Abracadabra, Danny McBride:  A Look Back at Summer’s Best Short Films

The busy month of August kicked off with the 5th Annual HollyShorts Film Festival, which ran August 6 - 13 in Hollywood.  Among the celebrity shorts showcased: Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “These Vagabond Shoes,” starring Kevin Bacon; the arson mystery, “Sparks,” helmed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and starring Eric Stolz and Carla Gugino, Courteney Cox’s Glamour Magazine short, “The Monday Before Thanksgiving,” and Bob Odenkirk’s “The Pity Card,” with Simon Helberg, Derek Waters, Bill Hader, and Zach Galifianakis. 

Director Tony West took home HollyShorts’ best drama award for his impressive 30-minute short “Skylight.” Additionally, West shared the audience award for his program with Jarrett Conaway’s USC-thesis short, “Turbo,” which also won best student film. Alicia Conway was honored for her screenwriting talents displayed in her surprising ritual short, “Rite.”

Filmmaker’s Alliance scheduled their annual VisionFest event on August 19 at the DGA theater in Hollywood. In addition to honoring producer Ted Hope with the Vision Award, the best shorts produced through FA in the previous year were screened.  The evening began with a special screening of a Make A Film Foundation project, “Put It In a Book,” a heartfelt message film written by teenager Rodrigo Garcia and produced by Tamika Lamison.  FA execs Amanda Sweikow and Jacques Thelemaque each debuted artistically ambitious shorts, the playground horror story “The Cycle” and the fairground romance “My Last Day On Earth,” respectively. Sundance short film programmer/filmmaker Todd Luoto mesmerized the packed auditorium with his 13-minute relationship drama “Oil Change,” which hangs on a terrific performance from lead actor Pat Healy.

Two nights later, Luoto and his fellow Sundance programmers were out in full force at the Downtown Independent movie theater for a special screening dubbed “Downtown and Dirty Shorts.” Headliners James Franco, David Gordon Green, and Danny McBride were unable to attend in person. Instead they sent a video message taped on the set of their current production, “Your Highness.” 

Danny McBride good-naturedly announced that his University of North Carolina School of the Arts student film was so terrible that the audience should take a bathroom break instead of watching it. Indeed, “Eddie Noble and the Heroes” isn’t a tight film, but it has a definite McBride touch that makes it well worth watching. David Gordon Green’s UNC student film,  “A Biography of Barrels,” was also fascinating to watch, displaying hints of the filmmaker’s future voice. Todd Rohal’s 2001 short, “Hillbilly Robot,” was notable for it’s remarkable sense of time and place, but the most impressive film of the evening was James Franco’s new short, “Herbert White,” which had audience members buzzing in the lobby afterward.
Luckily for anyone unable to attend the August 19 screening, three of the most entertaining shorts on the Downtown and Dirty roster are available online. The animation that tickled the audience’s funny bone, Homestar Runner’s “Independent,” helpfully defines the difference between independent films and “indie” films (viewable on the company’s website.

Jody Hill’s contribution to the evening was a cell phone/online piece commissioned by the Sundance Institute entitled “Learning to Skateboard” (also starring Danny McBride and available for viewing on the Sundance site.

And finally, the short that had the audience rolling in the aisles was Episode 3 of “Drunk History,” Jen Kirkman’s inebriated retelling of a historical event, reenacted by man-of-the-evening Danny McBride (online at Funny or Die.