Charlie's Ear

HAROLD BOLDGETT IS AN ORDINARY GUY struggling to get out of bed to face another work day. It happens to be his birthday. And it's going to be one of those days: he feels rotten, he hates his life, he hates himself, and most of all he hates his wife, Connie. He'd like to wring her neck! When he comes home from work, he finds two thugs, Longo and Charlic, finishing some sort of job. He thinks they're plumbers sent by the landlord until he finds out they're working for him. They know him, but he doesn't know them or remember any dealings with them at all. What did he hire them to? To kill his wife? From there the plot unfolds rapidly, with chilling surpriscs and unexpected guffaws around every corner._

Comment:
WE ALL HAVE THOUGHTS THAT WOULD SHAME Hell. How casually we say things like ''If you do that I'll wring your neck'', or ''I'm so mad at so-and-so I could kill him''. But what if these malevolent thonghts took on a life of their own - dark forces buried in the unconscious personifying themselves and acting out these sinister wishes? The unconscious mind, that vast churning ocean beneath the tiny bubble we know as consciousness, does operate in such a fashion. Thought does create form.
I reflected upon these notions as I wrestled with the idea that had just popped into the bubble of my conscionsness, the idea that was to become the film, Charlie's Ear. As the scenario unfolded in the theater of my imagination I was horrified and fascinated simultaneously. I wanted to deny that evil capable of formulating such a thought resided in my psyche, and yet the dramatist who calls my mind home relished the unexpected visitation of this disturbing idea, embraced and examined it and in due time shaped it into a screenplay.
In the writing and the directing I chose to confront these demons with the best weapon at my disposal: humor. Not the straight line/punch line form of humor that proliferates, but a more complex, thought provoking style wherein you laugh at things that ought not to be funny. Although the form is commonly known as black comedy, I prefer, in this instance, to call it farce noir. The term ''noir'' connects it to the genre known as ''film noir'', with which it has much in common, and it is a farce because of its clockwork dramatic structure as well as the absurdist manner in which it juxtaposes the trivial with the profound. The world of Charlie's Ear is such that everyday ordinary things like a stain on the pants or a broken dish can lead to heinous murder.
GARY CHASON

Medverkande
Austin Pendleton, Catherine Hyland: Producent
Chuck McCrory, Gary Chason: Manus
Gary Chason: Foto
Claudia Raschke: Musik
Arthur Gottschalk: Talat språk
English