Sydney — a Q&A with Grant Earl MacIntosh

Sydney is a drifting 32-year-old living with his overworked mother in a rental home marked for demolition. After a string of small humiliations, he stumbles upon a broken TV left on the curb and decides to sell it online. A locally-made dramedy about dead-end hustles, unstable ground, and the struggle to find direction.

Sydney screens in Hope After All on Saturday, June 27 at 7:00pm at LSPU Hall.

How did your film come together?

Well like any film it starts with a simple idea that just kept blooming. I wrote the script and redrafted and changed so much of it just over the course of a year. I was struggling to make the kinds of films I wanted to within the school system so I sort of took advantage of the resources, ignored all my professors advice and just went out to make something intimate with my friends and close collaborators about a marginalized character who I wanted audiences to relate and empathize with. I wanted the film to feel captured rather than staged.

Did anything unexpected happen as you were making this film?

Filming in open streets definitely has its advantages and disadvantages. One guy did a few backflips in front of us while we weren’t rolling, another mooned the camera, and perhaps a few cars might’ve bumped into each other as they were excitedly watching what we were up to. But it’s all that beautiful chaos that surrounds the film and was something I was very much looking for during the entire process.

What’s the best filmmaking advice you’ve ever received?

There’s a great diary book of Steven Soderberghs that he put out after the success of sex, lies and videotape. In the opening of the book he has this quote that I repeat to myself whenever I felt a great sense of doubt in the project or when I’m trying to navigate a new one or worry about the next day. It reads: “Perseverance + Skill = Luck. Be ready when it happens”. It’s a small line that is always the healthiest reminder for me throughout the entire process of filmmaking and the pursuit of a career in filmmaking.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Everyone who worked on the film has a cameo in the film, it was important to me that everyone had a moment of ownership and immortality through celluloid.