Tacoma filmmaker Chad Ruin is on the verge of breaking into the big time. As I write these words, Ruin is finalizing a deal for international distribution of his latest film, A Perfect Life (release and distribution details not yet available).

Set entirely in Tacoma with Tacoma cast and crew, A Perfect Life is a wonderfully moody film starring Joe Rosati, Ashley Cozine and Scott C. Brown. Weekly Volcano readers voted Rosati Tacoma's Best Actor two years in a row. Cozine is a New York University Tisch School of the Arts alum and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She's a DJ for the online radio station Tacoma.fm. Brown is a three-time winner of my "Critic's Choice" Best Dramatic Actor award in the News Tribune. Most recently he was seen in Harlequin's "The Last Schwartz" in Olympia.

Rosati is Brian, a homeless man who wanders into a diner and throws his last bit of change on the table for a cup of coffee. The waitress challenges him: "If there was one thing you could change about your life, what would it be?" He speaks of grandiose plans including being president, or even God. Then he describes the perfect life with a house and career and the perfect wife, saying he wants that perfect woman to come through the door right now. Which she does. And his perfect life comes true, but it is a life he has already lived - and already screwed up.

His "perfect life," however, is mundane and clichéd. He's an architect with a loving wife, Bella, and two sweet daughters living in a typical middle class house with a white picket fence and a golden retriever.

Rosati nails the character. He's absolutely believable, as is Cozine in the role of his wife. Their smallest gestures are spot-on natural.

The film transitions constantly between the homeless Brian of the present, a down-and-out drunk separated from Bella, and the more together Brian of the recent past whose one big mistake destroyed his life.

The drunken Brian narrates the story, telling it to anyone who will listen, from a street artist to a pair of drunks (Brown and Colin Sannes) who pretty much live on a park bench. The story he tells is poetic and sad, and filled with imaginative dialogue.

Scott Stone's photography is outstanding. He uses a lot of strong lighting and extreme close-ups from odd angles that create the impression that we're watching Brian and Bella's private life through hidden cameras. His cuts and angles contribute to a feeling of hovering between dream and reality. 

Outstanding in their comic-relief bits as a couple of drunks, Brown and Sannes brought to mind Jay and Silent Bob from a host of Kevin Smith films.

Ruin says heloves Tacoma. "It has the perfect quantity of everything I love; a rich history, great old buildings, a beautiful waterfront for me to do my writing and a very active art community. The art here has a seediness to its beauty, and at the same time, a great sense of humor about it. I love that! Pretty much everyone in the film is from Tacoma and this town really opened its arms to our production. It's the only place I have ever filmed where I was able to negotiate the use of a location for a cigar. I think any director would be hard pressed to find that kind of hospitality in Hollywood."

They held anopen casting call at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center, and only four actors showed up. Ruin says they were all great actors but none had the look he wanted. They found Kris Keppeler at the casting call. "Everyone else was attached from day one," Ruin says. "I have worked with Joe several times now on other projects and I just love him. He knocked this part out of the park! Bella was a tough roll to cast and Ashley was fantastic! Scott C. Brown plays a haggard homeless street prophet. He was in something like three plays while we were filming, so he wasn't able to spend much time with his very difficult lines. He looked at the script for all of 15 seconds on set and nailed it, first take, every single time."

When asked what the inspiration for the story was, Ruin said, "I have never felt like I relate to the American ideal of the nuclear family. I wanted to write something that attempts to understand it, but makes no apologies in its failure to understand it. We are taught at a very early age that we are supposed to grow up, get jobs, get married, have kids and collect status symbols like nice cars, nice houses and the greatest American symbol of them all - a white picket fence. The character of Brian wants these things so badly because he's supposed to. Like so many of us, that is his downfall.
Ruin wrote the film in four days "while walking around Seattle. I didn't eat, sleep or even sit down," he says.

We don't yet know when A Perfect Life will play Tacoma. Watch for it.