In the last few years, indie filmmaking has seen a phenomenon few saw coming five years ago, spinning off from the work of the Duplass Brothers and the “Mumblecore” scene, many of the actors who have appeared in those films have in turn directed their own low-budget but high-concept indie films, starting a wave that’s been the talk of most of the film festivals of the last two years.
This was first seen at Sundance 2009 with Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, starring Joshua Leonard, who arguably starred in one of the first truly successful DIY movies The Blair Witch Project, and Mark Duplass. Duplass’ wife Katie Aselton followed that last year with The Freebie with Dax Sheppard (who went onto direct his own movie) and then Leonard himself directed The Lie, which debuted at this year’s Sundance.
On Friday, the 10th Tribeca Film Festival will premiere Treatment, the directorial debut by Steven Schardt and Sean Nelson, who both have been actively involved in this growing scene, Schardt as the producer of Humpday and Nelson as an actor who has made many appearances in movies by this scene.
The concept for Treatment is that Joshua Leonard and Nelson himself play failing L.A. screenwriters who learn that superstar actor Gregg D. has checked into rehab, so in order to get close enough to pitch their latest project to him, Leonard pretends to have a drug problem and checks himself in.
ComingSoon.net has an exclusive clip as well as a look at some of the supplementary materials made for the film including a TMZ-style story about Gregg D checking into Wingspan as well as a Vanity Fair questionnaire parody (View those here!).
Treatment debuts at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday night and look for our interview with Joshua Leonard sometime next week.
