Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Movie Basis 1
The Baltimore Sun
June 25, 1998, Thursday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: FEATURES, Pg. 1E
LENGTH: 1072 words
HEADLINE: 'Hav Plenty' heals filmmaker's heart; Success: Love gone awry led a young man to dump his film project and write about the broken affair. Therein lies a tale.
BYLINE: Ann Hornaday, SUN FILM CRITIC
BODY:
Life's hard. Love hurts. But art heals -- especially in the form of an acclaimed movie and a multi-picture deal.
Three summers ago, Christopher Scott Cherot, having dropped out of New York University's prestigious film school, was immersed in the pre-production phases of his first feature movie. But the budding auteur was preoccupied. "At that time I had just gone through this relationship and was suffering, I guess, from an intensely broken heart," the 30-year-old filmmaker recalled in a recent telephone interview, "and the creativity that I thought I would have for this first project was stunted. All of my thoughts and all of what I guess you'd call the creative juices were consumed with the after-effects of this relationship. So I felt, since this is consuming my creativity and it's on my mind, I felt the best thing to do, the most positive therapeutic catharsis for me, would be to write about it."
So Cherot wrote. And wrote. And he realized that the words and scenes were coming much more easily than they did in his other project. When the new script was finished, "I realized this was a good story, and I could make it for less money than I thought I could make my other script for," he said. So, putting the first film aside, Cherot cast the new movie that fall. By early 1996, its mostly-unknown ensemble cast was rehearsing. Cobbling together a $ 65,000 budget (most of it from mortgaging his mother's house), Cherot spent three weeks filming that spring.
One year later, after editing his feature debut on two VCRs, Cherot showed the film to an audience for the first time at the Acapulco Film Festival. Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds and his wife, Tracey, hot off the success of their first production effort, "Soul Food," saw the film and bought it on the spot. When the movie was screened at the Toronto film festival the following September, executives from Miramax purchased it from them and offered Cherot that multi-picture deal.
And -- after wowing audiences at Sundance just for good measure -- "Hav Plenty," the little romantic comedy that started with a broken heart, opened in theaters last Friday to warm reviews and pretty respectable box office.
"I'm sure some people out there will say, 'This happened to this guy overnight,' " Cherot allowed. "And it may seem like that. But I think my overnight success is how quickly I came out of obscurity. Actually it took me three and a half years."
"Hav Plenty" is set during an eventful holiday weekend at the Architectural Digest-worthy home of one Havilland Savage (Chenoa Maxwell), a lovely young professional who is currently dating a rap impresario (Hill Harper) who is rich, handsome and cheating on her like a dog. ("Am I a biscuit, Michael?" she asks at one point. "Am I a french fry? Than why do you keep playing me like a side order?")
In a fit of pique, Hav invites struggling writer Lee Plenty (Cherot) to spend the weekend with her, her best friend and her sister. Thrusts, parries and general romantic mayhem ensue. Although the title indicates that this hot-and-cold romance ends in the Hollywood-style wedding, nothing in "Hav Plenty" is that simple.
At one point in the film, Cherot -- who took the starring role when one of his actors dropped out at the last minute -- turns to the camera and says, "Remember folks, as outlandish as this all seems, this is a true story." In fact, Cherot initially wanted to keep the story's real-life roots hidden: He even put a pseudonym on the shooting script.
But he was quickly found out. "Once we started shooting, something about my performance as Lee made people think that I wrote it. My assistant director came up to me one day and said, 'You wrote this, didn't you?' I asked him why he should think that and he said, 'Because you haven't looked at it once since we've been shooting.' That kind of gave it away."
Turning your real life into reel life has its other dangers. For one thing, Hav doesn't come off as the most sympathetic young woman. Throughout the film, she teases Lee, manipulates him into hanging around her house and extols the virtues of her rich and powerful boyfriend -- wealth and power meaning more to her than, say, creativity and soul.
Indeed, according to Maxwell -- who makes her feature debut in "Hav Plenty" -- Hav started out as an even more unsympathetic character. She insisted that Hav be given more humanity. "I didn't want to make her a [witch]," Maxwell said during a visit to Baltimore last month. "She's a woman scorned, and she has some walls up. I think Chris would have wanted to make her a total [witch], but I didn't want that."
For his part, Cherot insisted that "Hav Plenty" "wasn't a revenge piece." But the best judge is probably the real Hav herself, who isn't talking. Although she attended the film's premiere earlier this month, there was no record of her reaction to the movie.
