I'm willing to help the less fortunate who don't have a lot of money," said Orel. "I fully support the low-budget films of America."
The film, entitled "Thru Yonder Window Breaks" - an allusion to Romeo's famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet - was written by Freeman from a story devised with Brown and Betthauser, and deals with the travails of a man seeking adventure and romance in life. The title, said Freeman, references the film's first scene, where an object explodes through a window and into the protagonist's world, setting him loose on a path that leads him to take refuge in an alternate reality straight out of an action movie.
"He wants to live the exciting life - he wants to live this fantasy world that he's seen in TV and the movies all his life," said Freeman. "He finally threw a brick |
through his window; he finally gets a chance, and he's invited into the fantasy world."
As the story progresses, said Freeman, the man gets drawn further and further in as the film cuts back and forth between reality and fantasy. The scene filmed at 101 during four hours of shooting Tuesday night - the protagonist trying, and failing, to enjoy an ordinary dinner with a young woman - exemplifies the degree to which the man's imagination takes hold of him, said Freeman.
"He was just really, really bored with the world of reality - he really didn't want to be there," said Freeman. "The girl was oblivious to it, of course.... Then the fantasy world starts creeping in, and he gets served a plate that has a gun on it, which is totally surreal."
With the gun, the man shoots his adversary before he can draw |
his own automatic weapon, then flees. Freeman stressed, though, that the man is notschizophrenic, merely caught up (rather intensely) in the conflicting thought processes going on in his own head.
Despite the numerous takes involved in getting the scene down the way the filmmakers wanted it, Freeman said he felt the shooting went well, lavishing praise on Café 101's suave setting as the perfect place to shoot the scene.
"It was a really, really outstanding place to use... |