October 2010
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Mary Szmagaj's Review →
SZMAGAJ: “Even as his life circles a drain of his own making, we kinda-sorta want Morty to win. Why? Because Morty is us. Rarely has a filmmaker held a mirror up right smack in front of his audience as adroitly as this. And we can’t look away. It’s as if Whaley has distilled every wretched thing we’ve ever done, every situation we’ve ever handled badly, regretted, and...
July 2010
2 posts
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Amber Wilkinson's Review →
WILKINSON: “Whaley cleverly puts the viewer in the position of Morty’s acquaintances as we, just as they have before us, find he is less tolerable the longer we know him. Whaley imbues him with a passive aggressiveness that is so subtle, however, that you may well overlook many of his less salubrious character traits on a first viewing, making repeat watches satsifyingly...
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Interview, EYE FOR FILM →
Wherein I discuss the production of Hell Is Other People, and also my next feature, The Glass Slipper.
March 2010
4 posts
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Sam Ippolito's Review →
IPPOLITO: “With its laid back Docu-Drama style, about themes of social interaction and suburban isolation, it really seems like a Reality TV Show, similar to say, Bravo’s “Hoarders” or “Intervention”, expanded past its usual hour length. Deft portrait of morally decaying figures surrounded by that same urban decay in the rundown South.”
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Cynthia Corral's Review →
CORRAL: “If this is a mumblecore film, it is most definitely a mumblecore of a different sort. The lilting Tennessee accents of the characters quickly drew me in, and even with the sometimes blurry handheld camera work the film has a beauty that director Jarrod Whaley’s incredibly touching short film PASSION FLOWER also exhibited.”
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Alejandro Adams on HIOP →
“Hell is Other People offers up the pariah Morty, whom director Jarrod Whaley described as a distillation of all the things we don’t like about other people (i.e., ourselves). Morty certainly is that, but there’s something lovable about this character as embodied by Richard Johnson, blinking uncomprehendingly behind smudged glasses, and this creates a compelling tension in the film: when...
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Three Pittsburgh Screenings
Hell Is Other People will screen on three dates in Pittsburgh, PA this month: March 13th at 4:30, March 15th at 7:00, and March 16th at 9:30. All screenings will take place at the Hollywood Theatre, and will be preceded by a screening of Out of Sync, a short film by Peet Gelderblom.
These shows have been organized by Indies For Indies; see the series’ Web site for more information.
February 2010
6 posts
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Win Free Tickets To The CQ Premiere
Five free tickets for the 2/27 premiere of HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE are up for grabs! Call 423-300-MORT and leave Morty a voicemail. Vent your spleen, or air your neuroses, to everyone’s least favorite “psychotherapist.” The five funniest voicemails between now and 11:59 PM PDT on Friday, Feb. 26 will win free tickets. Winners will be notified by phone.
Get dialing!
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KFJC interview →
Here I am on the radio discussing the film. Also being interviewed is Campbell Graham, writer/director of Anyone You Want, which is also premiering at Cinequest.
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Tassoula Kokkoris' Review →
KOKKORIS: “Chattanooga, Tenn. provides a perfect backdrop for the slow pace and discussions of the characters in this film. The mood feels Southern; polite with a natural tendency to get heated. All of the friends and acquaintances talk to and about one another just as we all do in real life. The women also appear to talk a lot more. Fair enough.”
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Richard von Busack's Review →
VON BUSACK: “There’s an acuteness to this home-brewed movie that contrasts nicely with the sheepishness of Morty. Although he is not mean, this shambling boy-man possesses a wily streak. He shows off a humiliating yet really clever method of dodging a bill that was a new one on me, and I didn’t think I could learn any new ones. One thing I like about the year 2010 is that...
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Premiere Party
There will be an informal, open-to-everyone party after the premiere of Hell Is Other People on Feb. 27: 9:00PM at The Loft. Everyone is welcome.
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5 Questions: CQCentral.com →
1Q: Tell us a little about the origins of HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE, from writing to financing.
The core concept of the film–that it would be built around an inscrutably shady character who makes his meager living by working out of his vehicle–came out of a conversation I overheard somewhere. The details of the conversation elude me given that this took place nearly four years ago now, but one of the...
