His great-grandfather would be proud. When Johnny Phillips opened the original Frankie and Johnny’s in Manhattan on the corner of 45th and Eighth, he probably never would have guessed that his great grandson Matthew Bryan would use the Hoboken spin-off as the setting of a short film about a man who’s, well, a little shy.
Stage Fright is a five-minute film about an obsessive-compulsive man trying use a urinal, and having problems. He is out on a first date, and it is going poorly.
“It was something silly I came up with to write about,” said Bryan. “It’s not a regular problem that I suffer, but I think everybody’s experienced it at one time or another.”
The actual bathroom scenes were filmed at Busker’s in Hoboken, but the restaurant scenes were at Frankie and Johnny’s.
“I needed a classy restaurant scene and I thought it would be funny to do it in sort of my grandfather’s legacy,” Bryan said.
This is Bryan’s second film. The first, Gutter Balls, was a comedy which he co-wrote, produced, and directed along with John Nugent. It was accepted at the New Hampshire Film Festival, the Gulf Coast Film Festival, and the New York Independent Film and Video Festival.
“Gutter Balls was a 30-minute short about two guys who go out on a Friday night, and everything possible goes wrong for them,” said Bryan. “It’s a cross between Swingers and American Pie.”
Bryan filmed Stage Fright in Super-8 black and white, in the style of old horror movies.
“We tried to make it look like a silly 1950s horror movie to reinforce how silly it is that some men experience this disorder,” Bryan said. “There is this internal voice in his head taunting him as he tries to go.”
Bryan has lived in Hoboken three years ago. He is originally from Long Island and works as a product manager for Oppenheimer Funds. Filmmaking is something he does on the side.
Almost ready
Stage Fright is presently in post-production and should be finished by the end of September, at which point Bryan will submit it to film festivals, both nationally and internationally, when we will find out whether “stage fright” is a cross cultural phenomenon.
“I think humans have a certain degree of fear within them, and this is just an expression of it,” said Bryan. “It’s a fear of embarrassment.”
For information about the film, e-mail the director at mattbryan13@hotmail.com.