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Abby Singer
Reel Indies // Unrated // July 24, 2007
List Price: $14.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
There's a great story about the making of "Abby Singer," and a great cautionary yarn. Here is a movie whose makers put salesmanship above storytelling, and as their tale unfolds, we see hubris give way to the cold reality that they made a movie nobody would want to watch.
The film began life in 2001, when Utah-based writer/director Ryan Williams gathered a local action class for a new project: a drama shot on the cheap, with no screenplay. In early 2002, Williams - who also cast himself in the lead role - and his merry band of ad-libbers took their cameras to the Sundance Film Festival, where the cast would hunt down any celebrities they could and get them on tape. This was not to further the story, but to expand the film's ability to get noticed: now Williams could tell studio honchos that he was making a movie with Stockard Channing, Patricia Arquette, and Adam Carolla! (The part about them being in ambush-cameo roles would be conveniently absent from this description.)
Later, the filmmakers would also journey to other festivals, using their big names to sweet-talk bigger names into making a tiny appearance, and soon the cameo list managed to include Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Williams would also use video footage of speeches given by folks like John Waters as a way to further increase his A-list roster.
In the middle of this, Williams moved to Los Angeles and devised a way to sneak on to all the major studio lots in town, where he and a few pals would leave behind packets including press kits and a DVD of a rough-cut trailer. The director, feeling extra-savvy, even invited a journalist along, guaranteeing his adventures would nab him some free press. That journalist was Tim Cooper, who wrote about it in 2003 for The Observer.
That article is priceless for its insights into Williams' line of thinking at this point. The filmmaker, pointing his hawker shtick inward, plastered his apartment with positive-thinking Post-It Notes, self-affirming messages aimed at his salesman's heart: "I will sell Abby Singer for $5m. Goal: $10m."
Ah, but Williams did not sell "Abby Singer" for $10 million, nor $5 million, nor anything. Despite landing an agent who was equally keen on the sales pitch, and despite somehow convincing a few studio employees to give his DVD a quick spin, Williams wound up with nothing. Cooper's article ends with a mention that Williams was busy cooking up new schemes to get his movie noticed, and only a small note explaining that he also took another stab at editing the darn thing.
And that explains everything. Here is a huckster in place of a filmmaker. Impress people all you want with tales of illegal adventures in Hollywood, spiced up with slick-sounding names like "Operation Nighthawk," but if you fail to spend any time actually concerned about the movie you're trying to sell, all the nifty codenames in the world won't help you. Which is why after three years of nobody biting, Williams finally sat down, finalized the edit on his movie, got into a few low-key film fests, and eventually went straight to video thanks to a small, respectable company called Reel Indies. So much for winning over the Weinsteins.
All these escapades leading to a complete dismissal by the studio machine reminds me of the great scene in Tim Burton's "Ed Wood," when Johnny Depp's title character bravely talks his way onto the lot with a copy of "Glen or Glenda?", only to find himself strangely optimistic despite his being on the wrong end of history's worst business phone call: "Worst movie you ever saw? Well, my next one will be better."
Granted, "Abby Singer" is not a shambles of Woodian proportions. But it is a very bad movie, weighed down with horrible production values, ham-fisted acting, and a go-nowhere story, and the idea that Williams seriously thought he could sell this grimy, shoddy indie for $10 million reveals a sad optimism and sadder delusion.
The story - best I could gather in between the unintelligible dialogue (several scenes were apparently filmed with only a single in-camera microphone), random flashback structure, and long, self-indulgent posturing - involves two chums, Kevin (Williams) and Curtis (Clint Palmer), whose lives have been falling apart for years. Both are failed actors. Kevin now works as the world's worst acting teacher, his lessons filled with lengthy woe-is-me diatribes that are somehow intended to inspire everyone to follow their dreams; Curtis is employed at a casting agency, and the movie has nothing of interest to note about that career.
The two friends drifted apart in college, when both fell for the same woman. Kevin wound up marrying her, but now finds himself in the middle of a rough divorce, which leads Kevin to fill his kitchen with liquor bottles, some of them still in the brown paper bag, because that's how down and out Kevin has fallen. Curtis, meanwhile, has opted for suicide, and following a bizarre sequence in which he tries to buy a gun from a dealer in the park (as a word, "bizarre" doesn't do this out-of-left-field almost-comedy scene justice), the two characters finally reunite in the woods, where they deliver stupid monologues about second chances and following your dreams and such.
By the way, it is here the movie finally tosses us the movie term "Abby Singer," which is slang for the second-to-last shot of the day, named for a famous production assistant. Kevin tells Curtis that this moment is his own Abby Singer, meaning, I suppose, that there's more left in life if he's willing to keep going. But the movie never before bothers to show us how these two people would be aware of the phrase - they're not presented as the sort of ravenous film buffs that would know such a term. Indeed, the movie is forced to include a lengthy title card explaining the term's definition, because the rest of the movie forgets to.
