WWTW Interview: Writer/director David Spaltro (…Around)

One of the perks of running a movie web site is getting to know young filmmakers like David Spaltro.

David reached out to me recently regarding “…Around,” his first feature film. I gave it a look and came away impressed. It’s a complicated tale of a film student named Doyle, well played by Robert W. Evans, barely making his way through school.

It’s full of big ideas and strong performances, the raw material we should see more of in mainstream movies.

The filmmaker shared his thoughts with WWTW about how he became a filmmaker – and why he needed 40 credit cards to finance his movie.

WWTW: Tell me about your film education — how did film school help you? Did you always yearn to be a filmmaker?

DS: I remember when I saw my father [as a child] we’d go to a movie, or being six years old and seeing the 1989 “Batman” and realizing for the first time that movies were real and there were people behind them creating these amazing things.

I gravitated more towards comic books and writing but eventually got involved with both the drama and the communications departments in high school.

It was during my time at the School of Visual Arts in NYC I learned and really fell in love with filmmaking as a tool for telling stories. I had great and different teachers like Larry Hiller (who plays the writing professor in my film) who really pushed me to try out new things and find my voice as well as seeing all the different parts of how a film comes together; from the crew, the preproduction and post-production.

We had to make two films a year, so writing, casting, shooting and editing quickly prepared me for independent filmmaking, for sure.

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WWTW: How autobiographical is your film? Was that a hard balance — to use your own life as inspiration while keeping the film as totally Doyle’s story?

DS: The film is very autobiographical not just in the word-for-word or what really happened sense. I feel once you start writing something it’s fiction because you can only tell it from your point of view, but it’s very true to me and events I went through and people I knew and memories sort of tied together.

Almost two years after making it I’ve realized just how much the film is me and how much I’m still “Doyle.” In some ways it is a perfect capsule of me at 18, thinking I was invincible, but in some ways I’m probably just as crazy and risk taking and wear my heart on my torn coat sleeve as much as he does.

Tomorrow: Spaltro recalls some production problems which hit his film, including an untimely visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and why he decided to self-finance the project.

Part 2 of WWTW’s chat with David Spaltro

(Photo: Doyle (Robert W. Evans), the main character in the new indie film “…Around,” does a balancing act with his credit cards.)

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4. WWTW Interview: ‘Frozen’ writer/director Adam Green – Pt. I
5. WWTW interview: ‘Extract’ writer/director Mike Judge – Pt. 1