Able Edwards (2004)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Graham Robertson

Writer:

Graham Robertson (writer)

Genre:

Sci-Fi | Drama

Plot:

Shot on mini dv entirely against a green screen, "Able Edwards" is a story about the clone of a famous...

Plot Keywords:

Clone | Green Screen | Corporation | Retro | Disaster

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Scott Kelly Galbreath	...	Abel Edwards
Michael Shamus Wiles	...	Chairman Lowery
Steve Beaumont Jones	...	Gower
David Ury	...	Franklin Wallace
Keri Bruno	...	Rosemary Edwards
Johari Johnson	...	Morgan Farina
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Susan Allison	...	Mary Lou Edwards
Dennis Apergis	...	Mr. Halston
Christian Armbruster	...	Warren Edwards, 1 yr.
Jackson Atwater	...	Young Edwards
Brian Carpenter	...	Warren Hastings
Carol Carpenter	...	Committee Member Silva
Sean Casaus	...	Young Gower
Christine Dunn	...	Times Reporter 1
Jonathan Everett	...	Nathaniel Edwards
Nishira Fitzgerald	...	Nurse 3
Joe Hartman	...	Perry Panda
James Hurd	...	Globe Reporter 1
Elizabeth Ince	...	Dr. Wise
Joanne Judd	...	Mother at Park
Ethan Keogh	...	Cinema News Narrator
Donna Kimura	...	Committee Member Hartford
Ken Kimura	...	Committee Member Harrison
Kent Kubena	...	Globe Reporter 2
Andrew Lamond	...	Mr. Edmonds
Christopher Leirer	...	Father at Park
Katie Lipow	...	Daughter at Park
Max Martin	...	Warren Edwards, 8 yrs.
Joanne McGrath	...	Mother at Park
Christopher Okon	...	James Edwards
Kathlyne Pham	...	Photographer
Bruce Purcell	...	Nurse 2
Nectar Rose	...	Flirty Girl
Barrett Sanders	...	Spaceman 1
Chambers Stevens
Jim Trudell	...	Android Ride Attendant
Melissa van der Schyff	...	Television Reporter
Aaron Vattano	...	Mr. Bowerman / Cowboy Carl
Colin Walker	...	Sun Reporter 1
Terrill Warren	...	Committee Member Jennings
Abby Wolf	...	Nurse 1

Runtime:

USA:87 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Graphic Films

Trivia:

Shot in 15 days.

Movie Connections:

References Red Planet (2000)

Surprisingly affecting-- and inspiring

It takes guts to do way more than you should even try, and talent to make the audience still feel it.

While everyone else at the SXSW festival was at JERSEY GIRL I wandered over and watched ABLE EDWARDS, which was an object lesson in what can be done for $30,000 and some software. This movie has a great script, actors, and sparse sets-and fake backgrounds. That's what you have to get over, moment you walk in. It's a `greenscreen movie,' like Sky Captains, but less polished, because the director and the writer are one guy, Graham Robertson, who decided to do whatever his imagination told him to.

Here's the thing. The movie is basically, `the Disney Corporation clones Walt Disney in the far future to re-invigorate the company, but he instead struggles with his own identity and threatens the company as a whole.' This is a future so far-flung that, a la GUNDAM, mankind lives in vast spaceborn cities circling the planet, which drips with disease and acid rain. And yeah, the special effects are a little shaky-the spaceship effects are not cutting edge. Same thing as the green screen. You can those hallways are projected.

And yet, and yet-hey, I go to a play, I can tell that cityscape is a model behind the window. It's like that. You watch the movie for a few minutes and you don't care. Cause here's the thing-these guys made a movie for peanuts and did what they wanted, and what they wanted turned out to be a clever homage to Citizen Kane. Scott Galbreath plays Able Edwards as if he's channeling Walt Disney himself, the queasily tyrannical, Errol-Flynn-moustached patriarch with a vision and no time for people who don't share it. Watch the way he can fire someone and smile. The idea of the movie is that Able, like Truman in THE TRUMAN SHOW, has been watched his whole life, groomed to take over the company. This means arranging everything that will happen to him (in a nod of sorts to THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL) and creating every emotional travesty. Able throws himself into his corporate role, as expected. And he immediately turns the company upside down, setting out on a vast undertaking that tracks with Disney's fight to create his theme parks. In Able's world, the draw of the parks is their danger-reality has long since been replaced with digital fun, and Able wants an actual big park, with actual animals and gravity-defying rides. As he falls in love with a designer played by Susan Allison, who really seems to have stepped out of a 40s movie here, Able's story becomes-how can I put this-you watch it and one part of your brain is going, `wow, who would have thought you could do the Disney story, Citizen Kane and Boys from Brazil-all in a Space City.' And the other half is forgetting all that and feeling genuinely affected by the tragedies of Edwards' hubris, which are vast and wrenching. I dunno. This movie-if Graham Robertson had thirty million, and not thirty thousand, I'm betting the movie would have looked about a hundred times better. But I'm also betting we would have lots about half the character development and richness of imagination, and that wouldn't really be worth the money. Robertson, a set director who decided to make a movie, has done a great thing-he's let his imagination fly and produced a 90-minute production that for all its technical limitations still affects on an emotional level. Think how easy it might have been to just make a sci-fi film, or to re-film THE ODD COUPLE, which would require no special effects. Robertson just goes for it, and it works. I hope we see more of him.