Movies You Made: “Windscreenwiperman”
March is Movies You Made month at Go Into The Story where we feature the work of independent filmmakers. Today: Windscreenwiperman. Some background on the project from co-writer/director Sam Baron:
My co-writer Raphael (who also plays the lead role) actually uses online chat-rooms to meet new friends all over the world. When he told me about this, I thought it was weird — but he couldn’t see why. I presented every argument to him, but he would always undermine my objections with sensible, logical answers. Yet no matter what he said, my gut instinct was still that it was weird. We realised how deeply ingrained the social stigma still is against online friendships, and wanted to use this stigma to fuel the tension in an unexpectedly innocent story about an online friendship. Ultimately, we hoped to stimulate conversation about these topics, and to make people question their own preconceptions. Is it weird to make friends online? Should online friendships ever try to cross over to the real world? And is it ever okay for a man to befriend a teenage boy, online or offline?
Raphael and I are both in our late 20s, and still feel very connected to who we were as teenagers. We both often wish we could give our teenage-selves advice about life, school, girls, and so on — or wish that someone had given us that advice back then. But is it wrong to give the advice you wish you’d been given to a teenage boy who reminds you of your younger self? We realised that we could weave these questions into our story by making the central friendship between a man in his late 20s and a teenage boy. We hoped this would amplify the stigma and the preconceptions that viewers would have, and therefore make our challenge of winning them over with an unexpectedly positive story even harder. After all, the idea of grown men chatting with 14-year-old strangers on the internet is incredibly problematic. But by making this particular story about the most positive version of that kind of friendship — between a man who has the first pangs of paternal instincts kicking in, and a boy whose own father is no longer around — we wanted viewers to question where you draw the line. What makes it “not okay”? Is it simply because of the danger that could have emerged? Or is there something inherently problematic about even this most positive version of that friendship? I would suggest there is — but I don’t think it’s as simple as being entirely black and white, so I wanted to raise these questions and let viewers make up their own minds.
Cast and Crew
Directed by Sam Baron
Written by Sam Baron & Raphael von Blumenthal
Produced by Mark Hopkins, Aidan Grounds & Emily Precious
Starring Raphael von Blumenthal, Joe Hurst & Rebecca Herod
Here is the 25 minute drama Windscreenwiperman:
Sam was one of the winners of the 2014 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. Look for my interview with him to run in the next few weeks.
Twitter: @baronifish.
Tomorrow: Another Movie You Made.
If you have been involved in the creation of a film and want to participate, please email me with details. Note: Need an embeddable trailer or movie.