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SLEEPER TRILOGY––Three Undiscovered First Features
"Thirty-five plus years after his 1975 feature filmmaking debut, American Independent Rick Schmidt remains a free-wheeling derring-do filmmaker holding fast to the notion that people's real lives are more truly dramatic, hilarious, exciting and as exasperating as those manufactured by Hollywood's minions. To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms."
––Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTRE
In Rick Schmidt's classic how-to, Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices (Viking Penguin), his low/no-budget trilogy is described as being "about the American dream." But it's more than that. His first features––A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER, (SHOWBOAT) 1988-THE REMAKE, EMERALD CITIES––completed during the 1973-1983, timeframe, represent a crucial point in the history of the US. For it was just after that, with Reagan as President, that conservative values in government began to deprive citizens of the optimism represented by the 'hippie' youth movement, the "One World Family" of the Woodstock Nation. In Schmidt's trilogy, especially his censored (SHOWBOAT) 1988, he inadvertently pitted himself against this "takeover." By his natural inclination toward improvisation-vs-scripting, non-actors-vs-trained thespians, reality-over-fiction, he gave his actors/performers the ability, and permission, to "tell it like it is."
-----------------
"A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER works in a way that makes it one of the most absorbing films I’ve seen of what is generally called the independent filmmaking movement. Actress Carolyn Zaremba in particular, singing a tearful rendition of 'Bye, Bye, Blackbird," gives a performance that is of the First Rank.”
––Jerry Oster, NY DAILY NEWS
“Beautifully shot in the Mendocino, California landscape, the film flows back and forth between the fiction of the script and the half-submerged reality of the actual writing of the script.”
––Marc Weiss, Bleecker St. Cinema, POV
“A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is a tragic epic, a love story, a documentary about drug addicts, a comedy, a portrait, a commentary and a tapestry. Mostly, however, it’s a film about violence. Not Peckinpah spleen-punching violence or Coppola bleeding-horse’s-heads violence —by comparison these are cartoons, embarrassingly vapid, self indulgent and boring.”
––Linda Taylor
“For lovers of weird movies, independent director Rick Schmidt is the king. A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is one of the weirdest films you’ll see this or any other year.”
––Robert W. Butler Entertainment Editor, KANSAS CITY STAR
"SHOWBOAT)1988 in its cumulative preposterous flummery is a spirited outcry for people to throw off the covert and overt forms of oppression and be themselves. Beneath the film’s Quixotic humor and surprisingly touching pathos stands the surrealist belief that art is never more important than life. An outrageous tour-de-force.”
––Vic Skolnick
“The film (1988) raises questions about exploitation, entertainment, politics, psychology, and the nature of the medium itself.” —Michael Blowen, THE BOSTON GLOBE
“(SHOWBOAT) 1988-THE REMAKE stops waiting for the moment and makes the moment.”
––Lauren Berlant, “THE FEMALE COMPLAINT” (DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS), Chair, University of Chicago, LGBTQ STUDIES PROJECT
"EMERALD CITIES is Rick Schmidt’s provocative, and compassionate 'howl' at the gathering tide of nuclear lunacy as the mass media adjusts us to the 'new dark ages' of limited nuclear war. Schmidt’s film style is blending the mad-cap humor of the Marx Brothers, a heady version of American surrealism, and iconoclastic inspiration, perhaps from Jean Luc Godard."
––Vic Skolnick
"Featuring punk bands FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS, EMERALD CITIES is one of the best films of the year."
––L.A. Weekly
––Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTRE
In Rick Schmidt's classic how-to, Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices (Viking Penguin), his low/no-budget trilogy is described as being "about the American dream." But it's more than that. His first features––A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER, (SHOWBOAT) 1988-THE REMAKE, EMERALD CITIES––completed during the 1973-1983, timeframe, represent a crucial point in the history of the US. For it was just after that, with Reagan as President, that conservative values in government began to deprive citizens of the optimism represented by the 'hippie' youth movement, the "One World Family" of the Woodstock Nation. In Schmidt's trilogy, especially his censored (SHOWBOAT) 1988, he inadvertently pitted himself against this "takeover." By his natural inclination toward improvisation-vs-scripting, non-actors-vs-trained thespians, reality-over-fiction, he gave his actors/performers the ability, and permission, to "tell it like it is."
-----------------
"A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER works in a way that makes it one of the most absorbing films I’ve seen of what is generally called the independent filmmaking movement. Actress Carolyn Zaremba in particular, singing a tearful rendition of 'Bye, Bye, Blackbird," gives a performance that is of the First Rank.”
––Jerry Oster, NY DAILY NEWS
“Beautifully shot in the Mendocino, California landscape, the film flows back and forth between the fiction of the script and the half-submerged reality of the actual writing of the script.”
––Marc Weiss, Bleecker St. Cinema, POV
“A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is a tragic epic, a love story, a documentary about drug addicts, a comedy, a portrait, a commentary and a tapestry. Mostly, however, it’s a film about violence. Not Peckinpah spleen-punching violence or Coppola bleeding-horse’s-heads violence —by comparison these are cartoons, embarrassingly vapid, self indulgent and boring.”
––Linda Taylor
“For lovers of weird movies, independent director Rick Schmidt is the king. A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is one of the weirdest films you’ll see this or any other year.”
––Robert W. Butler Entertainment Editor, KANSAS CITY STAR
"SHOWBOAT)1988 in its cumulative preposterous flummery is a spirited outcry for people to throw off the covert and overt forms of oppression and be themselves. Beneath the film’s Quixotic humor and surprisingly touching pathos stands the surrealist belief that art is never more important than life. An outrageous tour-de-force.”
––Vic Skolnick
“The film (1988) raises questions about exploitation, entertainment, politics, psychology, and the nature of the medium itself.” —Michael Blowen, THE BOSTON GLOBE
“(SHOWBOAT) 1988-THE REMAKE stops waiting for the moment and makes the moment.”
––Lauren Berlant, “THE FEMALE COMPLAINT” (DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS), Chair, University of Chicago, LGBTQ STUDIES PROJECT
"EMERALD CITIES is Rick Schmidt’s provocative, and compassionate 'howl' at the gathering tide of nuclear lunacy as the mass media adjusts us to the 'new dark ages' of limited nuclear war. Schmidt’s film style is blending the mad-cap humor of the Marx Brothers, a heady version of American surrealism, and iconoclastic inspiration, perhaps from Jean Luc Godard."
––Vic Skolnick
"Featuring punk bands FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS, EMERALD CITIES is one of the best films of the year."
––L.A. Weekly
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 27, 2022
About the author
Rick Schmidt
106 books4 followersRick Schmidt is the author of Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices (Viking Penguin, 1988, 1995, 2000), which is considered "The Bible" of fledgling filmmakers, credited with influencing filmmakers Kevin Smith, Vin Diesel, Tom DiCillo, many others. Extreme DV (Penguin/Random House Books), his digital video book, is now available on e-book. And his first novel, Black President, was published by Picnic Publishing in UK,
In 2006, Schmidt received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Rome Intl., . His films have been screened worldwide, at film festivals including Sundance's Dramatic Competition (Grand Jury Prize nomination), Slamdance, Rotterdam, Berlin International, New Directors/New Films, Museum of Modern Art (NY), and on Channel Four, UK.
In 2006, Schmidt received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Rome Intl., . His films have been screened worldwide, at film festivals including Sundance's Dramatic Competition (Grand Jury Prize nomination), Slamdance, Rotterdam, Berlin International, New Directors/New Films, Museum of Modern Art (NY), and on Channel Four, UK.
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