Of Small Ponds and Big Ambitions

Film directors depict small towns as either Norman Rockwell-esque fantasies or intellectually stifling places full of small-minded people.

But the Columbia, Missouri, depicted in Baltimore filmmaker Josh Slates' first feature film, Small Pond, is neither. It's a place where artists can find themselves while paying cheap rent and working at one of the local bars or restaurants that cater to the college crowd.

But it's also a place where you can stagnate, sitting on a bar stool night after night like the movie's heroine Kirsten.

"You have sort of built in expectations about small-town America and [Slates] sees something more interesting there," says Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival. "He sees people who are struggling with more human issues."

Small Pond sold out at its screening at the Charles Theater as the only narrative feature by a Baltimorean at the festival. The movie will play at a Baltimore movie theater again in April and at the Ragtag Cinema in the movie's — and Slates' — hometown. It won a Programmer's Award at Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.

Small Pond's Kirsten drinks too much and works too little, alienating many of her friends. She relies on her roommate Katie —played by rising indie queen Amy Seimetz — to drive her to work and buy groceries after losing her license from a DUI.

"Don't f--- with my portabella mushrooms," Katie warns after Kirsten refuses to pay her share of the stuffed fungi. "Don't even."

Naturally, Kirsten does.

Played by Hari Leigh, Kirsten also has a penchant for cutting sarcasm. When she meets a new graduate student at the Missouri School of Journalism — a transplant from Baltimore — Kirsten congratulates the newbie for her career choice, given, you know, all the promising things that are happening in the newspaper industry.

Kirsten dreams of working in the music business, but lacks the confidence to break free from the barstool to do something more meaningful besides taking orders at Shakespeare's Pizza.

"There's a little bit of myself in Kirsten," Slates says during a recent interview at One World Café in Charles Village. It was a long-awaited break for Slates, who had been working nonstop on movies for the past seven months. "There's more of myself in that character than I would like to admit."

That seems hard to believe for Slates, 35, who counts more than two-dozen TV shows and movies among his film credits. Most recently, he was an assistant location manager for the HBO movie Game Change, shot in Maryland, and The Dark Knight Rises, filmed in Pittsburgh. He has also worked on The Social Network, Up in the Air and He's Just Not That Into You.

A film school graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Slates moved to Baltimore in 1998 while the city was enjoying its film and TV heyday with Liberty Heights, Runaway Bride and Homicide. He got a job at the Charles Theater — "one of the best decisions of my professional career" — that connected him with the city's movie scene.

His first film gig was working as a production assistant on the final season of Homicide. Having directed 11 short films, Slates decided it was time to make his first feature film.

"There was no compelling reason not to make a feature film," says Slates, who lives in Hampden. "Our time on earth is finite. It was time to get crackin.'"

Depicting the environment he grew up in seemed like a logical first step in his feature filmmaking career. "I didn't see any honest portrayals of the Midwest in film," Slates says.

"TV shows like Cops show bare-knuckle brawling in the trailer, but I wanted to capture the vibrant spirit of its creative community of artists and musicians. I wanted to show a side of the Midwest that highlighted its everyday easygoing tranquility."

His directorial inspirations are Richard Linklater (Slacker), Hal Hartley (Henry Fool) and Baltimore's favorite son John Waters.

"Those three people more than anyone else taught me you can make movies in your backyard with your best friend and tell an interesting story with a unique point of view."

Going forward, his dream, like any filmmaker, is to have the movie picked up by a distributor for widespread theatrical release.

Getting there will be a challenge as there are fewer distributors and movie theaters, yet more budding filmmakers thanks to digital technology that makes it cheaper to make a movie these days, says Scott Bayer, publisher of Indie Film Reporter.

After getting rejected from the larger film festivals, Slates says he'll focus now on the smaller ones like Sidewalk. "I'll continue to share it with audiences," Slates says of Small Pond. "I'd like to look at this as first in a series of low-budget filmmaking." 

Julekha Dash will make her debut as BmoreMedia's Managing Editor Nov. 15. A former senior reporter at the Baltimore Business Journal, Dash has written for Baltimore magazine, Portfolio, Salon and Delaware Today.

Captions All photos © Arianne Teeple - Filmmaker Josh Slates at the Charles Theater - Film at the Charles Theater in Baltimore, MD - Filmmaker Josh Slates at the Charles Theater - Photo © 2011 Tenhoursaweek, LLC - Filmmaker Josh Slates at the Charles Theater - The Charles Theater in Baltimore