Movies You Made: “Feeding Mr. Baldwin”

March is Movies You Made month at Go Into The Story where we feature the work of some independent filmmakers.

Today: Feeding Mr. Baldwin.

Production notes from writer-director Will Prescott:

Feeding Mr. Baldwin is a feature dark comedy about a house sitter (played by Dalton Leeb) who bites off more than he can chew when a dead body shows up at the estate he’s watching. Desperate to make a good impression, he convinces an old friend (Anil Margsahayam) to help clean up the mess before the wealthy homeowner returns (Christopher B. Duncan). This proves to be easier said than done as a series of odd and threatening people begin to stop by while the body count cascades into a disturbing comedy of errors.

The script took around two years to complete. I wanted to challenge myself to write something structurally complicated that moved — most of what I’d been seeing on the festival circuit at the time felt so loose and slowly paced. I also wanted to write something producible, so 85% of the action takes place in one large location.

We first attempted to raise financing the old fashioned way, but ended up completing a successful Kickstarter campaign for $60K. One month after that, we were well into our insane 14 day shooting schedule.

After a year of post, we premiered at our first film festival in NYC and won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. We went on to screen at several more festivals with several award nominations.

We’ve recently signed a distribution deal and will be released by Devolver Digital Films on VOD and Digital platforms in May of this year.

Cast and Crew Info:

The cast consists of theatrically trained actors Dalton Leeb (Holy Land, One Day Like Rain), Anil Margsahayam (Grey’s Anatomy, Silicon Valley), Abby Miller (Justified, Caper), and Christopher B. Duncan (The First Family, Veronica Mars, The Jamie Foxx Show). Comedic supporting talent from Upright Citizens Brigade, iOWest, and Groundlings theaters including Laird Macintosh, Andrew Donnelly, Annie Sertich, and Mark David Christenson rounds out the ensemble. The cast was nominated for Best Ensemble at the Orlando Film Festival where Dalton Leeb was also nominated for Best Lead Performance.

The crew consists of many graduates from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media arts including writer/director Will Prescott, producer Matthew Watkins, Co-Producer Ethan Cushing, Editor/Post Supervisor Tom Flynn, Casting Director Mark Jwayad, and Production Designer Brendan O’Connor. Other key crewmembers include Producer Zach Prescott and Anil Margsahayam, Executive Producer Peter Turschmid. Cinematographer Corey Weintraub. Composer Brendan Eder, and Costume Designer Ashley Tibbits.

Here is the trailer for the feature length movie Feeding Mr. Baldwin:

I asked each of the filmmakers in this month’s series to answer this question: What inspired you about this particular story to make it a movie? Here is Will’s response:

The original concept for Feeding Mr. Baldwin came from the short sketch “Mail Order Bride” that I wrote for The Greater Good comedy group (myself, producer Matthew Watkins and editor Tom Flynn are founding members of the group). The story is fun and farcical with a lot of unbelievable things happening, but at the heart of it is the main character’s attempt to achieve success, or his idea of what “success” is, by taking the shortest route possible without considering consequences.

I think most of us feel like this at points in our lives. You get to a certain age and you’re like “What the hell am I doing? I’m wasting away. I need to get there now!” The main character attempts an unknown, shortcut route to a better life and we get to watch how it goes.

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Tomorrow: Another Movie You Made.

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