FIRE OF THE PHOENIX

Download the movie here.

SPOILER-FREE SYNOPSIS

A man cuts his friend out of his life forever.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY (SPOILERS!) by Diego Kontarovsky

Fire of the Phoenix was my project for Directing II.  A while before, I had seen a bagel in the stairwell to my apartment and came up with a very basic premise for a scene where a guy notices his friend eating the stairway bagel and is so disgusted that he says they can't be friends anymore.  I was never seriously considering it, especially as the jumping-off point of a short film, but when pressed for a project idea, I somehow realized that it could be developed into a legitimate statement about friendship.

I felt that sometimes friendships can wear superficially thin and people can get so used to the really valuable friends in their life that they start to get sick of them and take them for granted.  I used the bagel incident as an absurd exaggeration of the stupid thing that would push a friendship's breaking point over the edge for one such person.  Because usually, the arguments that shake friendships are over very stupid things.

When I pitched this idea to my Directing II teacher, she thought I was making fun of her.  See, she had put us all into groups and was trying to get us to think of ideas through random word association.  At one point, I told her my idea and she excused herself from my table because she felt the "brainstorming process had become a little too shallow."  I suppose the premise does sound rather simpleminded, but that, to me, was part of its beauty.

I used the rest of the movie to show that Irwin was a very passionate person who acted exclusively on impulse, while putting him in situations that would make him realize how valuable Bryce was to his life.  Bryce coming back at the end to save the day was crafted to be a little larger than life.  He purposely makes his return in an illogically fantastic situation, because I wanted to illustrate the magical impact that people experience when a friend comes through for them.

This movie is also the best example of my passion for handheld reframing as opposed to static, standard coverage.  I intentionally made pretty much everything handheld from the second Irwin kicks Bryce out, to underscore the instability Irwin has just introduced into his life.

The final product divided people at my film school seemingly more than anything else I've ever done.  Some people have hated it, some have told me it's my best work to date.  Some flipped from one to the other.  My teacher compared the tone to a Saturday Night Live skit (which I think is selling the emotions behind it extremely short) and another teacher couldn't get past the fact that I used my fellow film students in the cast, claiming that it was basically a "home video" of all my friends acting goofy.  My stance on this is that I did not cast a single person out of laziness.  This movie is meant for everyone, but since it is coming from me, I cast people my age.  When I needed an older actor, such as the loan shark, I cast older.  I feel very strongly about the performances in the movie, and would not in a million years have cast anyone who I considered a bad actor.  There is an essential element of humor to everything I do, and humor is the hardest thing for any filmmaker to nail.  So for someone to invalidate a work that came from a very personal place because it's a comedy and because the people who helped me make it are my friends is, I think, childish.

AWARDS & FESTIVALS

Official Selection, Daytona Beach Film Festival (2005)
   

FIRE OF THE PHOENIX     2004 / Running Time: 12 minutes. Written, Directed, & Edited by     Diego Kontarovsky Directors of Photography     Robert Dastoli     James Dastoli Starring     Carl Fieler as Irwin     Justin Lader as Bryce     Alejandro Kontarovsky as Phil     Jordyn Roberts as Colleen     Dominick Vicchiullo as Maurice     Matthew Chai as Restaurant Guy     Andrew Kenneth Gay, B.A. as Proctor

Also Starring     Robert Dastoli as Test Takers #1-6     Drew Suppa as Thug #1     M. Francis Fuller as Thug #2 Color Timing & Sound     James Dastoli     Robert Dastoli Special Effects     Dastoli Digital Score Arranged by     Diego Kontarovsky Special Thanks     Rich Grula     Drew Lindo     Fusian

Back to Movies.