“Lunch Films”

“It is all literally an accident,” says Mike Plante of “Lunch Films.” The short-films program got started when Plante took his friend, shorts filmmaker James Fotopoulos, out to lunch. “He found out [the restaurant] was cash-only, and he was like, ‘Dude, I don’t have any cash.’” Plante paid for Fotopoulos’s lunch; instead of money, he requested a short film as payback. Fotopoulos agreed, but Plante laid down some guidelines based on the conversation the pair had been having about the mediocrity of independent films. “We were talking about like how [it] seems like indie movies were constantly just two people’s lives intersecting, but people were never friggin’ interesting or anything, or they’re singles in Manhattan, and it’s like, ‘Oh, who cares?’” says Plante. For that reason, rules like “strangers’ lives must not intersect” were added to the napkin/contract along with themes, objects and places that must be referenced. Fotopoulos turned in his film about a week later. “It was like animated porn,” Plante says. “It’s like two naked women and then a platypus flying in the air.”

Other filmmakers heard about the deal and wanted in. “Cam [Archer] heard about what Fotopoulos did, and he’s like, ‘Oh, that’s bullshit, I want a free lunch,’” Plante says. “Then the snowball just kept rolling.” The project has turned into more than 30 films, some of which will be screened at Aurora Picture Show today. Plante gave each filmmaker a different set of guidelines, which made for odd paybacks, including Roger Beebe’s 16-millimeter three-minute short, which is comprised of white dots, the shape of Texas, dancing silhouettes and former Aurora employee Eileen Maxson explaining how Kelly Clarkson is her doppelganger, or is it the other way around?

This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2007.