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Sara Schieron's Review →
SCHIERON: “This gently paced comedy, indistinctly set in Chattanooga, Tennessee, feels like a marriage between Richard Linklater’s early work and an inversion of Mumblecore (trading emotional vagueness and verbal clarity for emotional clarity and totally incomplete sentences). However what first time feature director Jarrod Whaley (an acquaintance of this critic) has done here is distinct; a...
January 2010
6 posts
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“Single, unemployed and forever scrambling for money and love, Morty specializes...”
– Fernando Croce, Cinequest Program Guide
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Premiere - 2/27/2010
Hell Is Other People will premiere at the 20th Cinequest Film Festival on Saturday, February 27th at 4:15 PM. The exact screening venue has not yet been announced. CQ tickets go on sale this Wednesday at cinequest.org.
Please note that there will be a second screening on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:00 PM.
Do drop by the event invitation on Facebook.
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December 2009
5 posts
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For The Press
This probably goes without saying, but as my good friend Rodney Ramsey says, those things which go without saying are often those things which most need to be said:
I’ll be happy to send DVD screeners to members of the press (including bloggers of course);
Richard Johnson and I are both available to be interviewed—over the phone, by email, or in person (depending on geography).
In...
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Premiere: Cinequest 20
It is with a mountainous amount of pleasure that I announce the premiere of Hell Is Other People at Cinequest 20 this Spring in San Jose, CA. More later.
October 2009
2 posts
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Jason Wiener's Review →
WIENER: “I should make it clear—I feel for Morty. I see a lot of my insecurities, fear, self-loathing, and simple poor social behavior in Morty, and I understand him. […] It has occurred to me that this movie has made me want to reveal more about myself than I usually do. I don’t know what to make of that.”
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Michael Leary's Review →
LEARY: “There is a great coherence here in Whaley’s filmmaking that is able to swap interior and exterior focal points, to let us see Morty from a lot of angles at once and then connect so many shots together that would otherwise feel a bit discordant. Hell is other people, but so is cinema. Because of films like this, I haven’t ever been able to go all the way with Sartre on this...
September 2009
1 post
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“I love Morty as I love a part of myself: guiltily and embarrassedly. He is the...”
– Leslie Evers (via Twitter)
August 2009
2 posts
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“[Whaley] is as gifted a screenwriter as he is a filmmaker. And why isn’t...”
– Andrew Grant, President, Benten Films (via Twitter)
“I just mean it’s my fault that you got better.”
– Morty.
May 2009
3 posts
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Chuck Tryon's Review →
TRYON: “This is a small, intimate story, suggested in part by Whaley’s judicious use of close-ups and extreme close-ups that seek to track down the inner life of these struggling, awkward characters.”
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April 2009
32 posts
“Just because it isn’t in an office doesn’t mean it doesn’t...”
– Morty, Hell Is Other People
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“For a carefully constructed film [HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE] feels very elliptical....”
– Alejandro Adams
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BTdv Roundtable: Self-Distribution →
This discussion covers the topic from a wide variety of perspectives; within my contribution I discuss—both directly and indirectly—Hell Is Other People and my plans for it.
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“HIOP is the story of Morty the loser, but it’s the sympathy created by the...”
– Rodney Ramsey
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“I’ll have to admit, here, now, that HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE [could] easily...”
– Jarrod Whaley, via Twitter.
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It Is Finished
Postproduction of Hell Is Other People has been completed. The local Post Office will soon be showered with a blizzard of outgoing screeners.
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Director Jarrod Whaley coaches Richard Johnson and...
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“Can I tell the world that I love HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?”
– Marya Murphy, producer of Around The Bay, Canary, and Babnik. (Via Twitter.)
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“I’ll charge you some money for that, and the only reason we would even do...”
– Morty, Hell Is Other People
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Brief Twitter Exchange: HIOP & Theme of Poverty
@zevik: about the film itself, looks like it also portrays today's financial affliction in the the advent of a car vs a home-office
@jbwhaley: I suppose it does, but that was never my direct intention. The film was "written" three years ago under a booming economy.
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Filmmaking, In The Wilderness
Don’t get me wrong; I love Chattanooga. Some deeply primal part of me will always consider it home, even after I’ll have moved on to a place sculpted more (in our collective imagination, at least) by seismic waves and brush fires than by the shameful “removal” of its native people. I too am being forced Westward, though the coercion is far more subtle and less hateful in...