FEATURE NARRATIVE 77 Minutes World Premiere
FILM GUIDE THE F WORD
In his influential Medium Cool, Haskell Wexler wove a fictional narrative into documentary footage when he had his actors emote on location in Chicago while real violence at the 1968 Democratic convention swirled around them. Wexler's fictional story was about a TV cameraman disassociated with and alienated from the world he covered, who during the course of the film shed his callous pose of objectivity and neutrality as he and the people he held dear were buffeted by violence and politics. This time, in The F Word, director/writer Jed Weintrob put actors right in the middle of the crowds of demonstrators and police that filled Manhattan's streets during last summer's Republican convention. His media protagonist, a fed-up radio disc jockey (Josh Hamilton) whose station is being forced off the air because it can't pay its nearly $1 million in Federal Communications Commission-mandated indecency fines, decides to take his last show to the streets with a wireless mike and a portable transmitter. His meandering broadcast becomes an odyssey, through Manhattan streets thronged with actual protesters, delegates and cops, as well as with a colorful assortment of actors in cameos, whose characters (the Construction Worker Supporting Nader, The Stripper, The Hippie, The Bicyclist Just There to Pick Up Chicks, and the Protester Babe From Boston) all uniquely express various ideological points of view. The F Word is a shoe-string-budgeted indie film with a blockbuster-sized movie's "cast of thousands," but here, nearly all of the extras are courtesy of the GOP.
About the Director(s)
Jed Weintrob is an accomplished video game creator, feature film producer, and theater director. A pioneer of interactive entertainment, Weintrob founded and ran the video game division of the newly launched Orion Pictures. After brokering the successful merger of Orion Interactive with MGM Interactive, he "went on walkabout," backpacking and bicycling around the world for a year, crossing five continents, and developing ideas and inspirations for future projects. Weintrob's directorial feature debut, On_Line, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to play the Berlin Film Festival, Cinequest (winner, Best Narrative Feature), Gen Art, Outfest, and numerous international festivals including Puchon, Melbourne, Stockholm, Zurich, Kiev, and Rio. On_Line was released theatrically throughout the United States and foreign territories in 2003, on DVD in 2004, and on television in 2005.