Our short film “Stabbing Stupidity” and its recent appearance in the Short Film Corner at the 60th annual Festival de Cannes has gotten some press attention here in Arizona - in Scottsdale’s Take 5 Entertainment and News Guide.

Check it out here or on the Take 5 site (both PDF).

Special thanks to our friend Laura Durant (pictured at left with Lindsey Marlin) and her team at Durant Communications for getting the word out on this!

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We’ve just added the April sale spot we did for West Herr Auto Group (Buffalo, New York) to our YouTube Channel:

Graphics, Compositing and Color Correction by Paul DeNigris. Written and Produced by Steve Briscoe.

Produced and Edited by Bob Stachura, Buffalo Advertising. 3D Logo modeled, textured, and animated by Brad Doan. Spokesman: Steve Tasker (formerly of the Buffalo Bills).

We’ll be posting a breakdown of the post-production work we did on this spot soon in our Visual Effects section.

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With Spielberg’s reality show “On The Lot” premiering tonight, I figured it was time for full disclosure regarding my experience as a would-be contestant for the show. (Up until now, I was bound by a confidentiality agreement. Now… what the hell, right?)

As many of you know, our short film “Stabbing Stupidity” was produced specifically as our entry into the competition. The film was submitted and showed up for a brief time on their website - though I subsequently pulled it (more on that in a bit). Anyway, here’s the chronology of how things went down after the film was submitted.

On Tuesday February 6th I got a call from a casting assistant, who told me I had advanced to the 2nd round and I had to fill out additional paperwork by that Friday.

On Thursday February 8th she called again - “We like your short so much, we are moving you into the 3rd round even before you send in that other paperwork.” The challenge was to make a 3-minute short film - by the following Thursday. It had to be in their hands by Friday February 16th.

On Friday February 9th I wrote a 3-page supernatural thriller called “Envy.” By 9 am that morning, I was calling actors and crew, trying to get everyone lined up to shoot on Sat or Sun. Luckily a bunch of my top-notch students were available, as were Lindsey Marlin (from “Stabbing Stupidity”) and Vince Reign (who played “me” in my autobiography and also was in “Stabbing Stupidity”). My writing and producing partner Steve Briscoe was to take the 3rd role (there were only 3 parts), essentially reprising his role as Detective O’Keefe from our feature film The Falls. Briscoe spent Friday looking for a special box (a “magic box” factors into the plot), while I wrote my shot list.

Friday night Briscoe and I went to the college where I teach digital video - the University of Advancing Technology - to get all the cameras and equipment - and I got deathly ill. (The stomach flu had been going around UAT for 2 weeks and it was my turn.)

We spent 10 hours on Saturday shooting the film, from 3 pm until 1 am. I was on the dry toast diet while the crew ate pizza! But we got through it, and everything looked great. Mind you, I couldn’t tell ANYONE why we were shooting a movie on such a tight schedule. But I think they all knew.

I spent a couple of days editing, my composer Daniel Baranowsy did a kick-ass score, and it went out in the FedEx on Thursday February 15th. And we all felt great about it.

Briscoe and I then spent 3 days in L.A. for a pitching conference and pitched our feature scripts The Redhead and Borderline to 20 or so companies. Got some good feedback and learned a lot. We returned to business as usual for a week, and then…

Monday February 26th I got another call. “Envy” went over so well, they had advanced me to the 4th round. About 500 people had made it this far, out of the 12,000 who entered. I was asked to fly to L.A. for an interview, so on Friday March 2nd I flew out for the day. (As a cool little bonus, I shared a row on the plane with actor Robert Loggia, on his way back to L.A. from the Peoria Film Festival screening of Forget About It, and spent the hourlong flight talking with him about working with David Lynch and about his favorite places to visit in Rome.)

My interview was in the offices of Mark Burnett Productions, the company behind “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” The place was huge, the people were nice, and the interview lasted for about 20 minutes. One guy in a little tiny office with a DV camera. He asked me like 6 questions and then I was done. Really weird. But I thought it went well, we seemed to hit it off, and I felt like I had nailed it by basically just being myself. As I left, he said “You should hear from us in two, two and half weeks.”

So the next 2 and half weeks were pure torture. Up ’til then I had no expectations that I would get as far as I had. I really expected to just enter “Stabbing Stupidity” and go no further.

Wednesday March 21st… 2 and a half weeks. No news. I’m going nuts. So I call my contact, the casting assistant who had always called me. She reassured me that the process was taking longer than they thought and they’d be making decisions and final calls by March 31st. “If you don’t hear from us March 31st, then it’s not your time” she tells me.

So… since you didn’t see me on Fox this evening… and since I hadn’t disappeared to L.A. again… I did not make the final 50. At first I was very disappointed and I felt like the whole thing was a waste of time. In fact, I reacted by emailing the webmaster of thelot.com and asking them to remove “Stabbing Stupidity” from the site. Which they did. Basically, I figured being on their site was now no longer of any assistance to me, and with the film now making the rounds of the film festival circuit, I thought it would be wise to protect the film’s “freshness” by removing it from the online world for the time being.

In the end, the “On The Lot” experience was not a waste of time. Our desire for perfection on “Stabbing Stupidity” prompted us to hire extremely talented DP Vincent Pascoe and to run a casting call that brought us the lovely and talented Lindsey Marlin, whom we have subsequently cast in 2 more films. “Stabbing Stupidity” is just now wrapping up its appearance at the Short Film Corner at the Festival de Cannes, soon to be followed by a festival appearance on my home turf on Long Island. And its acceptance to the Phoenix Film Festival helped win me the coveted Copper Wing as Arizona Filmmaker of the Year!

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We’ve just received word that our short film “Stabbing Stupidity” has been accepted as an Official Selection at the 2007 Long Island International Film Expo, to be held in Bellmore, New York, July 12th-19th. This is especially exciting for us because filmmaker Paul DeNigris grew up on Long Island!

Expect more info soon - screening date, time, and location.

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