Last summer, I released the first trailer for the film. Here it is below, showcasing the work of the immensely talented ensemble cast. If you enjoy it, please feel free to share it far and wide!
Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue Trailer from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.
Where do I even begin with the folks who made this movie possible? Mike Wesolowski (who also co-wrote the film) leads an amazing cast which includes Justin Danforth, Allison Frasca, Max Pava, Taylor Marie Frey, Aubrey Elenz, Michael Galligan, Jamie Wolfe, Matt Davis, Connor Delves, Justine Magnusson, Matt Borruso and Zachary Gamble. Watch out for brilliant cinematography by Kevin Dynia, the impeccable sound design of Bobb Barito and the astonishing color stylings of Ben Dewey! And I can't begin to thank the rest of our crew - producer Alex Fofonoff, assistant director Matthew James Reilly, script supervisor Lain Kienzle, production sound mixer Nick Chirumbolo and so many more - for their hard work.
Last December, the other film I directed, Four Play, won the Audience Award at the Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival at New York City's Alamo Drafthouse. It was a great screening of comedy shorts, and honestly a bit surreal to see something I directed in the same cinema where I frequently watch first-run films. The film's writer, producer and star, Ben Krevalin, was also on hand to speak. On a side note, I have no idea who wrote my bio in the program, but bless them for including all of these great things I haven't done (see above).
Last fall, I started taking Advanced Scene Study classes at HB Studio in Manhattan, under the direction of Austin Pendleton. It's been a great way to keep active as a performer and work with a wide array of scene partners (since the fall, I've done scenes from Uncle Vanya, Hurlyburly, Days of Wine and Roses, American Buffalo and Summer and Smoke, among others). In particular, it's been a pleasure studying under Mr. Pendleton, whose career as an actor and director, both in film and theatre, is unparalleled (he was most recently on Broadway in this year's Tony-winning Choir Boy, which I saw in January).
All the while, I'm continuing to work on a feature screenplay with my dear friend Lucas Loredo about our experiences in high school theatre. We spent a week together last year in Austin, in a self-imposed writing "residency," outlining and structuring the screenplay (I wrote about our process in a blog post from last year). We made an extraordinary amount of headway last fall, when Lucas workshopped our script in his MFA screenwriting course at UT's Michener Center for Writers (Lucas just graduated in May from the prestigious three-year program). We held weekly phone conversations, in which Lucas relayed excellent notes from his class and professor, and passed drafts back and forth by email. The screenplay has come a long way, and it's my sincere belief that I'll be making this film in the near future.
I'm eager to cover more ground from the last several months, but I'll finish here with two highlights. In late September, Sophia and I spent a great weekend in Boston with some of the best folks I know. My college friends Jon Annunziata and Emma Viles were married in Danvers, Massachusetts at Glen Magna Farms, and the wedding was a delightful film school reunion. We stayed at a hotel in nearby Wakefield, and before the wedding, we toured the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, a colonial house and museum (Nurse was executed during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692). I also had a chance to eat at the equally historic Wahlburgers (a burger joint owned by Mark Wahlberg and his brothers) in a shopping center near our hotel.
The wedding itself was magnificent, featuring a live band (to my great delight, they played I'm Shipping Up to Boston) on a beautiful estate, and I was surrounded by a group of truly amazing people. The morning after the wedding, we attended a brunch at Emma's parents' house, and then Sophia and I headed into the city of Boston - to meet another one of the finest married couples in human history, Austin and Grace Kingsbery. Austin is one of my best friends from high school (we were in a number of plays together as Red Dragon Players at Austin High), and I was overjoyed to attend his wedding six years ago with Lucas and Cora in Milwaukee (a wedding that very, very loosely inspired my film Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding). He and Grace now live in Winthrop, and Sophia and I stayed with them on Sunday evening in their lovely home. We also met their newborn baby, Elias, who was adorable. Austin gave us a walking tour through the heart of Boston in the afternoon (Sophia had never been to the city before), and then we met Grace and Elias for a lovely dinner in Winthrop.
The other highlight comes from exactly one year ago today, when Sophia and I were able to see Springsteen on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. As soon as it was announced Bruce Springsteen was holding a residency on Broadway, I had desperately been seeking tickets. It wasn't until the show was extended for a second time that I was finally able to secure seats, and we saw a glorious performance on Friday, July 13th, 2018.
The show was a near-religious experience – even from the back row, you could feel the power and resonance of Springsteen's every word. Songs I’ve known for what feels like my entire life are given new meaning and context, with added insight into the role they play in Springsteen’s life. I was hearing My Hometown, Thunder Road, My Father's House, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out and so many others in a whole new way - I was really listening to those lyrics like never before. The sections on his mother and father brought tears to my eyes - both his father’s quiet desperation and his mother’s strength and vitality spoke to me so strongly.
He also spoke to the fact that his most popular songs so rarely stemmed from his direct experience (he’s never stepped into a factory in his life, he says), but rather from observation and studying folks like his parents.
Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue Trailer from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.
Springsteen on Broadway is a self-biography concerned not with accomplishments, accolades and hit records, but with fleeting and powerful memories amassed over a lifetime. And with each new chapter of his life, I felt like I was there – the details and imagery in each story are as evocative as the song that accompanies them. This man has shaped the way I think, feel and relate, and his words and music will never leave me.
Before I depart, I'd love to mention a new film made by two of my friends, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik. They're currently on the film festival circuit with Lake Michigan Monster, which is an explosion of creativity, some kind of cross between a Guy
Maddin fever dream and Tews and Cheslik’s animated web-series L.I.P.S. (in which I admittedly appear as a relaxed man living inside an alien's eyeball) – and yet neither comparison
does justice to this picture. There are sequences both hilarious and haunting,
and an underwater third act that achieves a kind of poetic power in its
abstraction and imagination.
Tews, as the erratic Captain Seafield, is a living and
breathing cartoon (in the best possible sense of the word) – he supports the
film’s manic energy from his very first entrance, inviting us along for the fun
as he aims to avenge his father’s death by hunting down a mysterious sea
creature. Cheslik’s effects work in this film is masterful – every
frame is packed with extraordinary helpings of visual information, sight gags,
and images both otherworldly and flat-out absurd.
You can feel when a film is made with love, and Lake Michigan Monster, with its
immensely creative use of Milwaukee locales and a cast of amazing Wisconsin
talent, practically brims with heart and soul. For all of its inspired lunacy
(which had me in stitches for eighty minutes straight), I truly felt as if I
had experienced some ancient Midwestern lore by the film’s end, as I hummed
along to the elegiac original song “Dear Old Captain Seafield.” I am deeply,
deeply proud to know the folks who made this film.
