Welcome to “Your Weekly Short,” a LakeFrontRow.com feature that showcases one short from a Wisconsin filmmaker each week, every week. Brace thy face.
In honor of Madison’s 48 Hour Film Project, which runs the weekend of July 19 – 21 and screens July 25 at Sundance, we’re spending each week this month singling out a winning entry from years’ past.
“But it’s past July 21!” you say. “And the weekly short seems early!” you say. Right on both counts, sweet cherub. Then again, one can only contain his anticipation for the 48 Hour Film Festival for so long. You’ll forgive me?
Were you to attend last year’s festival, you’d see a lot of names familiar to Madison’s independent film scene. Greg Kuper of Public Image Media or perennial entrant Firmament Films, teams that won several awards in their own right. No team however was more successful than newcomer Drywater Productions, taking home a whopping five awards with their short “Tripping With the Planketts” in addition to being a runner up for overall Best Film. 2012’s required elements? A) a pharmaceutical rep named “Tanner” or “Tammy Greene”; B) a suitcase; C) and the line “Watch and learn.”
Roadtripping couple Forrest (David Bitter) and June Plankett (Stacey Mochnik) are enjoying a perfectly pleasant drive to their hotel. That is, until they happen upon Tanner Greene (Jim Lyke), a shirt-and-tied executive for a big drug company. Or as the Planketts gradually come to think, maybe he’s actually “Mr. Big” in an even larger drug cartel. They really need to lay off the murder mysteries.
It would be easy to dismiss June as a breathy ball of delirium or Forrest as a naive weevil, flashy hysterical portraits of life-sized cartoons. You know, the kind that might win an award for Best Acting. Fortunately, director Stephen Pickering knows enough to bounce Jim Lyke’s tempered, definitely-not-but-maybe-cocaine-murderer off of the broader Bitter and Mochnik’s broader antics. Virtually contained within a few stretches of road, cornfields and a minivan, Drywater Productions offer up a polished short film, punched up by Corinne Lyke’s jaunty (and infectiously catchy) piano waltz and a technically-sound interplay between its three-shots and its wider swaths of farmland.
Like the annual festival itself, the short brilliantly functions as its own reinterpretation of minutia. Replace “Watch and learn” with June’s cherrypicking of “international operation” or a suitcase with cocaine laundry detergent. Wayward travelers, the Planketts fashion their own narrative, consumed by a steady diet of trashy pop culture and dollar store mystery novels. “Tripping with the Planketts” ends in such a bizarrely comic fashion, the Planketts’ conclusions may leave you wondering where people come up with this stuff. I may have a similar question for Drywater Productions.
- Remember: Madison’s 48 Hour Film Festival’s two screenings begin at Sundance tonight at 7:00 and 9:00pm. Tickets are $12 and go on sale in the Sundance Lobby at 5:00pm.