Say Hello to My Little Film

The no-budget lovechild of an orgy featuring Starsky, Hutch, Crockett, Tubbs, Tony Montana, and Jackie Brown, Buzzer Beater contributor Damon Agnos and Jason Reid’s 75-minute buddy cop flick, Haymaker & Sally, was filmed over the course of nine hell-bent-for-leather days in South Central Seattle, with an all-amateur cast comprising the filmmakers’ acquaintances. With enough crass dialogue to make Tarantino blush and more gunfire than the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, the film succeeds due to its adroit pacing, silly-but-smart one-liners, a gloriously realized undercurrent of sleaze, and a bearded Special Forces villain (played by Reid himself) who’d whoop John Rambo in a staring contest. When filming the picture’s climactic shootout near an armored car lot in Georgetown this past Fourth of July, some cast members—described by Agnos in the production notes as often being “too drunk to act”—were cuffed by an actual SPD SWAT team who mistook them for a gang of armed robbers. (To make matters more surreal, some of those apprehended were dressed as cops.) Life imitating art has a new standard bearer, evidently.
Sat., Oct. 13, 2007