1. Black Press
Chicago Reader Review
Cutting Room MRB Shout Out
2. Synopsis
3. Bios
4. Director's Statement
5. Reviews of Hurt McDermott's Previous Work
25 Years in Chicago
6. Credits
For Photos, click here
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
1. Black Mail Press
BLACK MAIL
Chicago Reader Review, April 2, 2010
A philandering, middle-aged mope (Taylor Nichols), fired from his job as second-string film critic for a Chicago daily, plunges his savings into a doomed repertory cinema (portrayed by the late Three Penny in Lincoln Park). His dishy, tart-tongued wife (Kelly Hazen) intercepts a letter he's written on flameproof paper to their pretty young pastor (Lois Atkins) but mistakenly assumes it was meant for their child's nanny (Sara Krukowski). That barely begins to summarize the spiraling convolutions of this modestly budgeted video, whose daffy comic plot is nominally patterned after Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Writer-director Hurt McDermott (Nightingale in a Music Box) extracts a ton of fun from a great cast, sharp editing, and a witty, offbeat script. 104 min.
To obtain a screener or to arrange an interview with Hurt McDermott, Taylor Nichols, Andrzej Krukowski or anyone else from the production or for more info, please contact Kerri Noto at 312 952 7186.
2. SYNOPSIS
Inspired by William Shakespeare's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, but set in present day Chicago, BLACK MAIL stars Taylor Nichols (METROPOLITAN, BARCELONA) in a comedy about the difficulties of communicating in a world where any "misreadings" can prove very dangerous indeed. With his business on the rocks and his marriage rocky, theater owner Lee Burrows can't help pouring out his heart in a love letter to the beautiful new minister at his church. When the letter falls into the wrong hands, he finds even an unconsummated desire has the potential to destroy your life.
3. Bios
Along the way his plays and films have picked up numerous awards and honors. His work has found particularly strong support in the San Francisco Bay Area where his play SLEEPWALKER premiered and where his feature film NIGHTINGALE IN A MUSIC BOX was the hit of 2003 Mill Valley Film Festival, giving it a boost (after it premiered at the Siskel Film Center) to the Slamdance Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize for Screenwriting in 2004. NIGHTINGALE went on to win several more awards, play internationally, including festivals in London and Israel, and find representation in the digital realm from John Sloss's Cinetic.
Hurt's latest project is a book published in hardback and in e-editions by Lybrary.com entitled ARTIFICE, RUSE & ERDNASE: The Search For One Who May Not Want to Be Found. It is a non-ficition investigation into the true identity of S. W. Erdnase, a Chicago writer who published his one known work, The Expert at the Card Table, in 1902. Incredibly the author has managed to escape detection for over a 100 years despite being the author of one of the most important books in the history of magic.
Hurt McDermott's plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles as well as Chicago, where he received a 1999 Joseph Jefferson Citation for Outstanding New Work for his play WarHawks & Lindberghs. Other plays include the often produced repeat w/Madeline, which Daily Variety called an "hilarious and brilliant ... comedy", and Sleepwalker. His play Divertimento in Flat F was a SemiFinalist in the National New Play 2000 Festival. The Golden Watch Chain was nominated for the 2002 Kaufman & Hart Prize for New American Comedy before premiering in Los Angeles. His Fermat's Elevator was a Finalist for the 2002 Heideman Award at the Humana Festival of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Most recently his English rendering of Aristophanes’ BIRDS was produced by Chicago’s acclaimed TUTA Theater Company.
Hurt's other feature films include UNTIL DAYBREAK, RECONSTRUCTION, and SERIOUS BUSINESS, which was the closing night film of the Rhode Island Film Festival.
Hurt McDermott has provided the video accompaniment for famed Serbian-American Composer Natasha Bogojevich's BAJALICA, a contemporary music piece for solo wind player, electronic drone and motion picture, which made its World Premiere Tour of Russia, Greece and the Balkans in 2007. So far it has been played in over 25 cities and theaters including at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. It has played twice in Chicago and premiered in Boston premiered in March 2009. (It is easily accessible on You Tube). Hurt has also provided the text for Bogojevich's ORATORIO, which has been produced in New York City and Belgrade. Kirsten Broberg has set his poem How Still the Night as part of PAPAGENO'S GIFT, a projected prequel to Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE.
