The alternately fun and
turbulent lives of teenagers are a favorite topic for Hollywood
filmmakers.
But have you ever seen a
teen movie that was actually filmed by teens?
If not, Friday night is
your chance to see the big-screen debut of “The Leslie
Situation,” a feature-length movie shot by a team of Fremd High
School students.
Based on a screenplay by
Palatine resident David Grelck, “The Leslie Situation” will be
shown at Cutting Hall in Palatine.
Grelck, 23, started
writing the screenplay when he was a student at Fremd. Then he set
the script aside, studied film at Columbia College in Chicago,
spent a semester in Los Angeles learning about the film industry
and came back to Palatine, still striving to become a professional
filmmaker.
While Grelck hasn’t
received any calls from major studios offering big-budget picture
deals, he did receive an e-mail from Fremd senior Mike Noens.
Grelck had dated Noens’ sister, so Noens knew about the
screenplay.
Grelck agreed to let Noens
and his friends make the movie. And to his surprise, they did it.
“I was so impressed when
four high-school students finished making a feature film,”
Grelck said, noting that many college film students haven’t
accomplished as much.
Noens said he and three
friends — Steve Coulter, Derrick Greene and Nick Mikula —
began making movies with video cameras
five years ago, when they were at Plum Grove Junior High in
Palatine. They call their “studio” CNGM Pictures, coming up
with the name by combining their last initials.
After making a 15-minute
video titled “Keep it Simple” and the hour-long “Zero
Conspiracy,” the young filmmakers decided they wanted to try
making a full-length movie.
“The Leslie Situation”
approaches the subject of dating in high school from a somewhat
surreal perspective.
Noens said the film is
about a student named Crawford Briggs (Karl Pichotta), who is “a
pretty average student.”
He’s in love with a girl
at his school, but Leslie (Natalie Harden) seems too good for an
average guy like Crawford.
“Everyone’s telling
him, ‘Don’t go for it. She’s way of out of your league,’
” Noens said. “But he goes for it anyway.”
Leslie agrees to go out
with Crawford, but she is using him as a way of taunting her real
boyfriend.
Meanwhile, someone is
mysteriously posting information at the school about the status of
various student relationships. These dating ups and downs are
presented in the form of a stock market ticker.
“It’s a mystery,”
Noens said. “No one knows how it works.”
“I was going for
capturing the very surreal nature of relationships in high
school,” Grelck said. “People can follow the stock ticker. The
school is omnipresent. The school knows when a relationship is up
and down.”
The movie includes scenes
filmed along the lockers in the hallways at Palatine Village Hall
— left over from the days when that building was Palatine High
School.
Noens is the production
manager for movie; Mikula, the director; and Coulter, executive
producer and director of photography.
When they first made
films, they were interested in exactly the kind of movies you'd
expect junior-high boys to like.
“I had the typical guy
thing,” Noens said. “I wanted to make action movies with
cheesy dialogue — because it’s fun.”
Noens said his interests
have changed, and now he wants to make dialogue-driven dramas.
CNGM Pictures has also
progressed technologically.
The group used to edit its
video at AT&T Broadband’s public-access studios, but Noens
said “The Leslie Situation” was filmed on High-8 digital video
and edited on an Imac computer, resulting in higher-quality
picture and sound.
Although “American
Pie” and other teen-oriented movies have been box-office hits in
the last few years, Noens said he and his video-camera-wielding
cohorts were more inspired by the 1980s teen movies of John
Hughes, such as “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.”
“The ’80s teen films
are the most true to how life is in high school,” he said.
“The movies today always take place in L.A., and everyone is
rich. They’re not very realistic.”
Grelck said he was
impressed by the acting in “The Leslie Situation,” which
features students from Fremd’s theater classes.
“They really got the
material,” he said. “All the actors knew exactly what they
were doing.”
Noens said CNGM Pictures
plans to sell “The Leslie Situation” on DVD, as well as
soundtrack CDs featuring musicians Ryan Ohm, Marc Muszynski, Blame
Twilight and Elenie Dimoulis.
The cast of “The Leslie
Situation” also includes Gwen Kmiec, Nick Harden, Ryan Ohm,
Jamie Doppelt, Caitlin Barlow and Amy Coulter.
“The Leslie Situation”
will be shown at 8 p.m. Friday at Cutting Hall, 150 E. Wood St.,
Palatine. Tickets are $5. CNGM Pictures also produces a television
show called “Movie Talk,” shown at 9 p.m. Mondays on AT&T
Broadband Channel 19. The episode airing this month includes
scenes from “The Leslie Situation.” See www.cngmpictures.com
for details.
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