. Trying to cram and force complicated facts and opinions into a 15 minute short would create a messy narrative, in my opinion. To me, this story was an exploration of the helpless husband, bound by the very plates on which he shared his family meal. The tension during the son's removal of the plates, and his facing the EAR after the dust had cleared were marked story beats for me. The EAR's methods were interesting, even though I know that only scratched their surface and barely touched on what was factual.
And I appreciate your remarks about the difficulty of turning complicated facts into a film narrative, one that must be entertaining to some degree.
Another difficulty, I would imagine, is to make a film about a serial rapist. As film viewers, people are agreeable to the idea of watching serial killers, especially when they are charismatic (Silence of the Lambs) or cryptic (Zodiac). But a film about a serial rapist would likely turn people away unless viewers got a sense that the focus would be much bigger than that.
For such a film to work (in the way that movies have to work to be entertaining), it seems like Fincher's Zodiac probably provides the best model. I would think that the movie would have to focus on the different investigators from the different counties, a few of the victims who continued to receive threatening phone calls, and would probably never offer a clear view of EAR. Or if viewers did get a view of EAR, it would be done through multiple, conflicting, and ambiguous views as investigators come across a range of potential suspects.
Reading Richard Shelby's "Hunting a Psychopath," I got a sense of the very landscape being ominous--the construction and home-for-sale signs, the highways and the greenbelts used to travel. I think there was even a near-cinematic scene in it when the investigators realized a pattern to the homes being broken into, and they were close to predicting vulnerable houses in a neighborhood. Such a sense would translate well to film, I think, adding to the anxiety of the time.
Any publicity that draws attention to important details in the case in a respectful, non-salacious way is welcome. Good luck on your project.