4. Director's Statement
In 1990 I went out one night to see a film for which I held no great expectations, METROPOLITAN, at a theater where I had never been before, the 3-Penny. So powerful was the experience, the next night I felt compelled to go back and see the film again. Recognizing a true lover of film seeing me back, the owner, Jim Burrows, offered me a job and in the midst of the final days of the true Golden Era of American Independent Film, I finally had a job in the industry. In fact that night led to many things. The janitor gave me my first editing job on a motion picture; and now BLACK MAIL stars the actor who blew my socks off that night, Taylor Nichols. Unfortunately the shooting of BLACK MAIL also turned out to be the final hurrah for the doomed theater.
And the demise of the 3-Penny turned out to be a symptom of the demise of the American Independent Cinema in general. Once the Oscars and the Indie Spirit Awards start honoring the same films you know "independent" is just another marketing category.
But maybe it's cinema itself whose time has passed. Oh it'll hang on like opera or theater, but just as the stage will never see another Elizabethan England to give us another Shakespeare, so too film is no longer the main action. The giants, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Godard and John Ford give way to creators diminished by the age of the tiny, solitary you-tube square.
And the demise of the 3-Penny turned out to be a symptom of the demise of the American Independent Cinema in general. Once the Oscars and the Indie Spirit Awards start honoring the same films you know "independent" is just another marketing category.
But maybe it's cinema itself whose time has passed. Oh it'll hang on like opera or theater, but just as the stage will never see another Elizabethan England to give us another Shakespeare, so too film is no longer the main action. The giants, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Godard and John Ford give way to creators diminished by the age of the tiny, solitary you-tube square.
5. REVIEWS OF HURT McDERMOTT'S PREVIOUS WORK
Excerpts w/links to
"Nightingale" is terrific. It's a taut little mousetrap of a thriller, with more than a nod to the clever plotting of Hitchcock. It rockets along, one step ahead of the viewer, and creates a tense, edgy mood with a minimum of fuss or special effects.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/09/28/MO17940.DTL&type=movies
Village Voice:
Freudian notions of the unconscious are put to better use in Nightingale in a Music Box, a taut brainwashing thriller in which a federal agent sifts through an amnesiac's fragmented memories, separating the real from the programmed. Nightingale ... has its screws tightened—director Hurt McDermott is aware of his limitations and more than capable of thriving within them.BEN KENIGSBERG
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0522,tracking2,64449,20.html
E-Insider Reviews:
“Nightingale In A Music Box” is a film with a lot on its mind—an intricate maze of ideas that are so tightly woven together it overflows with intelligence. It begins and ends methodically in a calculating manner inventing some new word usage along the way to describe a strange process of mind control and, probably, hypnosis. George Orwell might have had this film in his DVD library had such a thing existed in his time.
Films like “Nightingale” demonstrate that independent thrillers do not need stunts and computer generated action sequences to be thrilling and entertaining.
http://www.einsiders.com/reviews/archives/show_theatrical.php?review_theatricle=64
Senses of Cinema:
Nightingale in a Music Box (Hurt McDermott, 2002). A well-crafted Chinese puzzle, and a sterling example of the class of hermetic, talky mental mysteries of which Mamet's House of Games (1987) is the archetype. The director, who is also a Chicago-based playwright, keeps the pace brisk and the performances cold and Brechtian. Just the way I like 'em.
--Carloss James Chamberlin
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/31/slamdance_x.html
Variety.Com
Vet Chicago playwright Hurt McDermott's microbudget first feature goes out on an admirable limb, weaving an intriguing tale of high-tech theft and brainwashing.
