The lead story of Phillip Baker Hall as wise sage to a messed-up gambler was expanded by Anderson into the feature Hard Eight (1996). The short played at the Sundance Film Festival and got Anderson into the Sundance directors lab, where he developed the feature version. Just keep drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and everything will be fine.

Slide 6: From Five Feet High and Rising to Raising Victor Vargas

When a short wins both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, you hope it could work as a feature too. Cast, produced and edited by Eva Vives, directed by Peter Sollett and written by both, the 29-minute Five Feet High and Rising (1999) was their NYU student thesis film, winning those two prestigious fests. It was later adapted into thefeature Raising Victor Vargas (2001, retitled from “Long Way Home”) with the same actors. While the short was inspired by Sollett’s life growing up in Brooklyn, the feature was inspired by the actors they found. Rather than remake or stretch out the original short, Sollett and Vives wanted to simply work again with actors Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte and base events in the film on their lives. Sollett worked on the feature script as part of a Cannes residency in 2001.

Both the short and the feature dive in to the oft-horrible world of puberty, where we try to figure out emotions, relationships and even the simplest move – a kiss. Both films have great insight into teen worlds, with realistic acting in everyday New York, without all