Along the way, the movie tosses us a heap of flashbacks, some of which take us to film festivals, where Curtis spent some time with an ex-girlfriend, or something. The main point here is to figure in all those cameos Williams shot. Most of them have nothing to do with anything, which is an insult to the talent involved.
The biggest insult is saved for Roger Ebert, who's interviewed here over his love for "Citizen Kane." Ebert even delivers a recital of the famous "white parasol" monologue, then explains how that scene beautifully illustrated lost opportunities and romantic regret - two themes Williams clumsily tries to handle himself in his movie. What Ebert's appearance does, essentially, is cheaply co-opt the critic's love for a masterpiece for its own end; rather than come up with touching scenes on its own, "Abby Singer" asks someone in the know to think of a better scene in a better movie, then talk about that for a while. This is a movie that stops dead in its tracks so it can haul in a discussion it never earns on its own.
The rest of the cameos will leave you scratching your head, wondering why they were included at all. At one point, the characters obsess over the idea of Curtis' inability to perform oral sex on a woman, and the filmmakers get all giddy at the chance to ask celebrities to discuss such bedroom behavior on camera. They oblige, and it's sometimes cute (who can deny sex talk from Adam Carolla?), but what does it have to do with our characters, or their journey?
"Abby Singer" is ultimately a jumble of random scenes, some experimental, some guerilla-clever, some dramatically go-nowhere. (Didn't even mention the Kubrickian sex scene-with-masks, or the subplot about the old guy who wants to be a star, or the dozens of other irrelevant tangents this movie dumps on us.) It's a frustratingly empty experience, a lame-brained indie project that's both propped up and knocked down by a salesman's confidence.
The DVD
Video & Audio
As mentioned in the review, "Abby Singer" looks and sounds terrible, and this DVD transfer does nothing to improve it. The 1.33:1 full screen image never looks better than somebody's home movies, with shoddy lighting bringing out heavy graininess in too many underlit scenes. The Dolby stereo soundtrack is even worse, for reasons mentioned above. No subtitles are available.
Extras
A slideshow presents photos that are less "publicity stills" and more "stuff Williams shot while hanging out with his friends."
Also included is a Reel Indies trailer reel, which includes the "Abby Singer" preview.
Final Thoughts
Without the cameos, "Abby Singer" is just a second-rate student film that wouldn't earn a lick of attention. Its backstory is an extraordinary cautionary tale, but that doesn't mean you have to sit through the actual movie to understand its lessons. Skip It.
The film began life in 2001, when Utah-based writer/director Ryan Williams gathered a local action class for a new project: a drama shot on the cheap, with no screenplay. In early 2002, Williams - who also cast himself in the lead role - and his merry band of ad-libbers took their cameras to the Sundance Film Festival, where the cast would hunt down any celebrities they could and get them on tape. This was not to further the story, but to expand the film's ability to get noticed: now Williams could tell studio honchos that he was making a movie with Stockard Channing, Patricia Arquette, and Adam Carolla! (The part about them being in ambush-cameo roles would be conveniently absent from this description.)
Later, the filmmakers would also journey to other festivals, using their big names to sweet-talk bigger names into making a tiny appearance, and soon the cameo list managed to include Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Williams would also use video footage of speeches given by folks like John Waters as a way to further increase his A-list roster.
In the middle of this, Williams moved to Los Angeles and devised a way to sneak on to all the major studio lots in town, where he and a few pals would leave behind packets including press kits and a DVD of a rough-cut trailer. The director, feeling extra-savvy, even invited a journalist along, guaranteeing his adventures would nab him some free press. That journalist was Tim Cooper, who wrote about it in 2003 for The Observer.
That article is priceless for its insights into Williams' line of thinking at this point. The filmmaker, pointing his hawker shtick inward, plastered his apartment with positive-thinking Post-It Notes, self-affirming messages aimed at his salesman's heart: "I will sell Abby Singer for $5m. Goal: $10m."
Ah, but Williams did not sell "Abby Singer" for $10 million, nor $5 million, nor anything. Despite landing an agent who was equally keen on the sales pitch, and despite somehow convincing a few studio employees to give his DVD a quick spin, Williams wound up with nothing. Cooper's article ends with a mention that Williams was busy cooking up new schemes to get his movie noticed, and only a small note explaining that he also took another stab at editing the darn thing.
And that explains everything. Here is a huckster in place of a filmmaker. Impress people all you want with tales of illegal adventures in Hollywood, spiced up with slick-sounding names like "Operation Nighthawk," but if you fail to spend any time actually concerned about the movie you're trying to sell, all the nifty codenames in the world won't help you. Which is why after three years of nobody biting, Williams finally sat down, finalized the edit on his movie, got into a few low-key film fests, and eventually went straight to video thanks to a small, respectable company called Reel Indies. So much for winning over the Weinsteins.
