Short of the DayA stylistic fever dream of frustration.
Anyone who’s ever had it knows that writer’s block is more than a mere malady, it’s a mental frustration that keeps you hovering between the fantasy you’re trying to create and the reality of not being able to create it. It’s like pushing against a massive wall that yields a little but never gives.
Writer’s block has been captured on film many times in everything from Naked Lunch to Adaptation to The Shining, but I’ve never seen it captured quite like it is in Writer’s Block, a short film from writer-director Brandon Polanco that blends one writer’s frustration with fever dream hallucinations of his block, here manifested as a lovely and mysterious woman.
The short stars Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as the writer and it was made a few years ago while Cranston was shooting Cold Comes the Night, on...
Anyone who’s ever had it knows that writer’s block is more than a mere malady, it’s a mental frustration that keeps you hovering between the fantasy you’re trying to create and the reality of not being able to create it. It’s like pushing against a massive wall that yields a little but never gives.
Writer’s block has been captured on film many times in everything from Naked Lunch to Adaptation to The Shining, but I’ve never seen it captured quite like it is in Writer’s Block, a short film from writer-director Brandon Polanco that blends one writer’s frustration with fever dream hallucinations of his block, here manifested as a lovely and mysterious woman.
The short stars Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as the writer and it was made a few years ago while Cranston was shooting Cold Comes the Night, on...
- 4/19/2017
- by H. Perry Horton
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Bryan Cranston is a cool guy. Loved and acclaimed from both inside the industry and those at home, we already know Anthony Hopkins is a fan, and you can now add Brandon Polanco to that list. In 2012, Cranston was filming “Cold Comes the Night” when production halted due to Hurricane Sandy. Being the cool guy that he is, Cranston wasted no time and created a short film contest for the production assistants working on the film. He challenged them to write and submit scripts, with the winner landing Cranston in the lead role, in a film they would shoot during the downtime. Pa Brandon Polanco’s script won, and three hours later “Writer’s Block” went into production. The 13-minute black-and-white short film stars Cranston, Chaz Rose, Lela Edgar, and Spenser Granese, and the whole experience is one Polanco treasured and learned from. "A piece of advice that I got...
- 2/11/2014
- by Joshua Encinias
- The Playlist
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy temporarily halted the production of "Cold Comes the Night," a drama-thriller starring Bryan Cranston (read our review). During that impromptu down-time, Cranston created a contest. He invited the movie's production assistants to create a script to submit to him, and if he liked it, he'd star in it. The winner was Brandon Polanco, and the result was "Writer's Block," a short black-and-white starring Cranston, Lela Edgar, Spenser Granese, and Chaz Rose. According to BuzzFeed, production began just three hours after Polanco won the contest. What's the story? It's not crystal clear, but it definitely keeps you watching with unflickering narrowed eyes until the end.
- 1/14/2014
- by Taylor Lindsay
- Indiewire
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