1/27/2010

“Single, unemployed and forever scrambling for money and love, Morty specializes in finding new ways to make his friends feel uncomfortable. Whether being talked into posing for an eccentric artist’s photo project or vainly trying to romance an ex-girlfriend with lines like “You’re beautiful when you’re indignant,” he seems to have taken Sartre’s titular adage to heart. But is he really Chattanooga’s biggest loser, or a forlorn psychiatrist who just can’t seem to take his own advice? That’s the question at the heart of Jarrod Whaley’s deadpan treat. Charting the different relationships within a group of friends with lucid emotion and dry wit, the film manages to be both a wise comedy and a look at the characters’ often painful need for human connection.”

— Fernando Croce, Cinequest Program Guide

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Reactions:

"An existential nautilus shell wound as tightly as it is loose."
--Sara Schieron, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE

"HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE functions as a seeming farewell to a place where the vistas aren't as large as they might be."
--Richard von Busack, METRO SILICON VALLEY

"Deft portrait of morally decaying figures surrounded by that same urban decay in the rundown South."
--Sam Ippolito, PITTSBURGH INDIE MOVIE EXAMINER

"Whaley has launched a counter-movement [...] that now just needs a catchy name to spread like wildfire."
--Brian Darr, HELL ON FRISCO BAY

HIOP On Twitter:
Director's Statement:

What is it about financial poverty that so often impoverishes the inner lives of those who suffer from it? Does the relationship even operate in this fashion, or does emotional poverty precede—even serve as a primary cause of, in some cases—the pecuniary variety? ... [This] is a private story whose movements could only be written by one man holding one camera.

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On Limitation:

Don’t get me wrong; I love Chattanooga. ... I have learned to make large things from small nothings. My resolve has been permanently strengthened. I have been taught to know what I want and to aim only for that[.]

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Director's Bio:

Jarrod Whaley is a Chattanooga, TN filmmaker who has, to this point, worked primarily with digital video. Whaley graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a double-major B.A. in English and French. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Shaking Ray Levi Society, a non-profit arts organization which has been bringing non-traditional creative work (such as improvised music, video, film, and performance arts) to Chattanooga, TN and elsewhere for over 20 years. In 2005, Whaley was one of several individuals appointed to the Chattanooga Film Commission by Mayor Ron Littlefield.