2007/narrative/18 min.
A quiet, introspective study of a Marine's last day home before shipping back to Iraq with a weighty conscience. In this loose narrative, three vignettes display the difficulty and uncertainty that people have in expressing love. A good man tries.
As an exercise, Mosley edited an alternate cut of the film here.
An entirely improvised "home movie" that was shot over the course of one day in Arlington, Texas, using both actors and non actors, both family and friends of the director, all from a one page outline. It’s the first film from the improvisational film collective, Backyard Movies.
It premiered at 2007 Dallas Video Festival as part of the Opening Night Showcase; was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the Mid Valley Video Festival in Portland, Oregon; and was listed by SHORT END MAGAZINE as "a quiet triumph.”
FORT WORTH WEEKLY wrote: “Mosley knows how to edit scenes to stir a maximum amount of tension and sadness from otherwise mundane or even dopey situations. Starting with extensive rehearsals full of goal-driven improvisation, he nudges professional and nonprofessional local actors alike (including his mother and grandmother) to give tight performances that don’t bear the ragged improv scars of self-consciousness and self-indulgence. You don’t realize until the film’s over that Mosley has let the loved ones tell this soldier’s backstory in scraps of conversation; the protagonist maintains an aching near-silence throughout.”
Starring Nicholas Blanton, Page Mosley, Nancy Owens, Gideon Seaman, Jessica Hixson, and Frank Mosley.