Matt Mailer asks tough questions about complicity and responsibility in The Money Shot, a feature version of his prizewinning ’96 half-hour NYU short. Stephen Lang plays Quinn, a fortyish one-hit filmmaker trying to resurrect his career with a documentary about street kids in Times Square. Quinn’s lost his own 13-year-old to a tough divorce so his take on teens is less objective than he thinks. When he connects with Rayna, 16, a sometime prostitute and frequent runaway, and her mugger friend Toby, 18, his on-camera questions and off-screen intrusion have grave repercussions. Quinn screens his footage for a producer who thinks the project could be worth investing in if the violence were edged up a notch. So when one teen overdoses and Quinn tells Toby where she was that night, the stage is set for a stunning climax.

"There’s a personal journey involved in making a documentary – in Quinn’s case it fills a void," says Mailer. "Toby is pretending to be a cold-blooded killer. Quinn doubts that but encourages his stance because it makes for a better film."

Mailer, 26, grew up in New York and started working in the special-effects departments of low-budget films and Off-Broadway theatre while still in high school; he also interned at Naked Angels and the Actors’ Studio. He wrote the short version of The Money Shot in ’94 as his NYU undergrad film program thesis project and shot it the next summer. He says his original idea stems from a newspaper series in which a reporter chronicled the life of a teen mugger who later claimed to have fabricated the entire story. Money Shot’s producers are Mailer’s older brother Michael, a ten-year production vet with credits on films ranging from In the Soup to Die Hard with a Vengeance, and Wall Street refugee Daniel Bigel, who formed Bigel/Mailer Films in 1995. Bigel/Mailer’s first effort was as executive producers of James Toback’s Two Girls and A Guy. Principal photography on The Money Shot ran 25 days beginning January 6. The filmmakers expect to have a completed 35mm film in early May. All rights are available.

Cast: Stephen Lang, Tamara Tunie, Robert Alexander, Aesha Waks, Vincent Laresca, Merrill Holtzman, David Deblinger. Crew: Producers, Michael Mailer, Daniel Bigel; Coproducer, Taylor MacCrae; Screenwriter/Director, Matthew Mailer; Cinematographer, Elia Lyssey; Production Designer, Betty Martin; Locations, Joe Humeres; Editor, Jim Cozza. Contact: Michael Mailer, Bigel/Mailer Films, 443 Greenwich Street,, Suite 3A, New York, NY 10013. Tel: (212) 343-7916, Fax: (212) 343-9572.

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Desert Blue - Morgan J. Freeman
The Money Shot - Matt Mailer
SHOCK TV - Whitney Ransick
The Sky Is Falling - Florrie Lawrence
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