Beneath, Between, Behind the Scenes: The Producer of LIFE
M. Francis Enright is a filmmaker. His first short film, LIFE, was accepted into zero of the 23 festivals to which it was submitted. His second short film, The Comic, was nominated for Best Dark Comedy at the Georgia Comedy Film Festival. His third short film, Say Your Name, won Best Drama and Best Director at the Top Shorts Films Festival and was selected for the 2024 Boston International Film Festival.
I’m not a great judge of character. I just take people at face value and do not spend a lot of time evaluating them. If they tell me something, I don’t give it a lot of thought, unless it is utterly absurd, self-serving bullshit.
Which, even at my low-rent level, you run into a lot.
This past March, I was at the Boston International Film Festival with a short film I had written and directed. A short, balding man in a cheap rumpled suit asked me if I had a film in the festival. I told him I did. He then proceeded to tell me about the 12 short films and 6 feature films he had written, directed, and produced. He also told me about his medical supply business in Houston, TX. He said that the director of the BIFF had asked him to come to the festival, even though he didn’t have a film in the festival. That had to be bullshit.
Then he remarked, “Yeah, this is a pretty good crowd. Not as crowded as the Oscars though. I was out there for that.”
Obviously, his implication was that he was at the Oscars, as in he was in there sitting at a table with George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Maybe he was in LA at the time of the Oscars. Maybe he was eating in a Thai restaurant a few miles from the Dolby Theater, eating Pad Thai and dreaming of wearing a tuxedo and standing at the podium, proud yet humble. Perhaps he even stood outside in the crowd of desperate sycophants watching the beautiful people going in and wanting so badly to be a part of that crowd.
But “at the Oscars”? I’m calling bullshit on that.
He is far from alone.
The film industry, much like the music industry, is full of people who talk big, completely misrepresenting themselves and their status. They have this lunging quality about them. When they talk to you, they are constantly scanning the crowd for someone who might be more important that they can leech onto and try to sell themselves.
It is nauseating and at the same time fascinating. How does a person go through life being full of bullshit? Do they believe it?
Somehow, Kyle Johnson became the producer of LIFE, which was odd because of the folks at the production company, he was the least capable. To this day, I am not sure why they were working with him or why he was put in charge of anything. It seemed to stem from a sense of loyalty which I admire in the abstract but it didn’t do me any good.
I could forgive that except that Kyle is a walking monument of bullshit..
Kyle bills himself as a stand-up comedian, as well as an actor, a producer, and all around genius. He has a couple of videos of himself on YouTube, one touting his credentials as a comedian and offering his services to “teach” comedy. He is standing on a stage, talking about how he was the class clown and everyone thought he was a riot. It is not clear that there is anyone in the audience.
In the other, he is performing stand-up at a bar. By that I mean it appeared as though he had grabbed the mic that was being used for karaoke and started telling jokes. One of his jokes had to do with women not achieving climax during sex. “That’s why some women never come at all.” Which I think he lifted from the first Austin Powers movie.
The only thing funny about the videos is that anyone might actually seek Kyle out for guidance in stand up comedy.
Kyle talks constantly and in all of his stories, he is the hero. He saved the day with his excellent acting skills, or knowledge of building sets, or how to use a copy machine. He will tell the same stories over and over. Which is irritating enough in itself but add to that the fact that he does not do his job.
Two days before we were to shoot David’s first day at the office, we were doing a walk through to see how the action would play out. David walks into the lobby of the building and takes one of the elevators to the second floor.
About a month, maybe two, before this I had asked Kyle to order a banner that had the name of the company that David worked for printed on it. I told him which one I liked and went on to make other decisions about what was needed, trusting that it would get done. All he had to do was order it online from Staples and go pick it up. (This request was met with yet another story about Kyle’s heroism. He told me that he often had to help the people at Staples use the machine because was an expert on that in addition to everything else he is an expert at.)
When we were doing the walk through I told the DP, Larry, that we would want to get the wall between the elevators in the shot because that is where we would place the banner. Larry asked, “Where is the banner?”
We all looked at Kyle who mumbled, “I had it sent to my mother’s house.”
Which was a lie. He had forgotten to order the banner. He is too busy bullshitting to order a banner.
And he wasn’t even smart enough to hold the lie. He emailed me later in the day to ask me which banner I liked.
I didn’t have the energy to call him out on it. I had a thousand other things to think about so I just picked one and he put a rush on it and it got there in time but Jesus Christ. You’re a forty something year old man and you can’t even order a banner? And you call yourself a producer? Producers are supposed to fix problems, not create them.
Just stop talking and do your fucking job.
