Playing the Hangman

Playing the Hangman

Copyright © 2005 George Meryll

Machiavelli Hangman

http://www.hangmanmovie.com







Like Napoleon Dynamite and Reservoir Dogs before it,

Machiavelli Hangman (http://www.hangmanmovie.com) is already

being hailed by many as a triumph in low-budget independent

filmmaking in American cinema. Shervin Youssefian who wrote

(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1352346/) and directed the film is

a graduate of the University of Northridge. After completing the

fifth draft of Machiavelli Hangman which was his fifth feature

screenplay, he called up his producer friend Artin Nazarian to

take a look at the script.



"As soon as I turned the script, I knew right away that this was

going places. I called him back and I think he was excited to see

my reaction. I don't think even he had realized what great

material this was," explains Nazarian.



After several months of extensive rewrites and polishing, the

script was finally complete and the casting process began. "This

was like Selznick looking for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara," says

Youssefian. The amount of detail and requirements that were put

in the casting process could equal any major studios.



As the actors came in to audition, they were handed out two pages

of the script, to prepare for a cold reading. Many noticed just

from the few pages that this was not your everyday screenplay. "I

was at first surprised that a major studio hadn't picked it up

yet... the fluidity and the wit of the dialogue jumped out of the

page. It felt like auditioning for Pulp Fiction or something like

The Usual Suspects," says Brian Cumberland, an actor in Los

Angeles.



The team had such a strong confidence in its abilities that it

immediately attracted the attention of investors and other well-

positioned industry professionals. Word of mouth spread and

before the producers knew it Youssefian's screenplay was being

sent to the offices of some of the best known actors in the

industry.



"You find yourself in a whirlwind and things happen so fast that

one minute, you're sitting in your backyard thinking 'what if'

and the other, you're having lunch with the biggest stars in

Hollywood in their backyard!"



This comes to show that Hollywood is not as closed as many think

it is. Studios and distribution companies seek out good material

and when you have good material, they will come to you and make

things happen. An advice to young filmmakers is to find a script

and instead of submitting it to festivals, try to get as many

people as possible to get excited about the project. When you

have enough people on the team, it gets attention and just like

a Reservoir Dogs and Machiavelli Hangman, more people will jump

on the bandwagon.George Meryll is an entertainment columnist for various

newspapers. He has done his homework and is happy to

share with us what he has learned about the coming film,

Machiavelli Hangman

(http://www.hangmanmovie.com).

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