Jennifer Dundas Lowe in Swimming.

Robert J. Siegel adds a salt-water twist to the coming-of-age genre with Swimming, a tale set at the height of summer tourist season in South Carolina resort haven Myrtle Beach. Sure to be compared to Ruby in Paradise, the film stars Lauren Ambrose (Can’t Hardly Wait) as Frankie, a young local who’s just beginning to figure out that she wants more than Myrtle Beach can give her. She works days in her brother’s restaurant and wastes nights on the boardwalk with her more carefree friends. Jennifer Dundas Lowe, who wowed New York theater-goers in Tom Stoppard’s "Arcadia," plays Frankie’s lifelong best friend Nicola, proprietor of a boardwalk piercing shop and self-defined seeker of trouble. Frankie’s always played sidekick to Nicola so neither are prepared when two new arrivals, a young siren hired as waitress and a drifter selling tie-dye out of the back of his van, court only Frankie. Nicola’s ensuing jealousy sets a series of betrayals in motion.

Siegel, an accomplished commercial director whose previous dramatic features, Parades and The Line, have gone to festivals like Venice and Deauville, currently teaches narrative film directing in the SUNY Purchase film department. Swimming originated there as a script submitted by Lisa Bazadona in 1997 as a senior thesis project based on her summer job painting temporary tattoos in Myrtle Beach. Siegel optioned the script and brought in playwright Grace Woodard, a former writing partner with whom he’d scripted HBO’s Descending Angel (1990), and short filmmaker Ciro Silva, a former student, to work with him and Bazadona on revisions. Also added to the team was producer Linda Moran, who left a prior music industry career for independent film after acting in Tim McCann’s 1995 Telluride discovery Desolation Angels. Moran has since production managed the New York City segment of The Buena Vista Social Club and co-produced five features including Amos Kollek’s Sue and Fiona, Mob Queen, Dating Games and Harlem Aria, the last a 1999 Toronto premiere.

By spring 1998 Siegel had locked in financing from private investors. Swimming shot on location in Myrtle Beach for 28 days last October and November. At press time the filmmakers were mixing sound and music and expected to have a print later this fall. All rights are available.

Cast: Lauren Ambrose, Jennifer Dundas Lowe, Joelle Carter, Jamie Harrold, James Villemaire, Josh Pais, Joshue Harto. Crew: Producers, Robert J. Siegel & Linda Moran; Co-Producers, Ciro Silva & Grace Woodard; Line Producer, Valerie Romer; Screenwriters, Lisa Bazadona, Robert J. Sielgel and Grace Woodard; Director, Robert J. Siegel; Cinematographer, John Leuba; Production Design, Charlotte Bourke; Casting, Judy Henderson; Editor, Frank Reynolds; Music Supervisor, Mark Wike. Contact: Robert J. Siegel, Oceanside Pictures, 302 West 86th Street, New York, New York 10024. Tel: (212) 874-6041, Fax: (212) 873-9477, E-mail: oceansidepix@aol.com

Boyd’s Out - Dani Minnick
Follow Me Outside - John Sullivan
Kali’s Vibe - Shari Carpenter
The Magic of Marciano - Tony Barbieri
Maryam - Ramin Serry
On the Q.T. - Yale Strom
Slice & Dice - Rob McCall
Swimming - Robert J. Siegel
Waiting - Patrick Hasson