Local filmmaker’s nonsuccess leads to ‘Failure’

Failed filmmaker’s efforts become award-winning documentary

By: Purvi Desai
   WASHINGTON — His ambition to make a movie was born right after being introduced to TV.
   And he made it, right after graduating university, and boy, was it a failure.
   About five years ago, Chris Suchorsky set out to shoot a 95-page script in six days, by spending money he didn’t have, buying equipment he didn’t know how to use and using actors who didn’t know how to act.
   It didn’t work.
   But though the movie didn’t fly, the attempts at making it were put into "Failure," a documentary, which has won several awards and much praise, and is now playing on the Independent Film Channel.
   "The documentary is basically about me failing to make the film," said the Allentown-raised Mr. Suchorsky, who now, at 30, lives on Robbinsville-Edinburgh Road.
   "Failure" premiered in April 2003 at a film festival called the Back East Picture Show in Hoboken, where it won best documentary, he said.
   It won another best documentary at the Freedom Film Festival in Philadelphia in February 2004, Mr. Suchorsky said, was officially accepted at the Tambay Festival in Florida and was named an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival in, both in April 2004. Toward the beginning of 2005, "Film Threat," the number one online film magazine in the world, which reviews everything from "Oceans 11" to the smallest independent films, gave "Failure" four stars, he said.
   And now, throughout the month of May and possibly in June too, "Failure" will be playing on the Independent Film Channel on HBO.
   "IFC bought the television rights for a three-year deal," he said, though he didn’t say for how much. "But the film is playing across the country. It’s playing 18 times this month alone."
   Mr. Suchorsky said he gets e-mails every day from people all over the country.
   "I still hold the rights to theatrical and DVD sales," he said. "And the DVD sales have been doing well ever since the film aired." Mr. Suchorsky said the biggest compliment he received was when IFC bought his film.
   "I’m just glad it’s out there on television now and people can see it," he said. "It was hard to get the film done. It was a long hard process to get it out there and be seen."
   Mr. Suchorsky said the idea for the documentary was born after he decided to take the outtakes of funny footage and the flubbed lines from the film and do something with them. A note at the end of the film gives a nod to "Lost in La Mancha," a documentary made by director and Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam after his attempt to film "Don Quixote" bottomed out.
   "I worked on the documentary for nearly three years," he said. "I kept playing with different ideas. After two-and-a-half years, I finally knew what I wanted and finished the film."
   Despite the fact that he didn’t know how to use any equipment, Mr. Suchorsky said, he got everything necessary to shoot the initial feature length movie he shot.
   "I worked mainly alone. I did just about everything. It’s tough to hire people to work for free," he said. "I used credit cards to fund the project. It took me a while to pay off the debt."
   Mr. Suchorsky said he originally spent $2,000 filming.
   "When all was said and done, the film ended up costing over $10,000," he said. "I had to rent a camera, tripod, microphone, et cetera. I didn’t know what I was doing. The camera came with an instruction manual, so I was using that as I was making the film. That was a real bad idea."
   Mr. Suchorsky said his original film, "Executing Love," was a dark comedy. What was shot in and around Chesterfield.
   "It was about college life, showing me as a kind of slacker," he said, adding the movie was a story about a 20-something guy, Chase, who comes home from college and realizes that his education is worthless. He can’t find a job, and, essentially he is a slacker living in his parents’ house.
   Mr. Suchorsky graduated from Seton Hall University in 1999, with a bachelor’s degree majoring in advertising art and minor in communications. Currently, he is working full time in advertising, but still hoping to make movies.
   "I just want to make enough money in filmmaking that I just continue to make films," he said. "I’m paying my mortgage and financing the new film," he said, of his upcoming production, "Golden Days" — a feature-length documentary about an Indie rock band from Brooklyn, called The Damnwells, Mr. Suchorsky said.
   "I have been filming it for over a year now," he said.
   "Golden Days" shows The Damnwells over a five-year period, as they go from being struggling artists recording their first albums in a storage space, to major recording artists working with Epic Records a well known record company — and then being struggling artists again.
   "It’s getting tough," he said. "I’ve had to fly out to LA twice in the past couple of months to shoot, I’m shooting on top of the line cameras, and I’ve shot over 130 hours of footage.
   "So it’s getting expensive," he said. "I’m really hoping that "Golden Days" does well enough that I’m not financing my next film (myself). But I’d say I’m in it for the long haul."
   Mr. Suchorsky said one positive thing is that he is getting a lot of familiar faces in the film.
   "Right now, the band The Fray are in the film," he said. "Their single, "Over My Head (Cable Car)," is number nine this week on the Billboard charts. Cary Brothers, who you might remember from the "Garden State" soundtrack, is in the film, as are other artists, such as Augustana, Rhett Miller of the Old 97s, and members of Cheap Trick, he said.
   "And … if we’re lucky, we’ll be heading back out to LA in the next couple of months to do an interview with a few people including, hopefully Ryan Reynolds" (whom you might remember from such films as "Van Wilder," "Waiting," "Just Friends," and "The Amityville Horror").
   "I’m hoping the film will be successful," he said.
   As for a sequel to "Failure," Mr. Suchorsky said he has something in mind.
   "There’s another film that will follow and that is essentially about the next part of life," he said. "I won’t say what it is, but I started filming for it in 2004. I put that film on hold to do ‘Golden Days.’ I’ll probably go back to that film when I’m done with ‘Golden Days.’"