THE LAST MAN

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SPOILER-FREE SYNOPSIS

A man has a bad day at work.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY (SPOILERS!) by Diego Kontarovsky

The Last Man was the fourth of my four Directing I projects.  There was no prompt, and the target running time was loosely set at 5 minutes.  This one goes about a minute over, and is then extended about a minute and a half for credits, which I rounded up to the next highest minute, which is why the bottom of this page says it's 8 minutes long.  Do the math; it all checks out.

At first, I really had no idea what story I wanted to tell, but I was considering doing something with a clown.  Don't ask me why, because I don't remember.  So I started asking people for clown-related ideas.  My brother suggested something about a guy who goes to work in a clown suit.  I took that single statement and wrote the script based on it, which is the reason for the whole "based on a sentence by" credit.

A man accidentally putting on a full clown costume including make-up is an absurd concept, so I used it to make a statement that people could identify with.  I had the clown be so mortified by his appearance that he lets people walk all over him.  And it was important that no one really acknowledge the clown costume, because sometimes, the superficial details that destroy our confidence are things that no one else really notices.  His co-workers treat him the way they do because of his attitude, and nothing else.  I don't think I consciously decided to do this as much as it naturally flowed from the basic premise when I sat down to write it.  It kinda plays into the running theme of isolation that seems to run through my Directing I shorts.

The title was just as hard as the initial premise to arrive at.  I initially was temporarily calling it The Passion (which was not as retarded a name then as it clearly is now; The Passion of the Christ had only just come out).  But everyone told me that they hated the title and some people pitched other ideas, which were mostly amusing puns that I rejected because they didn't really say anything about what I felt the movie was about.  Then, during a conversation with my friend Drew Lindo, I finally arrived at the title The Last Man.  This is an homage to The Last Laugh, a silent German film made in 1924 by F.W. Murnau that we had seen in our Film History class.  This movie is about a man who works as a doorman in a luxurious hotel, and every day, when he goes home to his poor neighborhood, he is treated with utmost respect because of his beautiful uniform.  When he is demoted to bathroom attendant, he is stripped of the uniform and loses everyone's respect, which turns him into a broken, empty shell of a man.  Its original German title is Der Letzte Mann, or The Last Man, so that is what I called my movie.  They both explore very similar themes of clothes dictating how a man sees himself. 

AWARDS & FESTIVALS

Winner, DMAC Short Film Slam #5 (2004)
   

THE LAST MAN     2004 / Running Time: 8 minutes. Written, Directed, & Edited by     Diego Kontarovsky Based on a Sentence by     Alejandro Kontarovsky Directors of Photography     Robert Dastoli     James Dastoli Boom Monkey     Alejandro Kontarovsky Personal Assistant to Mr. Lindo     Laura Lopez "... Baby One More Time"     Written by Max Martin     Performed by Britney Spears

Special Thanks     Chuck Kerrigan     Andrew Reiber Starring     Carl Fieler as The Boss     Andrew Kenneth Gay, B.A. as Davis     Justin Lader as Johnson     Jordyn Roberts as Judy     Christina Rubenstein as Woman #1     James Dastoli as Man #1     Robert Dastoli as Man #2     Meredith Engstrom as Woman #2     M. Francis Fuller as Man #3     Matthew Chai as Man #4     Walter Clark as Man #5     Drew Lindo as The Clown

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