Dani Minnick makes her feature debut with Boyd’s Out, a tragic tale of teen romance set in ’80s L.A. Intimate and immediate, the fiction film is shot verité-style.

Boyd, the film’s hero, is charismatic and a loose cannon, a classic outlaw type, and Katie’s always been in love with him. Her friends smell trouble, but Katie is dazzled by Boyd and too smitten to question him when he shows up at her parents’ door to take her for a ride in a stolen police cruiser. After all, she reasons, how could you give up on someone who slept with his probation officer so he could get back to you faster? And now Boyd, who’s been in and out of lockups his entire life, is getting out again.

"Ladies love outlaws," says Minnick, "and this story charms you into the excitement of a teenage love affair before dropping you into the reality of teenage delinquency."

Minnick spent years as a working actress in TV, film and theater, racking up over 100 commercial appearances before entering the American Film Institute as a directing fellow. In 1997 she received a production grant from Lifetime Television to make World Upon Her Shoulder, a short that premiered on-air in the Lifetime Women’s Film Festival the following year and went on to festivals like Santa Barbara, Aspen and Mill Valley. She has also directed for the stage in L.A., winning L.A. Weekly and Drama-Logue awards for her play, "Peace in the Valley."

Minnick and producer Lulu Zezza, an NYU film program grad with ten years of L.A. producing experience, raised financing through private investments and shot under the SAG experimental agreement. Though the two leads and most of the juvenile cast are newcomers to the screen, the film’s adult cast members include Karen Young (Joe the King), Patricia Clarkson (High Art) and John Diehl (The End of Violence).

Boyd’s Out was shot on digital video in California’s San Fernando Valley and Granada Hills over 22 days last spring. The filmmakers plan to finish the film this fall and all rights are available.

Cast: Brian Vaughan, Megan Wilson, Patricia Clarkson, Elizabeth Ruscio, John Diehl, Harley Venton, Rick Rossovich, Karen Young. Crew: Producer, Lulu Zezza; Co-Producer, John Diehl; Screenwriter/Director, Dani Minnick; Cinematographer, Alessandro Zezza; Production Design, Julieann Getman; Costumes, Alexandra Selsman; Casting, Susan Booker; Editor, Alessandro Zezza; Associate Producer; Staci Pontius; Composer, Bill Gable. Contact: Lulu Zezza, Frozen Motion Films, 16126 Haynes Street, Van Nuys, CA 91406. Tel: (818) 997-8527, Fax: (818) 779-0937.

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