All these escapades leading to a complete dismissal by the studio machine reminds me of the great scene in Tim Burton's "Ed Wood," when Johnny Depp's title character bravely talks his way onto the lot with a copy of "Glen or Glenda?", only to find himself strangely optimistic despite his being on the wrong end of history's worst business phone call: "Worst movie you ever saw? Well, my next one will be better."
Granted, "Abby Singer" is not a shambles of Woodian proportions. But it is a very bad movie, weighed down with horrible production values, ham-fisted acting, and a go-nowhere story, and the idea that Williams seriously thought he could sell this grimy, shoddy indie for $10 million reveals a sad optimism and sadder delusion.
The story - best I could gather in between the unintelligible dialogue (several scenes were apparently filmed with only a single in-camera microphone), random flashback structure, and long, self-indulgent posturing - involves two chums, Kevin (Williams) and Curtis (Clint Palmer), whose lives have been falling apart for years. Both are failed actors. Kevin now works as the world's worst acting teacher, his lessons filled with lengthy woe-is-me diatribes that are somehow intended to inspire everyone to follow their dreams; Curtis is employed at a casting agency, and the movie has nothing of interest to note about that career.
The two friends drifted apart in college, when both fell for the same woman. Kevin wound up marrying her, but now finds himself in the middle of a rough divorce, which leads Kevin to fill his kitchen with liquor bottles, some of them still in the brown paper bag, because that's how down and out Kevin has fallen. Curtis, meanwhile, has opted for suicide, and following a bizarre sequence in which he tries to buy a gun from a dealer in the park (as a word, "bizarre" doesn't do this out-of-left-field almost-comedy scene justice), the two characters finally reunite in the woods, where they deliver stupid monologues about second chances and following your dreams and such.
By the way, it is here the movie finally tosses us the movie term "Abby Singer," which is slang for the second-to-last shot of the day, named for a famous production assistant. Kevin tells Curtis that this moment is his own Abby Singer, meaning, I suppose, that there's more left in life if he's willing to keep going. But the movie never before bothers to show us how these two people would be aware of the phrase - they're not presented as the sort of ravenous film buffs that would know such a term. Indeed, the movie is forced to include a lengthy title card explaining the term's definition, because the rest of the movie forgets to.
Along the way, the movie tosses us a heap of flashbacks, some of which take us to film festivals, where Curtis spent some time with an ex-girlfriend, or something. The main point here is to figure in all those cameos Williams shot. Most of them have nothing to do with anything, which is an insult to the talent involved.
The biggest insult is saved for Roger Ebert, who's interviewed here over his love for "Citizen Kane." Ebert even delivers a recital of the famous "white parasol" monologue, then explains how that scene beautifully illustrated lost opportunities and romantic regret - two themes Williams clumsily tries to handle himself in his movie. What Ebert's appearance does, essentially, is cheaply co-opt the critic's love for a masterpiece for its own end; rather than come up with touching scenes on its own, "Abby Singer" asks someone in the know to think of a better scene in a better movie, then talk about that for a while. This is a movie that stops dead in its tracks so it can haul in a discussion it never earns on its own.
The rest of the cameos will leave you scratching your head, wondering why they were included at all. At one point, the characters obsess over the idea of Curtis' inability to perform oral sex on a woman, and the filmmakers get all giddy at the chance to ask celebrities to discuss such bedroom behavior on camera. They oblige, and it's sometimes cute (who can deny sex talk from Adam Carolla?), but what does it have to do with our characters, or their journey?
"Abby Singer" is ultimately a jumble of random scenes, some experimental, some guerilla-clever, some dramatically go-nowhere. (Didn't even mention the Kubrickian sex scene-with-masks, or the subplot about the old guy who wants to be a star, or the dozens of other irrelevant tangents this movie dumps on us.) It's a frustratingly empty experience, a lame-brained indie project that's both propped up and knocked down by a salesman's confidence.
The DVD
Video & Audio
As mentioned in the review, "Abby Singer" looks and sounds terrible, and this DVD transfer does nothing to improve it. The 1.33:1 full screen image never looks better than somebody's home movies, with shoddy lighting bringing out heavy graininess in too many underlit scenes. The Dolby stereo soundtrack is even worse, for reasons mentioned above. No subtitles are available.
Extras
A slideshow presents photos that are less "publicity stills" and more "stuff Williams shot while hanging out with his friends."
Also included is a Reel Indies trailer reel, which includes the "Abby Singer" preview.
Final Thoughts
Without the cameos, "Abby Singer" is just a second-rate student film that wouldn't earn a lick of attention. Its backstory is an extraordinary cautionary tale, but that doesn't mean you have to sit through the actual movie to understand its lessons. Skip It.
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