Premiere of independant movie "Eat"

Cafe Society
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Last night was the sold out premiere of the movie “Eat” at the Memphis Indie film festival done by one of our own Memphis Dopers*. I am not easily amused by most comedies that are out now days. Most are more silly than funny, but I have to tell you this is a funny movie. If you get the chance to see it, make it a priority.

A quick synopsis is that it is a day in the life of some restaurant workers.
*I met the folks involved with this movie at a Memphis Dopefest so I have no involvement financial or otherwise whatsoever with the film. If I hadn’t liked it I could have sneaked out and never mentioned it again. Go see this movie. And tip your waitstaff well.

Adhemar

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Is it about gay cowboys eating pudding, by any chance?

(IOW, I’d like more information about the film itself.)

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Nope, it’s about restaurant people in a couple of different type restaurants,with screw-ups and horrible customers and nasty/unreasonable bosses. I am sure I am not doing a good job of making it sound worth seeing but it is.

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Eh, a lot of good films have unpromising premises. For example: American expat barkeep meets old flame, decides not to hook up with her again. A film like that shouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, should it?

Off to MPSIMS.

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I’m so glad you liked it, adhemar! And it was a treat to see you at the premiere! The crowd was WAY overbooked, and I’m glad; this was Eat’s only showing at the festival, and I’m thrilled at the great response it got.

The movie was written and directed by a fellow Doper, but I’m not going to out anyone; I’ll pass along a link to this thread in case Doper X wants to chime in, which seems likely.

About the movie:

The story takes place in three restaurants over the course of one day, many of whose employees know each other and hang out after work. It’s perfectly clear from Scene One that this movie knows the realities of the restaurant business from back-of-house forward.

The story is told with grace and occasional poignance, but at heart it’s the rarest of films: a truly smart comedy. It is extraordinarily funny, from the wait-staff’s brutal observations about rude customers (“You’d think people would be nicer to the people who touch their food”) to the swiftly sketched character outlines (as a woman comforts her stabbed-and-bleeding boyfriend on a men’s-room floor, a desperate guy bolts into a stall to pee. “Hey!” the woman shouts, “There’s a LADY in here!”).

This is only the director/producer team’s second film, and they swung for the fence: There are 54 characters with speaking parts. I was lucky enough to play Doug, the asshole day-manager of the movie’s rather Chili’s-esque chain restaurant, Canape’s.

The cast was uniformly terrific. (I don’t include myself in that statement; I’m just glad I didn’t ruin everybody else’s movie.) Several people really surprised me with the depth of their performances, especially the characters of Rob, Wendy #1, and the gay chef whose name I’ve suddenly blanked on.

As for people getting a chance to see it: I’m sure they’ll be shopping it around to other festivals, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it were to get at least some limited distribution. If you get the chance to see it, I heartily recommend you take it.

My favorite line comes during a quiet moment when two characters are sitting out on the loading dock, having a smoke and discussing a stupid thing one of them has done in his personal life:

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Eat is my movie. I wrote it with my long-time girlfriend (referred to on these boards in times past as Bun-Ra) and produced it with her and another producer who is also an actor and who I have been working with for a long time. We shot it over a two-week period in April (99 hours on set in 11 days) and have been editing it pretty much ever since.

jackalope’s performance is one of the best in the movie, which is full of great performances. And I don’t think your character is an “asshole”. We tried to be sympathetic to all of our characters, making sure their motivations are clear for the things they do. Doug is just an under-employed guy forced to sometimes act like asshole by the job he’s in and the people he deals with. That’s kind of the theme of the movie: who you are at work versus who you really are, and the masks you have to put on to get through the day.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the reception we got Sunday night. As I walked into the two-story theater, I ran into the head of Indie Memphis who told me. “We’ve got a sellout up here and a riot down at the ticket booth.” I don’t know if we eventually got everyone in who wanted to see the movie (I was a little busy), but there were people sitting in laps, and we rounded up all the chairs we could find in the lobby to bring them into the theater (which has a capacity of about 300, IIRC).

We’re currently negotiating some options for more showings in Memphis, and sent off our Slamdance application on Monday. We’ll be applying to lots more festivals in the coming weeks and months. If anyone has a suggestion for a good one or a local festival in their town, I’d love to hear about it! I’ll apply anywhere! We are also planning a DVD release early next year, possibly in conjunction with a release of our last movie Automusik Can Do No Wrong, which jackalope is also in.

Finally, here are articles about the movie from the Memphis Flyer and The Commercial Appeal.

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Let us know where you have it showing, I would like to see it again.

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Thanks, adhemar! I’m glad you liked it so much you want to see it again! That was pretty much our goal in making the movie. We’ll be sure to let everyone and their brother know when it’s playing again.