One For Icon

This film was inspired by a very personal, cinematic experience I had a few years ago. I exchanged my cash for a ticket and sat down beneath the screen expecting mere entertainment; what I experienced when the lights went down, was so much more than that. Lit on fire, from the inside out, by a film, by an actor who burst off the screen in flames; physically, emotionally, sensually shaking me to the core. I recall the walk from the cinema to the bus stop, wandering beneath a dazed veil of disbelief, I didn’t really know what had happened but it felt like I had experienced something extraordinary, almost…spiritual. I was consumed, overwhelmed, in the most wonderful, intoxicating way. I went to see the film six more times: approximately every week until the movie left the theatre. Each time I thought it would be my last. I journalled passionately about the experience; and about the stark contrast of the mundane world I returned to when the lights came up.

Out of all of this, I began to imagine someone who was more extreme than me. Someone a little more daring and a little less sane. A character who would take this sensation further than I ever could; someone who would surrender herself entirely to it. And that is how Annie Everett came into being.

The source of Annie’s angst is that she is an aspiring playwright who is frustrated by her stalled dreams. When we meet her, she is at a crossroads as her creative partner’s abandonment of their once shared ambitions sends her spiralling into self-doubt. She hates her survival job in a call center, her mother doesn’t understand her aspirations, all of her plans have fallen through.

I asked myself: what if all the force of lament, frustration, and self-doubt of someone who dreamt of living amongst such brilliance as they experienced in that dark cinema, but couldn’t reach it, was driving this obsession? If all the redundant passion and determination she couldn’t expend was channelled into it? As a filmmaker, the danger, the volatility, the tragedy, of such a character was electric to me.

Annie’s hunger for meaning, connection, and transcendence becomes focused on a single cinematic experience and the star who embodies it. Her obsession is not simply with a film or a celebrity, but with the state of being that cinema gives her: the feeling of aliveness, belonging, desire, and emotional truth that her own life deprives her of.

This film is an exploration of obsession, from the highest euphoria, to the lowest desperation. An exploration of the threshold between passion and madness, and how narrow and wavering it really is. Annie’s relationship with the fictional movie, Icon, and its star, Brandon Aubrey, fills the emotional voids in her life: intimacy, energy, fantasy, sexuality, purpose. It becomes a space where she feels more real than she does in reality itself.

The film uses the structure of addiction to explore obsession; how something that begins as pleasure, inspiration, and escape can quietly become compulsion and self-destruction. We witness Annie’s life and mind deteriorate in tandem. The line between want and need dissolves, and dark fantasy begins to overtake her ability to exist in real life, taking her to the brink of death.

The visual and tonal language of the film mirrors Annie’s psychological journey. Her early euphoria is expressed through kaleidoscopic, sensual, and rhythmic sequences that convey the intoxicating pleasure of obsession. As her grip on reality weakens, these sounds and images become darker, quieter, more repetitive, and more ritualistic, reflecting the narrowing of her inner world.

I liked the idea of using a diary or journal, narrated through Annie’s voice-over, to illustrate the character’s inner psyche- her reflection on the film and its star, and the shortcomings of reality in comparison. Because at its core, the film is about disillusionment with ordinary life, with modern connection, with the limits of reality; and the seductive power of imagined worlds, of hope, of dreams, in comparison.

One for Icon is a character-driven psychological drama about obsession, identity, and the longing to feel fully alive. A raw, emotional, intimate ride that I hope will speak to its audience in a visceral way; it is also a love letter to cinema; to the strange, powerful, and transformative experiences that can only happen in a darkened theatre, when fiction often feels more true than life itself.
- by Nicole Clinton - Writer/Director.