After spending his last visit to the festival sleeping in a disused factory, American indie filmmaker Alan Madison is celebrating the screening of his debut feature film Trouble on the Corner in Panorama by upgrading to a pensione. By Hero Brown
Begging, borrowing, squatting… it's not an easy life being an indie filmmaker. But Alan Madison is still persevering, nine years after he first appeared at the Berlin film festival with his short film The Ten Count. Back then, Madison had the ignominy of dossing in a disused factory. "Actually it was great fun at the time," he says, "but I've decided I'm too old for squatting. This year you could say I've graduated to kneeling."
Madison is referring to the modest pensione he calls home while he promotes his debut feature film Trouble on the Corner, which screens in the Panorama at Berlin. The twisted comedy-thriller, which Madison describes as a subverted take on the 50s 'peeper' movie, is currently without a distributor, so the writer/director/producer is scouring Berlin for takers. "Right now, I wish I wasn't the producer," he says. "You have to be kind of arrogant to want to make people spend two hours in the dark watching something you've done - but the film is amazing!"
Trouble on the Corner has been a labour of love for Madison, 28, who for years shopped his script around while working in everything from industrial and TV commercials to porn. Now something's gone very right for the amiable New Yorker. Despite a CV which contained only The Ten Count and the three-minute short The White Lady as his completed projects, he managed to interest actors Giancarlo Esposito (The Basketball Diaries, Malcolm X) and double Tony-winner Tammy Grimes in his script, which explores the increasing neuroses of a pyschiatrist who can no longer differentiate his patients' lives from his own. "I'm always fascinated by the story of the man who goes into the post office and blows away ten people, and everyone always says, 'But he was the nicest guy' or 'He was a family man'. We have no insight into the human mind. That's interesting to me."
It says something for Madison's commitment to Trouble on the Corner that he's made it to Berlin this year - he's sacrificed being at one of his basketball team's games to be here. Coach to the Centre School Chiefs (10- to 13-year-olds) for eight years now, his young team has never had a losing season. "I have a life outside film," he happily admits. "That's probably why it's taken me nine years to make Trouble on the Corner!"
Watch out for Madison's sci fi-horror/comedy 'Squito (mosquitoes with huge probisci wreak havoc à la 1954's Them!) at Berlin 2007.
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