THE MANEATER
Student film makes its MU debut
Coverage of the American Gothic Columbia Debut
About 160 students filed into Stotler Lounge on Friday night for a screening of "American Gothic," a full-length film written and directed by MU sophomore Randy Prywitch.
Another MU sophomore was involved with the film: Prywitch's longtime friend Jason Goldstein, who was the film's executive producer. Goldstein is also a member of the Maneater staff.
The turnout was a result of feverish marketing efforts including flyers posted around campus, a trailer on YouTube.com that has received over 2,700 hits, an event and a fan club group on Facebook.com, and a word-of-mouth campaign, Prywitch said.
This was only the second time "American Gothic" has been shown publicly. The first screening took place in August, when about 130 of Prywitch's friends and relatives saw it at the Plaza Frontenac
Cinema in St. Louis.
But this time the movie was better suited for the audience, Prywitch said.
"This is our target audience," he said.
The movie typifies suburban teenage life, including plenty of sex, drugs, tobacco and alcohol use.
The narrative follows the fall of Jessica Bender, played by Emily Bates, who gives her stepbrother a blow job in the opening scene and goes downhill from there.
MU junior Angie Cipponeri said she thought it was
awesome.
"I can't believe someone my age did this," she said.
MU senior Mike Pasch, one of Prywitch's fraternity brothers, called the movie "unbelievable," considering that Prywitch made it on his own.
The making of the movie began in February, when Prywitch left school for a semester to recover from a health problem.
He didn't want to be a victim of his sickness, he said, so he began writing the script he'd been trying to work on for months.
The script he wrote was inspired by an idea his friend Grant Harris had envisioned a year before: a story showing "how fucked up teenagers are," Prywitch wrote in a behind-the-scenes article posted to the Web site of his production company, BeTheShoe Productions.
Prywitch founded BeTheShoe with Goldstein in 2002. Before "American Gothic," the company produced other shorter films.
He said he became so interested in producing something "real" that he would transcribe his friends' conversations.
And when alone, if an idea would suddenly present itself to him, he would grab a scrap of paper and write it down. Then he would sit at his desk and type it up.
He never cleaned up the scraps, though, so they piled up on his desk, lead actress Emily Bates, who studies theatre at Loyola University Chicago, said.
In May, Prywitch began filming with a small group of friends, all of whom have been involved with BeTheShoe.
Prywitch struggled to find convenient times for everyone to meet up for filming because so many of his friends worked, he said. But occasionally they were all able to get together.
When filming was done, Prywitch had used up 14 hours worth of tapes, which was something he said had never happened before.
But once he finished editing, the film had been trimmed down to one hour and 40 minutes.
Four days later, it was being shown at Plaza Frontenac.
Prywitch said he is now fleshing out another film, one that is very different from "American Gothic."
The new film will be "really transgressional" and full of "very cynical-type humor," Prywitch said.
