INTERVIEW: NJ-set ‘Dunning Man’ jumps from short story to silver screen
The Dunning Man began as a collection of short stories by writer Kevin Fortuna, and now the lengthiest piece in that collection has been given the silver-screen treatment. Director Michael Clayton has adapted The Dunning Man with James Carpinello (TV’s Gotham) in the lead role, and Fortuna now has a chance to see his wild ride of a narrative jump from one medium to another.
The Dunning Man, with Fortuna as producer, recently played the Garden State Film Festival, where it won the coveted Home Grown Feature prize. The movie also received its premiere at Resorts casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which seems appropriate because the dramedy is set in the New Jersey coastal city.
Carpinello plays a character who is down on his luck. He has recently broken up with a longtime girlfriend in New York City, and he moves back to his native A.C. to become a better landlord over a few rental properties he owns. While in the casino town, he runs into old family members, new enemies and possibly a few allies along the way.
“So this is a movie adapted from the longest story in that collection, The Dunning Man, which is about half the page length of the book,” Fortuna said in a recent phone interview. “It’s really a pretty felicitous adaptation of the last story in the collection, which again is the longest story, and the story was inspired by some experiences I had down in Atlantic City. I have been going down there since I was a kid, and I moved around a lot. So, in a lot of ways, Atlantic City is more home to me than anywhere else, and because of my longtime connection to the city and the fact that it felt like home, I’ve always sort of believed in it as it’s tried to reinvent itself over and over again. And I invested in some rental properties at one point, and my experiences as a landlord for those properties inspired the story, although the story is pure fiction.”
The Dunning Man is a wholly original story, but Fortuna counts filmmaking brothers Martin McDonagh and John Michael McDonagh as influences. He is particularly fond of In Bruges and The Guard, and the dark comedy that pervades those two features can definitely be found in The Dunning Man. Sprinkle in some Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese influences, and the story and characters in this new film begin to take shape.
“I wanted it to be fun,” he said. “I wasn’t really trying to shed light on the human condition and write something super literary, so much as I wanted to write something smart obviously. But I wanted to make people want to turn the pages. I wanted all the stories to have a forward lean and to have characters that you root for and characters that are complex, and that’s certainly true with what I was trying to do with Dunning Man, the short story. I had never written a screenplay, and I met Michael Clayton in a writing program, a low-residency writing program at the University of New Orleans. And I knew he was a great script writer, and I said, ‘Would you ever try your hand at an adaptation?’ And we collaborated on it, but he was the pen on that script.”
Clayton, who had never been to Atlantic City, spent a long weekend in the New Jersey city with Fortuna and the writer’s octogenarian uncle serving as tour guides. “I took him to all my old haunts,” he said. “He really fell in love with Atlantic City in a lot of ways. He called it the most American city because of its history, its constant effort to reinvent itself because of its contradictions.”
One can turn down a block in Atlantic City and find a luxurious casino resort like the Borgata. Turn down another block, and there may be a neighborhood struggling with poverty and crime. Nearby is the Atlantic Ocean and a beach that has had its ups and downs from a business standpoint. The Dunning Man captures much of this dichotomy because most of the exterior shots were filmed in the city (interior shots were filmed in New Orleans).
“Michael became so connected to this story that he really was the clear choice for a director,” Fortuna said. “We had a couple other directors attached at one point, but I finally said, since I put my own money into this, if I’m going to make the movie, then I really wanted Michael to direct it. And he was hesitant because it was a big ask, and there was a lot riding on it. But I think he did a great job. [He has an] encyclopedic knowledge of movies, and he was great with the technical aspects. And even though it’s his first film as a director, I think he did an amazing job.”
The film’s editor, Ian Blume, has a strong connection to Atlantic City, and Fortuna believes that helped the final product. “I think one of the lucky breaks that we got that helped us really pull the footage together and tell the story the right away was we got Ian, and Ian connected to the material, the sense of place, the history, which is kind of woven into the movie,” Fortuna said. “He was a great partner in the post-production process.”
The actual production was a trying endeavor. When filming in New Orleans, there was a heat wave and water ban on the set. When filming in Atlantic City, there was a Nor’easter, and the power grid went out. New Jersey was also having an unusual dip in temperatures, so they needed to warm the set with kerosene heaters. This bad luck seems to mirror the bad luck the main character has in the film.
Right now, the plan is to have The Dunning Man play film festivals, and Fortuna hopes that it will make it to movie theaters one day. He’s betting on a limited theatrical release, and he’s convinced it will do well in certain markets.
“More than anything, I just want people to see it, and I think it does deserve to get a wider audience thanks to the great work of everybody involved,” he said. “I’ve been approached by a couple of people. I have not made any commitments at this point. The story kind of keeps getting better. We had our world premiere at Cinequest on the West Coast, this great festival right in Silicon Valley, and we’ve been accepted to 12 festivals, including two international festivals. So I think, over the course of this year, I’m going to figure out what makes the most sense for the movie, but audience reactions have been amazing so far. We had four screenings out west, and people laughed at the right times. And people were really enjoying themselves. Again I wanted it to be a fun ride, and I hope and I think that we accomplished that.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Dunning Man is currently playing film festivals, and Fortuna’s short story collection is currently available on Amazon. Fortuna said profits from the book will help Concern Worldwide, an organization based out of Ireland. Click here for more information.