CHICAGO SUN TIMES:
McDermott's "WarHawks & Lindberghs," which received its world premiere in an exhilarating, brilliantly staged Shattered Globe Theatre production Tuesday night, is a richly layered historical pageant that traces the volatile career of Charles Augustus Lindbergh. In the process, the play also offers a fascinating meditation on notions of heroism, politics, seduction, celebrity, racism and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, fear.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4439755.html
BIRDS
WINDY CITY TIMES
Hurt McDermott's adaptation of Aristophanes' text is a delight, its breezily contemporary tone easily comprehended by academics and ignorami alike. Literary allusions ( 'You don't expect me to believe that someone could write an interesting play about The Clouds, do you?' ) abound, side-by-side with casual colloquialisms—'Trying to kill a bird with two stones, huh?'—and flat-out puns ( 'I'd forget my head if it weren't attached to the body politic.' ) .
http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=7955
repeat w/Madeline
Variety
McDermott's brilliant and hilarious .... wildly comical dialogue always sounds realistic and plausible
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117339952.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
Sleepwalker
Chicago Reader
Dreaming, the body remains inert while the mind goes a-roaming, but when one sleepwalks things are the other way around. This simple observation provides one of the clues that the sleepwalker in Hurt McDermott's one-character play discovers, but only after she's somnambulated for several nights through classically Jungian glades. ("I love the woods," she assures us. "But if I were to wake up here, it would scare the hell out of me.") As she shares with us the insights that she will not remember in the morning, the enigma of her nocturnal wanderlust continues to elude her even as she seems to tease us with its meaning.
It would be easy to play McDermott's sleepwalker as the standard-issue neurasthenic of romantic fiction, but Kelley Hazen is too savvy an actress to fall for this, though she travels to every corner of the dank and chilly Cafe Voltaire basement. Instead she opts to have her character discuss symptoms and possible causes with a lucidity that piques our curiosity at every turn and a wryly humorous candor that engages our sensibilities as no amount of weepy hand-wringing could. This matter-of-fact approach to a terrifying phenomenon is what makes our heroine's moment of enlightenment not a grand catharsis but a welcome bit of revelation that we can take with us and use to hurdle the small barriers to everyday happiness so common in our times.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/sleepwalker/Content?oid=888978
full on-line articles, where available:
NIGHTINGALE IN A MUSIC BOX
A feature film
Written & Directed by
Hurt McDermott
WINNER
Best Screenplay, Slamdance X, 2004;
Excellence in Screenwriting,
Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2005;
Best Director, Shriekfest, 2005
San Francisco Chronicle:A feature film
Written & Directed by
Hurt McDermott
WINNER
Best Screenplay, Slamdance X, 2004;
Excellence in Screenwriting,
Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2005;
Best Director, Shriekfest, 2005
"Nightingale" is terrific. It's a taut little mousetrap of a thriller, with more than a nod to the clever plotting of Hitchcock. It rockets along, one step ahead of the viewer, and creates a tense, edgy mood with a minimum of fuss or special effects.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/09/28/MO17940.DTL&type=movies
Village Voice:
Freudian notions of the unconscious are put to better use in Nightingale in a Music Box, a taut brainwashing thriller in which a federal agent sifts through an amnesiac's fragmented memories, separating the real from the programmed. Nightingale ... has its screws tightened—director Hurt McDermott is aware of his limitations and more than capable of thriving within them.BEN KENIGSBERG
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0522,tracking2,64449,20.html
E-Insider Reviews:
“Nightingale In A Music Box” is a film with a lot on its mind—an intricate maze of ideas that are so tightly woven together it overflows with intelligence. It begins and ends methodically in a calculating manner inventing some new word usage along the way to describe a strange process of mind control and, probably, hypnosis. George Orwell might have had this film in his DVD library had such a thing existed in his time.
Films like “Nightingale” demonstrate that independent thrillers do not need stunts and computer generated action sequences to be thrilling and entertaining.
http://www.einsiders.com/reviews/archives/show_theatrical.php?review_theatricle=64
Senses of Cinema:
Nightingale in a Music Box (Hurt McDermott, 2002). A well-crafted Chinese puzzle, and a sterling example of the class of hermetic, talky mental mysteries of which Mamet's House of Games (1987) is the archetype. The director, who is also a Chicago-based playwright, keeps the pace brisk and the performances cold and Brechtian. Just the way I like 'em.
--Carloss James Chamberlin
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/31/slamdance_x.html
Variety.Com
Vet Chicago playwright Hurt McDermott's microbudget first feature goes out on an admirable limb, weaving an intriguing tale of high-tech theft and brainwashing.
