King Street

“King Street” is ultimately about self awareness (or lack thereof). Through an improbable convergence of two lives, a young person with a problematic history of substance use begins to recognize some of her own troubled ethos in the actions and utterances of her ostensibly stable host.


The script was inspired by an incident in which I was driving away from Seattle's King Street railway station and suddenly heard someone pounding on the back of my pickup cab. We were both pretty shaken, and perhaps because this event was so utterly unforeseen, our brief ensuing conversation had an unforgettable energy. So the “King Street” script began as a thought experiment: What if an episode like this lasted hours, rather than minutes? Would shock give way to empathy or insight, or would aversion and repression hold sway?


I had the good fortune to pursue this project with a bright and curious bunch of collaborators, and to our minds, the older character Jason (Bruce Christopherson) has his own compelling issues. But as we dug into principle photography it was Sam, the unwitting stowaway (Tasha Newell) who captured our attention, and in a feature-length version of this same story, Sam would probably reappear.


That said, the beauty of the short-form format resides in its expressive economy, with meaning dripping through the layers of sound, image, and text. We think "King Street" taps this potential, and we're excited to share it.