Apparently there is a guidebook called Washington, DC From A to Z out there and my '99 released feature/my first feature (shot in 1 day on 16 MM color, 70 mins. long) Wild Diner is mentioned in it. Check out the mention at this link. Pretty cool, thanks goes out to the authors, needs to get me a copy of that book. Wild Diner is not in distribution at the moment, but, perhaps in the future it will make it on to a DVD as an extra item.
Some Wild Diner trivia related to a more recent & much better received indie movie: the DP of Wild Diner was Sean Williams, who also shot - years later - Ron Bronstein's Frownland. Williams also appears in a brief role in Mary Bronstein's Yeast. For Wild Diner Williams had to work under some very difficult conditions (like shooting a whole feature script in one day in a living room badly made up to look like a diner! :), and I don't think he was very happy with his work on that movie - so he was credited using a pseudonym in the flick. I have not seen the movie in years - but I did like the colors & the overall look of the movie, plus the scenes of DC in it - from 1998. And the music, lots of great local indie music in that movie.
I played the lead in Wild Diner. The movie - a comedy-drama - is about a guy who goes to a diner one night, meets several unusual characters, and by the morning all his problems are solved.
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So, the lesson from Wild Diner is: don't shoot your 16 MM indie feature in one day in a set made up largely of colorful thrift store bedsheets. But if you do end up making a movie that way, you may end up being mentioned in a local guidebook several years later. Which, in the end, is probably a good thing - I think.
- Sujewa
