Consider the Sparrow

I was the Assistant Director on Plot, Jeremy Folmer and Ann Hamilton’s humorous first
short about a garden club in a New York City apartment building, and had a wonderful
time. We worked hard, laughed hard and solved problems well together. We made a
great team. When Jeremy asked me to direct Consider the Sparrow, I jumped at the
chance to work together again. So much about Consider the Sparrow appealed to me.
It’s a political story for our times and it’s also a very human one. And it’s a complex
story; like an onion there’s always another layer underneath. It’s about politics today,
it’s about religion, it’s about religion and politics, it’s about the environment, it’s about
secrets, it’s about grief, it’s about a marriage, it’s about ambition and its about hard
choices. Suzanne Bradbeer, our writer, doesn’t make it easy for the audience to align
themselves with any particular issue or to choose who to root for. If only in these
difficult times, we all weren’t so divided and would be able to have some
understanding of every side of an issue. I can think of no greater achievement as an
artist than to help further open and respectful dialogue. We need that so much right
now. And as in everything Ann and Jeremy work on there is humor. Someone, I cant
remember who, said “when humor goes, there goes civilization”. Finally, over the years,
I’ve worked primarily as an actor and Consider the Sparrow is a great piece for actors.
There is a lot of dialogue and it’s the actors that take us on the ride. Each character
faces difficult choices and learns about themselves in the process. Our DP, Mathew
Landfield, used a lot of dolly shots and the slow, almost imperceptible movement
subtly underscores the emotional and intellectual chess game we see play out between
our three protagonists.