A BAG OF HAMMERS
feature film
It has taken four years of work and development, but in August 2009 we shot A Bag Of Hammers. It was a grind shooting in the hottest part of the year in Burbank, but it was very much worth it. The cast and crew were terrific. I am very excited to go through the post process, I am very proud of this film.
The fun one. This I wrote with Jake Sandvig. I had had taken a bit of a break before this script. I knew I had some elements for something kicking around. And I knew I wanted to write about criminals. One day I saw a show on the travel channel about stealing cars from valets. Which I thought was interesting and then on the was driving past a cemetery one day I thought that that would be the perfect place for this scam, because at a funeral no one is paying attention to the valet at all. At the same time I was telling Jake about these fragments, as he has, since I've known him, been a sounding board for my projects. At the same time as we were talking about these fragments, Jake and I were watching his neighbor, a kind of bad single mother and getting to know her son. One day when she nearly ran me over in her driveway, I got an idea. I ran it by Jake and together we figured out how these pieces could be woven together. Then Jake asked if he could write the script with me. I was surprised and thought it could be risky in a personal aspect, but I said yes. This is the lightest script I've worked on in tone. It's a film that will hopefully make the audience laugh a lot and feel good, that was our intention with it. As well as emulating a kind of buddy genre that was happening a lot in the 80's which doesn't really happen as much anymore.
It also should be mentioned that Peter Friedlander has been working with us, developing the script and being the driving force behind the production. He's simply great and smart and if I never had to work with anybody else, I wouldn't.
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directed by Brian Crano
written by Brian Crano and Jake Sandvig
producers Peter Friedlander | Lucy Barzun Donnelly | Jennifer Barrons
editor Travis Sittard
directors of photography Byron Shah |
Quyen Tran
production designer Bradley Thordarson
cast
ben Jason Ritter
alan Jake Sandvig
kelsey Chandler Canterbury
mel Rebecca Hall
marty Todd Louiso
wyatt Gabriel Macht
lynette Carrie Preston