Has Anyone Seen Bill?
Has Anyone Seen Bill follows hard working, middle management Bill, a kind, 51-yr-old man whose obliviousness to the instability of employment in America sends him tumbling into homelessness after one bad decision.
Bill is a nice man who lives a solitary life after a rough divorce. He believes everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out...as long as you try.
He always strives for a "growth mindset" but as a sea of shiny new hires encroaches with a new self-organizing structure in the company he's worked at for over a decade, Bill decides it's time to pursue independent consulting.
Two months later, Bill's prospects haven't panned out as planned, and his rent and car payments have drained his bank account. Like 68% of working Americans, he had no savings.
As Bill tumbles through one-way socio-economic trap doors, his faith that things will turn around begins to falter. He moves out of the apartment he can no longer afford, and unable to meet the income requirements for another one, finds himself living in a local run-down motel. He takes any work he can get, mostly delivering meals and groceries. He crashes on his son's couch for a while, until he's no longer welcome.
His bank account overdrawn, he starts to sleep in his car, still believing he'll be able to climb back out of this mess. When his car is suddenly repossessed, he joins a small group of squatters and for a while has found a new kind of home with people who care about each other. But when a young squatter dies of pneumonia, the group splinters.
Bill is once more living a solitary life, now as one of over 35 million Americans living in profound, inescapable poverty.
Has Anyone Seen Bill delves into the complexities and misperceptions around housing insecurity, and how a perfect storm of inflation, job market viability, overpopulation, reprehensible wealth disparity, and affordable housing shortages has brought homelessness to the doorsteps of a staggering number of Americans.
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Bronwen J CarsonDirectorTunnels Above Ground, Vara, 49th Street and Other Stories
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Bronwen J CarsonWriterTunnels Above Ground, Magpie, a savage simple
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Bronwen J CarsonProducer
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Guy MerrittProducer
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Mel BlackwellProducer
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Darren SmithKey Cast"Bill"
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Gabby MorrellKey Cast"Minette"
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Tammera Sudderth-HillKey Cast"Dot"
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Chris DixonKey Cast"Cliff"
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Project Type:Short
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Genres:Drama
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Runtime:19 minutes 58 seconds
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Completion Date:October 1, 2024
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Production Budget:7,500 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Blackmagic 4.6K Cinema
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
BRONWEN CARSON is an award-winning writer and director. She’s a New York International Fringe Festival Excellence in Directing award recipient, a member of the 2022-23 playwriting cohort at The Dramatist’s Guild, recipient of the 2023 Engaged Artist Grant, the 2022 Unleash Press Book Award, the 2021 Rona Jaffe Breadloaf Scholar Award, a two-time Drama League finalist. and a Riggio Honors: Writing and Democracy Scholar. Her novel, Magpie is currently nominated for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway award. She’s a Ross Foundation playwriting finalist. Bronwen’s work has been supported by The Director's Lab at The Actors Studio, Sarasvati Creative Space, Irondale, The Ross Foundation, The Rona Jaffe Award, NY Int’l Fringe Festival, The Ailey Center, Skirball, The Watt Family Foundation, Meetinghouse Literary Journal, Unleash Press, TÉA Artistry, Duke Films, Nix Creek Films, GRASP, The Private Theatre, Triality Studios, The Dramatist’s Guild, and The Sundance Institute. Her latest film, Has Anyone Seen Bill? was shot in North Carolina in January of this year, after which she travelled to New York to direct the US premiere of Red Silk, a dramatic play about Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton. Member of SDC, SAG-AFTRA, and AG.
www.bronwencarson.com / https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1291496/
I was interested in exploring the space between stability and homelessness in America, because it's happening everywhere everyday, to increasing numbers of people who never thought they'd encounter it.
My hope is that Has Anyone Seen Bill? will contribute to the conversation about what happens when, despite every effort to stay afloat, societal structures that once supported us, start to push us underwater. (69% of Americans don't have emergency savings to help protect them if they lose their job or encounter a sudden financial emergency).
As Bill descends into housing instability and eventually homelessness, he becomes a smaller and smaller inhabitant of his world-his relevance and societal place shifting to one of insignificance and invisibility.
I chose to have this be a 20 minute short film because of the breathtaking speed in which working Americans can find themselves homeless. While editing it, I found the speed of his life unravelling to be unnerving and knew that it would be important to the telling of this story.