Whacked!



Running Time: 5 mins. Film Format: 16mm Black and White Copyright ©1997	Director's Statement: "Whacked! was my first assignment at NYU (Tisch School of the Arts) Graduate Film School, and the parameters or "rules" were very strict: no music no dialogue no color film no artificial lighting no interior photography maximum five minutes in length Looking back, I now believe that working within such well-defined limitations forced me to think further, and to submerge myself in the creative use of the few cinematic parameters that were available to me. The same experience was described recently by Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) speaking of his experience of making a film according to the restrictions or "commandments" set forth in Dogme 95 together with fellow countryman Lars von Trier. When I left Berlin to study Film at NYU, I was already intending to take advantage of my first, unencumbered impressions of New York by making the city itself a character in my first short film. I hope that the freshness of the newcomer's point of view is visible in Whacked! In looking for a story, I was inspired by a fabulous location I wanted to use: an utterly surreal golf driving range on the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan. Only after conceiving and writing the story from my imagination, did I learn that the real-life drivers of the ball-sweeping vehicles actually do get constantly bombarded by the golfers - and that their anger and frustration is real enough for them to find the climax of my story inspiring! -- This made me understandably worried about what they might do... Whacked! can be interpreted as an allegorical statement about the roles of Persecutor and Victim, and the unexpected ways in which this relationship can suddenly be reversed. But, perhaps more importantly, this film has also proven itself successful at what I had most hoped to achieve: to make a wickedly entertaining black comedy.