When the filmmakers behind “Good Dick” decided to pursue “word-of-mouth screenings” of their film on college campuses, UCLA was at the top of their list.
The film screened in Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Oct. 6, followed by a Q&A with four of the movie’s creators, making UCLA the first college in the nation to show this independent film.
Playing at the Nuart on Santa Monica Boulevard from Oct. 10 through Oct. 16, “Good Dick” is producer, director, writer and actress Marianna Palka’s personal take on reality with all its complexities.
The film’s small budget of $200,000 caused everyone involved to make practical choices, but also forced them to get creative.
“When you have less money to work with, you’re forced to solve problems with more innovation rather than throwing money at the problem, which is an easy solution a lot of the times,” said Cora Olson, one of the film’s producers.
Palka and boyfriend Jason Ritter, who also co-produced and starred in the movie, filmed part of “Good Dick” in their own L.A. apartment. They also shot much of it at CineFile, a video store right next door to the Nuart. Filming there after-hours meant late nights for the crew of 40 workers, who knew there wasn’t much money to be made at that point.
“When you’re bringing people on board and it’s not for the money, you tend to really attract the right people because they really believe in the project, and that’s why they’re lending their time and their expertise,” Olson said.
Working with people who weren’t motivated by money proved to Palka that people are good, a message she conveys in the film.
“At their core, I do think that human beings are fundamentally good, and it takes a hell of a lot of corruption to make them bad,” Palka said.
She wrote the role of Ritter’s character with the same outlook. He plays a video-store clerk in love with Palka’s character, who frequents the store to rent erotica. Despite her recurrent rejection of his love, he never fails to stand by her.
“My character’s the knight who has to rescue this damsel in distress from the dragon. But in the movie, the damsel is the dragon. That’s what makes it complicated,” Ritter said.
In addition to this major twist in the fairy tale, another twist exists in the thoughtful omission of the names of the two main characters.
“In the film, she’s watching videos and he’s watching her, and there’s so much voyeurism going on. I like the idea that they’re anonymous, and at the end of the movie you feel so close to them … and all of a sudden you remember that these people are strangers to you,” Palka said.
Allowing much room for interpretation, Palka leaves audiences with unanswered questions, but not without purpose.
“She gives her main characters a lot of privacy,” Ritter said. “You’re not exposed to every little thing in their past. You find out things about them almost as much as they are willing to release to you, so in the end there’s the aspect that there’s more to these people than just what you’ve heard.”
Another fresh feature of the film is that a woman, Palka, wrote the character of the leading male. While some audience members at the campus screening found Ritter’s character to be feminine, Palka thinks that her use of role reversal isn’t so much that as it is an exaggeration of her belief that everyone has personality traits generally associated with the opposite sex.
“Some people have more than others, but as opposed to showing something opposite or different, it’s just showing more than other stories would,” Palka said.
Also different from many other stories, “Good Dick” shows a side of Los Angeles that is rarely seen. The film follows the lives of two ordinary people who live in Los Angeles and are associated neither with the wealthy upper class nor with gang violence. With films such as “Street Kings” and “Iron Man” pulling toward either end of the L.A. lifestyle spectrum, the majority of L.A. residents can relate to the normalcy found in this film. Palka, Ritter, Olson and Jennifer Dubin, Olson’s producing partner, also aim to trigger discussions about the title of the film and its varied significance.
“To me what it means is finding the beauty in another person that has nothing to do with what they look like … and letting them see sort of your scariest parts that you don’t like to show anybody,” Ritter said.
This small, independent film carries big messages and continues to gain attention around the world. Already playing at festivals such as Sundance and Edinburgh, where Palka won the New Director’s Award, “Good Dick” has been well-received.
At the film’s final screening at Sundance, 85 people waited in the snow only to be turned away. The four producers behind the film have even refused to sell the movie rights to an outside distribution company, making themselves the film’s distributors.
With so much control over how her story is released to the world, Palka was able to focus on creating a meaningful film without the ulterior motive of profits.
“(Palka) had a strong vision for the movie in general, and we really did everything we could to support that vision and to make it come to life,” Olson said.
“Good Dick” is the first feature film for Palka and Ritter’s production company, Morning Knight, and for that of Olson and Dubin, Present Pictures. As is the trend with certain independent films today, “Good Dick” may very well become the next “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Thank You For Smoking,” but these four people just want the movie to be seen.
“We’re just hoping we can have a life in theaters beyond one or two weeks and then go to DVD and television and kind of just keep it going. We just want to get the movie out to as many people as we can,” Olson said.
The producers collaboratively created a movie that means so much to all of them, yet the filmmakers, as well as the audiences, can’t seem to agree on the genre of the film.
“It had a lot of offbeat humor. I guess I’d say dark comedy is what it most closely falls under,” said fourth-year history student Eric Draper, who attended the on-campus screening.
Ritter is able to narrow it down to the category of “dark romantic comedy” or that of a “twisted fairy tale.” However, the three women behind the movie do not hesitate to say that, with all its intricacies and its take on the truth shared between the two leads, “Good Dick” is a love story.