Rob Munday
Have you ever experienced red mist and then regretted it? That flashpoint where your anger burns so bright that you see the cause of your rage as “all that is wrong with the world”, only later to realise you probably went a bit too far. If so, then you’re going to relate to today’s S/W pick, dark-comedy A Simple F*cking Gesture by Jesse Shamata.
Set entirely within a car stuck in rush hour traffic, Shamata’s eight-minute short places its viewers as the awkward third wheel in the vehicle, as we witness the couple inside completely lose their sh*t over driver etiquette. Letting the driver ahead of them pull into their lane, all they expected in return was the “simple f*cking gesture” of the title, but when they encourage the other motorist to pull over they encounter something they weren’t expecting…a “land pirate”.
Christy Bruce (L) & Paul Bates seeing red in an encounter with another driver in Jesse Shamata’s short film
Inspired by Shamata’s own anxiety of being in traffic, the writer/director describes creating A Simple F*cking Gesture as a “therapeutic endeavor”. After voice recording his raw and immediate reactions to road rage in his car, upon listening back he realised that they were not only “embarrassing but funny”, they also provoked a session of self-reflection which proved instrumental when developing the premise of the short. “I wanted to make the film because, while I sounded like an angry lunatic, it sparked questions about entitlement, and how I projected my insecurities onto other drivers”, the director explains. “Ultimately I thought it was a pretty relatable and darkly comedic way to hone in on a microcosm of privileged society.”
Essentially a two-hander between its lead actors (and real-life couple) Christy Bruce and Paul Bates, although A Simple F*cking Gesture is largely restricted to the interior of a car, don’t be fooled into thinking this was an easy shoot. Requiring the closure of a street and 25 background actors in cars to recreate the traffic jam Shamata had his hands full on the set of the short, but credits the spontaneity of his two leads as vital in the film’s success. “When takes went astray, as improvisers they could bring things back on course with ad libs – much of which made the final cut”, he reveals. For the role of the mysterious man in the car in front of the couple, the director turned to someone he knew his could trust, his own father Chuck Shamata, as he was sure he could “bring a perfect balance of menace and humor to the role”.
Christy Bruce and Paul Bates (pictured) are a real-life couple and had weeks working with the material before the shoot
To ensure the shoot went smoothly, Shamata and his DP Martin Hawkes staged the scene, “beat by beat”, by using mini Hot-Wheels cars from overhead to prepare. On the night of filming, with limited hours of darkness in August, they worked to a dusk-til-dawn schedule, employing some creative lighting – “Quasar tubes mounted to the roof and practical ‘street construction’ lights for the exterior” – to get everything they needed in that one night.
Financed through the Directors Guild of Canada Short Film Fund, I first caught A Simple F*cking Gesture at Encounters festival here in the UK and it was a film I instantly wanted for S/W. Thankfully Shamata was a lot more agreeable than his on-screen characters and was excited for his film to be a part of our collection. Continuing to work as a writer/director he now has a “traumedy” called Keep It Together in the works, along with a musical comedy titled Feltworth.