In Search of a Midnight Kiss

May 18, 2007 4:51 PM
by [email]

Alex Holdrige was inspired by a car wreck. Flanked by the Arizona desert, the young filmmaker snapped a picture of his smashed car - a literal and figurative dent on a trip from his native Texas to a new home near Hollywood.

The picture shows up in “In Search of a Midnight Kiss.” So does the Holdrige’s favorite bar, La Poubelle, which is where fictional filmmaker Wilson (Scoot McNairy) meets Vivienne (Sarah Simmonds), a Texas transplant wandering downtown Los Angeles on a New Year’s Eve search for the perfect date.

Shot in just over seven days and written in fourteen, “Kiss” marks Holdridge’s third feature as writer/director (he helmed festival hits “Wrong Numbers” and “Sexless”) and co-stars his former roommate, Brian Matthew McGuire, as Wilson’s almost-engaged roommate. I caught up with the collaborating foursome at Chelsea’s Half King Café. Sprawled across two couches and passing my tape recorder back and forth, they took a break - if you can call press that - from wall-to-wall screenings and parties in Tribeca.

CJ: How’d you make this so quickly?

ALEX: I’d been trying to get money to make this more studio picture and went, “let’s pull the group together and make a little one.” It’s very liberating to be on the streets and able to do it our way.

SARA: Everyone just dropped what they were doing. Alex started writing scenes for the next day, Scoot and I would be rehearsing them in his little kitchen, watching the dailies at night. It was like a frat house basically, we were all staying in that one little apartment.

BRIAN: Crashing on the floor.

ALEX: We were laughing, because we would have to shoot in a grocery store and we heard “You can’t just shoot locations,” we would just walk in with a camera…

BRIAN: Alex had a jacket on with gaffer tape underneath.

SARA: People did come up to us and ask what we were doing. We always just said, “wedding video.”

CJ: You found so many great locations.

ALEX: Sara and I used to just walk through the streets of downtown, and we found a lot of the locations just by meandering. The theater district! The place where they do the confessions.

SCOOT: We were just in awe of the places as we are in the movie.

SARA: People in LA don’t really utilize downtown. So for a film to be shot in downtown LA – I’ve never seen it. Broadway’s so sad, all these amazing theaters, they’re storefronts now for radios and toys, and then there’s the subway, films never use the subway in LA.

CJ: Except maybe in “Speed.”

BRIAN: Sara based her character off Sandra Bullock. And me, Dennis Hopper.

CJ: Will Wilson and Vivi see each other again?

SCOOT: Maybe in rehab.

SARA: That’s the sequel.

ALEX: You know how old boyfriends and girlfriends, every once in a while you’re like, “I wonder if they have a myspace page?”

SARA: I’ve tried to seek out old lovers through myspace, and then you see ‘em, and then you’re like…urg. But I don’t know if (the characters) would choose to find each other again.

ALEX: Her character is so chaotic and has such a crazy back story, she comes off with a whole lot of armor…

CJ: Hence the sunglasses, the coat?

SARA: Oh! This is funny! I was in Texas, and I flew in, missed my flight, and I get to where these guys are shooting and I had brought a bunch of clothes…

SCOOT: And I was like, “you’re not wearing that.”

SARA: So Scoot and I hauled ass, went in his car, learned our lines for the scene we were about to shoot…

ALEX: I’m waiting on set…

SCOOT: We learned all of our lines that day.

SARA: Alex is like, “you have thirty minutes.” We fly into my apartment, go through my closet, Scoot pulled that coat out…

SCOOT: And the boots.

SARA: And the boots.

SCOOT: I spent some time in fashion.

SARA: I showed up on set, got out of the car, a mike was being put on me. And I’m like, “Alex, do you like it?” and he’s like, “I love it, I love it, we gotta go.” And we start shooting. But the awesome thing was, we didn’t have any costume changes. Cause it takes place in one day.

SCOOT: So we smelled. Awful.

CJ: What’s your favorite scene?

ALEX: When they get back to the apartment and have their intimate moments. That to me is magical. And we shot that chronologically. It felt like you guys really lived through that experience. There was this emotionally weirdness; we didn’t want to talk too much. We just shot it patiently and quietly.

BRIAN: That’s how I felt about the proposal scene, it was scary. I had fifty of my best friends who were gonna be there - who aren’t really actors, who are more musicians - and I was gonna be proposing. I was so nervous I felt like it was actually happening. It just felt real.