Cleveland in My Dreams
By Bobby Neal Winters
There is an ageless debate about which is better, store-bought or home-made. There are good arguments to be made in either direction. While home-made offers great variety and distinctiveness, store-bought offers us uniformity and reliability. Besides, while we might like the taste of home-made better, there is comfort, while you lay writhing in agony from food poisoning, in the thoughts of suing a large corporation with deep pockets instead of someone's well-meaning grandmother.
Those thoughts aside, there are large corporations who glowingly claim their product is "as good as home-made," but on the other hand, I've seen amateurs praised that there work was "as good as store-bought." I am saying all of this now because I've just seen a home-made movie that was a good as store-bought.
Cleveland in My Dreams had its world premier on Tuesday, August 2 at the Route 66 Movie Theatre in downtown Webb City, Missouri. This short (30 minute) film was the brain child of Mark Sullivan who hails from Pittsburg, Kansas, USA.
It is my guess that we are going to be seeing more efforts like this one coming from the sea of would-be movie makers out there. The consumer level technology has developed to the point where a gifted amateur can do a creditable job capturing a story on video. Hollywood-style special effects are still out of reach, but this is a blessing in that it forces the emphasis is focused on the story rather that the action.
And Cleveland in My Dreams is a good story. The screen play, written by Pittsburg's own Olive Sullivan (catty-corner neighbor of the critic), is a skillful adaptation of a short story by Lawrence Block. The importance of the screenplay in an undertaking such as this can't be overstated. While the director, actors, and technicians all add their own beads, the screenplay is the string on which they all hang together. Though the screenplay was based on a short story, it is a work of art that stands on its own.
As for the rest of the film, everyone involved did what was required in the telling of the story. The sound was indiscernible to my ears from any Hollywood film, and the same was true for the photography. All of the acting was credible, but, among the strong cast, there was one stand out. Todd Loudis of Joplin, Missouri, who played Dr. Krull, has something they call personality. I don't know what they'd think of him in Hollywood, but I thoroughly enjoyed his performance.
The story itself, which does receive the full focus of this film, is about a man who is visiting a psychiatrist because of a recurring dream about driving to Cleveland every night. There is nothing disturbing about the dreams, but the act of making an eight-hour round trip every night is leaving him exhausted.
After innumerable fruitless sessions, his therapist dies and he is sent to anotherDr. Krullwho tells him to give him a call from inside the dream and he will help him with the driving.
If you hadn't guessed, this is a comedy. The script has been seasoned with humor evenly, tastefully, and subtly throughout.
The great thing about store-bought products is that you can go to the store and buy them. Home-made is harder to come by. The same thing is true about home-made movies. I saw this at its world premier in Webb City, and will be shown again at the Route 66 Film Festival in Springfield, Illinois, where it has already been awarded prize for Best Comedy. Other than that, public showings will be hard to come by. For my part, I am going to camp out at the film's website until September, when I am told they will be marketing a DVD.
I liked it that much, and I hope there will be more efforts from Mark Sullivan and his Spark Digital Media production company.