Filmmaker Eric Swinderman
We’re more than five long months
into (ugh, do I say it?) our post-COVID-19 new normal (there, I did it), and,
for the most part, we are all still in quarantine.
While it’s true we’re all getting out a bit more and taking on versions of normal things, things certainly aren’t normal. Everything requires a little more thought and thoughtfulness, along with whole bunch of new skills.
So while we’re not stuck at home, we are staying at home. And we’re still talking to filmmakers about what they’re doing during the pandemic. Today we chat with Eric Swinderman, best known for his films Made in Cleveland and The Enormity of Life.
MMM: How would you describe being a filmmaker locked down at home without a crew?
Eric Swinderman (ES): As someone who considers myself a writer first, the change hasn’t been that drastic as I was working on an episodic series for streaming. So while I probably haven’t been writing as much during the lockdown as I could be, due to the anxiety and general strangeness of it all, I have been working on fleshing out the first season.
One thing I just started working on is something I’ve coined “Social Distance Acting.” I’ve reached out to about two dozen actors I know about shooting some scenes, separately, from their own homes on whatever cameras they have access to (iPhones included) using scripts from iconic movies and then uploading them to me to edit and see if we can make it work. Totally for fun, not going to do anything with them beyond sharing them with my small circle.
Behind the scenes of 'Made in Cleveland' with Busy Phillips and Gillian Jacobs
MMM: How are you
stretching your filmmaking skills while at home?
ES: Again, as
an artist and a writer, things are about the same as they were a couple weeks
before the shutdown. Aside from the fact I can’t do my weekly dinners with my
partners, I’m still writing and fleshing out the first season. I had the first
four episodes of an episodic drama written with a blueprint for four more. The
plan is to have all eight written by the time we are able to shoot the pilot.
MMM: What passion
project are you working on now that you’ve got extra time?
ES: I’ve been
working with Bryant Carroll and Sage O’Bryant on a really dark episodic series
called Epidermis with some
really great actors from shows like Orange
is the New Black, House of Cards,
Black Swan and The Deuce, to name a few. We had a schedule to shoot the pilot in
May, but that is obviously on hold now, as is everything with my feature film The Enormity of Life. That was a feature
we shot with Breckin Meyer and Emily Kinney and we had hoped this year was
going to be a big festival year, but again this pandemic has turned Hollywood
on its head and no one knows when things will truly get going again.
MMM: If you were
asked to make a movie about this COVID time, what would it be?
ES: I think
most people would lean toward making some kind of horror/zombie film, but that
is too easy. I like to write about nuance and the layers of the human psyche,
so I would be more interested in writing a comedy.
They say comedy is simply tragedy
plus time, so I’d like to explore the way this pandemic has affected our minds
and our spirit, our relationships with people we know and people we don’t.
Maybe a few working titles would be Pandemic
Pam or Quaran-Tina.
MMM: What five
films are a must for everyone stuck at home?
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