Playing Solitaire

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In the 90s when top film festivals reigned as the supreme event for discovering new Directors Scott Hadley Morgan was dared by his peers in the writers’ arena to try to be the Writer-Producer-Director of his own film. They egged him on, swearing it’s harder than he can imagine to complete, much less win any category. Scott told them that not only would he film it, he would shoot it on 35mm instead of High-Definition, he’d cast all new talents, he’d use Sydney Lumet’s Director’s style which is very hard to pull off, he’d use an all-Asian cast because that was the future, and he’d shoot all angles in one take. And still qualify to get into festivals. [The only angles requiring more than one take ended up being the flying jib shot and an attack scene during a strobe light that required 3 takes each to make sure the faces were within frame.] He convinced award-winning cinematographer Patti Van Over to be the D.P. He rehearsed for 3 weeks with both leads. On the day of the shoot in a loft in downtown L.A. Scott and Patti shot 23 pages on the first day. Three locations in total. They delivered an intense piece of cinematic art that won all three festivals it was entered into: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York Video and Film Festival. He got work as a Writer-Director so fast after that he didn’t enter it into any other festivals.

The details are on his website www.scottwriterdirector.com under the Playing Solitaire heading on top.