At 24, this filmmaker gets his shot

Chris Fuller's Loren Cass, set in St. Petersburg after the '96 racial disturbances, competes at a LasVegas film festival.

By Steve Persall
Published June 8, 2007

Chris Fuller picked at a plate of chicken strips, too busy explaining himself and his primal scream movie to eat.

This is an exciting time for the 24-year-old writer, director and editor of Loren Cass, a gritty concept movie set in St. Petersburg after the shooting of a black man by a white police officer sparked disturbances in 1996.

This weekend - nine years after Fuller began writing the screenplay - Loren Cass gets its "official" U.S. premiere at the CineVegas Film Festival. It played locally at Studio@620 last fall. The festival, chaired by actor Dennis Hopper, slotted Loren Cass in the Jackpot Premieres competition for entries without distribution deals, with a $10, 000 first prize.

Loren Cass is a series of tentatively linked impressions, mostly young adults aimlessly coping (or tragically not coping) with tensions shortly after parts of St. Petersburg burned during protests of the shooting.

But race isn't a key issue in Loren Cass. Smoldering rage is.

Most of Fuller's characters are white, beating each other down with random violence or indifference. The episodic style is occasionally interrupted by pitch darkness over fiery words of protest, yearning and despair. Fuller's editing is ragged, yet with serrated precision.

"I wanted to take the soul of adolescence, whatever that is, and translate it into images and arrange them into a story, " the St. Petersburg native said, slouching over his plate. "I know that's lame and sounds pretentious as all hell, but that's basically how I put it together. It's not a quick-cutting action-oriented sort of deal. It's about setting a mood."

The film brings to mind the work of other directors, the brain-twisting of Jean-Luc Godard and the unsentimental nostalgia of Francois Truffaut. But Fuller doesn't believe in comparisons.

"That's a slippery slope, " he said. "It really does pigeonhole you and the kind of films you're making.

"If you really beat me for an influence, I would go more for (philosopher Arthur) Schopenhauer and (composer Richard) Wagner. It sounds lame but the kind of philosophy they had about their work, about art, is more interesting to me than 99 percent of the filmmakers today."

Fuller's confidence comes with raw talent. He eschewed film school and learned his craft by studying foreign film masters at the public library. He never shot home movies as a childhood hobby like Spielberg, and he quickly left a Tarantino-esque video store gig because it felt "sacrilegious" to hand out junk.

Loren Cass is the first movie Fuller attempted, yet it plays with a veteran expressionist's touch. One example: A scene of one character's suicide on the Sunshine Skyway bridge segues to grisly footage of Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer committing suicide on live television.

"That's the only image that made me feel the way people should feel when a kid jumps off a bridge, " Fuller said.

Loren Cass isn't easy viewing. It has no conventional story arc or detailed characters. It includes more pregnantly paused words than action. Nobody in the film is even named Loren Cass. More questions are raised than answered, and even the reasons for curiosity are inscrutable.

"The most important things we're saying in the film shouldn't be said straight-up, " Fuller said. "You get from it what you give to it and the first step is walking through the door. You need to invest yourself a little bit and read between the lines.

"I don't think you really see the film until the second or third viewing. It's tough to request people to do that. It feels kind of ridiculous. But it is textured and layered. It's just a matter of not slapping people in the face with it."

Fuller's cinematic interest spouted at 12. He leaned toward French New Wave, Werner Fassbinder and Truffaut. At 18, after three years of penning a script, Fuller and close friend Frank Craft incorporated Jonesing Pictures and found financing to begin production in 2004.

Fuller won't say exactly what it cost to make Loren Cass, just that it was less than $1-million, because he doesn't want to affect a bid for distribution rights.

CineVegas is a place where a distribution deal could come through. Fuller already has connections: independent film consultant Robert Hawk - who discovered Kevin Smith's Clerks -and director Julian Goldberger (Trans, The Hawk is Dying) have taken to him, suggesting a sales agent who began networking Loren Cass at Cannes.

"When things were looking pretty bleak, they'd always be, like, 'Hang in there, ' " Fuller said. "They don't have to help me. I'm shocked that they even watched my film. I can't really say what they see in me.

"Maybe it's just sheer persistence. I got nothing else, really. It's just important for me to leave something behind. I'm about a quarter done (with my life) at best. I've got to get cracking, you know what I mean?"

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com. Visit his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies

CineVegas Film Festival

The ninth annual fest began Wednesday with the screening of Ocean's Thirteen and continues through June 16 at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, concluding with a showing of John Dahl's hit man comedy You Kill Me starring Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. Loren Cass will be shown twice, Saturday and Sunday, in the Jackpot Premieres competition among indie films without distribution deals. Judges will determine which entry wins a $10, 000 grand prize. For more, go to www.cinevegas.com or lorencass.com.

[Last modified June 7, 2007, 13:09:24]