Jul
25
After I graduated from film school in 2002, I moved to Hollywood, thinking that my talent for writing would easily land me a screenwriting gig. Well, it’s been almost 6 years now. A couple of my scripts have been semi-finalists in screenplay competitions, and I’ve had exactly one meeting with a producer about a low-budget script I’d entered in the Nicholl Fellowships. But nothing’s really come of any of my screenwriting efforts to date, regardless of the fact that I live right where it all happens.
Meanwhile, a buddy of mine from film school, Sean Gleaves, stayed in Washington and found himself a writing gig on an independent film produced there called “GPS.” As part of the Action on Film International Festival program, I finally got to check it out. The film was screened in Old Pasadena at the One Colorado — a theater I used to work across the street from during my days at Yahoo. So my living in Los Angeles fortunately positions me that much closer to art houses screening my former classmates’ films.
At least I’ve got that going for me.
Anyway, before I begin my review of “GPS” in earnest, I have to mention the short film, “Apparition,” that was screened before it. Now I’ve seen some truly awful shorts — hell, I’ve written and directed a couple myself — but “Apparition” is like a punch to the man-parts. It’s about three friends on a camping trip. On the drive home, their SUV goes over a cliff. Two of them manage to escape, but they can’t pull the third one out in time. So they leave him to die in a firey explosion. A month later, the surviving female friend has a vision of the dead guy — all burned and gnarly looking — while taking a tastefully-shot shower. Later, the surviving male friend comes over to her house. She sees the dead guy again, this time in the kitchen, standing behind the guy who’s not dead. She dumps the guy who’s alive for no reason, he leaves, and she goes to bed. THAT’S THE WHOLE FRIGGIN’ MOVIE!!!
I understand that “Apparition” is a short, and short films don’t always have endings that tie up everything like feature films do. But, WTF?! The film ends about two acts too soon. Even shorts have a three-act structure. It’s not as though I wanted “Apparition” to go on much longer — as it is, it’s a pretty horrid way to spend 10 minutes of your life — but they weren’t even trying. If anything, it’s inspired me to make another short film just to show idiots like the auteurs behind “Apparition” how it’s done.
With all that out of the way, what follows is my review of “GPS.” It’s a stalk-and-slash movie about a group of campers on a GPS hunt, looking for $2 million in stolen money a friend of theirs has hidden deep in the woods. Before seeing the film I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of a GPS hunt. Like I said, I live in Los Angeles. As far as I’m concerned, going into the woods is something you do if you’re interested in having your head split open by some hatchet-wielding psychopath. But there are some folks out there, I guess, who go on these types of hunts — plugging coordinates they get off the Internet into their hand-held GPS units — to find all sorts of treasures…when they’re not getting stabbed repeatedly, shot full of arrows, or being impaled on a tree branches.
Now I love slasher films. There’s something about stupid young people being destroyed way out in the middle of nowhere by a masked killer that appeals to me. Probably my biggest critique of “GPS” is that it’s not a more straightforward slasher movie. Tonally, it’s a little uneven because the horror is introduced rather late in the film. I initially thought the movie was a light-hearted adventure until about the midpoint when the kids discover footage of one of their friends getting his head caved in.
Knowing Sean as well as I do, I imagine most of the issues I have with the script — co-written by the director Eric Colley and star Hallie Shepherd — probably weren’t his idea. I’d bet cash money that the ridiculously overwrought motive the killer provides at the end of the film wasn’t something he’d suggested during the development stages. It’s almost a self-reflexive send-up of all the bizarro contrivances that drive a slasher movie psychopath to cut people into tiny pieces, it’s so out of left field.
Despite its flaws, the movie was produced. I can’t say that about anything I’ve written. So for those of you keeping score it’s…
Sean: 1
Brad: 0
“GPS” hasn’t quite put Sean on the map yet — har, har. But when and if it does, I hope he doesn’t forget about the little people like me, not to mention my extremely well-written entertainment blog that doubtless made it all possible.
-Brad Lohan
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I don’t know who this “Sean Gleaves” fellow is, but he sounds handsome and virile. He probably wrestles grizzly bears for sport.
And he would probably (as far as I know) like to point out that he had nothing to do with the short film “Apparition”, and has in fact never even heard of it.
That said, I heard that his tears cure cancer, and his penis once won the World’s Strongest Man competition.