SHORTS THAT LAST - KITCHEN SINK and THE MORNING RITUAL

When I lived in Northern California I loved to see obscure movies in downtown San Francisco, and there wasn't a better theater to see incredible films than The Castro. I remember one night going to see the fabled lost film of Orson Welles called IT'S ALL TRUE.

I'll never forget the evening I saw it. I was accompanied by my wife Jodi and my two good friends, John and James. When we went inside the theater it was relatively quite outside. But when the movie concluded, the Castro exploded with outlandish life as the Exotic Erotic Halloween Ball suddenly sprung into full tilt. We walked outside and the whole street was filled with wild costumes, colorful cross-dressers, and men being led around on chains by their members (I don't mean "partners," I mean partners leading their boyfriends around by their member. Ouch).

One such Castro event that I attended had an incredible short film attached to it. The film was shot in black and white and ran about ten minutes. I don't want to tell you much about it other than to say it has haunted me for years. I could never recall the name and I had no idea who the filmmaker was. Please remember, this was before the internet was in the palm of your hand, so it wasn't so easy to search for information. I've met other filmmakers who were also deeply weirded out by this short film, and they too, couldn't remember the name. But now... I've found it.


It's called KITCHEN SINK by Alison Maclean. She is a Canadian filmmaker who also made Jesus' Son with Billy Crudup. Here is the short. It's in two parts on YouTube.

I moved to Memphis and began making my own ultra-low budget films. In 2001, my assistant/producer Erin Hagee and I decided to help produce new filmmakers in Memphis. One filmmaker was our friend J. Lazarus. He came to us with a an idea that immediately made me think of KITCHEN SINK. For one thing, it involved no dialogue. It involved a kitchen sink. It was going to be done in black and white. It was also creepy as fuck. We filmed the short in my kitchen over a weekend. J. Lazarus won the Indie Memphis Hometowner Award for best short. It is called THE MORNING RITUAL. I love this short. play it and crank up the sound. It rocks.