Abby Singer
November 2007 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Reel Indies is the product of a collaboration between Mill Creek Entertainment and Breakthrough Distribution that offers filmmakers "a cooperative umbrella under which to bring their works to a broad retail marketplace while retaining their creative vision." Abby Singer is another of their releases of low-budget films that have played the film-festival circuit with some success. Given the constraints of budget, this film takes lots of long shots. There’s an editing style of quick cuts that’s hard to follow, a timeframe that keeps shifting, some scenes on the confusing border between real and hallucinatory, and a surprisingly long list of cameo appearances that must have involved complex legal releases. Look for such big names as Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Don Cheadle, Jodie Foster, Stockard Channing, and Roger Ebert.

It’s a story about the friendship, failed romances, and defeated dreams of two young men aspiring to be film actors. When we meet them, they’ve both given in and taken jobs on the fringe of the industry, Curtis (Clint Parker) as an assistant casting director in a small-time agency and Kevin (Ryan Williams) as an instructor in a college theatre department. They meet up again after the quarrel that separated them years prior. Kevin is facing a divorce from the woman of his dreams, and Curtis is nursing a broken heart. (These two leads, by the way, co-wrote the script, and Ryan Williams directed.) It’s Curtis’s plot that drives the film, reaching its crisis in a flashback at the Sundance Film Festival. (It’s here where the many cameos are shot, with actors like Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Don Cheadle giving Curtis stern advice on his love life.) Cowed by his dominating boss Maxine (Robin Ballard) and overwhelmed with sexual guilt by his fervent Christianity, he breaks down. His conscience -- "Jesus wouldn’t like that" -- won’t let him meet the sexual demands of Mabeline (Wendy Buss), and he loses her.

"Abby Singer" is a technical term meaning "second-to-last shot" after Abner E. Singer, a production manager who would call it the last shot of the day, only to have the director call for another final shot or two. In the movie, when Curtis is about to end it all, Kevin tells him this grief of his is his "abby singer," and there are other better "shots" to follow. The movie ends with the two buddies arriving in Hollywood, as if to prove it.

It’s a movie you’ll need to watch twice; the continuity won’t be apparent the first time. And it seems to have begun production without the screenplay firmly in place. Some scenes seem salvaged from earlier scripts. But it’s worth the second viewing. It’s a labor of love by a group of five or six young men that wrote, acted, directed and produced it because they have the same dream as the two main characters. And that "abby singer" scene, shot in a starkly beautiful birch forest, is genuinely affecting.

You can use your old DVD player to watch it -- it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to your fancy new system. And there aren’t any significant extras, just a slide show. Maybe it was for budget reasons, but there is a very nice completely original score, and there are some surprising, wild scenes of the nightlife at various film festivals, shot on location.

It’s something when a group of young guys can work together to produce a meaningful film, independent of Hollywood. Ironic that that’s where their characters head in the end.

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