You’re the Puppet
Laramie and Leonard are the hottest comedy duo in the local scene. Tired of Leonard getting all the credit, Laramie considers branching out on his own.
As far back as he can remember the movie theater has been Michael’s favorite place to be. As a child, he got lost for hours in the stories he found there, in a dark room, set apart from the “real” world. As he grew, Michael began to see the movie theater as a place where traditions are subverted–where the status quo gets turned on its head. And this is where his writing sensibilities lie–in taking an established concept or idea and finding a way to turn it into something completely different. From slasher films where the “sexy” girls are the most competent ones to a rom-com where the meet cute takes place during casting for a snuff film, there’s no trope he’s unwilling to push to its limit.
From an early age he was a storyteller, crafting worlds that he and his friends would play in, but it wasn’t until much later that he even realized he could be the guy to create the movies he so loved. After years of pursuing music performance and production, Michael sat down to write his first script, which he eventually turned into a movie. Since then he’s written more than fifteen feature films (and produced four of them) as well as written and produced a series of shorts. Michael has had several feature scripts both place as finalists and win in festivals and has had multiple short films win awards at festivals in recent years, including several that took top honors.
Puppets are cool. There’s just something really magical about them, you know?
I grew up on the Muppets (and still love them) and Jim Henson’s sense of humor and character building were huge influences on me. I’ve often compared the characters in ensemble films I write to the core characters of the Muppets to build the right archetypes. I always knew that I had to make a film (at least one) with puppets at some point. When I met and worked with Chadwick Smith on my last film, Random Knowledge, and found out that he builds and performs puppets I knew my next project had to involve a puppet.
A lot of hard work went into pulling all this off, from puppet building and performance to writing the jokes for the sets… but I was lucky enough to have some incredibly talented people backing me up on this project. The end result is a weird, dark, comedy and I hope you have as much fun watching it as we did making it.