Attend Film Prize in-person October 16-17th or watch online starting October 15th, watch all 20 short films, and then you can vote for the grand prize winner of $50,000 cash. Plus you can vote for the best acting performance category!
Minutes before a job interview, a man with a stubborn case of shy bladder becomes the center of an increasingly surreal restroom spectacle as every well-intention attempt to help only makes things worse.
Produced by Tamra Corley Davis
Starring Jason Wiley, Duane Jackson, Johnnie Brannon, Lisa Ashcraft
Cinematography by Alexander Jeffery
Edited by Alexander Jeffery
Music by Johnnie Brannon
Xander Topich is an Arkansas filmmaker, writer, and educator whose work has screened at film festivals across the country. He holds an MFA in Digital Filmmaking from the University of Central Arkansas and has taught film studies at the collegiate level. His films have earned awards for directing and cinematography, and his screenplays have twice advanced to the quarterfinals of the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Topich also writes a weekly film column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, covering cinema, filmmakers, and Arkansas film industry.
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There was a point where I had come to terms with the fact that I might not ever make another film again. The last film I tried to make, which was nearly a decade ago, was cursed and an utter disaster. But I kept writing.
During the COVID era, I wrote the first draft of Stalling. I was doing a lot of writing exercises back then. For this particular script, I had asked myself, “what is the hardest emotion to elicit from an audience.” And my answer was that painfully awkward feeling you get from certain dark comedies that put you in a voyeuristic position of an incredibly awkward situation, unable to turn away. So my entire goal with this script was to make the entire audience feel discomfort and high anxiety. And what’s more uncomfortable than someone trying to start a conversation at a urinal.
Well the script went into a drawer and collected dust… until this past year, when I was essentially bullied into making it.
I was at the El Dorado Film Festival in Arkansas, talking to the festival runners, Tamra Corley Davis and Alexander Jeffery. We were discussing how short films seem to be getting longer and longer these days. Then, unprompted, I told them I had this eight page script. And after they read it, they sat me down and said, “you’re making this for Film Prize.” No ifs, ands, or buts. It was the best kind of bullying/motivation that I needed to become a filmmaker again.
Visually, I wanted the camera itself to mirror the panic of a guy trapped in a conversation, unable to relieve himself. At first, the camera is static, controlled, and composed. But as the situation spirals into surrealism, so does the camera with dutch angles and chaotic handheld cinematography. We all become trapped in this restroom with nowhere to escape to.
Being from central Arkansas, it was important for my above the line cast to also be Arkansans. So I brought them south to Louisiana with me. All the while, we used a Shreveport crew, creating this strangely beautiful mixture of talent from two different states. All of us locked in a restroom for two days, crafting eight minutes of pure anxiety.
— Xander Topich
