Filmmaker Daedalus Howell Creating Sci-Fi Film for the Art House
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Filmmaker Daedalus Howell Creating Sci-Fi Film for the Art House
Independent flick “FMRL” stars Golden Globe-winning actress Karen Black.
Sonoma, CA — The future looks bleak for Sonoma-based writer-director Daedalus Howell -– at least as interpreted in his debut feature film, FMRL, an independent sci-fi flick concerned with issues of censorship, pornography and freedom of speech in the post-Digital Age. Also written by Howell, the film is envisioned as an homage to the dystopian films of the 1970s (THX1138, A Clockwork Orange, Logan’s Run) with a sense of humor. It is currently in preproduction with Looking Glass Productions.
The campy film begins production this summer and stars Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe-winning actress Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces, Nashville) and newcomer Joseph Egender, star of festival circuit favorite Lurking in Suburbia, who has also appeared in television’s American Dreams and The West Wing. Claire Rankin, familiar to sci-fi fans as Dr. Kate Heightmeyer in Sci-Fi Channel’s Stargate: Atlantis, also stars as does veteran indie actor Jim Hanks who voiced the popular cowboy doll Woody in the animated video Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Abe Levy, director of The Aviary, co-produced by Howell and starring Rankin (now playing in the Sonoma Valley Film Festival), will shoot the futuristic feature. The score will be composed by Shannon Ferguson of RCA recording act Longwave.
“Digital technology has almost completely emancipated filmmakers from Hollywood,” says Howell, a native of Petaluma, CA, who lived and worked in Los Angeles for five years prior to “repatriating” to the scenic Sonoma County wine country earlier this year. “Bringing this flick to life in my own backyard, so to speak, has been both liberating and daunting — but the commute is much better.”
Howell, a Bay Area entertainment journalist and author of the cult novel The Late Projectionist, first garnered noticed as a filmmaker for his series of award-winning mock 1950s classroom films dubbed the R&H Educational Series with producing partner Jerry Rapp. The films have played numerous film festivals and aired on Showtime and Canal Plus.
Howell intends to focus much of the production of FMRL in Northern California, with an emphasis in Sonoma County, where he is part of the county Film Office’s Task Force on Film, a think tank comprised of local film professionals to bring more film productions to the area.
For more information, film synopsis and art, call Daedalus Howell directly at (310) 869-2913.
Visit DaedalusHowell.com.