Film noir, James M Cain novels and Ren and Stimpy cartoons are my biggest influences,' says 30-year-old New York director Lawrence O'Neil, in town for the festival screening of his low budget thriller, Throwing Down.
His debut feature, Throwing Down was shot for well under US$100,000 in conditions reminiscent of those encountered by the tyro filmmakers in Tom DiCillo's satire on the indie scene, Living In Oblivion. 'It was very difficult, it was brutal,' O'Neil recalls. 'We shot up-state in this abandoned house. It was freezing cold. There was no running water or electricity. We bought a US$500 van which continued to break down throughout the shoot.'
By contrast, O'Neil recently took on 'a hired gun re-writing assignment for Warner Bros'. After living on credit cards for two years, he needed the money, but was pleasantly surprised by the licence given to him by Warner Bros: 'They let me get away with quite a lot. It's a female-driven thriller to star a top star, but it is also a fairly gritty, mean-spirited angry story in some ways.'
But O'Neil's heart remains in New York. Despite landing himself an agent in LA, his next film ('a horror story about Christmas and pornography') will definitely be shot on the East Coast. Geoffrey Macnab
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