When Lisa inherits her Aunt's house on the beautiful coast of Maine, she sees it as an opportunity for a fresh start thousands of miles from her old drama. She moves in with her reluctant teen daughter and before long meets a handsome local fisherman.

Things are looking up!

Then one night, she catches an intruder trying to break in and in the aftermath, discovers there's over $3M hidden in the walls of the house. 

Things go badly from there.

MAINE NOIR is inspired by the lean, low-budget film noirs of the 40's and 50's, films like DETOUR, THE HITCH-HIKER, and WOMAN ON THE RUN. These were the indie filmmakers of their day, not just stretching every available dollar, but writing scripts that turned budget limitations into a strength. 

And we want to embrace that. 

Because that's the spirit we're trying to emulate. The script was written to take advantage of the existing resources in my hometown, things I either already have access to or can easily find, with a self-contained story that can be shot quickly.  

A film noir should be rough around the edges. It's a perfect genre for micro-budget film. 

Beyond the noir angle, we've been conceptualizing it as BLUE RUIN meets IN THE BEDROOM.

Movies, even no-budget movies, get expensive quickly.

The bulk of the money we're raising will be used to get the cast and crew to Maine, where the community will take excellent care of them and feed them more lobster than they can handle. Still, travel to Maine isn't cheap and we need to pay the cast and crew a nominal rate for all their hard work.

Thanks to the pandemic, we'll also need to follow SAG's COVID protocalls, which isn't cheap, even for a film this small.

I have a stong track record of stretching budgets and we'll be getting a lot of in-kind donations from the community, so you can rest assured that every dollar we raise (and then some) will be up on screen.

This is my third feature film.

I like to call my style of filmmaking "genre-adjacent". I start in a genre and take the story elsewhere. In this film, it'll go in reverse, finding its way to noir.

My first feature, BLANC DE BLANC, was shot and edited in 2 weeks as part of a #2wkfilm challenge between filmmakers frustrated with all the false starts of trying to get a film made. So we forced ourselves to make one.

It had a small theatrical run and is currently available on Amazon Prime.

My second feature, UP COUNTRY, is a film about 3 guys who hire a Guide to take them fishing in the northern Maine woods. Except, the Guide leads them into the middle of nowhere and steals all their stuff.

We shot that in 7 days.

It is just starting a festival run, but here's a teaser trailer.

But what I'm best known for is A YEAR WITHOUT RENT, a travel project where I spent a year living out of my car and volunteering on indie films. I was everything from a PA on a film directed by a big movie star to the gaffer on a film shot in the UK. I documented the project for Film Courage, Film Threat, and Filmmaker Magazine. Most of the people working on this project are people I met in that year.

We're currently casting the film and anticipate being able to announce some of the cast soon.

Lisa (Leonora Pitts)

Lisa has made some mistakes in life. She got pregnant young and has put too much trust in shitty men who took advantage of her. So when her aunt leaves her a house on the coast of Maine, she jumps at the opportunity to leave all her problems behind. At first, Maine represents a fresh start. She starts to get romantically involved. But when she finds the money, things get complicated.

Ava (Emily Robinson)

Ava wants no part of this. A high school senior getting ready for college, Ava is here because her mother dragged her here. She's just killing time until she starts college in the fall, binge-watching true crime shows on Netflix. But it turns out that information is suddenly very helpful.

Tony

Tony has spent his entire life in Midcoast Maine. Sure, he goes to Portland every so often, but that's pretty much it. He's still mad about Mookie Betts. He was a pretty good high school basketball player who didn't see the point in going to college. He digs clams and plows driveways and wouldn't be caught dead at Red's Eats. He's a complicated version of the love interest in a Lifetime movie.

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Maybe you've seen something in the news about this pandemic? There's always a chance that we have a COVID outbreak and have to shut down or the Delta variant puts us back into lockdown. *sigh*

There's a thousand things that can go wrong. But as I like to say, the only thing indie filmmakers know how to quit is a day job. 

I have a lot of experience getting things made despite impossible odds. I made a feature in 2 weeks. I made a film in the middle of the woods during bear hunting season. I did A YEAR WITHOUT RENT. This is film is way easier. Things will go wrong. But we'll figure it out. We always do.

It's no secret that things are bad for indie filmmakers these days. 

In a landscape overstuffed with "content", it's harder and harder for us to break even. Payouts are down. Sales are down. Algorithms are skewed against us. Everything is bad.

But I have a good day job.

I strongly believe crowdfunding is more essential than ever. 

Imagine a world where it wasn't rare for filmmakers to raise $100K+ for a feature, make the entire film for that amount, and then gross $200K self-distributing it. Only, there's no middle men ripping them off. There's no investors to pay back. That money is all going back to the cast and crew. You know, the creators.

This is a future that's still possible. It truly is.

I even think it's doable.

Let's keep working toward that goal.