“INTO EITHER END OF THE CYLINDER” (2006)

Starring: jamesevanpilato, Cassie Cohn, Mindy Shiben, Joe Yates, Carlos Del Valle, Kirsten Trump, Chris Boykin & Lewis Hughes
Written by Henrik Ibsen (story) & David Wanger (screenplay)
Directed by David Wanger
Mamba Fever Pictures

Polly Staffle Rating: ***

When Robert Rodriguez wrote “El Mariachi” he decided to write a script using a number of props and locations he knew were available to him. He had a guitar case and a small town, so he came up with the film’s concept. Rodriguez also had a turtle, so he put that in the opening scene. He had a bus he could use, so he made sure to write a scene for it.

“So let's make a screenplay for a movie you can actually make without having to make your parents poor,” Rodriguez has been quoted as saying. “Let's make a cheap movie. Look around you, what do you have around you? Take stock in what you have. Your father owns a liquor store - make a movie about a liquor store. Do you have a dog? Make a movie about your dog. Your mom works in a nursing home, make a movie about a nursing home.”

To me this is definitely the best approach to independent filmmaking. Not only did it work for him, but Kevin Smith took his advice with his debut film, “Clerks.” Smith says he had both video rental and convenience stores he could use, so he wrote a dialogue driven script around them. Without consciously realizing it, that’s just what writer and director David Wanger did.

Having six short films under his belt, including the 2004 Surrealist Film Festival winner “Return of the Gnome,” Wanger, 28, decided to try his hand at directing a feature. So he sat down and wrote a full length screenplay. When he stepped back to examine his script, there was one small problem. Wanger wanted to make a film for less than ten grand and his script would have required at least another $90,000. According to Wanger, “Dripping Snot of the Hound of Lucifer” was a surreal spy movie, featuring “neutron bombs and strange unexplained occurrences.” He needed something less elaborate. He needed something more dialogue based.

Wanger had been spending a lot of time doing administrative work at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown,West Virginia and an idea hit him. To find inspiration for a lower budget project, he turned to theatrical plays to see if there was something he could adapt. Wanger soon decided on Henrik Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm.”

Eighteen days of filming over a six-month period and $3,500 later, the experimental film “Into Either End of the Cylinder” is the result of Wanger’s adaptation. Shot on mini-DV, the film runs 70 minutes and is a modern look at romance, politics and death with a dark sense of humor.

The film stars jamesevanpilato as John, who claims he has found a mathematical proof demonstrating there is no such thing as free will. John dabbles in writing, photography and political video art, but is basically an average guy that likes to B.S. down at the local café with Karl (Joe Yates). John’s girlfriend is the gullible Rebecca (Mindy Shiben), who is roommates with the sneaky snake femme fatale Beth (Cassie Cohn). John and Rebecca both get caught up in mind games with Beth that end up proving deadly. Along the way, there’s a clip of Colin Powell speaking satanic “gibberish,” a tripy party scene, a computer hacker named Aldo that likes to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to air clips of a guy humping a tree and a discussion about the Pope and how he is a dictator and should be assassinated.

Although Wanger says he didn’t plan it this way, the top four roles in his film went to friends and most of the scenes were shot at the cast and crew’s houses and jobs. The best part about it, Wanger didn’t pay any of them a cent. He just made sure they were fed well. Before you dig out your dad’s camcorder and swing by McDonalds to pick up a few Big Macs en route to film your best friend working the graveyard shift at the local adult store, let me explain. One, Wanger went into the project with a Sony PD-150 he already owned to shoot the film. Two, his friends all had acting experience.

