Where to Land Continues Racking Up Awards
Where To Land wins the Grand Prize at the Lisbon Film Festival! I would encourage anyone to find a screening of Where To Land and attend. Its favorable reception isn’t surprising to me given the shape our world society is in. The story offers what feels like a step back to normalcy ironically, since the consequences in the story are very much rooted in misunderstanding. The offer to work on WTL came to me in March of 2020 as the pandemic was just starting to put the kibosh on everyone’s momentum, especially the film industry. Hal intended to have “some fun” with my role in expanding it. Somewhere in the midst of a two-and-a-half hour wardrobe fitting that spanned two days, Hal made an impromptu choice to name the character in this diminutive role, Carlos Barbados. Hal envisioned Carlos as this flamboyant and narcissistic artist, snapping shots of Muriel (Kim Taff) while demanding espressos and camera switches from his assistant. But as is common in the biz, not all ideas make it in. The role was relegated to a featured stint. You can see my final look, replete with scarf, in this production still. One of the final requests to costume designer Kerry Hassler by Hal was “a bigger scarf.”
As uncertainty draped itself over the planet, Hal pushed shooting until the late summer of 2020 but WTL was cancelled indefinitely. The project was resurrected in 2024. I received the script in March. What you see on screen is very much as it read — this isn’t always the case. But given this is Hal Hartley, you can arguably transpose most of his work onto the stage — which is to say, this is dialog-driven material. I was immediately drawn to the piece and had favorite lines of dialog, one in particular from Leonard (Robert John Burke) who says “Gotta be careful about charitable impulses. They can be a mask for vanity.”
Hal Hartley directs Jason Arcaro, Kim Taff and Katelyn Sparks in Where To Land