Shorts Column | Matthew Modine on Fifteen Years of Making Short Films

On “Smoking” (1994)

I was driving in my car and I heard David Sedaris on National Public Radio reading a passage from his diary. I went to meet David, who was cleaning apartments for a living to subsidize his writing.  He saw “When I Was a Boy” and agreed that “Smoking” could be an interesting short film.  Not wanting to deviate from the radio program, I used the original piece produced by Ira Glass.

On “Ecce Pirate” (1997)

I was doing a pirate film in Malta, quite an expensive pirate movie. And I was doing a publicity interview with someone who had seen my two earlier short films at the Sundance Film Festival and asked me if I had a new one that I was working on.  I started bullshitting about how I was going to make a short while I was on this film, a story about a boy who gets kidnapped, is taken aboard a pirate ship, and learns to accept things that are beyond his power. The reporter said, “Wow, that sounds fantastic.” When I hung up the phone, I thought, “You know what, it does sound like a really fantastic film.” I had a bunch of 16 MM film with me, certainly enough to shoot a 15-20 minute short film.  So I wrote the screenplay and filmed it. And I think it’s my favorite short film I’ve made.

On “Cowboy” (2006) and “To Kill an American” (2006)

I did those two films back-to-back. “Cowboy” is just a joke, a cowboy goes into a bar—and that’s it. “To Kill An American” is based on a song that Paul Robeson sang during the Second World War. I went into Washington Square Park with a U-Hall Truck in which I had made a portable studio in the back. My son, who was seventeen at the time, helped me do this; he said he got to do something that he’s always wanted to do, which was to go up to people and say, “You want to be in a movie?” I gave people the script and said, “Here’s what I want you to do: pick out something that you feel really strongly about, something that touches you emotionally.”

On his recent public service short

There’s another short film that I made recently for the World Economic Forum—it’s called “Bicycle for a Day” (2008). I was approached by Young Global Leaders, who asked if there was one thing that I could to do reduce global warming, what would I do? I said why don’t we try to get the whole world to ride a bicycle for a day—so I made that short film. It’s on bicycleforaday.com

His advice for other short filmmakers

Short films are very special. I love making short films, and I love watching them.
I’m always surprised when I see shorts that have “movie credits” on them—so many people involved!  Keep it simple.