Disposal

Love is not disposable. But a body is. An atmospheric blend of mirth and malice, DISPOSAL is the darkly comic tale of a yuppie twosome facing a dreadful predicament, and a father and son hunting for the perfect gobbler. On this crisp autumn day they will all wish they had never met. DISPOSAL stars J.K. Simmons (Spiderman 1 + 2, The Cider House Rules), Catherine Lloyd Burns (Malcolm in the Middle, Everything Put Together), Sam Breslin Wright (Happy Hour) and Jake M. Smith (Holes).

Sandra & Ted suddenly find themselves in a classic dilemma

I think I was the first person to buy this DVD from Amazon.com. It had no Amazon rating (or a rating of infinity, if you look at things the other way around) when I clicked on the listing. Now it's got an Amazon rating.

So I may as continue the trend by being the first to review it. And I may as well give the full five stars while I am it.

I was curious about "Disposal" because the star Catherine Lloyd Burns told an anecdote about the shoot for this film in her book, "It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks." She's perfectly cast in the role. She plays a struggling 30-something actress named Sandra. She is married to (or maybe just living with) a dopey guy named Ted who has one of those jobs where he has to wear a suit but makes enough money to lease a pretty snazzy SUV. One lovely fall day, they get enmeshed in a classic thriller dilemma: they suddenly have a corpse to dispose of. (Hence the title of the film.)

They come up with a foolproof plan to get rid of the corpse. It is not giving away too much of the plot to say that the plan turns out not to be foolproof.

Ms. Burns is outstanding as the sharp-tongued, quick-thinking heroine. J.K. Simmons is great as a smug turkey hunter who chooses the wrong day to take his son out in the woods with him. The photography is gorgeous. The plot is not necessarily 100% hole-free but the story moves along so quickly and so strongly that you really won't notice.

This is an 18-minute short originally created for the festival cicruit and as a sample of the director Alex Turner's (considerable) talents. June 24, 2006

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