00:00This is Tim Wasper from Festtrek Concert TV.
00:28I'm here at the Regal Cinemas Union Square in New York City for Dances with Films New York.
00:50So it's a mockumentary about tour guides in New York.
00:54So it's really a proof of concept for a longer half hour project with five guides, young people making it in New York while working as guides.
01:04It's just basically doing all that craziness that people in their 20s and 30s who don't know what they're doing, they're trying to figure it out, they have their friends at work.
01:12You get in New York.
01:14Exactly.
01:15All the craziness about New York, it's all part of it.
01:18I've been here for 10 years.
01:20I feel like I'm always learning new things about the city, but I mean, some of the episode material that we shot, which obviously we won't give away, it's just such niche history about New York.
01:30That it's not the kind of thing that even if you've lived here for a while, you wouldn't know about it.
01:34So, you know, Carson can talk more to that, but it was really fun to just like go off of those niche facts about the city.
01:40Very niche. Very niche.
01:42Yeah, very niche.
01:43I grew up in New York, but of course you don't know every story or urban legend.
01:48One tease I'll give is the episode where a screening that Hunter stars in.
01:52He's the tour guide and he tells the story of Mother Mandelbaum, who's a real woman.
01:57She lived on the Lower East Side during the Tenement Era, and she was basically the city's largest crime boss at the time.
02:03And she was taking in orphans, teaching them how to rob.
02:07All of this was true.
02:11Life here was...
02:14Does anyone know what gibbeting is?
02:23It was normal to get pneumonia at age 18 and die.
02:27Typhoid.
02:30It's been a while that I thought she made it up.
02:33Yeah.
02:34Until like last week.
02:35Now that same street, it's like shops, people going to brunch, you know, all that stuff.
02:39So it's crazy to think that that was happening there.
02:41But I think, I mean, I think when we made this project, we definitely wanted to premiere it in New York.
02:46That felt true to what the heart of the project was.
02:49So we were really pumped to be able to do that with Dances With Films.
02:52And I think that, you know, while there are some specific references that maybe people in New York might, it might mean something different to them.
03:01We're really just going for that feeling of being young, being in a city and not really having it all figured out.
03:07And there's so much color in all of our cities and so much going on.
03:10So I think that's something we really universally tried to bring across.
03:14And I think the way that it was shot, it's kind of a POV.
03:16So if you're not knowledgeable about New York, it's kind of like a bird's eye view of it.
03:21So you can kind of relate.
03:22Whatever's on the page, you know, usually it resonates with any given actor.
03:30So you kind of leave it at that.
03:32And then when you say action, that's when, you know, the magic happens.
03:35So you kind of let it evolve on its own.
03:37I don't really overanalyze those things.
03:39I kind of let it play out.
03:41If it's on the page, the actors understand it and then it takes on a life of its own.
03:47It's always nice to see, you know, when you watch the film or whoever watches the film,
03:51they can take away so many different things from it.
03:54I always sort of saw it as sort of a blend of a lot of different genres.
03:57You could say it could be a romance drama, psychological thriller, horror movie,
04:01all these different things.
04:02There's these elements of violence, so on and so forth.
04:05But I try to, again, I don't analyze these things too much.
04:10I kind of let it play out.
04:11And when I write it, I write it sort of in a way where I kind of think of what would the audience kind of,
04:16you know, let's trick the audience.
04:18Let them see that they might think this might be going in this direction.
04:20But then he goes, turns around and goes in that direction.
04:22So, but it's sort of, I leave it up for that, you know.
04:26In a world drenched with noise and madness,
04:29every sight of you is the only music I wish to hear.
04:33I remember that look.
04:35This is a Nazi falling in love with a Jew.
04:38Love finds a way.
04:40Your seconds separate all of us from being on the wrong or the right side of life.
04:44One false move and life becomes death.
04:47Just like that.
04:53You must survive.
04:55Another arm!
04:57God, Hannah, what have you done?
05:03Yeah, I wanted it to be, have a very specific look.
05:07To sort of harken back to the bygone era of movie stars in the 40s.
05:13To look like, you know, a blend of someone that you might think of all the movies like Elizabeth Taylor,
05:19Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Cary Grant, James Cagney, you know,
05:25Compton Bogart, all the old classic movie stars.
05:28So when the audience sees them, I wanted the audience to kind of fall in love with both of them in a way.
05:34We kind of believe that this girl does have the capacity to seduce Nazis and then kill them.
05:40And that he is someone who could be very charming and very precise in how he sort of presents himself
05:46And someone who at first could be, to anyone, be interesting and debonair and all these different things
05:53That could be interesting to anyone who at the time, you know, could meet a guy his age and find him interesting.
06:02Despite him being obviously who he is, that he's a Nazi.
06:06Oh, it's a huge honor.
06:07Not just to be at the festival, it could be the opening night film.
06:10It means a great deal and it's New York, it's a city I grew up in, so it's another added thing for me.
06:18So I love it, I think it's a huge honor and I can't wait to see what people think and how they experience it.
06:46That's a huge honor for you.
06:52Yes, I love you.
