New Jersey Noir: How Gazer Portrays a Forgotten Town

Odds are, you’ve never been to Kearny, New Jersey. But if you’ve ever taken New Jersey Transit from Newark Liberty International Airport to New York Penn Station, you’ve at least been through it without realizing it.

If you’re having trouble finding it on a map, filmmaker Ryan J. Sloan can break down the geography. “It’s New York City, Meadowlands, my town, and then Newark.” Don’t worry, the locals aren’t upset that you haven’t dropped by the tiny Newark suburb. The Kearny native called it “a forgotten industrial town that’s being gentrified like everywhere else around the world.”

It’s also the location and the soul of his new film, Gazer. Heavily influenced by what he called “the Blow-up/The Conversation/Blow Out trilogy,” it follows unemployed single mom Frankie (co-writer and star Ariella Mastroianni) as she turns unlikely detective to make ends meet. The movie had its Austin debut at last year’s Fantastic Fest and now returns with a special screening and Q&A this Thursday at the Alamo South Lamar.

“Where we would shoot, Ryan would say, ‘This is the shadow of the city.’”

Mastroianni, who grew up across the Hackensack River from Sloan in Hoboken, said that the two of them always wanted Gazer to be rooted deeply in the New Jersey they recognized. “It is a character in the film,” she said. “Yesterday a friend of ours had seen the film for the first time and said, ‘This is a new genre. This is Jersey Noir.’” In hindsight, she realized they’d always be making that kind of film. “Where we would shoot, Ryan would say, ‘This is the shadow of the city,’ and even that is very, very noir.”

Every city has its own style of noir, from the urban grime of New York to the slushy streets of Chicago and the tarnished dreams of Los Angeles. For writer/director Ryan J. Sloan, what defines Jersey Noir is that it’s “a scrappier kind of noir in comparison to these other cities. New Jersey is such an underdog, blue collar kind of place.”

To capture that feel, Sloan decided to sink a major portion of their tiny budget into shooting on 16mm. Rather than risk not being able to rent a camera on those stray days when they were able to film, he bought an Arriflex Arri SR2. “We grew up watching films on 16mm, and everyone is trying so hard these days to shoot digitally and make it look like film, but you can’t. Those scratches, those are my hands in the magazine in a black bag, threading it. You can’t recreate that.”

New Jersey has undoubtedly appeared in a lot of noir, but often it’s been as a side location for the “real” action in New York (want rid of a car, a gun, or a body? Send it to Jersey). However, Sloan wanted to give his home state and its rich history of crime its moment in the cloud-covered sun. He said, “In Jersey, in the Northeast area, we obviously have a history with the mob.” Being wedged between two major cities, both hubs of transportation and commerce, “the bleed over and the amount of trafficking with drugs and crimes is through the roof.” Yet this isn’t just some kind of Sopranos-esque narrative to him. He said, “I grew up knowing a lot of shady people, people who do things illegally and under the radar, and sometimes they get away with it and sometimes they don’t.”

It’s that kind of desperation that breeds creativity, even if Sloan and Mastroianni found that some of the true stories they heard were too creative even for Gazer. Sloan said, “We were reading newspaper clips of things that would happen, and if you put them in a movie script, no one would believe them.”

Those elements all lend themselves to noir, and for Mastroianni the area’s neither-here-nor-there location makes it perfect for the genre. “It’s forgotten, so it really lends itself to that mystery.”

“There were these stories of people who thought that ten minutes had passed and it had been an hour.”

There’s another essential element to noir, and that’s time. Often there’s a ticking clock, either literal or metaphorical, but in Frankie’s case the narrative driver is that there is none, at least not for her. She has dyschronometria, a rare condition under which the brain cannot properly process the passage of time. As a philosophy major in school, Mastroianni had become fascinated by mind-body theories, “and at some point I went, is there such a thing that would affect your perception of time? Then when I came across dyschronometria. There were these stories of people who thought that 10 minutes had passed and it had been an hour. You’re in such a trapped zone, and you’re so vulnerable. What is happening in these moments when you’re not fully aware? That was the question, and the answer is, ‘Well, noir happens.’”

In some ways, Frankie becomes a proxy for the region: abandoned, overlooked, and falling into a life of crime because it’s the only option open to her. “It’s a very practical life,” Mastroianni said. And much as the duo accidentally backed into making a noir film, Mastroianni noted that a friend had told her that Gazer is also a commentary on American health care, or the lack thereof. “If Frankie just had access to health care, maybe she wouldn’t need to take this shady job. … Three grand to a lot of people might not be much, but even to us making this film, it’s a lot of money. Especially to someone in her position.”

---

Gazer screens at Alamo South Lamar April 10-11, with live Q&A from director Ryan J. Sloan and co-writer/actor Ariella Mastroianni. Tickets at drafthouse.com.

This article appears in April 4 • 2025.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US