American Short Shorts Film Festival 2000

Elisabeth Lochen	Roy Unger	Mark Osborne	Keith Milton
Chris Harwood and Bruce Laffey

Keith, 31, has worked in production--for videos, commercials, and short film--for over half his life. He studied film and television in London in his native England, before he moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago.
He currently works as a producer at Virgin Records where he has produced music videos for Janet Jackson, David Bowe, and the Rolling Stones, among others. Twinkle Toes is his directorial debut.

About the film . . .	About short film	Current Projects
About American Short Shorts	Personal favorites

	About the film . . .

a. What do you think is the most unique aspect of your film?

"It's completely nuts."

b. What was difficult in putting it all together?

"I had a really good crew because my day job is working in music video, so the most difficult part was getting the crew to commit." Because Keith couldn't offer to pay anyone, he had to accept the possibility that his crew would find paying jobs which conflicted with his shooting schedule. "My DP said he would commit 3 or 4 days before the shoot. It was a huge relief when he finally said he could do it."

c. Talk about some unexpected surprises that arose

The biggest surprise was Sally Kirkland's announcement that she was having her breast implants removed the day before the shoot. "In the film, she actually gets strangled quite violently, so we had to be very careful with her that day. But she made a huge media event out of having her implants removed. The following week on the Howard Stern show, she presented Howard with one of her silicone breasts. And she talked about the film on air."

d. Talk about the reception your film has had a previous screenings

"It gets a good laugh. I've won a couple of audience awards and it's played in lot of major cities."

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	About short film

a. Why is short film so great in your opinion?

"The best thing about short film is that you can do absolutely anything that you want. You can do a minute film to 30 minutes, and you can do whatever you want. There's no restrictions in terms of you have to do traditional story telling, you have to end it on an up note, you have to end it where people redeem themselves. You probably have no financiers, no studio, no distributor inquiring about what you're doing, so you can just go completely crazy with it."

b. Why go to see shorts versus features?

"You can see such a wide variety of film in an hour and a half."
"It's very quick and concentrated film making."

c. Are we in a shorts revolution?

"Definitely. Mainly because of the internet."

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	Current Projects

a. What current projects are you working on?

"I'm making a spec commercial. And I'm actually cutting some spec commercials out of my film."

b. Were those projects influenced by the short in ASS?

c. Ultimate goals as a film maker or something else?

"I want to continue directing, but also I'd like to produce as well and develop. I've got some scripts that I'm developing with a friend of mine for HBO films."

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	About American Short Shorts

a. What went through your mind when you heard about a shorts fest in Japan?

"At first I was quite surprised when [ASS] first contacted me because I wasn't sure what it was, but the more I found out about it, the more it made sense to me because there is a huge fascination with American culture in Japan."

b. What would you like the Japanese audience to take home from your film?

"That you can murder somebody and get away with it."

c. Do you think that American shorts have a place in Japan?

"Absolutely because of that culture thing. I think there's a fascination with American culture."

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	Personal favorites

a. Film

The Exorcist because it's very scary, very well directed and acted.
Sunset Boulevard in terms of classic film.

b. One word that describes Japan

"It's a tough question because I've never been there, but I would say Metropolis"

c. Favorite director

Pedro Almodovar
And in terms of classic directors, Billy Wilder

d. Main reason for becoming a director?

"I've worked in production since I was 16--I've worked on sets as a PA, on music videos, commercials, short film. I've worked on music videos for the last five years with my job at Virgin Records. There's this kind of mystery that surrounds directors, and I see all these guys doing it, so I'm going to give it a shot."

e. A movie love scene that rocked your world?

"I think the most hilarious love scene is between Madeline Kahn and the creature in Young Frankenstein."

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