PAINT IT RED
Starring: Laurence Fuller
Director/Writer: Paul T Murray
Produced by and Co-Starring: Chad Addison & Tommy Kijas
Cinematographer/Producer: Steven Mangurten
Supporting Cast: Sally Kirkland, Jack McGee, Randy Wayne, Ray Diaz, Jacinta Stapleton, Martin Kove, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Khleo Thomas
Struggling artist Ciaran (Laurence Fuller) stumbles upon two duffel bags of cash, $650,000, to be exact. His buddies Owen (Tommy Kijas) and Trevor (Chad Addison) have different opinions on what he should do with it, but time starts ticking when the original robbers (Khleo Thomas, Ray Diaz) come looking for the stolen loot that they stashed away! The body count rises each day as the gangbanger thieves hunt for their money in this trashy complex.
For all they know, maybe it was the hooker next door who took it. Or Ciaran's girlfriend (Kirby Bliss Blanton). Or Stuntman Scabs (Martin Kove) and his two sidekicks. Or Ballerina Lana (Cassie Steele). Or the Deaf Couple. Or apartment manager Adele (Sally Kirkland). Perhaps Detective McNutty (Jack McGee) and his partner Detective Dark (Randy Wayne) can prevent the death toll from rising before it's off the easel. For what it's worth, it's all happening in the dumped off dirty cousin of Hollywood...NoHo.
LAURENCE FULLER INTERVIEW
"PAINT IT RED was about the search for faith, but not in a religious sense, faith in the realization of one's own artistic vision, in this case the survival of a struggling artist in his quest to get out of poverty and survive a very fortunate and very threatening bit of good luck. At the same time the underlying themes and relationships deal with artistic integrity and ethics. I had a brilliant time exploring the life of a painter for a while. The search for beauty is so often underpinned by a rugged brutality, stringent, uncompromising quest to prevail, exclusivity, a climb, a struggle, a ruthless clawing at the flimsy veins of existence, which pretend and shelter. One begins to claw, because of a feeling of not knowing, or of knowledge that there must be more.
Alone in the darkness of our own avoidance to the beast of feeling that lurks in the passionate night unseen, chained to the stumps of reason, practical, bland objects, unrelated interactions in the presence of other people which relate solely to food or to sex or to expending less effort. All these things make me want to smash those chains and for all those things to dissipate. All these perspex surfaces hiding the truth.
Ciaran is running through the hills of a dream of the world he wished to create, sprinting up mountainsides to grab at a feeling for something real. He is a man of faith, who knew what he stood for and would demand it of life. And yet he knew that if he let any of it slip even for a moment, it would all fall apart and that dream he so carefully cherished and held onto would fall into the hands of another equally hungry LA dream chaser”.