QUIET SHOES, PART XXII >>>
We buy produce from local farmers and handmade gifts from neighborhood merchants; why not support a Tacoma filmmaker as well? Writer-director Isaac Olsen, our city's own (considerably skinnier) Orson Welles, first told me about his feature in the works, Quiet Shoes, two years ago on the Rialto Theater steps. Appropriately, that same theater premiered the film this summer to a huge audience. Now at last it has arrived in a glorious two-disc package, available for $25 on Olsen's production company website, www.schnelluloid.com. The set includes such goodies as commentary, outtakes, and a featurette on the film's many shooting locations.
Quiet Shoes packs the same virtuosic camerawork, editing, and direction we've come to expect from this talented ensemble's winning shorts at virtually every Grand Cinema 72-Hour Film Competition. Using sophisticated rigs built from scratch, the camera swoops through car windows and over people's heads in ways that make film nerds like me drool. And the intricate story, a tongue-in-cheek homage to film noir, requires multiple viewings. In The Big Lebowski, all The Dude ever wanted was his room-tying rug back. QS hero Rick Savage just needs time to break in his eponymous footwear, but this gangly gumshoe keeps walking into a situation that gets stickier by the minute.
Alluring dames, cyborg criminals, and the occasional corpse populate this mythic Tacoma, while high above the Metropolis-like smokestacks churn out clouds of grime endlessly. Residents will pause the movie more than once and notice literally dozens of well-known haunts.
"The city," the narrator growls early on, "a pee stain on the crotch of the world." Let that civid pride flow and buy your copy soon.