Blurring the line between fiction and reality, the independent film Point & Shoot captures the world of New York fashionistas–photographers, models, and their friends–as they hit the downtown scene, making names for themselves as effortlessly as they set trends.
Shot in a guerilla home-video style, the story is told from the point of view of writer/director/star Shawn Regruto, as he meets and falls in love with the radiant model Athena (Athena Currey). Because of Shawn’s voyeuristic approach, the audience is given in an intimate–and, at times, unsettling–look at a world where young people are exposed to glamour and fortune in ways that often lead them down paths of self-destruction.
Hollywood.com spoke with Regruto and producer Kevin Asch, about making the feature as well as the arduous task of getting their film “out there” through film festivals and distributor meetings.
How did you become involved in the project?
Kevin Asch: I came onboard when Shawn was writing the script. We went to college together the School of Visual Arts and had worked together a bit at an independent film company. The film is dedicated to Shawn’s close friend, who was caught up in the whole fashion scene and died of a heroin overdose at the age of 20. That had a profound effect on Shawn and consequently, the story.
Shawn Regruto: People do come to New York and get caught up in that glamorous as well as the dark side of it. So it was finding a way to tell that story.
KA: There is really history here, but even as real as it seems, it does take a lot of work to not come off as cheesy or false. Everyone is playing some version of themselves. We really tried hard to make it feel like you’re watching something you’re not suppose to watch. But we talked about this project a lot and then in the summer of 2002, we starting casting. It took like three months and we saw every model in the city, it seemed like.
That must have been really hard to do.
KA: [laughing] It was tragic.
SR: We sort of took an unconventional approach to casting. Right from the start, we knew it wasn’t about someone’s acting ability but about somebody’s personality and spirit. And to get a good indicator of that, we sat down with the girls with a set of questions and had an interview. Sometimes singing–and if we could get them to dance, all the better.
Why do you think we have a fascination with models?
SR: There was definitely a lot of discussion about models and their place in the whole food chain of the celebrity world. Certainly during the mid-’90s, their popularity was at a peak with the whole “supermodel” term. I remember reading back then that models were popular because there was a lack of glamour in Hollywood at that time. Fashion sort of took that spot and the models were embodiment of that. They were the canvas for all these designers and photographers who set the bar on what was glamorous and sexy. Nowadays, when you pick up a glossy fashion magazine, you see more movie stars than models. In the last five years, Hollywood has kind of reclaimed that glamour.
So tell me about the strange journey you’ve been on since premiering Point & Shoot at the Tribeca Film Festival?
KA: At Tribeca, it was great seeing it with a live audience, such a great response we got, but we went immediately back into the editing room. We then premiered it at a festival in Hawaii called Cinema Paradise, a three-year-old festival. They had tracked the film since Tribeca and sort of programmed the festival around [Point & Shoot], like a reality-film festival, with other films. It went off great there–won the audience award. And then we got into the Hamptons Film Festival. Between then and now, we’ve been getting it out to a lot of distributors.
What kind of a response have you gotten?
KA: Some of the smaller distributors are saying it actually might be too commercial for them while the mini-majors are looking at it as very experimental. Weird, huh? Falling in between that gap. But we have a lot of faith in this film will get out there. We want to get it at least into New York theaters by late winter, early spring. Even if we have to do it ourselves, which may end up being the better idea. We would also like to take it to colleges, talking to a young audience about it.
SR: It’s easy for us to get young people in there, people interested in fashion, but I think the film has the potential to speak to people outside that. And with distributors, they are used to having formulas and doing things by the numbers, so this is a challenge to them. But we have a lot of strong ideas on how to market this movie and we still want to try to do it in a way where we aren’t revealing too much about what the film is. The less people know about the mechanics of it, the better their experience when they sit down and watch it.
What kind of hard lessons of the biz have you learned so far?
SR: For me, there have been a lot of hard lessons and I’ve been frustrated, disenchanted and even upset with the whole system. I feel like there’s a lot of politics involved with the film festivals. I think the films that aren’t the best are selected and the good ones get passed by because of some political reason, like you showed it at one film festival and now that it’s had it’s world premiere, others don’t want it. They also tend to favor films that have some kind of name cache. But it’s great to show people the movie and have them talk to you about it. And a film festival allows that platform to do that, the exposure. It’s been good, it just hasn’t been what I wanted.
Are you ready to play the game?
SR: I have a few things I want to do next and they are in my means, right here and now. But you hear stories about other filmmakers who want to do small films but end up doing the next Batman. Who knows what their motives are. But the filmmakers I respect, like Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, who come out of New York and mostly stay in New York, I’d like be like that.
