Director John Sullivan (sleepover) returns with Follow Me Outside, a quirky romantic comedy written by Saul Fussiner that turns a brief encounter between two disenfranchised loners on a road trip to Maine into something more profound.

Sam’s a sophisticated young New York exec who, playing hooky from the corporate status quo, impulsively takes the train to its last stop – New Haven – and finds herself in a local dive. In walks Cole, a working-class rogue with leading-man looks who’s running away from his own life for reasons he’s careful not to divulge. Their attraction is instant, and the two head off together. The film plays out on the road as both lovers reveal more than they intend to, and in Maine, where the state exerts a mystic spell before the two hapless detectives trailing Cole catch up with him.

Sullivan, 31, graduated NYU’s BFA film program in 1990 with a thesis short, Deliver It, that won the school’s First Run Festival Directing Award. Five years later sleepover, his first feature about suburban teens from broken homes, premiered at Toronto; the film later sold to the Sundance Channel. Outside got made through a group of Wall Street investors who approached producer Scott Kaplan through an attorney aquaintance to offer a set figure to make a film. "You follow up on these things, but you never really think it’s going to pan out," says Kaplan. "This time it did." Kaplan asked Sullivan, an old friend, what he had on tap. Sullivan was rewriting the middle act of his intended sophomore project, Out of Breath, and brought in Fussiner’s script.

Outside was shot on Super-16mm in New Haven, Connecticut, Portland, Maine and Peak’s Island off the coast of Portland over four weeks in May; the filmmakers covered 33 locations in 24 days and had to barge all their equipment to Peak’s Island, where intact World War II bunkers provide an eerie counterpoint to the film’s finale. The filmmakers expect to have a 35mm print by December; all rights are available.

Cast: Michael Laurence, Diana Demar, Lauren Stamile, Mike Hodge, Mark Kachersky, Jeffrey Ware. Crew: Producer, Scott Kaplan; Executive Producer, Steve Downey; Co-Producer, Anne Flocco; Screenwriter, Saul Fussiner; Director, John Sullivan; Cinematographer, Dejan Georgevich; Production Designer, Roshelle Berliner; Editor, Reynold Reynolds. Contact: Scott Kaplan, Let’s Go Now Productions, 476 Broome Street, 5th floor, New York, New York 10013. Tel: (212) 625-3591, Fax: (212) 625-3593.

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Follow Me Outside - John Sullivan
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Slice & Dice - Rob McCall
Swimming - Robert J. Siegel
Waiting - Patrick Hasson