But at least one of the real-life characters has seen and approves of the story of her life: "The girl who inspired Caroline [Hav's dotty, French-speaking friend, played in a screwball turn by Tammi Katherine Jones] was at the Pan-African Film Festival in February," Cherot said. "She was very flattered. We talked, and she felt that it was very accurate and very fair and helped her realize some of the things she did wrong. But she's still flamboyant. She had an Afro wig and a leopard coat on.
"One of the reasons I don't think [the real] Caroline or Hav will be offended was that I took a time and event and I wrote about it, but the actors themselves put a new light on these characters," Cherot said. "I think the real-life characters will see little flashes of themselves on screen, but these are different people up there."
Still, the power of "Hav Plenty" lies in its proximity to reality. Life's hard, but when it's turned into art, its mysteries are sometimes revealed. "Several times [in 'Hav Plenty'] Hav says, 'Lee, I know you have to go, but could you do me a favor ' I didn't understand until I saw the film on the screen -- and I wrote it! -- that every time Hav asked that, she was asking Lee to stay," Cherot recalled. "And it brought tears to my eyes. I would never have realized that if I hadn't written it."
As for love? "My heart was mended way before I met who I'm with today," Cherot said softly. "I think the actual writing of the film was where the true healing came."
Pub Date: 6/25/98
GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO, His story: Christopher Cherot wrote and stars in "Hav Plenty" with (from left) Tammi Katherine Jones, Robinne Lee and Chenoa Maxwell.
Movie Basis 2
Chicago Sun-Times
June 24, 1998, WEDNESDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 50
LENGTH: 491 words
HEADLINE: Filmmaker blended reality and romance to get 'Plenty'
BYLINE: BY BILL STAMETS
BODY:
Romance and realism make an odd couple onscreen, but director Christopher Scott Cherot marries these contrary styles in his debut effort, "Hav Plenty."
Hearts and careers clash in Cherot's autobiographical comedy about a starving novelist surrounded by material girls. Camping on friends' couches, Cherot actually lived the role of a real-life starving artist before his film triggered its own happy ending. Cherot, 30, traces his fondness for romantic comedy back to a youthful infatuation. "I was 10 years old when I first saw 'The Goodbye Girl' in 1977," he said. "And for some reason that movie just spoke to me. It played right around the corner from my house in the Bronx where we lived. I saw that movie maybe maybe 11 or 12 times, and I can't understand why I loved that movie."
For "Hav Plenty" (now at local theaters), Cherot created an alter ego of Lee Plenty, a New York writer with a canceled book contract and no apartment lease, who goes on a holiday trip to a friend's house in Washington, D.C. "What follows is a true story," states Cherot over the film's opening titles. To keep things true, Cherot also plays the role of Plenty.
While in D.C., Plenty encounters a flirting trio of professionally upscale women. His wry rebuffs only heighten their curiosity about this "self-imposed celibate slacker," as Cherot describes Plenty. Writer's block meets lover's block. As the women reshuffle their priorities, the house guest with the torn jeans absorbs new material for a screenplay.
Cherot winces when critics compare his film to "love jones," another recent African-American romantic comedy. "That was the same love story we've seen over and over again," he said. "Because there are black people in it, now we embrace it. This is a great move in responsible filmmaking," he added sarcastically.
Shot in 16-mm. for around $ 65,000, "Hav Plenty" opened the first Acapulco Black Film Festival in July, 1997, before it moved on to the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where Miramax Films bought the movie.
After Miramax test-marketed "Hav Plenty," Cherot resorted to some creative fine tuning. The original ending left matters unresolved for its two romance-wary leads. But test audiences wanted to see the movie's leading couple reunite. "I agreed to change the ending," Cherot said. "I said 'no problem.' "
The film now ends with a "One Year Later" scene at the premiere of the movie "Tru Love," an autobiographical comedy. In the lobby afterward, Cherot's character agrees to add a happy ending when movie executives offer a deal. "I always knew I wanted to do a film-within-a-film epilogue," Cherot said. By building the movie deal into his new ending, Cherot keeps "Hav Plenty" on course as a "true story."
As for whether he will recycle the next chapter of his life as cinema, Cherot said, "I think I've exorcised all my demons for now."
Bill Stamets is a free-lance writer and critic.
GRAPHIC: Christopher Cherot wrote, directed and starred in "Hav Plenty," based on his experiences as a starving artist. His triumph in selling the film to Miramax has been worked into a new happy ending for the movie.
LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1998
The Baltimore Sun
June 25, 1998, Thursday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: FEATURES, Pg. 1E
LENGTH: 1072 words
HEADLINE: 'Hav Plenty' heals filmmaker's heart; Success: Love gone awry led a young man to dump his film project and write about the broken affair. Therein lies a tale.
BYLINE: Ann Hornaday, SUN FILM CRITIC
BODY:
Life's hard. Love hurts. But art heals -- especially in the form of an acclaimed movie and a multi-picture deal.
Three summers ago, Christopher Scott Cherot, having dropped out of New York University's prestigious film school, was immersed in the pre-production phases of his first feature movie. But the budding auteur was preoccupied. "At that time I had just gone through this relationship and was suffering, I guess, from an intensely broken heart," the 30-year-old filmmaker recalled in a recent telephone interview, "and the creativity that I thought I would have for this first project was stunted. All of my thoughts and all of what I guess you'd call the creative juices were consumed with the after-effects of this relationship. So I felt, since this is consuming my creativity and it's on my mind, I felt the best thing to do, the most positive therapeutic catharsis for me, would be to write about it."
So Cherot wrote. And wrote. And he realized that the words and scenes were coming much more easily than they did in his other project. When the new script was finished, "I realized this was a good story, and I could make it for less money than I thought I could make my other script for," he said. So, putting the first film aside, Cherot cast the new movie that fall. By early 1996, its mostly-unknown ensemble cast was rehearsing. Cobbling together a $ 65,000 budget (most of it from mortgaging his mother's house), Cherot spent three weeks filming that spring.
One year later, after editing his feature debut on two VCRs, Cherot showed the film to an audience for the first time at the Acapulco Film Festival. Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds and his wife, Tracey, hot off the success of their first production effort, "Soul Food," saw the film and bought it on the spot. When the movie was screened at the Toronto film festival the following September, executives from Miramax purchased it from them and offered Cherot that multi-picture deal.
And -- after wowing audiences at Sundance just for good measure -- "Hav Plenty," the little romantic comedy that started with a broken heart, opened in theaters last Friday to warm reviews and pretty respectable box office.
"I'm sure some people out there will say, 'This happened to this guy overnight,' " Cherot allowed. "And it may seem like that. But I think my overnight success is how quickly I came out of obscurity. Actually it took me three and a half years."
"Hav Plenty" is set during an eventful holiday weekend at the Architectural Digest-worthy home of one Havilland Savage (Chenoa Maxwell), a lovely young professional who is currently dating a rap impresario (Hill Harper) who is rich, handsome and cheating on her like a dog. ("Am I a biscuit, Michael?" she asks at one point. "Am I a french fry? Than why do you keep playing me like a side order?")
In a fit of pique, Hav invites struggling writer Lee Plenty (Cherot) to spend the weekend with her, her best friend and her sister. Thrusts, parries and general romantic mayhem ensue. Although the title indicates that this hot-and-cold romance ends in the Hollywood-style wedding, nothing in "Hav Plenty" is that simple.
At one point in the film, Cherot -- who took the starring role when one of his actors dropped out at the last minute -- turns to the camera and says, "Remember folks, as outlandish as this all seems, this is a true story." In fact, Cherot initially wanted to keep the story's real-life roots hidden: He even put a pseudonym on the shooting script.
But he was quickly found out. "Once we started shooting, something about my performance as Lee made people think that I wrote it. My assistant director came up to me one day and said, 'You wrote this, didn't you?' I asked him why he should think that and he said, 'Because you haven't looked at it once since we've been shooting.' That kind of gave it away."
Turning your real life into reel life has its other dangers. For one thing, Hav doesn't come off as the most sympathetic young woman. Throughout the film, she teases Lee, manipulates him into hanging around her house and extols the virtues of her rich and powerful boyfriend -- wealth and power meaning more to her than, say, creativity and soul.
Indeed, according to Maxwell -- who makes her feature debut in "Hav Plenty" -- Hav started out as an even more unsympathetic character. She insisted that Hav be given more humanity. "I didn't want to make her a [witch]," Maxwell said during a visit to Baltimore last month. "She's a woman scorned, and she has some walls up. I think Chris would have wanted to make her a total [witch], but I didn't want that."
For his part, Cherot insisted that "Hav Plenty" "wasn't a revenge piece." But the best judge is probably the real Hav herself, who isn't talking. Although she attended the film's premiere earlier this month, there was no record of her reaction to the movie.
