DEAD CAT BOUNCE (2010, OpenFilm, feature short, runtime: 40 mins., director: Daric Gates):
What if you were mysteriously given the key to fame, fortune, and riches with zero accountability to anyone, including your boss?
Would you take the key? Would you cheat? Would you dive in for the filthy lucre and disregard all possible consequences? Or would you think twice?
Dead Cat Bounce is a modern-day techie morality tale about exactly that. Atlas (Joshua Durkin) and Jackson (Nathan Marlow) are a pair of stock trading buds frittering away their careers in front of their ‘puters. In their own words, they’re “bottom-feeding,” whiling away their precious hours until pension time, when, as Atlas deadpans, “their pension will be worth half of their present take-home pay.” Ugh!
Jackson’s marriage is on the skids after his house was put up for foreclosure by the greedy banks, part of the sudden shockwave of 50% of foreclosed homes during 2008′s Great Crash. His wife, Gina (Christina Iannuzzi), furious with her husband’s apparent lack of initiative and breadwinning potential, takes her leave — along with their child — for greener pastures. Atlas, the perennial bachelor and skirt chaser, tries to cheer Jackson up during a few rounds at the driving range. But it does little to brighten Jackson’s lowly spirits.
While puttering around in their golf cart, an unnamed middle-aged character intercepts Atlas to share with him some information — The Code — which promises to change his and Jackson’s professional lives for all time. As the man hands it over, he asks Atlas if “can feel the weight?” Huh?
For now, Atlas can’t grasp the magnitude of what just happened until he reasons it out for himself the next morning over java: if he somehow arranges the series of digits on the New York Times‘ front page, it predicts the precise closing volume of the Dow Jones, effectively making Atlas and his clients wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations. We all know what Atlas is up to…
In time, he brings Jackson in on the scam, reassuring his wingman that this might be the very thing to convince Gina to return and make him a happy husband once again. Jackson listens, though reluctantly, knowing full well that a previous employee at their firm who attempted something strikingly similar ended up in a pool of his own blood after blowing his brains out one fine morning. Jackson is clearly worried about Atlas’ flagrant disregard for the all-too-apparent consequences, of which, Jackson notes, there can be many. Though Atlas’ aloofness is unsettling in the extreme, Jackson eventually caves into Atlas’ dirty deed.
As the hundreds of thousands begin flowing in, the cocksure Atlas — living the life of Riley along with Jackson at some of L.A.’s finest night spots — is beyond convinced that the two of them are “invincible.” Needless to say, all is not kosher.
Atlas is warned several times by faceless forces to get the hell out of the grand game, but he disregards them all and carries on without a care in the world, keeping Jackson in the dark. With their futures ostensibly set in stone, there’s nothing left for this dynamic duo to do but rake in the bountiful haul. That is, until the Powers That Be decide that enough is simply enough and put an end to Atlas’ juvenile charade…
Naturally, the pain hardly stops there, but you’ll just have to catch it in its entirety for yourself. But here’s the trailer, as a sneak preview:
What I enjoyed thoroughly about DCB?
- the writing: while Joshua J. Durkin (Atlas) acted in the same film he wrote, this does little to diminish the deep impact of this story. Just as I’d mentioned in my earlier review of Person of Interest, when the indie writer is the same person as the indie protagonist, who better than that indie scribe to portray his/her lead actor faithfully? This thriller genre all the way, but with a twist. These films are rarely easy to pull off, given how it’s always a challenge to get over audiences’ initial “been there, done that” response. Suffice it to say that Gates, Durkin, and Marlow creatively overcame the crowd’s dissonance in DCB.
- length: 40 minutes for a short is dangerously close to feature territory, but since the story was so engaging it hardly mattered. Like a B-52 bomber, Durkin’s narrative needed a long take-off strip. In fact, Durkin & Gates could have even chucked a few additional plot wrinkles in the mix, but by then they’d have banked themselves out of the competition.
- production value: it never ceases to amaze me how L.A. indies can wrangle down so many key contacts into mounting productions of such tremendously high value. Major kudos to Daric Gates and his loyal posse for making DCB a reality.
And in case you’re wondering how I found out about this film in the first instance? None other than through Karen Worden and David Brainin‘s Film Courage YouTube Channel. Their featured interview with Daric Gates from the HollyShorts festival earned a PMD-For-Hire review.
