Kickstarter

"1999 was a simpler time in America. People were more innocent, more sheltered from the world, and slightly less aloof... But that doesn't mean it didn't suck." -- Norm Plumber

Norm Plumber is the cliched recent college grad who sets out to find himself by making a documentary about his hometown--a town obsessed with bingo. He winds up following around an ex stripper whose goal in life is to become queen of all things bingo. To do that, she'll have to dethrone the current bingo queen: a wheelchair-bound elderly woman with a tracheotomy and a bubbling colostomy bag.

As Norm interviews the townies, a thread develops about a conspiracy for the smokers to win more than nonsmokers. He brushes it off as bored paranoia, but is it? What he discovers shocks him into his true self.

Free Space is my second feature film. My first, No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story, is a documentary that plays like a mockumentary. Here, I'm hoping to do the reverse. Or barring that, to make a really, really funny comedy that caters to a low budget. Nothing caters to a low budget better than the mock doc and you can count on one hand how many really funny ones are in existence today. Odd, considering that there is a large indie market for them.

So Free Space caters to a low budget... has a built-in audience clamoring for the next hit... I'd say this is the way to go.

I'm not alone on this adventure. This time I've got the muscle of Philippe Mora backing me. He made one of my all-time favorite films, Communion, so to be working with him on this project is a complete honor. (But don't tell him that.)

Here's a fun fact that makes this film all the sweeter: much of the dialogue is verbatim from conversations I had with real people at a real bingo hall aptly named The Bingo Palace, located in Sacramento, CA. The Palace was a large room partitioned by a glass wall that separated the smoking section from nonsmoking. And yes, there really were conspiracy theories. How tongue-in-cheek they were is anyone's guess.