SELECT PLAY REVIEWS
WARHAWKS & LINDBERGHS
Joseph Jefferson Citation,
Outstanding New Work, 1999
WARHAWKS & LINDBERGHS
Joseph Jefferson Citation,
Outstanding New Work, 1999
CHICAGO SUN TIMES:
McDermott's "WarHawks & Lindberghs," which received its world premiere in an exhilarating, brilliantly staged Shattered Globe Theatre production Tuesday night, is a richly layered historical pageant that traces the volatile career of Charles Augustus Lindbergh. In the process, the play also offers a fascinating meditation on notions of heroism, politics, seduction, celebrity, racism and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, fear.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4439755.html
BIRDS
WINDY CITY TIMES
Hurt McDermott's adaptation of Aristophanes' text is a delight, its breezily contemporary tone easily comprehended by academics and ignorami alike. Literary allusions ( 'You don't expect me to believe that someone could write an interesting play about The Clouds, do you?' ) abound, side-by-side with casual colloquialisms—'Trying to kill a bird with two stones, huh?'—and flat-out puns ( 'I'd forget my head if it weren't attached to the body politic.' ) .
http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=7955
repeat w/Madeline
Variety
McDermott's brilliant and hilarious .... wildly comical dialogue always sounds realistic and plausible
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117339952.html?categoryid=33&cs=1
Sleepwalker
Chicago Reader
Dreaming, the body remains inert while the mind goes a-roaming, but when one sleepwalks things are the other way around. This simple observation provides one of the clues that the sleepwalker in Hurt McDermott's one-character play discovers, but only after she's somnambulated for several nights through classically Jungian glades. ("I love the woods," she assures us. "But if I were to wake up here, it would scare the hell out of me.") As she shares with us the insights that she will not remember in the morning, the enigma of her nocturnal wanderlust continues to elude her even as she seems to tease us with its meaning.
It would be easy to play McDermott's sleepwalker as the standard-issue neurasthenic of romantic fiction, but Kelley Hazen is too savvy an actress to fall for this, though she travels to every corner of the dank and chilly Cafe Voltaire basement. Instead she opts to have her character discuss symptoms and possible causes with a lucidity that piques our curiosity at every turn and a wryly humorous candor that engages our sensibilities as no amount of weepy hand-wringing could. This matter-of-fact approach to a terrifying phenomenon is what makes our heroine's moment of enlightenment not a grand catharsis but a welcome bit of revelation that we can take with us and use to hurdle the small barriers to everyday happiness so common in our times.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/sleepwalker/Content?oid=888978
6. CREDITS
CREW CREDITS
Hurt McDermott .................................Written, Directed & Edited by
Andrzej Krukowski............................. Executive Producer
Todd Slotten ....................................... Producer
Kerri Noto............................................Producer
Wendy Heimann-Nunes.......................Associate Producer
Michael Dunne.................................... Photography & Visual Effects
Natasha Bogojevich.............................Original Score
John Dalton......................................... Production Design
Natasha Dukich...................................Costume Design
Tom Hambleton ..................................Post Production Sound
Dave Martin........................................ Music Supervision
Chris Gadzic........................................Sound Mixer
Craig Stubing......................................Assistant Sound
Susan Muirhead..................................Assistant Camera/Grip
Johnny(Video)Chisholm.....................Assistant Camera
Monika Neuland.................................Assistant Production Design/Set Decorator
Helen Lattyak.................................... Assistant Costume Design
Carrie Hardin ................................... Assistant Costume Design
Paul Weil........................................... Transportation Captain
David Popper..................................... Publicity
Eric Roberts.......................................Production Assistant
Kayte Cerceo.................................... Production Assistant
William Colon ................... Grip
David Skarulis ................................. Production Assistant
Ashwin Korvadi .............................. Grip
Preeti Korvadi ................................. Grip
Chapin Gregor................................. Grip
Mike Stanislewski .......................... Grip
CAST CREDITS
Taylor Nichols...........................Lee
Kelley Hazen.............................Kelli
Mattie Hawkinson ................... Janet
Lois Atkins ............................Anne
Andrew Rothenberg .................Colm
Steve Key .................................Lt. Kelly
Jim Ortlieb ...............................Rev. Madison
Chris Farrell ..........................William
Doug McDade.......................... Ed Sr.
