Number One With a Bullet

“Number One With a Bullet” started life as a more modest piece, one of two scripts I wrote with the intent of making a short with principal photography occurring over a single weekend (to take advantage of a rare window of availability for our regular troupe of cast and crew). This particular tale was inspired by a casual conversation about the bizarre little fiefdoms that existed in the publishing world, and the quirky personalities that ran each of them. But when both scripts proved problematic — or at least enough so that I wouldn’t be able to finish them before the scheduled weekend — I reluctantly shelved them. (I ended up making the short film “The Big Lie” instead; it remains to be seen whether or not the second script I wrote during that period, “Some Kind of Hero,” will ever see the light of day.) Over lunch a few years later, Bjorn Munson asked if I’d mind if he took a look at “Number One With a Bullet” to see if it might be worth reviving, with an eye toward producing what he termed a “signature short”: something to serve as a Tohubohu calling card. To this day I’m very glad he did. While keeping the overall beats of the story intact (not to mention the dark-comedy tone and rapid-fire banter), he expanded the script significantly, refining characters and providing a clearer sense of motivation for our protagonist. (A staged reading hosted by writer/director Barry Gribble also gave us substantial additional feedback for revision.) Ultimately, the production proved far more expansive than we’d originally anticipated — this would be our first film shot in HD (though a few other HD shorts would be released first, given this film’s extensive postproduction work), and our first produced under a full SAG Low-Budget Short Film contract. But with experienced producer Joy Haynes on board — and a stellar cast assembled by Bjorn in his casting-director capacity — we ended up with a film that was about as close as we could have expected to the original intent. Filmed at the actual offices of The Atlantic in Washington, D.C. (thanks to Atlantic Media owner David G. Bradley), the film went on to win special acclaim at the 2010 TIVA Peer Awards, and continues to make appearances on the film festival circuit. A fun, entertaining film — though (as my writer friends will no doubt point out) it bears little resemblance to the real world of book publishing… I think…