FILMMAKER MAGAZINE | Fall 1998: PRODUCTION UPDATE

PRODUCTION UPDATE

Back in 1991, first features by Todd Haynes (Poison), Richard Linklater (Slacker), Matty Rich (Straight Out of Brooklyn), and Jennie Livingston (Paris is Burning) were the notable rags-to-riches success stories out of Sundance. That same year, however, saw a lower-profile but equally audacious debut, Greg Watkins’ and Caveh Zahedi’s A Little Stiff. The film enchanted many by telling the tale of Zahedi’s anxious film-school romance with a cast of amateurs reprising the roles they’d played in Zahedi’s real-life encounter.

Zahedi followed Stiff with an experimental documentary, I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore, that won the critics’ prize at Rotterdam. Watkins, who shot Las Vegas, has now filmed his follow-up, the fiction feature Signs from God, in which Zahedi plays the male half of a San Francisco couple hard pressed to maintain equilibrium as car problems, a housing crisis, and news of a possible pregnancy all collide in a single day. While Signs’ story is scripted, the film retains several devices the filmmakers initiated in A Little Stiff, like enlisting friends and family for roles duplicating their actual relationships. Zahedi’s "character," in fact, is a struggling filmmaker named Caveh, who, like Zahedi, is in his thirties and trying to cast an autobiographical movie called I Am A Sex Addict.

Watkins graduated from Stanford University with a degree in social theory before heading off to UCLA film school and meeting up with Zahedi. His feature credits as cinematographer include Britta Sjogren’s Jo-Jo at the Gate of Lions (Sundance ’92) and Todd Verow’s Frisk; he is currently back at Stanford pursuing his Ph.D.

Signs from God’s four-week San Francisco shoot began July 8 and makes rich use of the city’s varied landscape with stops at the Exploratorium, Union Square, and a mythic lookout point. The film was shot in 35mm color and fully financed through the auspices of first-time executive producer Richard Clark, a Stanford classmate of Watkins. The filmmakers have approached Jonathan Richman, recently seen in There’s Something About Mary, to do Signs’ score. All rights are available and the film should be complete next year.

Cast: Caveh Zahedi, Laura Sexton, Greg Watkins, Marine Macerot, Moe Ghassemi, Henry S. Rosenthal. Crew: Producers, Greg Watkins and Caveh Zahedi; Executive Producer, Richard Clark; Co-Producer, Audrey Ewell; Associate Producers, Moe Ghassemi, Henry S. Rosenthal. Screenwriter/Director, Watkins; Director of Photography, Jennifer Jew; Production Design, Amanda Field; Sound Recording, Kevin Glover; Editor, Zahedi. Contact: Greg Watkins, Just Above Ground Productions, 89B Escondido Village, Stanford, CA 94305. Tel/Fax: (650) 497-2219.