A faltering first date threatens to unravel completely when a high-strung young man brings up his mother’s cancer diagnosis.
Director’s Vision for ‘Talking Stage’
The idea for TALKING STAGE sparked several years ago on a first date, when I accidentally mentioned my mother’s Stage IV colorectal cancer diagnosis. To my surprise, my date was (unnervingly) interested in the intimate details of her illness. My mother’s tragedy made me more interesting by association. I realized that there are a million stories about cancer as a catalyst for personal growth. But what about all the negative feelings sickness can inspire? What if someone even figured out that their mother’s cancer could help them get lucky? These are the dark, personally-probing questions that I wanted to pour into my narrative debut.
My goal with TALKING STAGE was not only to exorcise personal demons, but also to viscerally capture the grotesquerie and shamefulness of a painful situation; the ugly humanity behind the supposedly “ennobling” qualities of suffering. My background in theater has left me relatively disinterested in realism. Instead of trying to hide the fact that audiences are watching a short film—to pretend to be real—I attempted to emphasize the artificiality in a Brechtian manner. This is one reason that I shot on 16MM Kodak film. The inescapable grain and weight act as reminders of the presence of the filmmaking process. We harnessed this physical medium for eerie, wide-angle compositions that tap into the push-pull of horror and attraction; a queasy and inherently-unreal sensation that pushes past reality.
The result is a nerve-wracking and intimate piece of cinema that defines easy categorization. I was lucky to have such bold collaborators, who were willing to go beyond what they had expected from a “two people sitting and talking” short. Venk, Elise, and LJ are fearsome, remarkably bold actors. My crew was just as gifted, and together we have realized a very personal vision of love and loss and disquiet.