jamesevanpilato, Cohn and Shiben all had worked with Wanger at CATF and the affiliated theater program at Shepherd University. Yates, who was a professional actor in an off-off Broadway theater company many years ago, is Wanger’s cousin. CATF board member and Shenandoah University professor Kirsten Trump, who plays a government agent named Mimi, was the only part cast in the writing stage. Wanger also said he wrote the finale, which features someone being pushed off a cliff, with Trump’s backyard in mind, but most of the locations in the film were decided on later. The scenes in Beth and Rebecca’s apartment were filmed where the film’s b-camera operator Kris Thacker lives. His bedroom was also used in the film for John’s sleeping quarters. The café where John and Karl meet is a place where jamesevanpilato used to work as a waiter. Wanger says they also shot scenes in Yates’ office building, an alley near where producer Anthony Scimonelli used to live and the home of contributing musician Doug Miller. So, is Wanger able to pull off a decent watch, using the Rodriguez approach to filmmaking? I would say yes.

Though this was obviously a group effort, the film is carried on the shoulders of jamesevanpilato and Cassie Cohn. jamesevanpilato is a cross between a young Bruce Campbell and a better looking Quentin Tarantino. I know what you’re thinking, “Hey, Mr. Polly Staffle Man, why you keep spelling dude’s name all lowercased and jammed together like that?” The first time you probably thought it was a mistake. By the third time you probably thought I had it out for the guy and by the fourth time, you probably thought I wanted to push the guy off an overhang into rapid waters below. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s his trademark. jamesevanpilato plays the soft spoken “everyman” that gets in over his head without even knowing it. He is the film’s lead, but is greatly propped up by Cohn and her manipulative character Beth. Cohn is a master of facial expressions and as Beth she is able to lie through her teeth so well I wouldn’t want to be Cohn’s boyfriend in real life because I would be suspicious of her lying to me all the time. Though jamesevanpilato is primarily a musician and Cohn is a theatrical director, I doubt we have seen the last of either of these two.

However, I have to admit my favorite scene in “Into Either End of the Cylinder” features Mindy Shiben. No, I’m not talking about the film’s only nude scene that has Rebecca passed out drunk on the kitchen floor butt ass naked. I’m referring to when Rebecca kills herself. Wanger uses the school of thought from one of his favorite directors, Alfred Hitchcock, and doesn’t show us everything in the scene. We see Rebecca place a knife to her throat. Wanger then cuts to John sitting in the living room and we hear a loud thud come from the kitchen. John then enters the kitchen to find Rebecca lying in a pool of blood. Not only does the way Wanger lets the event unfold save money by not having to do any special effects, it adds some suspense to the scene and is more effective. We as audiences have become so accustomed to seeing everything that when we don’t see exactly what happens, there is an element of unknown at play that really gets our imaginations going. It’s the same reason audiences swore they saw Janet Leigh being slashed up in “Psycho,” the hook penetrating flesh in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Michael Madison lopping off the cop’s ear in “Reservoir Dogs.”

That wasn’t the only directing trick up Wanger’s sleeve during filming. He also had to perform a scary balancing act to get low-angle shots of Beth and John in the final scene.

“I was clinging to the very side of the cliff,” Wanger said. “My right hand held the camera, my left hand held onto a shrubbery, my right foot was balanced on an inch wide ledge and I can’t remember where my left foot was.”

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Let me get this straight, homeboy didn’t pay anybody and still managed to get some nudity in his production?” Ok, since you didn’t process any of the last few paragraphs and you brought that back up, Wanger said shooting that scene and a sex scene between John and Beth were awkward, but everyone was professional and enthusiastic about the script. It really seems to pay to have decent friends when you’re working with such a small budget.

“The key to getting people to work for free is to get the project done as quickly as possible,” Wanger said. “If you’re going to be shooting a feature over six months like we did, you need to make sure that the key personnel are passionate about the project and understand the length of the commitment.”

Wanger also says to make sure and finish what you start. “I’ve personally seen at least a dozen projects, both features and shorts, that got abandoned somewhere during production or even during pre-production,” Wanger said. “The excuses are numerous, but I’d rather hear an excuse about why a film was so shitty, than one for why it wasn’t made.” Ok, now you can dust off that camcorder and get to work.

- CCF, April 2006