The Actor, Pet Shop Days
What good is an actor with amnesia? Duke Johnson (Dir: Anomalisa) is directing his first live-action film, The Actor.
Synopsis:
When New York actor Paul Cole is beaten and left for dead in 1950s Ohio, he loses his memory and finds himself stranded in a mysterious small town where he struggles to get back home and reclaim what he's lost.
The memory loss plot has a heightened surrealism, playing into tropes of old-timey cinema to heighten the lead Andre Holland’s discomfort as he moves through different liminal spaces (a bit like Eternal Sunshine).
Charlie Kaufman EPs. Neon is releasing in theatres on March 14th.
Olmo Schnabel’s feature debut, Pet Shop Days, stars Willem Dafoe and Peter Sarsgaard. The film is interesting for a number of reasons:
Premiered at the Venice Film Festival
Official selection: SXSW
EP’d by Martin Scorsese
Schnabel served as a PA on Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and notably as an Assistant on At Eternity's Gate (2018), starring Willem Dafoe. Notably, that film is directed by his father, Julian Schnabel (dir: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
Here’s the official synopsis for Pet Shop Days:
Follows the affair between the impulsive Alejandro and the college-age pet store employee Jack, exploring the underbelly of New York and a romance that sends them down a rabbit hole of vice.
The trailer plays a bit like Good Time, with Alejandro and Jack rocketing through New York, breaking everything in sight.
Robert Schwartzman, co-founder of Utopia, who acquired the film, stated:
“[The film’s] provocative dynamism not only harkens to iconic ‘90s independent cinema, but flourishes with promise of what the future of auteur filmmaking will look like… an unabashedly original NYC tale.”
Releasing March 15th.