When you cook someone a meal, they're putting their life into your hands. You're inviting them into your home. To your table. Your meal is supposed to sustain them. Gumbo is a story that takes that tension, the hospitality that's meant to be guaranteed on that trust, and puts it into question. An aspiring chef is told to do a mob hit. What do you do when your artistry is taken for granted? What do you do when what is life sustaining, is meant to kill?

Gumbo is a short film that takes the tensions, these anxieties that every person who's had a meal has had, and exploits them in a fun and exhilarating way. Louis has spent years working in his boss's kitchen, trying to perfect his craft. Trying to move up the ranks to chef. But his boss is a part of the mafia. Louis's boss knows that Bennie, our villain, loves to eat. His boss wants Louis to do a hit.

Passion intersects with respect and responsibility. Bennie imparts Louis with well earned wisdom, but wisdom from a vile murderer and criminal. Bennie sees in Louis potential that he doesn't want squandered by their mutual boss. The film takes inspiration both from real life chefs and service industry workers, and mafia history from New Orleans, and around the world. It's meant to capture the chaotic and passionate feelings you get in a kitchen through montage, while combinig it with a dinner conversation for explosive effect.

The film is structured to get as much bang for our buck as possible. We have cooking montage as Louis enters the zone to create his art, and we have a "Spielberg oner" to shoot dialogue coverage quickly and elegantly like they used to do for the gangster picture of Hollywood's golden era. We need money to hire a professional cast and crew, so we can get authentic gumbo ingredients, and so we can get everything looking and sounding great. (Because sound is half the picture!) We plan to go into production for three shooting days this winter, so we can have post finished and enter it into film festivals by the fall.

We hope you'll donate to our proof of concept short. A short that's intended to be authentic to its subject matter, as well as its genres. We love gangster pictures going from 1927's Underworld, to Goodfellas and The Sopranos. We love food, both cooking it, eating it, and the films depicting it from Babette's Feast, to Big Night, to Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and The Bear. This is a movie that combines two passions (and two genres) that were meant to be together, so we're putting it together ourselves! We are so excited to get this movie off the ground. We're ready to get cooking!