Way Off Broadway

(Method Fest)

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Morena Baccarin plays an aspiring actress in Danial Kay's 'Way Off Broadway,' shown at Method Fest.

A Just for Fun Films presentation. (International sales: Cataland Films, N.Y.C.) Produced by Andrew Charas, Daniel Kay, Joel Blanco, Richard Perello. Directed, written by Daniel Kay.
 
With: Brad Beyer, Morena Baccarin, Forbes March, Jordan Gelber, Michael Parducci.
 

Daniel Kay's debut feature as scribe-helmer, "Way Off Broadway," reaps benefits from American indie cinema's taste for personal accounts of an artist's early life but suffers from the deficits, especially the lack of experience needed to put one's life into perspective and to master filmmaking itself. His tale of five artist friends fresh out of college, all in Gotham struggling in different disciplines, is both extremely familiar and, despite frequent references to Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles, cinematically and dramatically dull. Minor fests and latenight cable may beckon, but this is otherwise way off moviedom's Great White Way.

Darrin (Brad Beyer) seems serious about writing plays but is a bit too willing to sell out for an advertising job that provides pic with its only visual joke. Faced with rejection, actress Rebecca (Morena Baccarin) encounters the old casting couch, while pal Jay (Forbes March) seems to have jettisoned a promising blues guitar career. Jordan Gelber's lit grad student Ethan and Michael Parducci's film student Mickey take up the rear, in colorless support.

Camera (color), David Tumblety; editor, Robert Tate; music, Craig Hilleson, Mike Kelley; production designer, Magen Kauffman; costume designer, Lynn Falconer; casting, Judi Henderson. Reviewed at Method Fest (competing), Pasadena, June 20, 2001. Running time: 87 MIN.