Spotlights

Sleepwalk

Thirty-four-year-old James Savoca, a veteran of the New York theatre scene, has crafted a winning, emotionally powerful, and completely unpredictable piece of narrative with his debut film Sleepwalk. The film chronicles the romantic pas de deux that arises from a chance midnight encounter between Ray (Ivan Martin), a worse-for-wear night crawler, and Henrietta (Drea De Matteo), a loft-bound artist with issues of her own.

Taking place almost entirely inside Henrietta's massive loft and surrounded by the tools of her work (the giant American flag painted on the floor acts as a unique backdrop to the characters' actions), Sleepwalk has the crisp, assured dialogue of a stage play while managing to be entirely cinematic in style and tone. Indeed, the film was based upon one of Savoca's one-act plays that he wrote during his eight years working off-Broadway.

"I went to film school at Syracuse University," says Savoca, "and to my surprise, I didn't realize just how expensive it would be to even just make films at a student level. I learned some technical things and I shot on video and I wrote some plays and I kind of kept writing, you know? I was really doing theatre with an eye toward creating my own feature film some day."

Although Sleepwalk has considerably less than a handful of characters to work with, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Martin and De Matteo in the roles, though Savoca mentions that a number of actors were auditioned before the leads were set.

"People know who Drea de Matteo is now because of The Sopranos [she plays Adrianna]," he says, "and I cast Ivan through a thing called Breakdown Services in New York, which is kind of like a step up from Backstage. Drea I found through our producer and pretty much knew she'd be perfect for the role right off. We looked at maybe 40 women and maybe a few more men. It was a little longer process for the male lead."

While Sleepwalk may be penned and directed by a confirmed lover of the stage, and while the film has echoes of its off-Broadway past, Savoca is quick to point out that there's a fine line between film and theatre:

"Writing-wise, there's not that much difference (when you're writing a film like Sleepwalk, anyway). I think there's a real difference between theatre and Hollywood films, though. If you don't ever have to think about money as a screenwriter, there's a big difference between writing a screenplay and writing a play. Death of a Salesman, I think, is one of the greatest plays ever written, and look what Arthur Miller accomplished in just a house and some flashbacks. You have to be more creative, and the story has to be better, you know what I mean? You can go anywhere in a screenplay, but I couldn't in Sleepwalk because we didn't have the money."

This all begs the question, in the wake of his first feature film: Is Savoca now a stage director who's shot a film, or a film director with a stage background?

"I don't feel as though I'm a playwright making a film," he says. "I feel that I'm a filmmaker, to be completely honest. I really did theatre as a means to get to direct films. I'd like to go back someday and do more theatre because I love it and production-wise, it's a lot easier. With this film, the last few weeks have been the most hectic weeks of my life. But, you know, that's okay. That's film."

Sat, Mar 11, 10pm, State Theater; Mon, Mar 13, 9:30pm, Convention Center; Wed, Mar 15, 9pm, Convention Center.