Private Project

PEOPLE

The participants of a one night stand face each other over dinner, and they don’t like what they see. Neither do the feuding couple on their way to the hospital following a strangely cutting dip in a fountain, but at least they’re having a better night than the friends whose boy’s boxing night deteriorates at first punch. Group counseling is not the answer; I heard the psychologist is just as troubled as his patients. If only the screenwriter could get his script past the industry gatekeepers this would make a great film. In the six searing vignettes that compose People we can find the ugly, the flawed, and the twisted. If we’re ready to admit it, we can also find ourselves.

  • Shane McGoey
    Director
  • Shane McGoey
    Writer
  • Eric Winder Sella
    Producer
  • Harrison Huffman
    Producer
  • Dino dos Santos
    Key Cast
  • Mustafa Harris
    Key Cast
  • Christine Lekas
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Comedy, Drama
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 23 minutes 52 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 24, 2015
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    2K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.78:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • USA Film Festival
    Dallas, Texas
    United States
    April 22, 2016
    World Premiere
  • New Orleans Film Festival
    New Orleans, Louisiana
    United States
    October 15, 2016
    Louisiana Premiere
Director Biography - Shane McGoey

Shane McGoey is a north shore native and alumnus of the University of New Orleans' Film and Theatre Department. He currently writes for a host of production companies, including Windy Hill Pictures and PalmStar Media, while continuing work on independent projects.

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Director Statement

PEOPLE was born out of contempt. Specifically a contempt for filmmaking...

My colleagues and I had just recently foreclosed on another film two weeks prior to the conception of "People". The previous film being an indulgent and acutely sentimental project—which nauseates me to reflect upon to this day. But, the failure of that film prior turned out to be a blessing, seeing as "People" was spawned from that painful experience.

One disheartened evening in April, I was kicking ideas around with one of my producers, Eric Winder Sella, over the phone. Wondering what we were going to do with the meager budget we had raised and the few resources we had aggregated for the previous project.

I wanted to throw in the towel and disappear into the night. But Eric sternly decreed to me that there was no way we weren't going to make a film. The "People" conceit came to light during this phone call. The film, at its core, would be about the trials of making, selling, marketing and distributing a film. It would also be post-modern, a film within a film, if you will.

We had had our fill of being sincere and earnest about film and telling a conventional story. We were now jaded and disaffected filmmakers. Satire was the only aesthetic path left for us to take; the divine, inherent, dark comedy. That is our wheelhouse now.

The chapter-based structure came as a result of this new approach, this new aesthetic. I had always admired Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit". I read "Being & Nothingness" in college. These were tremendous inspirations: people driving each other mad, trying to control one another, failing each other; people at perpetual odds. Why not dive right into the apex of conflict? What's better than watching a bunch of characters ruin themselves and each other? "People" is essentially a series of existential meltdowns, a paroxysm of the human condition. And that's comedy to us.

I hope our audience agrees…

-Shane McGoey, Writer & Director of "People"