Conversations with Kathleen Turner: Acting for the Stage and Screen
This book, a collaboration with stage and screen legend Kathleen Turner, will be constructed around a series of conversations between Turner and Morrow about such subjects as the relationship between an actor and a director, the preparation an actor must do for a role, and the pursuit of acting as a contemporary profession. Turner will also discuss with Morrow her many iconic film and stage roles. Kathleen Turner is a Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-, Grammy-, and Tony-nominated actor famous for her three decades of roles in cinema and on Broadway. Among her many films are Body Heat, Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Accidental Tourist, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Prizzi's Honor, Serial Mom, and The Virgin Suicides. On TV, she's appeared on The Simpsons, Friends, Nip/Tuck, Law & Order, and in a recurring role on the David Duchovny series Californication. On Broadway, she's recently been seen in The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and the controversial new plays Red Hot Patriot and High.
Everything Went Down
The feature film Everything Went Down is a realist musical in the style of the beloved Irish film Once. The movie mixes comedy, drama, and music to tell the story of a young college professor (played by acclaimed Canadian theatre artist Noah Drew) who has become a shell of a person following the death two years earlier of his wife. Crippled by a numbing grief, he’s shut himself off from the world emotionally. At the same time, a young singer-songwriter (popular indie rocker Kate Tucker) has begun to lose faith in the struggle to make a name for herself as a musician. Bogged down by the pressures of turning her art into commerce, she has lost sight of why she wanted to make music in the first place. Unfolding over the space of a couple weeks, the film chronicles the budding friendship between the professor and the singer, as the energy and beauty of her music begins to bring him back to life, and the value of her music to this man reawakens her to the merits of making music. Learn more about the film at its website, www.everythingwentdown.com.
Portland Music Video Festival
Prof. Morrow is the founding director of the Portland Music Video Festival, one of the only festivals in the world dedicated exclusively to the history, art, craft and exhibition of music videos. Music videos have influenced the manner in which television shows, commercials, and films are shot and edited. They have changed the methods by which music, film, and all popular media are marketed. They have altered the way that talent in the television and music industries is discovered and groomed. They have influenced politics, fashion, contemporary art, and advertising. And they have contributed to the development of a popular youth culture, forever altering the attention spans, the multitasking abilities, and the media savvy of young adults. The Portland Music Video Festival is dedicated to celebrating the production of the music video, and nurturing the great partnership between the music and filmmaking communities in Portland and across the country. More information is available here: http://www.portlandmusicvideofestival.com.
Music Videos
Dustin Morrow occasionally produces and directs music videos and short musical films. Among his recent videos are one for Kate Tucker’s “Blue December” (http://vimeo.com/41122063) and Johanna and the Dusty Floor’s “Forest of Sorrows” (http://vimeo.com/44683378).
Ground: London
Ground: London is an experimental short film that explores London’s urban landscapes from an unconventional point of view. The film was shot entirely on location in London.
Jet Lag
Jet Lag is a meditative short film that questions the convenience of modern transportation. When one can get on a plane, take a pill, fall asleep, and wake up thousands of miles away, as if no time has passed, what has been lost? Is there not value in feeling the miles pass – in watching the landscape move and change? If you’ve traversed half the globe in one fail swoop, shouldn’t you feel tired? In this experimental narrative, an Irish businessman becomes lost in the world – realizing that his entire life is connected to a series of numbers (mobile phone, social security, bank, credit, frequent flyer, and dozens of others); and as he moves about the nation and the planet with such ease, he ceases to feel as if he belongs anywhere. The health of the psyche is connected in part to place, to environment, and if that place is always changing, what effect does that have on the person?
The Working Man
The Working Man is a funny and frightening investigation into the deterioration of self-worth in the contemporary American workplace. This animated narrative feature film follows Jim Charleston, a working stiff with an unrewarding day job doing data entry, a wife who barely knows he exists, and a terrible case of chronic insomnia. Jim decides to accept a position as a phone support technician on the graveyard shift at a virtually empty, almost featureless office building. Before long, he’s beset by loneliness and boredom, which turn to hallucinations and madness as he feels his sense of self begin to slip away. The Working Man was shot with a barebones crew in the nearly anonymous landscapes of suburban Des Moines, Iowa, where the endless sea of interstates, office parks, and fast food restaurants provide a frightening setting for the story of one man’s revolt against a system that seeks to strip him of his individuality. This offbeat film asks challenging questions about the culture of work in the United States, and the importance of job satisfaction.