Au Revoir, Quentin! – Upcoming: Feature Film Seeking Funding

Logline: Can Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue deal with the fact that they’re not dead but are still trapped in their original, hyper-violent, restrictive narrative of Reservoir Dogs? Or can they transcend themselves and find a new way to exist? A funny and poignant re-imagining of what and who we celebrate in American film. A satirical retelling of Reservoir Dogs that is a critique of toxic masculinity in American films.

After examining institutionalized misogyny in our last feature, “The Bellwether”, (a solo character film staring a woman playing four different versions of herself) writer/director Christopher Morrison is looking at how toxic masculinity is presented and packaged to us as entertainment.

The entire thing is a metaphor…”
Okay, it’s not a metaphor, but a conceit created by playwright Tom Stoppard when he retold “Hamlet” by putting two minor characters center stage. In our film Reservoir Dogs happens in the background as we follow a resurrected Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue, and Angela (a new character to our film) in an all-new story with original dialogue. You do not have to know Reservoir Dogs to enjoy the movie.

The Hardest Propaganda to Fight is the One that You Already Agree With
Like many a Gen X’er cinema was incredibly important to forming our world view and we were certainly in love with Reservoir Dogs when it dropped.

Now older, we can see how Reservoir Dogs (and the films and the film’s creators it’s built on) are one of the many, many sources of misogyny and toxic masculinity that we willingly consume(d) on a daily basis.

All the roles in this film will be played by women and/or non cis-gendered men/not-male-identified actors. This will mess with the audience experiencing diverse women playing hyper-masculine roles that were orginally played by white men. Open-gender casting supports us questioning our own dumb assumptions.

It is imperative to get a wider take on the cause and effects of violence and toxic masculinity into the project. The performer’s voices will be just as important to this piece as Christopher’s. The desire is to have the script (and the final film) have as many perspectives infused into it as possible.

In this script Christopher is examining his own creative process, his implicit biases and our universal experience of taking in these deep structured messages that are in our everyday media; because the hardest propaganda to fight is the one that you already agree with.

Therefore Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue are walking the same path that he is: trying to escape the very things that made him.