FALLOUT

While a college student in 1979 I wrote a letter to U.S. president Jimmy Carter expressing my concern about the potential of nuclear war and urging him to do what he could to pull back on the stockpiles and reduce the possibility of conflict. I received a nice letter in return acknowledging my concern. Then when president Ronald Reagan came into power and began a nuclear build up it truly felt like the world was headed in the wrong direction and that the possibility of armed conflict on a nuclear scale was indeed a possibility. The policy of deterrence and mutually assured destruction felt like a madman’s game. It was terrifying.

After college I moved to New York City where I scratched out an existence on the Lower East Side and spent days doing street theater with my old college buddies. I felt like I’d finally found a voice for the frustration and fear we were feeling though it was articulated in a broad commedia del arte style.

As an actor I’d already had a couple of dashed shots at the big time. In my final weeks of college I was cast by director Tony Scott in a feature film version of Alive!, a gripping story of survival that I had devoured at age 16. Eventually I was told the project had been shelved by Paramount due to civil conflicts in the desired Latin American locations. Years later the film was made starring a young Ethan Hawke. Then in 1982 I found myself in the final 22-hour audition for Francis Coppola’s The Outsiders. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part. Even with my failure to be part of these projects, I felt like I had the potential to be a film actor so I made the possibly foolhardy decision to cast myself in a leading role and reached for my college graduation nest egg to fund the project.

In 1984 I teamed up with new friend and editor Stephen Plumlee and together we developed a script that swirled around the environment of Loisida. It was a simple love story about a young couple reuniting and breaking up infused with the apocalyptic musings of a basement dwelling guru who possessed the disturbing ability to materialize in one’s reflection. My earlier imaginings of nuclear annihilation came home to roost in a Lower East Side that in 1982 looked like a nuclear bomb had hit it anyway.

With very few resources we were determined to shoot the film by any means necessary. We cast it with friends and new actors who we found through the traditional audition process. We wanted the film to look great in black and white and our production manager Gulie Schnitzler introduced us to Richard Eliano a talented young DP who was just getting his feet wet in the business. We built sets in Paul D’Amato’s loft and we filmed guerilla style all over New York even shooting inside the World Trade Towers and at the famed Life Café in the East Village.

Out of funds and with a rough cut in hand, we applied for support from arts organizations and miraculously we received a modest contribution from The Brooklyn Arts & Culture Association (BACA). This lifted our spirits considerably but in the end the project languished…until now.