But at least one of the real-life characters has seen and approves of the story of her life: "The girl who inspired Caroline [Hav's dotty, French-speaking friend, played in a screwball turn by Tammi Katherine Jones] was at the Pan-African Film Festival in February," Cherot said. "She was very flattered. We talked, and she felt that it was very accurate and very fair and helped her realize some of the things she did wrong. But she's still flamboyant. She had an Afro wig and a leopard coat on.
"One of the reasons I don't think [the real] Caroline or Hav will be offended was that I took a time and event and I wrote about it, but the actors themselves put a new light on these characters," Cherot said. "I think the real-life characters will see little flashes of themselves on screen, but these are different people up there."
Still, the power of "Hav Plenty" lies in its proximity to reality. Life's hard, but when it's turned into art, its mysteries are sometimes revealed. "Several times [in 'Hav Plenty'] Hav says, 'Lee, I know you have to go, but could you do me a favor ' I didn't understand until I saw the film on the screen -- and I wrote it! -- that every time Hav asked that, she was asking Lee to stay," Cherot recalled. "And it brought tears to my eyes. I would never have realized that if I hadn't written it."
As for love? "My heart was mended way before I met who I'm with today," Cherot said softly. "I think the actual writing of the film was where the true healing came."
Pub Date: 6/25/98
GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO, His story: Christopher Cherot wrote and stars in "Hav Plenty" with (from left) Tammi Katherine Jones, Robinne Lee and Chenoa Maxwell.
Movie Basis 2
Chicago Sun-Times
June 24, 1998, WEDNESDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 50
LENGTH: 491 words
HEADLINE: Filmmaker blended reality and romance to get 'Plenty'
BYLINE: BY BILL STAMETS
BODY:
Romance and realism make an odd couple onscreen, but director Christopher Scott Cherot marries these contrary styles in his debut effort, "Hav Plenty."
Hearts and careers clash in Cherot's autobiographical comedy about a starving novelist surrounded by material girls. Camping on friends' couches, Cherot actually lived the role of a real-life starving artist before his film triggered its own happy ending. Cherot, 30, traces his fondness for romantic comedy back to a youthful infatuation. "I was 10 years old when I first saw 'The Goodbye Girl' in 1977," he said. "And for some reason that movie just spoke to me. It played right around the corner from my house in the Bronx where we lived. I saw that movie maybe maybe 11 or 12 times, and I can't understand why I loved that movie."
For "Hav Plenty" (now at local theaters), Cherot created an alter ego of Lee Plenty, a New York writer with a canceled book contract and no apartment lease, who goes on a holiday trip to a friend's house in Washington, D.C. "What follows is a true story," states Cherot over the film's opening titles. To keep things true, Cherot also plays the role of Plenty.
While in D.C., Plenty encounters a flirting trio of professionally upscale women. His wry rebuffs only heighten their curiosity about this "self-imposed celibate slacker," as Cherot describes Plenty. Writer's block meets lover's block. As the women reshuffle their priorities, the house guest with the torn jeans absorbs new material for a screenplay.
Cherot winces when critics compare his film to "love jones," another recent African-American romantic comedy. "That was the same love story we've seen over and over again," he said. "Because there are black people in it, now we embrace it. This is a great move in responsible filmmaking," he added sarcastically.
Shot in 16-mm. for around $ 65,000, "Hav Plenty" opened the first Acapulco Black Film Festival in July, 1997, before it moved on to the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where Miramax Films bought the movie.
After Miramax test-marketed "Hav Plenty," Cherot resorted to some creative fine tuning. The original ending left matters unresolved for its two romance-wary leads. But test audiences wanted to see the movie's leading couple reunite. "I agreed to change the ending," Cherot said. "I said 'no problem.' "
The film now ends with a "One Year Later" scene at the premiere of the movie "Tru Love," an autobiographical comedy. In the lobby afterward, Cherot's character agrees to add a happy ending when movie executives offer a deal. "I always knew I wanted to do a film-within-a-film epilogue," Cherot said. By building the movie deal into his new ending, Cherot keeps "Hav Plenty" on course as a "true story."
As for whether he will recycle the next chapter of his life as cinema, Cherot said, "I think I've exorcised all my demons for now."
Bill Stamets is a free-lance writer and critic.
GRAPHIC: Christopher Cherot wrote, directed and starred in "Hav Plenty," based on his experiences as a starving artist. His triumph in selling the film to Miramax has been worked into a new happy ending for the movie.
LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1998
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