At long last, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our final lead, Joe Swanberg! I first became aware of Joe when I was fortunate enough to see LOL at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. As I mentioned before, that’s where I met Tipper, but alas, no Joe. Still, his presence loomed large as “I wish Joe were here” became a kind of mantra spoken by the friends and filmmakers who had met him at SXSW.
After catching up on his first film, Kissing On The Mouth and seeing his latest film, Hannah Takes The Stairs, I count myself as one of his many admirers and was thrilled to finally meet him at the opening night party for the Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings (check out their blog Here). It really should have been a simple introduction where I told him I enjoyed his work and he said Thank you. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t be writing this right now. By the time I left I had somehow convinced him to read the script and consider the role of “Tom,” the last of the three leads.
Two days later he said Yes. How’s that for a good weekend?
The whole thing was immortalized and can pretty much be summed up by the photo to the right (thanks for sending Jason!) by a photographer whose name I do not know [UPDATE: That photographer is Andy Pixel].
If you’d like to find out more about Joe’s work in front of or behind the camera there's an article in Wikipedia, and this Filmmaker Magazine article on “Mumblecore” or as I prefer to think of it, The Independent New Wave. Also, don’t forget to check out The Ice Cream Floats, the band he’s in with Tipper Newton.
Welcome to our movie, Joe, it’s great to have you on board!
Oh and before I forget, you can see Joe in the latest issue of Rolling Stone where he's listed as part of the HOT LIST.