Deron Grams............................ Ed Jr.
Sarah Krukowski...................... Ann T
Liz Larsen-Silva........................Receptionist
Jim Poole ................ Julboard
John Hildreth........................ Associate Pastor
Jeff Alba................................British Man
Carolyn Arnolds................... Minister #1
Wayne Benson.......................No Butter Man
Emily Berman....................... Kelli's Secretary
Jay Boughanem......................Medical Student at BP
Sarah Brooks .........................Swedish Girl #2
Kayte Cerceo.........................Candy Counter Worker
Kerry Couch..........................Waitress (BP)
Kathleen Connolly................. BP patron
John Dalton............................Angry Theatre Customer #2
Katie Fairbank.......................Reader
Tom Geoghegan....................Madison stand-in
Charles William Georgas Charlie
Rachel Goldstein ..................Non-Swedish Girl
Andrjez Krukowski................Office Guest
Mike Lotus............................Angry Theatre Customer
John Lotus ............................Son of Angry Theatre Customer
Jean Lotus..............................Folk Singer
Mike.......................................Folk Singer
Penelope Miler.......................British Woman
Laurel Paffhouse.....................Swedish Girl #1
Ben Perkins ........................... Theatre goer
Hurt McDermott .................................Written, Directed & Edited by
Andrzej Krukowski............................. Executive Producer
Todd Slotten ....................................... Producer
Kerri Noto............................................Producer
Wendy Heimann-Nunes.......................Associate Producer
Michael Dunne.................................... Photography & Visual Effects
Natasha Bogojevich.............................Original Score
John Dalton......................................... Production Design
Natasha Dukich...................................Costume Design
Tom Hambleton ..................................Post Production Sound
Dave Martin........................................ Music Supervision
Chris Gadzic........................................Sound Mixer
Craig Stubing......................................Assistant Sound
Susan Muirhead..................................Assistant Camera/Grip
Johnny(Video)Chisholm.....................Assistant Camera
Monika Neuland.................................Assistant Production Design/Set Decorator
Helen Lattyak.................................... Assistant Costume Design
Carrie Hardin ................................... Assistant Costume Design
Paul Weil........................................... Transportation Captain
David Popper..................................... Publicity
Eric Roberts.......................................Production Assistant
Kayte Cerceo.................................... Production Assistant
William Colon ................... Grip
David Skarulis ................................. Production Assistant
Ashwin Korvadi .............................. Grip
Preeti Korvadi ................................. Grip
Chapin Gregor................................. Grip
Mike Stanislewski .......................... Grip
CAST CREDITS
Taylor Nichols...........................Lee
Kelley Hazen.............................Kelli
Mattie Hawkinson ................... Janet
Lois Atkins ............................Anne
Andrew Rothenberg .................Colm
Steve Key .................................Lt. Kelly
Jim Ortlieb ...............................Rev. Madison
Chris Farrell ..........................William
Doug McDade.......................... Ed Sr.
Deron Grams............................ Ed Jr.
Sarah Krukowski...................... Ann T
Liz Larsen-Silva........................Receptionist
Jim Poole ................ Julboard
John Hildreth........................ Associate Pastor
Jeff Alba................................British Man
Carolyn Arnolds................... Minister #1
Wayne Benson.......................No Butter Man
Emily Berman....................... Kelli's Secretary
Jay Boughanem......................Medical Student at BP
Sarah Brooks .........................Swedish Girl #2
Kayte Cerceo.........................Candy Counter Worker
Kerry Couch..........................Waitress (BP)
Kathleen Connolly................. BP patron
John Dalton............................Angry Theatre Customer #2
Katie Fairbank.......................Reader
Tom Geoghegan....................Madison stand-in
Charles William Georgas Charlie
Rachel Goldstein ..................Non-Swedish Girl
Andrjez Krukowski................Office Guest
Mike Lotus............................Angry Theatre Customer
John Lotus ............................Son of Angry Theatre Customer
Jean Lotus..............................Folk Singer
Mike.......................................Folk Singer
Penelope Miler.......................British Woman
Laurel Paffhouse.....................Swedish Girl #1
Ben Perkins ........................... Theatre goer
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