When crafting storyboards, filmmakers usually look to repertoire titles for inspiration. They may even “borrow” from a few. While this do-your-movie-homework method garnered millions for derivative blockbusters like “Hostel” and the “Kill Bill” series, Greg Mansur ’04 (MFA) prefers a road less traveled.
The RTVF instructor of six years stays out of theaters and avoids the television while developing a project. Observing other people’s work, he believes, taints the creative process and can tear the filmmaker away from her original concept.
“Everything I do comes from life experiences,” he says. “You always write what you know. I don’t watch a lot of movies or read a lot of books when writing. I keep a journal, so I can reflect on my past. I try to stay in that place.”
As an undergraduate, Mansur enormously admired Frederick Nietzsche and other spearheads of the Existentialist movement. Through his master’s thesis, “IDENTITY: The Creation of Identity within a Consumer Culture,” he opened a deeper discussion into how one can lose herself through the brainwashings of popular culture. Portions of this conversation made it to celluloid in 2004 with his short film “Adrift,” which follows middle-aged Wendy Nietzsche as she rediscovers herself after coming to terms with an unsatisfying life.
Mansur, a 55-year-old Boston native, has always pushed his film students to ignore the talking heads and make an opinion (or “a world”) of their own. He insists that, like Wendy discovered, it’s never too late. He believes that manifesting “a personal culture” is vital in order to distinguish student’s own sensibilities from their peers and from what the mainstream media forces down the public’s throat. He advocates film school as the ideal place “for a student to get that first self-portrait out of their system.”
“When most students enter film school, they’re only thinking about Madonna or whoever’s hot at the moment,” he says. “I try to bring them to a place where it’s not about being a celebrity but where they can find their own creative spirit.”
When Mansur realized that some students weren’t responding to “Adrift” and the lectures that followed, he reinvented his soapbox within a more relatable genre — the romantic comedy.
Shot in three days at Bari’s Restaurant in Flower Mound, “Date.CON” follows an obsessive-compulsive shut-in (“Prison Break’s” Brett Brock) whose friend coerces him into arranging lunch with women he met through an online dating service. The middle-aged bachelor endures one blind date gone awry after another.
The five dates are played by members of Random Order, a local acting/film production troupe that includes Mansur (who studies acting to learn how people think in front of the camera). Our shut-in gets slapped in the face by most of them: a hypersensitive “psychic,” a voluptuous nymphomaniac, a humorless control freak, an emotional wreck of a Christian fundamentalist and, yes, even a gay guy who misread the bachelor’s sexual orientation.
“I didn’t want to approach the subject in a cynical manner. I only wanted to show the hassles of the blind date,” Mansur said. “[Online dating services are] a good idea, but they’re always marketed as this ‘find your soul mate’ thing.”
Mansur uses the 40-minute short as a tell-tale for his students to understand what he sees as the deceptions in a consumer culture. Specifically, how the online dating game, he believes, can be a racket that sensationalizes love and convinces singles into settling for something less than intended, ultimately altering their identity.
“Date.CON” has been submitted to the GenArt Film Festival in Manhattan, and Mansur’s short film “4 Minute Matisse” will show in March at Dallas’ first AFI Festival. He also will be an AFI judge in the documentary competition, a result of his work with National Geographic TV and as photo director for the feature-length documentary on Rockwell Kent, which, after 13 years in production, was completed in 2005.
The independent film community may not recognize Mansur’s efforts as a profound body of work, but it certainly embraces them.
“Most romance comedy-type shorts can get depressing or too preachy, but this one was fun,” Think Tank Entertainment producer Keith Duncan said of “Date.CON,” “It has commercial value. If he were to expand the script with more back story, the movie would have some legs for a feature-length. With what he’s got now, he can raise money.”
In fact, Mansur has considered expanding his latest project to feature-length. He just doesn’t plan on watching other romantic comedies to get ideas how.
Mansur in the director’s chair: ”My Father” (1996) — 45-minute documentary explores Mansur’s bittersweet relationship with his dad “Me and the Angels” (2002) — two fugitives take a family hostage in a warehouse and “have to choose between hate or forgiveness” “Adrift” (2004) — a woman reinvents herself during a midlife crisis “Imperfection” (2005) — domestic abuse in the suburbs “Reilly” (2005) — an adolescent comes of age “4 Minute Matisse” — a threesome of sexy cat burglars (won first place in the 2006 Video Association of Dallas’ 24-hour video race) “Date.CON” (2006) — a humorous think-piece on online dating
For more information, contact Mansur at g.mansur@tcu.edu
When crafting storyboards, filmmakers usually look to repertoire titles for inspiration. They may even “borrow” from a few. While this do-your-movie-homework method garnered millions for derivative blockbusters like “Hostel” and the “Kill Bill” series, Greg Mansur ’04 (MFA) prefers a road less traveled.