"Inventory" to screen at Somerville Theatre on May 20 and 27 and June 3

Inventory will be screening at the Somerville Theatre (Somerville, MA) on three Fridays in May: May 20th and 27th and June 3.

Showtimes are 6:00, 7:45, and 9:30PM, and tickets are $10.

Contact info@castparty.com if you have any questions about the screenings.

Note: This reflects a change from the previously announced dates.

Joseph James Bellamy of Reel Zine praises "Inventory"

The first-ever review of Inventory!

Highlights include:

...the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle comedic magic that infused contemporary ensemble classics like “The Breakfast Club” and “Empire Records.”

The film, a grand-slam giggler concerning the exploits of a group of self-obsessed slackers on inventory day at a small furniture retailer, is side-splitting, clock-punching fun. A brilliant spiritual fusion of “Clerks”, ‘Waiting,” and senior study-hall, “Inventory” is a fresh take on what happens when too much time, too many brains, and not enough motivation are left to ferment in a vat of minimum-wage apathy.

...working-class wit, wholesale humor, and the kind of break-room antics that will keep your funny bone working overtime.

Rhode Island filmmaker Daniel Lee White praises "Inventory"

Via e-mail:

"Inventory is awesome! A good story with entertaining characters, good enough to watch more than once. It’s nice to see a movie produced in New England that is not only of professional quality and performance, but has a truly organic feel to the concept and dialogue. Justin Fielding and crew did a great job producing a solid film.”

Daniel Lee White
Love Thy Job Productions

Good grief

A curious thing about making movies is that you don't always know what influences are influencing you... at least not until after a film is completed.

Many of my filmmaking heroes don't, as best as I can tell, directly influence my writing and direction in a big way.

Well, there is perhaps a bit of Hitchcock about Castparty's comedy-thriller The Wife's Position and a little Kubrickian imagery in our psych-gore oddity, Denial.

However, I've gradually come to realize my biggest influence comes not from the world of film. Rather, it's from a steady childhood diet of Peanuts cartoons—both then-current strips from the '60s and beyond, and anthologized strips from before my time.

In project after project, I've found myself attracted to the intersection of the bitter and the sweet. The realm that Charlie Brown and company inhabit.

Since making the absurdist Telemarketing Orphan (from a script by Greg Hill), we've described many of our films as "sad, little comedies."

Some 40+ years after first reading Peanuts, the elegance of Charlie Brown's most famous utterance finally comes clear to me: "good grief." The comedy that comes from sadness, and the sadness that comes from comedy can be very, very good grief.

Beyond thematic resemblances, we've drawn up many characters in a Schulzian mode, especially numerous lovable poor schlubs played by Dennis Hurley, who in Inventory is guided by the domineering Greg much as Charlie often receives dubious and abusive tutelage from Lucy Van Pelt.

Jackie, too, with her bigmouthed aggression has more than a little Lucy about her.

Zoë shares many traits with Charlie's idiosyncratic beagle: quirky perches, imitating another character's gait, and riding on a fantasy surfboard. Perhaps the major difference is that Zoë is far more inclined to act like a canine.

I don't recall whether Zoë's Snoopyishness was ever something I verbalized in the course of shooting Inventory, or was even fully aware of, but there was something viscerally familiar about her playful inscrutability.

Then there's Eleanor, whose attachment to a humble armchair recalls Linus and his security blanket.

Further, the clerks mostly tune out authority figures, especially their immediate supervisor who barely says more words to them than the unintelligible adults do in Peanuts' classrooms and households.

Perhaps others who watch Inventory will find still-more resemblances, most all of which were unconscious, but which are indicative of how much I absorbed the tragicomic gospel according to Peanuts.

Kickstarter project to help "Inventory" song-score artist Cotton Mather release expanded "Kon Tiki" album

How great would it be to have a 2-CD deluxe edition of Cotton Mather's Kon Tiki, where Inventory soundtrack tune "Homefront Cameo" originated? Very great!

Please pitch in, if you'd like to see a lost-classic album re-released and expanded! Lots of nifty rewards available to contributors.

Mattysville Radio has high praise for "Inventory"

"This independent movie made in the Boston area took 2 years to complete and believe me it was worth the wait.... so funny I had tears coming out of my eyes... had to pause the movie so I could catch my breath.

The actors all had great chemistry.... The movie was full of laughs and actually... had a pretty touching and inspiring message woven throughout... a great movie."—Mattysville Radio

"Using Improv as a Screenwriting Tool" by Justin Fielding posted on masteringfilm.com

Mastering Film invited me to discuss takeaways from our use of scriptprov in creating Inventory, to help other filmmakers cultivate serendipitous creativity in their projects.

Please share the article with your friends and colleagues in filmmaking and improv!